GregValiant

When the printer moves to the Auto-Home position it is supposed to be up against the end-stop switches. That tells the printer that the XYZ are at absolute 0. The print head should not be able to move below a Z of absolute 0 (because the switch is there as a stop). From that point in space, wherever the print head moves in the XY plane the nozzle should still be at 0. When you level the bed you are adjusting the bed to the nozzle so the plane of the bed matches the plane of the nozzle. When it's correct, the top of the plate is also at Z=0 (or usually a paper thickness below the nozzle) and there should never be an interference. Does that printer have Auto Bed Leveling? If it does then you need to set a Z offset. That makes a fine adjustment between where the end of the probe is and where the nozzle is in relation to the probe. If it does not have ABL you need to practice your leveling. I use parchment paper. It's only .04 thick and nothing sticks to it. There are actual leveling prints you can use to move the head around the build plate without having to constantly putz with the LCD. I think CHEP has one.

Bingo!! That's one of the bad definition files. The default Z Hop speed is 10 and then your mini definition file changes the max Z speed to 1.5 but leaves the Z Hop speed at 10 so it's a show stopper. Next to the Setting Search box is a dropdown box for setting visibility. Set it to "All". Scroll down to the Speed section and then "Z Hop Speed" and you will see that it is red and has 10.0 in it. Set it to 1.5 and you should be good.

There are some printer definition files that have errors in them. Often it's because the author of the definition (who works for your printer manufacturer) did not change some defaults like they should have. It could be other things though. So as Smithy says, use "File | Save Project" to create a 3mf file and post it here.

Under "File" you will find "Save Project". Save a 3mf file with your settings and that model and post it here. There may be a clue.

I have sad news to report. Service.netfabb.com is gone. AutoDesk rolled it into Fusion 360 and now you have to pay for it. On the upside, I did find https://www.formware.co/onlinestlrepair and it's a tad slower but gives a report on what it found wrong with your model. They do impose on time limit on their service and if a model takes too long during processing it gets kicked out.

You will need to post a cura.log file and a project file so some troubleshooting can be done. Use "File | Save Project" and post the 3mf file here. A project file includes the model so use a different model if that one is proprietary. Under "Help | Show Configuration Folder" you will see a file Cura.log. Post that here too.

You could write it up over at the GitHub site. That would insure somebody takes a look. Not all the contributors hang around here. Besides reporting bugs it's the place to put New Feature requests.

I find that when filament gets moist that it acts oddly when extruding into air. Raise the print head above the bed 100mm and extrude 10mm of filament. With a .4 nozzle the string that comes out should be near .4mm in diameter. If it is growing in diameter then there is likely moisture that is turning to steam and causing the extrusion to expand. I am fortunate that my kitchen oven has a de-hydrator function and I can leave a roll of filament in at 46C for 4 hours and it comes out not perfect but useable again. It's hard to see on that print but you may still have some under-extrusion going on. My philosophy on Flow calibration is to get the E-steps correct, make sure the exact filament diameter is entered into Cura, and then stop right there. If I see some extrusion problems with a print I tune it on the fly.

This is a little Windows app I wrote for leveling and printing from your computer instead of having to use the LCD. It also has a built-in E-step calculator and shows printer responses to commands. It prints from the SD card rather than sending gcode over the USB port but does require a USB connection. There is a readme file and the total program consists of two dialog boxes. It really isn't very complicated and most folks seem to be able to muddle through. It's an unsigned app so if you are inclined to install it you will likely need to get it past your anti-virus. The installer will put a shortcut on your desktop and there is an un-installer. Greg's SD Print Tool.zip

I'm not 100% sure I understand what you want to do. You have the 3mf file with all the parts in it. Do you have the separate STL's? Are you trying to separate all the parts so you can make individual 3mf or STL files? Right now with what I see in your screenshot if you create a 3mf file for the handle project then that is all that will print. The inserts are in the file but off the build plate so they might be baggage in the file but they don't hurt the handle project. After you have that project saved (all parts) you could delete the handle, move the inserts over, set up Cura for them, and then create another 3mf project file for just the inserts. If you were to then re-open the handle 3mf file you could delete the inserts and re-save the 3mf with just the handle. You would end up with two project files. You could break it down further and create a project file for each insert but it looks as if you could print them all together so a single 3mf for the inserts is likely all you need. The "File | Export..." command isn't the same as "Save Project". When the Export command is used there are numerous options for file type. The binary STL may be the most popular but the default is 3mf. It's a different 3mf format though and will only contain the part, no settings, no printer because although it's also a *.3mf file it is not a project file. Aren't you glad that's so clear?

If you change the Skin Wall Count to 0 and the Skin Overlap Percentage to 30% I think the top will have a better chance of finishing without the loops falling into the interior.

Yes, that is the little known polygenistic effect. It's exactly like the "Snot Factor" only different.

This might explain better. The lines are a constant .4mm apart.

You printer is there but I don't have a definition file for it so the printer wouldn't load for me. The part came in though. It looks like a solid. I adjusted to 0% infill and a single wall, .4 top and bottom thickness, with .4 nozzle and .2 layer height. The slice looks pretty much like what you show. When Cura (or any slicer) cuts a section through a model, it is always in the XY. When you tell the slicer that you want a wall thickness of .4 then the slicer does a calculation based on a thickness perpendicular to the exterior surface. When the model is near vertical the .4 will be .4 in the slice. As the angle of the surface to the build plate approaches zero then the width of the plastic laid in a horizontal slice increases as a trig function of the angle. Those yellow lines are "skin" but think of them as outerwall. Cura is attempting to keep your wall thickness .4 (or whatever) even though a wall might be nearly horizontal. If you look at Layer 3 in the Cura preview I think you will see what I mean. The center area has no plastic because the .4 bottom thickness has been met but the surrounding area requires more plastic for the wall thickness to stay at .4. You may be able to get rid of some of that by using Adaptive Layers. A lower layer height will decrease the amount of yellow you see, but it isn't going to go away so long as some areas are near horizontal to the build plate.

If you would go to the Cura File menu and use "Save Project" and post the 3mf file here someone can take a look. A project 3mf will contain your printer and all your settings and is very helpful.

Pardon my English. My family is from Orvieto but it has been a long time since I spoke Italian and I never did learn to read it. It's a fun hobby. It has levels and depths that need to be explored. There is the electro-mechanical printer, the firmware, and the slicing software that all need to work together. Understanding what is going on between the three greatly increases the likelihood of consistently excellent prints. Learn the main gcode commands (G0, G1, G28, M104, M140, etc.) so you can understand what a gcode file is actually telling the printer to do. **Your Longer LK4 appears to be a clone of the Creality Ender 3 so when in doubt you can refer to the Ender 3 Reddit group. Make sure your printer is assembled with everything square (all axis at 90° to each other) and parallel (the Z uprights). If the printer is crooked your prints will be crooked. Just because some of the machine was pre-assembled doesn't mean it's right. (The pre-assembled build plate Y axis on my Ender was so tight it would barely move and it was angled by about 3°. Not good.) All the wheels need to be adjusted so the axes each move freely with no "wiggle". When they are correct you should be just able to spin a wheel with your fingers. The X beam should be rigid with no up-down wiggle at the right end. Make sure the Z threaded rod is parallel to the Z upright. Sometimes the motor mount bracket needs a shim. The print carriage needs to be at Z=0 when you check this. The Z rod coupler needs to be tight to the shaft and to the Z rod. The belts should be tight enough that they twang like a bass guitar string. Flow Calibration. If your E-steps/mm setting (in the printer firmware) is not calibrated then you will over or under extrude. You should calibrate the E-steps before you try to print anything. When the printer is told to extrude 100mm of filament then the extruder motor must push 100mm of filament - no more, no less. There are lots of videos out there on how to calibrate. If someone suggests to you that you need to calibrate "flow" using a single or double wall calibration cube then politely say "Thank You" and then DON"T DO IT. When Esteps are calibrated no further flow calibration is required. Carefully measure your filament diameter with a caliper or micrometer. In Cura under "Settings | Printers | Manage Printers | Machine Settings | Extruder 1 - Nozzle Settings" is a place for "Compatible Filament Diameter". It needs to match the actual diameter you measured. Example: If you measure the filament and it is 1.72mm and Cura is set at 1.75mm you will under-extrude by 4%. A moderator here (@ gr5) made a video about bed adhesion. It's kind of long, and in English, and it's very good. Leveling the bed (setting the Z gap) is really important. Practice, practice, practice. I use parchment paper because nothing sticks to it. A store receipt works well also. I suppose an auto-leveling system (BLTouch) is nice but there are thousands of threads on Reddit that complain about them. A piece of paper is simple, easy to understand, cheap to replace, and doesn't require any change in firmware. I am including a Leveling print that you can download. It makes leveling easier. If you open the file in a text editor you will see two instructions at the top. Uncommenting the temperature lines will allow you to level with the nozzle and bed hot. When the printer pauses at each position you can level and then click on the printer LCD to resume (the file uses the M0 command to pause). Practice leveling some more. Cura is a full-featured program with many options. Load a 3dBenchy STL or a calibration cube STL and then move around within the Cura application so you have an idea of where everything is. Go to the Marketplace and load the plugin "Printer Settings". Just above all the slicing settings is the "Settings Search" box and just to the right of that is a dropdown list for setting visibility. Use the dropdown and set the visibility to "All". Go through the settings. When you hover the mouse over a setting name a description will appear. Now you can start slicing and see the results in the Preview window. The 3dBenchy is printed without support, but turn support on for it, slice, and take a look at the preview. You can't print over air so when a model must have support the first question you always need to ask yourself is "How do I get the support out of there without wrecking the print". Good Luck and have fun. Greg Level.gcode

Sorry for the reply in English... I can only guarantee that the advice here will be free. Only you can decide if it's "good" advice.

The part off the plate is ignored and won't be in the slice. As long as the parts are separate you should be good to go. If the parts were located like that in a Group or Merged then Cura wouldn't slice because together they don't fit on the build plate. If you are printing with a skirt you can make it 3 loops around at 1mm from the part. That would make the reserved gray areas smaller and you might fit both on the plate at the same time. That would mean that both parts would have the same settings (there are some "Per Model" settings that could be applied). Stringing between parts can be an issue. Leaving them separate they can be printed with their own settings which would include Layer Height.

You are confident in your E-step calibration? When you unhide all the settings in Cura - all the Flow numbers are 100%? I'm still a little leery about the effect of the 6.5mm retraction on a direct drive. It can act like heat creep because soft plastic gets drawn upward where it doesn't belong, cools a bit, and can cause excess friction and under-extrusion. If you warm up the hot end and pull off the nozzle you can shove a 300mm long piece of filament down through the hot end (don't use the extruder just shove the filament through quickly by hand). If there is a plug of plastic in the warm hot end the filament should push it out.

Start at 1mm and see how it goes. That's a pretty small part so I think I'd test on a calibration cube or a benchy first so there would be more retractions. You might want to clean out your hot end as well. If you were pulling hot material back that far you might have a plug above the heat zone.

Retraction was at 6.5 in the 3mf file so I would guess it's a bowden. If it's DD then that would be way too much.

I opened the 3mf file and generated a g-code file (without making any changes) and printed it on my Ender3Pro. Looks good to me. I'm going to stick with the under-extrusion thing. It can't hurt to double-check the actual filament diameter and make sure that's the filament diameter in Cura, and to also double-check your E-step calibration. My print came out looking just like the Cura preview even with the poor filament I used. The mark in the top right of this photo is from the Wipe-Out move in your End Gcode.

It's hard to tell with the photo. Could you have some under-extrusion going on? What printer? With your model loaded in Cura and the settings the way you want, use "File | Save Project" and post the 3mf file here. I've got some scraps of PLA left and I can use some up on a test print. But the initial view (from maybe a couple thousand miles away) is that it looks like under-extrusion. 90% infill should be near solid.

If you can live with every other layer having "0" infill density then you can set the "Infill Layer Thickness" to some multiple of your regular layer height. For example: If you set your layer height to 0.2mm and the Infill Layer Thickness to 0.4mm and your Infill Density is 25%, then every-other layer would have no infill and the ones in between would have 25% infill density. If you were to make the Infill Layer Thickness 3 or 4 times the regular layer height then infill would be put down every 3rd or 4th layer. I will do that to speed up prints that have large areas of infill or that require dense infill. Putting infill down every-other layer will likely require increasing either the Infill Flow % or the Infill Line Width to provide more plastic. In turn, that can require slowing down the Infill Speed to keep from over taxing the flow capability of your hot end. The same thing can be done with "Support Infill Layer Thickness". You just need to keep in mind that Everything Affects Everything so a practice print can be a good idea.

I thought I'd throw this in as it might have some relevance. Last summer Creality switched to a 32bit mainboard for their printers and they immediately developed (what sounds like) this problem. After much time chasing it around - it appears (for the Creality machines) that the new style TFT LCD screens weren't enabled in the firmware. As a consequence M0, M1, and M117 didn't work because the printer couldn't interpret the messages to the screen and so the printer ignored the command and as a consequence, Pause at Height doesn't work on those machines unless the firmware is changed. A workaround is to insert "G4 Sxxxx" in the "gcode after pause" box. That will Dwell the printer for "S" number of seconds. One downside is that you have to be standing there watching the machine because unlike a pause that must be manually restarted, a Dwell is a timed event. When the time runs down the printer takes off. Another issue is that there is a hard limit of 1800seconds for the Disarm Timeout coded into the plugin. Your dwell must be less than the disarm timeout or the steppers will lose location. Finally, there is no way to re-start the machine during a dwell. You have to wait the full dwell time. But wait...there's more. If you have Z-Hops enabled then using Pause At Height with By Height can miss a trick as it will react to the first instance of the height specified for the pause even if it is only a Z-Hop and not the working height. Adaptive layers can also be a problem for Pause at Height. All that being said, I use Pause at Height a lot and it works fine for me but there have been issues.