GregValiant

You would have to make some file alterations. Since the printer would be a total custom you would need to copy the files over every time you upgrade Cura to a new version. Not difficult. I keep my custom profiles together and copy them over when needed. @tdbinns and @EngineeringGuy - Did you get the second extruder added?

Unfortunately scaling things down has that effect. That model is seriously scaled down from life size so, yes, it is going to lose a lot of definition. In any software, you can scale X and/or Y and/or Z but you can't scale part-of-a-part. It's an all-or-nothing deal. There really isn't anything you can do unless you are willing to jump through some hoops. You can try scaling it up so the base is 225 x 225 then increase the height of your build plate to 550. Add a support blocker as a "cutting mesh" and print the model in sections and glue the sections together. It will end up about 500mm tall. The model itself has problems (this is the most errors I've seen in an STL): -> Analysed your file: --> 16 Naked edges --> 4 Planar holes --> 0 Non-planar holes --> 7043 Non-manifold edges --> 9587 Inverted faces --> 0 Degenerate faces --> 2856 Duplicate faces --> 0 Disjoint shells This is with a .4 nozzle and no support. It does look like all the features sliced. This is scaled 1617%. Same model with support. That's a boat load of support. 48 hour print and 250 meters of 1.75 filament and it's just the bottom section. I don't really see a way to print it without support and I don't see a way to print it with support because it's so delicate it won't hold up to support removal. I'm going to call this unprintable but you can give it a shot if you want. I did generate the gcode file and it was 117mb and 4,046,430 lines of gcode - just for this bottom section.

@Torgeir and @gr5 are the Ultimaker gurus. I'm more of a "quick and dirty" sorta guy. I think all of us learn by taking cracks at other peoples printing issues. I can understand the customer wanting to go with ABS (or PETG?). On that part though, I guess it would depend on how it is being stressed. One thing I liked about the "L" bracket idea is that it minimizes layer failure. It's only a 3mm cross section and I broke two of them getting the support off (admittedly the PLA was not good). The designer was concerned as well as evidenced by the outside fillet on the 90° bend of the "L". That inner sharp corner still looks like a problem. Good Luck.

Yes, the one in italics is the "active printer" and only one can be active at a time. You could click on one of the other names and choose "activate" and maybe set it up different. I have a lot of printers installed in Cura due to opening so many 3mf files here. It's kind of a virtual print farm. I find it convenient to keep the Ultimakers and Creality machines installed but I do clean house once in a while.

Since we are beating this poor model to death...this would be my preference. The PLA I have left is old, brittle, silky, and the layer adhesion is poor. My first attempt fell apart when I removed the support. It looked good though! Print time for this one is 45 minutes and the L bracket won't suffer from delamination of the layers. Between the 4 of us we have considerably more time into it than it would take to print. I won't bother to include a part file since the holes are 2.2mm for 1.75 filament and you have an Ultimaker so you would need 3mm holes which won't fit. And here it is. Locating pins installed and then the final assembly.

Ok today it worked. I looked at it. Since you have a dual extruder machine do you have PVA loaded in Extruder 2? That would make this pretty easy. Since I have a single extruder I went with gear teeth down on the plate and Tree supports. There is a bit of PLA left on a roll so I'm using it for a print of your part. We'll see. I'm a bit concerned about the radius on the top. It didn't seem to want any support. If this were mine though I think I would have provided for a glue joint. A couple of locating holes suitable for filament to be glued in and it would locate the two pieces correctly. The "L" bracket nor the gear rack would require support.

A single definition file can be used for multiple installed printers. Each installed printer should have a different name. The printer definition file for the Ender 3 can be used for the V2 since both use a flavor of Marlin. The E3Pro is the same definition but does not include the "glass clip" disallowed areas that the E3 definition does. You could use the E3Pro definition if you want to. Just name the printer so you know what you've done. As far as "profiles" go, Creality (who supplies the definition files when they get around to it) doesn't dictate any printing settings other than Max Feedrate and Max Accel and Jerk and other things like that. The definition files are in Ultimaker Cura x.x.x\resources\definitions and are named like "creality_ender3.def.json". There are specfic extruder files (in resources\extruders) and nozzle files (in resources\variants) and the base plates are in resources\meshes and all together they constitute a "Printer Definition". You can open those files in a text editor and view them. You could alter them if you know what you are doing as they are Python scripts. The problem with altering them is you would have to manually install them again if you upgrade to the next version of Cura. So you only really need one printer installed. After you have adjusted all the settings for a model you can save that configuration as a Profile. You can also make changes to materials if you enter custom ones.

I do test prints for some things when I have just a bit of material left on a roll. I figure practice makes perfect. Right now I don't have any near-empty rolls but Kman did well with it. The only thing I'm absolutely sure of is that computers are not an exact science.

@terrypin - First I'll apologize. Kman and I tend to let our curiosity get the best of us, then we are talking over people. Sorry. UM is Ultimaker and my printer is an Ender 3 Pro. There is nothing in a printer definition file that would cause Cura to slice something differently for one printer than another. Now Settings Profiles and Material Profiles are a different story and they can vary by printer. Ultimaker's are much more precise and robust than my Creality machine and so Profiles for their printers are both more aggressive (speed and acceleration) and designed take advantage of the higher precision. I just opened the original file in 4.9.1 and it is the same as Kman saw in 4.8 and that you and I saw in 4.10. There is a little blip of an error in the STL. It isn't enough to have an effect on this particular model and as Kman shows - it prints fine. So have at it. Whatever caused your spaghetti problem wasn't the error in the model.

I passed on this one because there isn't any real information. A project file would be good. Knowing the Operating System and maybe even the video sub-system would be nice. Knowing your printer would be a help as well. Why did you bring up Firewall? Were there previous issues with your installation? Is Octoprint involved? Just providing the Cura.log file might give evidence of the "What" but probably not the "Why" and having to muddle through a 1mb text file is not one of my favorite things.

This is with a .2 nozzle at .2 line width and there are still areas missing. Not good. I agree with IRobertI. Looks like it's back to the drawing board for this one. There are a couple of threads here on the site about models like this. Do a search for "cookie cutter" and they should come up. Just as I was clearing the build plate I noticed these areas and they relate directly to the areas that don't want to print. This is the "prepare" view.

In regards to adding more or different tool functionality to Cura, this comes up once in a while from the SolidWorks/Inventor/Fusion360 crowds. Cura should be more capable dealing with the models and making adjustments to models or Cura should be tied right in with the CAD software so all an operator needs to do is think about slicing the parts and wham - done, or Cura should have assembly capability, and on and on it goes. I have numerous toolboxes and they each have a specialty. I don't do plumbing with the electrical tools. I don't drive nails with a crescent wrench. Each tool is good at what it does. Cura is good at what it does. If a bunch of sideline capability were added what energy would the team have left to keep Cura at the top of the heap of slicers? Let it be the best slicer that the team can come up with. I've got other good tools for other tasks and "they're only a click away". "Universal means it won't work either way" - Dick Mara (RIP)

You always make sense sir. The question is whether I understand what you are saying. In this case I think I've hit a snag. As I rotated the model around and stared at those triangles that make up the areas around the holes, they just looked "wrong". 3D builder seemed to indicate that the errors it found related to the bottom surface of the model. It would be nice to find a software that could look at an stl and tell me what exactly is wrong. Netfabb tells me nothing. Ideamaker has it's stats window that I like (but in this case didn't see any errors to report on). 3D builder and Meshmixer are not intuitive and just tell me "something" is wrong and then that it was fixed, but there is no analysis. Cura's mesh tools are OK when viewed with the rest of the group. When looking at the lot of them with a view at their Mesh Analysis Tools the phrase "mediocre at best" seems to apply to the entire group.

It almost looks like the snake is not positioned correctly to the staff. There are gaps where they aren't connected on the right side, and an overlap on the left. The little tail piece isn't really connected at all.

Yea, I should have mentioned it. From the bottom, Meshmixer shows all four through holes of the original file like this. When I load the "repaired" file it looks the same to me. It's apparent that there is a gap in my knowledge that a truck could drive through. This is after using the "Make Solid" tool in Meshmixer. I'll reserve additional comment because it appears it could be a really big truck.

4.10 beta for me.

I've got a system for bad models. If Cura complains about an STL, I check it and analyze it with the Mesh Tools. This didn't tell me anything other than "Not Watertight. Then I start IdeaMaker and load the STL. In my opinion it has better mesh repair tools. That didn't tell me anything either and in fact didn't find any errors with the model. That was a clue. Next, I upload to Service.NetFabb.com and so far there has only been one model I uploaded that it couldn't repair. In this case it did repair the file but as is typical, it didn't tell me what was actually wrong with it. So I used MS 3D builder. It also repaired the file but didn't tell me what was wrong. My final check is to slice the bad model and the repaired model side by side (if possible) and look for differences. This time I didn't see any. So my opinion (keeping in mind that I'm only on the Junior Varsity here) is that there ain't much wrong with it. Attached is the repaired file. In this instance I think the original file would have sliced fine. arduino_uno_bottom_fixed.stl

Google won't let me download that file ("...is dangerous and Google Chrome has blocked it"). I don't know the Ultimaker printers so @gr5 or one of the others will address the under-extrusion.

As @ahoeben says, if Cura notices the Keywords it won't add temps before your Startup Gcode. But some folks prefer a bit of preheat before ABL so something like this would heat the hot end a bit, start heating the bed, do the ABL thing, and then heat up to operating temperature. AHoeben's list of Cura Keywords is HERE. ; Custom Start G-code G21 G90 M82 M107 M140 S{material_bed_temperature_layer_0} ;start heating the bed to operating temp but don't wait for it to get there. M109 S150 ;heat the hot end to some temperature just below "drool" temperature. Wait while heating. G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder G28 ; Home all axes G29 ;your ABL command M109 S{material_print_temperature_layer_0} ;Wait for hot end to get to operating temperature M190 S{material_bed_temperature_layer_0} ;wait for bed to get to operating temperature ;you can add purge lines here ;End of Start G-code Since there is some expansion of the heat block, nozzle, and bed when they are hot then having them at an elevated temperature during AutoLevel can increase the accuracy of leveling.

It's under Support | Enable Support Interface. What you have there is the Roof interface enabled. It looks to be 1mm thick and is likely set to Grid. I usually allow a space of 1 layer between the top of the interface and the first real layer above so they don't bond together so well. That setting is Support Z Distance. Another important one is the density of the interface. I run that from 25% to 60% dependent on the model. If the interface is too dense there will be millions of retractions. If it is too sparse for the model the first real layer can sag between the lines of the interface.

@krikru What printer are we talking about? There are definition files, extruder files, and nozzle "variant" files. Something in one of them might be overriding settings. If a setting turns orange it will be OK to slice (whereas if it is red it won't slice). I agree that a .2 line width for a .2 nozzle should not be a warning. I use AHoeben's plugin for the SideBarGUI and with it installed in 4.10 the nozzles are here... In 4.6 it's in a drop down available in the Prepare screen when you click on the material/nozzle button. I think that's also the default location in 4.10. Let us know the printer manufacturer and model though. I think there might be something going on in the definition files (which are provided by the printer manufacturer).

That looks like it's the Z seam. There is always a Z seam. On parts with corners Cura has settings to try to hide it. On round parts there just isn't anywhere to put it. There are options for "random" but that leaves little blots all over. If you set the Wall/Outer Wall Wipe distance to .1 or .2 you may be able to make it less noticeable, but there is always a Z seam at the start/end of a layer. Turning off "Retract at Layer Change" can help because it will avoid a little prime blob at the start of a layer. Turning off Z hop can help as well.

The "USB printing" plugin is not maintained as no Ultimaker Printers currently use it. I find it surprising that the DaVinci printer is so advanced that it can notice when a print goes bad, run time backwards, and suck the spaghetti back up the nozzle (yuck!) and return it to the roll of filament. Now although Leonardo DaVinci was a very bright fella, it was actually H.G. Wells who invented the Time Machine. It wasn't until decades later that a certain Mr. Peabody was able to perfect it with the development of his "Way Back" machine (op. cit. Rocky & Bullwinkle). I bring this up since you are going Way Back three versions to 4.8 but it has not been fixed and 4.10 still has issues with time when printing loaded gcode files. The problem will likely persist through some time last year.

"I am still curious about the second part, getting a clean and attractive interface surface between supports and parts." It isn't easy. Sometimes it's a matter of the air gap you leave between the top of the support and the first layer of the print. Sometimes it's a matter of the Roof Interface Density. The problem is as @gr5 points out, if the support is the same material as the print then it wants to bond together. A sharp exacto knife is your friend as well as a set of pics to get the support out of tight places. If you zoom in on the second photo you see that there are definite gaps between the lines of extrusion. You are under-extruding there and that will always leave a poor finish above the support (maybe gr5 can address that). There already isn't any "squish" for that first layer and shorting yourself on the amount of material extruded will make that first layer of Roof look very stringy. For that part I would take a good close look at printing it with the "gear teeth" face on the build plate. Because the gear teeth have a piece that is discontinuous and starts all by its lonesome over the support it will be difficult to get a nice finish printing that portion vertically.

My guess is he had a blockage at a gap between the nozzle and the bottom end of the heat break. With a 1mm nozzle he was pushing a lot of material so heat creep doesn't seem as likely but is still a possibility. The black marks are filament and there may have been a bit of a leak of plastic past the nozzle threads (although that usually results in loose globs on the print). As the extruding slowed and stopped then any oozing plastic could get blown around by the fans and the strings just ended up getting stuck to the heat block. Take it apart and clean it up (careful of the wires and don't burn yourself). Make sure the nozzle is seated against the bottom of the heat break (if you also have an all metal), or that the bowden tube has a nice square cut and is mashed against the back end of the nozzle when you tighten the nozzle. The hot end should be near operating temperature when you tighten the nozzle. Oh...and tighten the nozzle with a socket. Only a hack would use pliers.