GregValiant

That is a very difficult slice and is totally dependent on the way the support is handled. Here is my take on it. 40% of the filament is used in the support. The 3mf file may give you a starting point. My stuff is mostly functional prints. @kmanstudios is much more of an artist than I am. Maybe he'll have a take on it. GV_Charizard.3mf

Don't encourage him Kman...the puns will just get worse.

It's in the Experimental section of the settings. The tooltip should read "DO NOT USE".

Turn off "Make overhangs printable". It's doing just what it says - instead of an overhang you get part structure.

Have you tried turning it on by sending a gcode command? You could also create a 1 line gcode file in Notepad M104 Stt (where "ttt" would be your target temp) and print it.

Geez, that could be a lot of things. You might check your Support Flow and Support Line Width. A "Tree Support Branch Angle" greater than 45° can cause this too. Zooming in to the right side of the skirt you may be under-extruding (the lines aren't welded together). What was the print temperature? How did the main model turn out (cuz you're going to throw that portion away)? It appears that the gaps are caused by the filament not adhering at certain points. That results in a straight line (like a bridge) so instead of going from A to B to C it's going from point A to point C because it didn't stick at B. The fact that it kinda shows up in preview makes me think it's line width or flow. There are a lot of suspects though.

You are accelerating for 1/2mm and decelerating for 1/2mm. Things are not instantaneous even with Accel turned off. You could set Retraction Speed to 1,000,000 and it wouldn't have any effect on the speed. Now, you could possibly raise the Maximum Accel on the Extruder but there WILL be a point where the machine will hurt itself when it tries to hit that number. Set the Retraction speed to 30 and forget about it.

I think you did an export. The only thing in the 3mf was the model and it sliced fine using my printer and settings. I need the project file (also will be a 3mf) because it will contain your printer, the STL, and your settings. In Cura, load the STL and set up the slice. Then, under the File menu select "Save Project" and create a 3mf file. Post that file here.

Go to "File | Save Project" and (if it isn't proprietary) post the 3mf file here.

Look at the mesh fixes section. The only thing you might want selected is "union overlapping volumes". The rest should be de-selected. If "remove all holes" was selected it was the problem.

A knife slice is very clean. Is there a way to smooth out the scratches from sandpaper? Even a fine grit will leave tool marks. I've heard of acetone smoothing for ABS. Is there something for PLA? Story time. I was working on a failure in some large plastic chemical tanks. The 35mm thick walls of the tanks had been edge welded and one of the things that was being looked at was weld penetration. After slicing the pieces through the weld, it was necessary to polish the welds to check penetration. They couldn't be buffed as no heat could be tolerated. After some thought I polished a good ole' carpenters plane with a diamond knife sharpener and planed the weld area. The finish was like a mirror (which is where I was going with this) and proved that the welds penetrated by 8mm into both pieces. So yes, a knife edge is good. It's a pity really that I was never allowed to play with sharp objects. I could have been a brain surgeon.

That's a smokin' extruder gr5! Many extruders are geared to provide more torque and push power. I didn't know of any of them were geared for that kind of speed. This is in the base definition file for Creality printers. It will either show up in your base definition or in the actual printer model definition file under "overrides". "machine_max_feedrate_e": { "value": 50 } You can carefully change the 50 to something else. This also might carry back to fdmprinter.def.json where the retract speeds are noted. "retraction_speed": { "label": "Retraction Speed", "description": "The speed at which the filament is retracted and primed during a retraction move.", "unit": "mm/s", "type": "float", "default_value": 25, "minimum_value": "0.0001", "minimum_value_warning": "1", "maximum_value": "machine_max_feedrate_e if retraction_enable else float('inf')", "maximum_value_warning": "70", Whatever you set it to will be affected by E-Accel. At the generic default of 5000mm/sec² on the E - it takes 4mm to get up to 200mm/sec. That means your retract distance would need to be at least 8mm to get up to speed. A retract speed of 175 takes about 3mm to get to speed so I would call that the max possible for a 6mm retraction. Average speed in that case would be 87.5. There may also be a max set in M203 in your printer or possibly in the firmware.

There is going to be a Z seam. It's the nature of the FDM process. Playing with "outer wall wipe distance" and "outer before inner walls" can have an effect but in the end - there is going to be a Z seam. If you are printing a cylinder or a ball, there are no corners to hide it in. The two options become: "random" which will leave little blobs everywhere (but they won't be lined up) and "none" which will line up the blobs and results in the Z seam line you are talking about. The "line" is easier to remove (sanding) and the random blobs are less noticeable unless you look close. I usually go with "none". @kmanstudios or @geert will know better ways to mitigate the Z seam.

Thanks for the report. Sometimes we wonder what happened as people get their problems resolved but don't report back. The all-new printer may not have the problems with layer shifting. It is always a mechanical problem and can be the belts, loose screws on the drive pulleys, insufficient voltage reference from the mainboard, etc. It can be tough to chase down. The cantilever design makes for a compact unit but the starts and stops of the print head can shake the machine. The fix is to keep Acceleration control setting very low which results in slow prints. I wrote a little application for calibrating Accel and Jerk. With a 120 x 120 build plate and the Accel at 11 and Jerk at 8, the max speed you can get is 24mm/sec. You can set Print Speed higher in Cura, but at an Accel of 11, 24mm/sec is the best it will do (16mm/sec around a circle). Trying to speed up the machine by increasing the Accel results in more shaking and directly affects print quality. I would think you could go to 100 though and that would result in a possible speed of 55mm/sec. My Ender runs very well at an Accel of 500. At 3000 it's pretty shaky and the quality on curves and corners definitely suffers. An industrial strength machine like an Ultimaker can take a lot more. If you get one of these SD to Micro SD adapters, you can use an SD card instead of fooling with the little micro SD. A second benefit is that it stays in the printer all the time and doesn't wear-out the memory card slot.

There isn't a profile for the Ender 6 yet. Creality might have submitted one and it may make it into the next release of Cura. When you add a printer, I think the Ender 5 is pretty close. I would install an Ender 5 (you can name the printer whatever you want) and change the build plate size in the Machine Settings within Cura. If you have a heated build volume you need to check the box for that as well. That should get you started.

I moved the model in the 3mf file up 50mm. The STL file does the same thing. I was thinking that it was the model. I designed one in AutoCad and got the same situation. Mine is on the right. (It has a flat bottom when on the build plate too.) Here is the original STL in Cura 4.6. It's a bowl. And here it is in 4.9.1 again, this time with "Make overhangs printable" turned off.

A clogged bowden tube can be consistent as clogging depends on the number of retractions, retraction distance, Infill and Support density, whether you have "connect infill lines" or "connect support" lines enabled, grid vs zigzag, etc. If your settings are near the same for each gcode you tried to print then I would expect a clog to form near the same point in each print attempt. A cold pull can remove a clog, but it usually requires that the bowden be pulled out, the nozzle removed, and the inside of the hot end be cleaned out. Post your gcode file (the one from the SD card) and I'll take a look at it just in case something odd is happening. Have you had trouble with any other prints stopping?

These settings are used when you select "One at a Time". They tell Cura how close together you can put parts on the build plate. They describe the "gray" area around each model. These dimensions are measured from the centerline of the nozzle. When you look at your print head from the front you can see the edge of the fan shroud on the left. That would be your "X min" and the X max would be the dimension from the nozzle to the edge of the fan shroud on the right. The Y min is towards the front of the machine and the Y max is towards the back. The gantry height is the dimension from the build surface to the bottom of the X beam that the print head travels on. I have entered my Ender measurements here. Notice that the X max and Y max are pretty large. I have a 50mm blower for cooling and it's mounted on the right and curls around the back. Printhead Settings X min [-26] Y min [-32] X max [32] Y max [34] Gantry height [25] Copy this to your start gcode. It will print purge lines on the right side of the print area. The heating commands will allow the bed and hot end to heat together. A line that starts with a semi-colon is a comment and is ignored by the printer. Words between curly brackets like {machine_depth} are keywords and Cura replaces them with the actual value when the gcode is created. ; ; AnyCubic Custom Start G-code M104 S{material_print_temperature_layer_0} M140 S{material_bed_temperature_layer_0} M109 S{material_print_temperature_layer_0} M190 S{material_bed_temperature_layer_0} G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder G28 ; Home all axes G1 Z2.0 F3000 ; Move Z Axis up little to prevent scratching of Heat Bed G1 X0.1 Y20 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move to start position G1 X0.1 Y200.0 Z0.3 F1500.0 E15 ; Draw the first line G1 X2.4 Y200.0 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move to side a little G1 X2.4 Y20 Z0.3 F1500.0 E30 ; Draw the second line G1 E28 G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder G1 Z12.0 F3000 ; Move Z Axis up little to prevent scratching of Heat Bed G1 X5 Y20 Z12 F5000.0 ; Move over to prevent ;End of Start G-code ; And copy this and paste it into your end gcode. After a print the head will lift and the table will come forward. ; ;Custom End G-Code G91 ;Relative positioning G1 E-2 F2700 ;Retract a bit G1 E-2 Z0.2 F2400 ;Retract and raise Z G1 X5 Y5 F3000 ;Wipe out G1 Z10 ;Raise Z more G90 ;Absolute positioning G1 X0 Y{machine_depth} ;Present print M106 S0 ;Turn-off fan M104 S0 ;Turn-off hotend M140 S0 ;Turn-off bed M220 S100 ;re-set feed rate M221 S100 ;re-set flow rate M84 X Y E ;Disable all steppers but Z ;All done

If you print vertical and change the infill to 100% it would be stronger. No matter what you do, if it is PLA it will be brittle, if it's PETG it will be flexible and maybe all the overhangs would want support. Either way - it's plastic so it isn't going to act like steel that's for sure. If you were to make this 2 pieces that would glue together it would be easier to make, but strength might be even more of an issue. Going to a 16mm O.D. would help also (but I'm sure you have design constraints). EDIT: @tenedor - I altered the 3mf file again. Line Width is now .35, walls are 3.5 and Infill Density is 0% (since the walls will be so thick) and there is no air gap between the part and the raft. This should be stronger as there is more material. Do you have a stock hot end? I had the same one as your Ender 3 and eventually the clogs at the bottom of the bowden tube were a constant problem. No amount of settings changes had any effect. I installed an all-metal hot end (like a Micro-Swiss) and it has been MUCH better. It still requires maintenance but now it is a normal schedule (instead of every hour of print time). GV_2_screw6.3mf

Make sure "Ironing" is turned off. Increase the the "Line Width" to 1.05 or 1.1. Print a second pair so the layer time is stretched out. Increase Minimum Layer Time. This will slow down the print head. Make sure the cooling fan is running at 100%. You are pushing a lot of material and it has some thermal inertia and doesn't cool as fast as it would with a smaller nozzle. You might want to play with "Lift Head". I haven't used it but I believe that cases like this are what it's for. Could be stringy though since it's a glorified Zhop.

Progress is good. Now that you have a handle on the layer shift in the X Y you get to go to school on Z banding. There looks to be spots where the Z didn't respond correctly and the result is layers that got mashed together. It's very noticeable at the wide portion of both vase models.

You can see that your work volume has been made shorter. When you turn on "one at a time", instead of "Max Z" the top of the virtual volume is "Gantry Height". You can increase the "gantry height" in your Machine Settings. It would need to be taller than the bracket. Be advised that Cura will still show a preview of them being printed "All at Once" because each part will have it's own Layer:0. The gcode will have two instances of Layer:0 though. You need to be careful. When you remove the Gantry Height safety, it's all on you to make sure there is no crash.

Because there are two printers involved I discounted that possibility of a mechanical problem but maybe gr5 nailed it when he brought up the Z mechanicals. Before you chuck them out a window, double check the Z couplers and the set screws. Print a gcode file with two lines: G28 G1 X10 Y10 Z125 F600 Then scale the height of the nozzle from the bed. If it's 125 then I'm lost as well.

It's odd that it was OK without the holes. When you made the holes it only made circles in the top and bottom leaving the inside hollow. without the holes it sliced as you would expect. The attached file has been repaired. There is one 8mm hole on the centerline and four 8mm holes on a 25mm bolt hole diameter. It looked like that's what you wanted. I used MS3D Builder to put the holes in and then repaired the altered model using Service.Netfabb.Com. Oh, and you type too quick. GV Repaired Plug.stl

In "Mesh Fixes" turn off "remove all holes". In "Experimental" turn off "make overhangs printable"