GregValiant

I think it's going to be a long, long time.

3D printing just takes a bit of thought and knowing where to find the information. Once the printer is set up nice and square and calibrated, the quality and accuracy of the parts can be dazzling. Speaking of calibration - have you calibrated the Extruder steps/mm? That needs to be done on all 3D printers (except maybe Ultimakers). And I have to say that I'm pleased that there is finally someone around here that's older than me.

This is where I started to go earlier... Cura has a virtual build plate and your printer has a physical build plate. They need to be synced so a print ends up in the middle of the physical build plate. Your build plate looks to be 255 x 255. Generally, you can't use the whole thing because you need some safety margin around the periphery. The build plate is mounted on springs and so might be a little this way or a little that way. It matters. So figure a safety area of 2.5mm all the way around Auto-Home the printer. Use the LCD and move the nozzle to a point 2.5mm from the left edge of the build surface and 2.5mm from the front edge of the build surface. Select "Set Home Offset" on the printer and then select "Save Settings". In Cura go to the Machine Settings again and on the left under Printer Settings make the X width 250 and the Y depth 250. So the Cura virtual build surface is 250 x 250 with 0,0 in the left front corner and that will be origin for any gcode you make. When the printer reads the gcode it will put the Cura virtual 0,0 at the Home Offset physical 0,0 position. After setting your Home Offset, if you move the print head to X125 Y125 it should be really close to the midpoint of your 255 build plate.

Sorry I was confusing. Just de-select origin at center. The rest of the reply has to do with determining what your actual midpoint is. The MinX and stuff on the right side of the Machine Settings dialog are the dimensions of your print head. They are used if you enable printing "One at a Time" so Cura can tell if the print head is going to mash a finished part on the build plate.

Settings | Printers | Manage Printers | (Make sure your printer is the active printer) | Machine Settings and then DE-select "Origin at Center". With a model located in the center of the Cura workspace - when you create a gcode for your printer you can open it in a text editor. Near the beginning of the file will be lines: ;MINX:-59.762 ;MINY:-28.957 ;MINZ:0.2 ;MAXX:59.764 ;MAXY:28.954 ;MAXZ:98.5 If MinX and/or MinY are negative numbers then "Origin at Center" was checked. You can see that (MinY + MaxY) / 2 = Bed Midpoint = 0. The only difference in the file these lines came from is that "Origin at Center" was de-selected. ;MINX:55.238 ;MINY:86.043 ;MINZ:0.2 ;MAXX:174.762 ;MAXY:143.953 ;MAXZ:98.5 The math is the same (MinX + MaxX) / 2 = Bed Midpoint = 115. The midpoint of my bed is indeed X115, Y115.

@prafersno you may not be aware but @ahoeben is one of the main contributors to Cura. I don't know that he "knows it all" but he probably knows 99.99% of it. I listen when he speaks, and so I learn. Reading back through this thread, I think his responses were concise and to the point and explained why there was no "top fuzzy". As for myself, I have been described as having a "wide skillset". I suppose that is the same as "Jack of all Trades and Master of None", but I'm good with that. I do appreciate a good workaround and so kudos to you for finding a workable workaround that worked. Have a nice day.

@gr5 I think it has to do more with the "Line Directions". When you spin any model in Cura you do not spin the skin pattern or infill pattern. If the infill (especially Lines or Grid) and Top/Bottom are printing at [45,135] and a rectangular part is square to the world then although it is filling the same area, some lines are shorter, some longer, and there are 41.4% more lines which means more short index movements at the end of each extrusion. If the part is spun to an orientation of 45° then it would be aligned with the skin and infill at [45,135]. All those lines are of equal length and you have limited the number of index moves. Within Cura your Accel and Jerk are set the same for both X and Y. You can alter the Accel by adding a line to your Start-Up Gcode By setting a different Accel limit on the Y axis than the X axis: M201 X500 Y300 Then in Cura if you set the Print setting for any feature to 500 the printer would limit the Y to 300. Some people do like to put a lower limit on the Y because of the weight of the table. Jerk is different because there is no "limit" command. You would have to alter the line that Cura puts into the gcode. F'rinstance, Cura might put in M205 X10 Y10 and you would need to change that line like M205 X20 Y10 or something. I'll stick in Greg's Accel and Jerk Tool. It's a little Windows app and a sort of calibration tool for accel and jerk. You can separate the axis for both Accel and Jerk and see how it affects movement of the print head at various speeds and around circles. There is a utility for leveling, and also for printing from the SD card as well. Greg's Accel and Jerk Tool.zip

It came in exactly square for me. At Z=-0.98 is just barely shows the three contact points of the fins. That was with McMuffin60's original 3mf file.

1972 Shasta Compact for the wife (she does have two ears and they work amazingly well). I thought the bumper, spare tire, and LP tank turned out quite well. I think these were with a .4 but I can't remember. A real plus is that she actually wears them.

Like I said - Vertical is scary. You just kinda gotta cross your fingers. When it gets around layer 1000 you can see it wobble on the Infill moves, but the inner and outer walls go down well. That's the key. You can generate a Gcode from that 3mf file I posted (and it's what you SHOULD do) but I'll pass on the gcode. The print speed will be calculated no matter what you put in. Cura will adapt the speed to hit the Minimum Layer Time. 10 seconds appears to be about right. To drive you really nuts - the OD of the small top feature came out at 5.03mm and the distance across the flats is 4.00mm. Sorry about the dimensional error on the diameter.📏 screw6.gcode

You're not going to let those earrings win are you. The "Support Z Distance is 2 layer heights (.24) and that could be narrowed to .12. Changing to "Z overrides XY" might help. But you may be asking too much of the system. Trying to print a pin with the point down is never easy. So much depends on the layer adhesion at the start and the plastic is gooey so the initial speck gets pulled off the support structure. And as you saw, it can recover but on a small model there isn't much room for error. Here is your initial speck... I made the above noted adjustments, added a 5mm brim with Brim Distance .1mm, and moved the entire model down to Z=-2.5. Here is the resulting first layer... You can see that it is much larger because I've cut the tips off. The model has a much higher chance to complete since it has a better base to build on. You might also look at putting the rocket on a raft. Divorcing it from the raft might be a problem though. You could also try printing multiples (you are aware these things usually come in pairs?). Minimum Layer Time dictates the speed on these and slow is good.

Sometimes curiosity gets the best of me. I save the ends of spools of filament to experiment. This came out really well and the raft snapped off perfect. There was zero bench work involved. The print speed was 60 with outer walls at 35 but the minimum layer time came into play so it printed quite a bit slower (the gcode says 21 and 12). The printer is a stock 8 bit Ender 3 Pro. I don't usually post prints but with a contact patch of "not much" on the raft I thought it was notable that it held up to the180mm height. BTW there was some leftover hairspray on the surface and I suppose it helped a bit.

It sounds like you received a warped bed. One fix is to use shims (aluminum foil works). If you were to cut out a square piece of foil 235 x 235 and cut a hole in the center maybe 200mm diameter and lay it on the aluminum with the build surface on top, it would raise the periphery. If one piece doesn't work then try two. That would certainly be cheaper than buying a new hot plate. Another fix is to go to a glass build surface (but you still might need to shim the corners or the glass might rock). You might try going with an "Initial Layer Height" of .28. That's about the most you can go with a .4 nozzle. You could remove the hot bed and try to take the "bow" out of it. Finally you could replace the hot bed. The problem with that is there is no guarantee that the replacement would be any better.

It's the bottom support blocker configuration. Here is your Cutting Mesh; Here it is as an Infill Mesh:

I had Cura and MS 3DBuilder check it @Smithy and it appears to be OK. As Smithy says, you have to be careful with models from Sketchup. You didn't mention your printer. Sometimes the SD cards can get corrupted and the end of a gcode file gets copied to the corrupt area. The file will be partially printed. You can open the file that is on the SD card using a text editor. Scroll down to the end and you should see the settings section. If you don't see that then the file is likely bad on the SD card. You can try re-formatting the card. It's always scary to print something that long vertically because it has such a small base. If you were to design a support that came halfway up and had a 1mm² piece connected to the part it that would be better. I've included a 3mf file of how I would do it. I was too lazy to design a dedicated support, but it's on a raft and with .12 layer height and might well get to Layer 1494. It wouldn't require near the bench work to clean it up after printing. GV_screw6.3mf

What!!! Sticking me with another learning curve on a beautiful Sunday morning! There are fish to catch you know. Besides, the platform is a rough cartoon. I'd want to clean it up a bit and etch a "5" into the surface. Maybe I can just pass this along to @fvrmr and let her do it. If not, then maybe I'll get into that. This STL has the 5 added. creality_ender5.stl

That looks much better. Your print speed would be high for a larger part (but you know your own machines) but on that particular part, acceleration at 500 will keep the actual speed down. If that one prints well you should be good to go. I print industrial kind of things and typically print at 60. If I want a decent finish (especially with silkies) I drop the outer wall speed to 35. BTW There was another Ender 5 THREAD a couple days ago about the fact that the build space is rotated compared to other printers. I put a little workaround together. It's a "Platform" with the Ender logo and the Zrods that makes it easier to tell which way you are looking at the machine. If you are using the generic Ender 5 printer definition, you can download the Zip file from that other thread and follow the instructions in my post and it will work for you.

There isn't any doubt about it. You had "Enable Ironing" turned on and "Iron Only Highest Layer" was turned off. All layers were ironed so effectively, all layers in that file were printed twice. Further proof is that the term ";TYPE:SKIN" appears in your Gcode file 630 times. It appears in my Gcode file 8 times (4 bottom and 4 top layers). At the top of the settings is the Settings Search box. To the right of that is a drop-down menu. Select that menu and choose "All" for settings visibility. Then go through ALL of them and set the model up the way you like and create a 3mf Project file, and post it.

@naziplanet that 3mf file is just the model. Please use "File | Save Project" to generate the 3mf file. It will include your model, your printer, and your settings. Then post the Project file here.

I use IdeaMaker sometimes for my Ender 3 Pro. I loaded a Raise3D E2 and did a couple slices just to see what differences there are. When using an E2 as a regular dual extruder machine Cura MIGHT work. It may be worth setting up a Custom FFF printer in Cura and giving it an experimental try. There are a total of 3 modes available for your E2. Along with the normal dual extruder mode there is also Duplicate and Mirror. If you were to install the printer 3 times in Cura as something like "E2 Dual", "E2 Duplicate", and "E2 Mirror" you may be able to get by with different Start-Up Gcodes for each printer. The Start-Up Gcode for "E2 Dual" would be a normal start gcode. The Start-Up Gcode for "E2 Duplicate" would include an "M605 S1" line and then the normal start gcode and the Start-Up Gcode for the "E2 Mirror" printer would include an "M605 S2" line and then the normal start gcode. It is those M605 lines that tell the printer whether to (S1)duplicate or (S2)mirror. The Gcode moves are always the same and unlike some IDEX printers, there are no U and V axes to deal with. It's going to take some time and experimenting by you, but you might get Cura to work for your printer. Raise3D seems to have separated the IDEX functions from the Gcode of a part.

You're welcome. For Christmas I want a Bugatti Veyron. Red.

For that gcode file - did you have "Ironing" turned on in Cura? It looks like there is way to much motion on each layer for such a small part. The Z progresses by 0.2 layer by layer. No problem there. The "Initial Layer Line Width" looks very narrow and leaves a poor finish on layer 0. So it prints a layer and goes back and irons the layer extruding very little material, then it moves up to the next layer and does the same thing again. Print a layer, iron the layer, print a layer, iron the layer, etc. That makes it look like it isn't advancing the Z, but it is. If you could go to File | Save Project and post a 3mf file, that would be helpful. But right now I would call it expected behavior that is do to your settings. EDIT: I found the clip on Thingiverse. I'm attaching a gcode file. I print PLA cooler at 210 (and white at 200) and with the bed at 50. I lowered the retraction to 1.5 for your direct drive. The file should print on your E5 without alteration BUT never blindly run a gcode file that someone else sliced. As Gr5 says "Steppers are mostly indestructable and never fail." GV_Chip_Bag_Clip_Small.gcode

When printing "One at a Time" each part instance has it's own Layer:0. When Cura displays a gcode file then all the layer"0's are shown on the bed at the same time. Within the gcode file though, layers might be numbered 0 to 10 and then the next 0 to 10 , and then another group of 0 to 10, etc. That's the order in which they would print.

If you grab the model and move it then yes, the box shows the hypotenuse of a triangle whose anchor is the previous X0 Y0 of the model location. It's the length of the rubberband between the previous 0,0 of the part and it's current location. If you want to move orthogonally you grab the red or green or blue arrowheads (instead of the part itself). The textbox shows the relative movement along that axis. If you want a precise movement you can type numbers into the boxes in the "Translation" tool dialog. Those numbers are the absolute location of the part in relation to the mid-point of the build surface.

Go to Manage Printers and then Machine Settings. Make sure that the "Origin at Center" box is DE-selected. Your origin is at the left front corner. Other things that can cause the problem are the size of the build area being entered incorrectly in Machine Settings, or the Home Offsets being wrong in the printer.