GregValiant

My current Silky profile is to print at 215 and at 60mm/sec but run the outer walls and top skin at 35mm/sec. The hotter temp makes the layer adhesion noticeably better (still not great) and the lower speed keeps the sheen.

That's what it looks like to me. Remember that there are no true circles. The G2/G3 commands are still faceted and the Marlin firmware "MM_PER_ARC_SEGMENT (Default 1mm)" can be altered when recompiling firmware to give a higher resolution. So it looks like it remains up to the settings of the export utility that creates the STL from the CAD model to determine the resolution. That resolution at some point can be picked up by Arc Welder and turned into G2/G3 moves whose max resolution would be MM_PER_ARC_SEGMENT in the firmware. If the MM_PER_ARC_SEGMENT were too short you would go back to stuttering as the number of calculations would start to overwhelm the printer/processor again like the extremely short G1 moves were doing in the first place. So my best guess is that there is a small window where Arc Welder could possibly increase the resolution of an STL file. But if someone was to ask me if it increased model resolution I'd tell them "no" which appears to be much closer to being correct than answering "yes".

I don't think that's the same gcode file. To troubleshoot gcode files I read them into AutoCad to take Cura out of the loop. The problem moves aren't in the gcode. Can you double check that you posted the correct file? It would be extremely odd if the printer just decided to go somewhere by itself on every layer change and then return to printing. I have no idea how it could do that. That looks like an Ender 5 and the motherboard and firmware are close enough to my Ender 3 Pro that I'm pretty familiar with it. Here is a screenshot of the file in AutoCad. Every line in the Gcode file is there. Travel lines (G0 moves) are magenta and you can see that there are only a couple of them that cross over between the parts. There is no running back and forth to the centerline of the build plate. This is exactly the same as it looks when opened in Cura.

There are "different" settings but there are no "better" settings. We just do the best we can. There are 2 1/2 kinds of gray areas. #1. Is around the periphery of the build surface and is reserved for skirt/brim. If you change the skirt settings or the brim width that gray area will change size. If you set Build Plate Adhesion to None that gray area will disappear. #2. Is around the model itself - sometimes. When you print "All at Once" there will be no gray area around the model. If you print "One at a Time" then Cura takes into account the size of the print head and limits where you can place models. It represents the interference area of the print head. Cura also takes into consideration the Gantry Height which is usually the distance from the top of the bed to the underside of the X beam. If a part is taller than "gantry height" it won't slice as Cura considers a possible crash between a finished part and the gantry. #1/2 is on Creality printers. It is defined as a stripe on the front edge and on the back edge of the build plate that is reserved for the clips that hold the glass build surface to the hot plate. The defined area is in the printer definition file and I remove it for my printer as I don't use clips.

Your example of G1 E20 would normally provide 20mm of material out of the extruder, not the nozzle. In the normal course of printing Cura knows the filament diameter and feeds the correct length of filament to provide an extrusion LayerHeight x LineWidth x ExtrusionLength. The relationship is "mm of filament" to "mm of extrusion" and is by volume. Knowing the diameter of the filament gives Cura the volume / mm of filament. Your line G1 E20 calls for 20mm of filament to move through the extruder, and the printer knows the steps/mm of the E motor. The basic fact is that 1.75mm dia filament is 2.405mm². An extrusion .4 wide x .2 high is .08mm² so that ratio would be 1mm of filament = 30mm of extrusion. The Gcode would look something like G0 X0 Y0 Z.2 F7200 ;starting out at X0 Y0 Z.2 G1 X30 Y0 Z.2 E1.0 F3000 ;30mm extrusion = 1mm of filament I'm sure you can get it to work other ways, but the above is what I understand of the relationship between the filament diameter and the Cura calculations.

As Geert mentions, your extrusions aren't welding to the adjacent stripes allowing a view of the layer below and unless it's a "look" you were going for, you are still under-extruding but what looks like a lot. If the higher layers are coming out good I'd kick the flow up further on the early layers. Go to 150% and see what it looks like. You could manually step the flow back down using M221 S??? at the start of the first three or four layers until you got back down to 100%. Custom machines often need custom touches.

I had to share all the folders with myself. Dumb, but that's Windows.

I played around with this a bit and I think you can change colors at a layer. It won't be fancy like if there were two models but it would change extruders. Place a support blocker to cover the model and then adjust the Z to the layer you want the color change. Set the Overlap Settings to Cutting Mesh. Set the model to one extruder and the Support Blocker to the other extruder. I assume you will need a purge tower. If there is support going up past the lower part of the model, up to the upper part of the model, you need to make a decision on which extruder to use for the support. The option to change support extruders when getting to the cutting mesh isn't available. If there aren't any supports to consider, the cutting mesh looked like it works as expected with the lower model printed with one extruder and everything covered by the Cutting Mesh printed with the other extruder.

"...suggesting that it's the way to smooth out a low-poly cylinder." That is an interesting question. If you take say, 5 points that are each 5mm apart and determine that they are on an arc. You convert the arc to a G2 move and pass it to the printer. The printer looks at the arc and finds that its minimum line segment for an arc is 1mm. So it appears (on the surface) that the resolution goes up from 5mm facets, to 1mm facets. Here is a shot of a tube that I exported from Acad in low res (FACETRES at 0.25). Lots of big facets. I sliced it with Arc Welder active. Within the gcode file are very few G2/G3 moves. I think the resolution was too low and fell below some threshold that may be present in Arc Welder. So I upped the FACETRES to 1.0 and tried again. I got pretty much the same result as noted above with hardly any G2/G3 moves in the gcode file. Lastly I exported the STL with FACETRES at the max of 10.0 and Arc Welder came to life filling the gcode file with G2's and G3's. Here is the final gcode file read into Acad. The VBA script does turn G2/G3 into arcs and I've copied one arc out to the right. There is a slight gap in the arc at about 9:00 that is at the Zseam location and I will assume it's where the .1mm wipe is. After all of that, I am pleased to present my astounding conclusion regarding the question "Does Arc Welder increase resolution"? And my answer is...Maybe, if the file is fairly high-res to start with. @ahoeben may know the threshold. In AutoCad it's between 1 and 10 and that's close enough for government work. Regards, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew Muppet Labs

Yes, I watched the video. Another thing you could try is the Arc Welder plugin. It calculates which G1 moves comprise an arc and creates G2/G3 moves when possible. That can free the processor some more. G2/G3 must be enabled in your firmware. I wrote a little program that just goes in circles (using G2/G3 moves). I was able to tune the Accel and Jerk by observing the movement. I can set the speed as high as I want because on a circle the Accel and Jerk settings have an overwhelming effect on the speed of the print head due to the very short line segments. On my particular machine, if I go above Accel 500 and Jerk 8, I get stuttering no matter the speed setting. The Max acceleration is defined in M201 and the acceleration for a particular print is defined with M204. Unfortunately, only a slice by Cura can check the effect of altering the Max Resolution. It's a balancing act between Max Resolution, Accel and Jerk, and if you use Arc Welder - the minimum defined arc segment in the firmware.

Under Mesh Fixes is a setting for Maximum Resolution. When Creality released the definition files for the Ender 3 and Pro in Cura 4.7, the suggested Max Resolution was .025 and the print head stuttered a lot trying to deal with all the very short line segments. When the Max Resolution is set to .5 there is no stuttering on my E3Pro. From the RepRap Wiki M566 "Sets the maximum allowable speed change (sometimes called 'jerk speed') of each motor when changing direction". It looks like you have set your Jerk differently for travel moves than for extrusion moves. You may be able to get rid of all those lines of Gcode by setting the Jerk the same across the board in Cura. That should free up the processor a bit more

Magic.

It depends on the model. Sometimes support blockers work when you configure them for "Overlaps" and set the infill density to 0 for a particular area. Other times setting the "Minimum Infill Area" to 2mm² (or some other low number) works. If you have something like a tube and you don't want infill between the wall structures you can set "Fill Gaps Between Walls" to Nowhere.

In Experimental there is "Wipe Nozzle Between Layers".

It sounds like it's priming instead of retracting. Use "File | Save Project" and post the 3mf file here. Post one of your "bad" gcodes as well.

If you would use "File | Save Project" and post the 3mf file here someone will take a look.

Yes, using the M28 command is extremely slow to the point of being useless. It isn't a Cura problem though. All printer/software combinations have the same problem. I wrote my own program to write to the SD but it wasn't any better. The printer mainboards aren't very capable when writing to the SD card. Printing from Cura over the USB isn't too good either as buffer under-runs and over-runs can occur and there are other problems as well. If you want to print remotely then I guess the Octoprint/RaspberryPI combination is the best solution.

I haven't heard of that one. Post a gcode file here that has the problem. Somebody will take a look.

Hi Ty, A search around here for USB Printing will turn up a bunch of problems that people have faced. I won't re-hash all those comments. Not all USB cables are created equal. Some are for battery charging only and don't carry data so you need the correct type of cable. USB Printing isn't used by any current Ultimaker printers and isn't maintained by the Cura team. It has issues that include random stoppages and Windows updates during printing that cause the computer and printer to both re-boot. That will cost you the print. Cura's USB Printing plugin searches for COM ports and then checks different baud rates until it finds what works. It does this when Cura starts up so the printer needs to be running and plugged in to the computer when you start Cura. You picked a decent printer. I've had my E3Pro for about a year and a half. It's an interesting hobby (even for a young guy like you). I don't send Gcode files to the printer, but I send all my print commands over the USB and print from the SD card and it works fine that way. I knock the computer off the network so it doesn't reboot during all-night prints and I'm good with that.

I would start with the Ender 5 profile. After adding and naming the printer, go to "Manage Printers" and then "Machine Settings". Set your build volume size (X Y Z), and check the rest of the settings, then check the extruder settings. I would guess it has the normal Creality bootleg version of Marlin firmware. While looking at that machine I came across the reason they sell so many... Here is the Assembly video from the Official Creality site. Well put together, but looks high maintenance.

If the printer says 100% then it read the whole file, but maybe the file was cut off when it was copied to the card. That can happen when there are bad sectors on the memory card. The memory cards that come with Creality printers are notoriously of poor quality. Re-format the card, copy the G-code file to it. Before you print, open the file that is on the memory card in Cura. Is everything there in the preview? (that won't work if you used the Arc Welder plugin). You could also open the gcode file that is on the card in a text editor and see if it is complete. Scroll to the end and you should see some settings, and just above the settings will be ";End of Gcode".

And now I know.

@geoffhobe - Use the "File | Save Project" command and save the Cura project as a 3mf file and post it here. Your Gcode isn't showing any CR-10 start-up gcode and there is no G28 so the printer doesn't know where the print head is. If you look at line 7 of your original gcode screenshot you see that the printer is an Ultimaker S5 though you state you have a CR-10. My suggestion is to start again. I'm attaching a project file with the active printer a plain Jane CR10. It has the standard Start-Up Gcode from the printer definition file. When you open the file you will have an option to update your current CR10, or to add a new CR10. "Add New" just in case. Slice the file (Benchy) and try to print it. If it starts and is printing OK you can abort the print. CR10 Project.3mf

@gr5 and @SusisStrolch, When I was tweaking my start gcode I was having trouble getting the head to "pick up here, move over there, start to extrude". It turned out to be that line that was the issue. My fix (not a great one) was to use the Search And Replace plugin and search for G1 F1800 E-2 and replace it with G92 E-1.5. Since there was no longer a retraction, the filament was right at the nozzle and the later G1 F1800 E0 that precedes the start of printing ends up being a good prime. Now my skirt (or whatever) starts right up. The downside to using the Search and Replace is that if I change retraction speed or retraction distance, the search criteria has to change as well. The second downside is that if the same line was to appear later in the gcode (which is exceedingly unlikely), it would be changed as well.

The Sovol SV02 and the Tevo Tarantula Pro are dual extruder machines. If you were to install one of them (with the name of your choice), and then go to Manage Printers and Machine Settings you may be able to make adjustments to the printer settings (build plate size, heated volume, gcode flavor, start and end gcode, Extruder settings, etc.) and get it to work. Hopefully someone else will chip in if they know of a better or less clumsy way to do it. You might be able to use the Ultimaker S5 definition but I don't know those machines or whether it would be possible to alter one to suit.