GregValiant

70 My age is now twice my IQ. Phyllis Diller said "Getting old ain't for sissies." She was right. Although we post back and forth, we are all far apart and likely as not, we will never meet. I thought maybe some folks around here wondered who I am. Here I am back on my first wedding day. Doesn't my bride look terrific? Her father (my uncle Clyde) was upset with us for using his dog in the photo. He was supposed to be out hunting raccoons with the rest of the pack. Anyway, I thought a little background information was a good idea. I'm going to take my nap now.

"...find a real backplot program to step thru lines of G Code.." Excuse me, you do happen to be running Windows? I've been looking for a guineau pig Test Pilot for this. It's on the recovery page as "Gcode Debugger". It will step through starting at the line you choose. You can air print (ignore the Z) and you can also ignore the extrusions if you want. Here is a screen shot. It's an unsigned app and you may have to fool your anti-virus to allow the setup file to run. There are instructions and a readme file. Here is the download link. Let me know what you think.

I don't know if you noticed this while you were searching. I came up with a sorta fix. In the settings box for Pause At Height there is a box at the bottom for "gcode after pause". Enter G4 S180 in the box and the printer will dwell for 3 minutes (the S parameter is Seconds which you can change). M0 restarts with a button click so you would be in control of the restart. G4 is a timer and printing re-starts when the timer runs out. Less control but it does work.

The problem keeps coming up but your exact problem is different. You can search around here for other threads. It's fine to discuss it here but there isn't much help because it isn't a Cura issue. I have an Ender 3 Pro and so does Mari here. We tend to pay attention to the threads that discuss printers like ours. I tried to chase this down for a couple of weeks late last year. I ended up at the Marlin Github site and they basically threw me out because Creality took the firmware and made it proprietary. The Marlin people are not happy with Creality. There was one poster here (4.4.2 board by btw) who said that a firmware change fixed the problem, but he never explained what firmware. I tried to message him/her but didn't get a response. At any rate, the 4.4.x board coupled with the Thin Film Transistor LCD display has issues. The problem lies between the mainboard and the firmware running the display. I think your best bet is to go to the Creality site and try to get them to explain. There are a lot of posts on Reddit about this issue as well. I have not come across a solution there either. The Ender 3's and 3Pro's being produced now don't seem to have the problem with M0/M1. It was a 3 to 5 month run of production when Creality ran out of mainboards and (I believe) was throwing in whatever they had laying around. Maybe they tried a firmware patch and it wasn't enough (because within Marlin there are specific callouts for TFT displays). They don't say much so it's really hard to tell. Your display is dated July of last year. That's right in the period I'm talking about.

Hello Ludovica There are many steps. There are just as many you-tube videos. I don't know how many are in Italian but there should be some. I think this is the official "how to print" video from Labists. #1 the print surface must be level, clean, and the exact correct distance from the nozzle. In the Labist video you will see the bed being leveled. Pay close attention. If it isn't correct, the print will not stick and you'll just make a mess. If you have trouble getting the print to stick to the surface you can use a light coat of hair spray to help keep the print in place. Instead of trying to use Cura (complicated and very tough for beginners), start with the Labist slicer that came with the printer. For now keep it simple. The Labist slicing program will have a definition file for your printer. The Labist site also has information for you. It is a beginner printer and rather than me confusing you, I think you should start there. I am attaching a 25 x 25 x 25 "Calibration Cube" that has letters on the side. It is the type of thing used to check that a printer is working correctly. Not exciting, but important. It will need to be sliced in the Labist software and a gcode file then goes to the printer. Good Luck. If you have more questions please ask. If you put my name in like this @GregValiant (type it slowly) I will get an email telling me that you have responded. X-Y Ref Block.stl

This has been coming up a lot lately with Creality Ender 3 printers. It's a firmware glitch with the 4.2.x boards and TFT screens. I hadn't heard it happening with the LCD screens. M0, M1, and M117 don't work because they send messages to the screen and there is a miscommunication in there. In the Cura Pause at Height settings box, right at the bottom is "Gcode after Pause". Try putting G4 S180 in there. The other code will run, the head will park, the M0 will be ignored, the G4 will timeout the machine for 180 seconds (which you can change and make longer or shorter). The advantage of M0 is that the machine waits for a button click. G4 waits for the amount of seconds you enter with no way to shorten the timeout. The mainboard model number is printed on the front of the mainboard. The only way to know is to open the box and look.

What mainboard and does it have a TFT screen (as opposed to an LCD)?

Looking at your sketches the max should be about 63°. This is 60° then 70° on the Ender3P. The 60° looked spot on. The 70° had consistent sagging of .5 to .8mm once it got away from the transition point. My fan works quite well.

Sorry for the response in English. It's been a long time since Italian was spoken in my house. This is a known glitch in Creality firmware (4.2.x mainboards and TFT screens). A firmware upgrade is supposed to fix it. Unfortunately I don't know which version of the firmware is the right one. The Glitch---When the printer gets a command that sends a message to the printer TFT screen, the command is ignored because the message cannot be displayed due to the glitch. M0 is the normal Marlin pause command and sends "Click to resume..." to the printer display. M1 is ignored for the same reason. M117 is ignored because it always sends a message to the screen. In Cura you can use the post processor "PauseAtHeight". Unfortunately it uses M0 to pause. In the "After Pause Gcode" box enter G4 S180 ("S" is time in seconds). That will give you 3 minutes before the printer resumes on it's own. Also in the Pause At Height settings, if there are Z-hops in the Gcode file then "By Height" doesn't work and you must use "By Layer". I don't bother with the Retraction settings. After hand feeding the new filament to change the color I pull back about 3mm of filament. Use some long-nose tweezers to grab the string hanging from the nozzle and when the print resumes yank it off. You will get a clean restart.

Let me see if I have this correct. You want to print 3 layers of the shell at .1mm layer height and then 1 layer of infill at .3mm layer height? Like this?... Quality / Layer Height = 0.1 Infill / Infill Layer Thickness = 0.3. It would probably be a bad idea to add "Print Infill Before Walls".

Cura calculates the volume required for an extrusion as {line width * layer height * length-of-extrusion} (there is more to it but that's close enough). When you put Flow numbers in Cura they are percentages of the calculated volume and it is those numbers that go into the Gcode as "E" values. Cura knows nothing about steps/mm, only the calculated flow (which in my world is known as Volume and Flow = Volume/Time). When the Gcode is read by the printer, the printer refers to it's own flow setting and adjusts every (a global change) E value it comes across by the percentage. If you Tune the flow on the LCD it is adjusted with an internal M221. It's the same as putting an M221 line into the actual Gcode file, you are asking for a global change and don't care what the settings were when the file was created. All are adjusted by the printer/planner to the percentage set by M221 whether internal using the Tune Flow menu setting, or as an M221 command in a gcode file. When you calibrate the E steps for filament you set them so that when you ask the printer to extrude 100mm then exactly 100mm is extruded. Let's say your calibrated E-steps are 93steps/mm. If you were to use M92 E46.5 then when a line of Gcode asks for 100mm of filament only 50 would actually be supplied by the extruder motor. You are fooling the system by deliberately misstating the E-steps to 50%. You mentioned setting the Cura/printer flow to 2.5%. That provides 100% flow for your system. I think it is right and proper to use M92 and adjust the Esteps so you get YOUR 100% flow. Using my example of 93steps/mm - if you were to set M92 E2.3 then you would be very close to what you want. That leaves a lot of adjustment both up and down using the Tune Flow adjustment on the LCD. If you were to put M221 S105 in your Start-Gcode in Cura then when you go to Tune Flow on the LCD you will see it at 105%. Using the knob you could over-ride that. I think I'd want a different stepper motor. A typical printer stepper is 1.8 degree step angle or 200 steps/revolution. A motor with a .36 step angle is 1000 steps/revolution. You would be able to tune in finer increments.

Those indicate the placement of the stop switches on the printer. I'm not sure but I think they are booleans. The full list of keywords and descriptions was prepared by Ahoeben of FieldOfView and can be found HERE.

The first thing I do is turn on "All". I only have a single profile and if settings are hidden I'd forget them and they might be needed for the current model.

Question 4 & 5: It's like the Cura build plate. Xmin is left, Ymin is rear, Xmax is right, and Ymax is towards the front. Gantry height is from the bed to the bottom of the X beam. I have a 5015 mounted on the right side of my print head and a baffle over the hot end fan intake so my Xmin = -32, Ymin = -32, Xmax = 45, Ymax = 50. The silhouette of the print head needs only be that portion below gantry height. The dimensions are used when printing "One at a Time".

What printer? What firmware? Does the printer have a TFT screen (as opposed to LCD)?

In the Special Modes turn off "Spiralize Outer Contour". When it's on it only prints the wall. If you can't see it then next to the settings search box is a drop down for setting visibility. Select "All".

Another setting you might consider useful is M221. It's the global flow percentage setting for the printer. M221 S100 would leave the Evalues in the gcode alone. M221 S50 would cut all Evalues in half. So setting the Cura flow to 10% and then putting M221 S25 in your start gcode should give you 2.5% flow.

Not just vase mode prints, do the bottoms on any of your prints on that machine show that smashed look? I'm asking because if that was a Creality printer I'd be thinking about Z-binding near the build plate which goes away as it gets higher.

How are the lower layers on other prints? Does it do that if printed in PLA?

My dial indicator died so I never checked. I know the z stop switch varies but it isn't really part of the Z system once a print starts. Now I'm curious. I won't be getting a new one but I might start hitting garage sales. @gr5, similar posts of yours are the reason I wrote the utility to alter the z-hops in a gcode file. Now I put them in when I know there may be a chance of catching on a lip and pushing a print. I remove the ones from the layers where there isn't any chance of that. It works for me.

Not in the marketplace and not a script. I wrote my own Application for controlling the printer from a PC. It's "Windows only" as VB doesn't port to anything else. HERE is the download link if you want to give it a shot. There are instructions and a readme. At the lower right on the Recovery Page is the command for fiddling with Z hops. You can alter one section of layers at a time. The app is unsigned (that costs money) so you may have to talk your anti-virus into allowing the setup file to run. If you do install it, let me know how it goes.

Maybe I had a power problem. Once the magic smoke leaves a printer it doesn't work near as well. Here is the Ender with the custom Lucas Electric connector. Damn thing was just starting to work right and it up and broke. Dad was right...you always get what you pay for.

A part like this needs Z-hops because when the 55mm hole starts to come together its large radius creates feathered edges that want to curl up as they cool. I've printed this part a couple of times and I compromised at .5 for the hop height. That's too much for the bottom and not quite enough for the top. I added a utility to my printing app (modestly called Greg's Toolbox) and I can adjust the Z-hop height in a file. So in the case of this particular part I slice the file with Z-hops at 1.0 and then have the utility open the G-code file and adjust the Z-hop height for layers 0 to 430 to "0" and then layers 455 to the end to 0. The lines of code remain in place but the head doesn't move up and down until it gets to layer 430 and then it stops bouncing at 456. On parts with horizontal holes but that will require z-hops I don't get the under-extrusion I was seeing between two hole features as I just kill the Z-hops for the layers I see as being problem children.

I mentioned using M502 to reset the mainboard and today I found I had to use it. I had answered a post here and had played with my start Gcode to come up with my response. When I went to print the file from the SD card, I noticed that the first few lines of code were skipped. I pulled the card and opened the file and found that the printer had over-written the first several lines of the file with this: b @ ÈA pA Á A pA G0 Z10 Y20 Z0.3 F1500.0 E30 5361 0 Right Front 0 axes 2 6162 63707 Z10 Y20 Z0.3 F1500.0 G0 F1200 E5 }@«ª¦BÍÌB M24 Present Print 7 E3.96232 5361 0 Right Front 0 axes 2 M82 1200 E-5 Á A pA G0 F1200 E5 int 7 E3.96232 5361 0 Right Front 0 axes 2 G90 1/75 | ETA 44M .0 0.0 303 M21 Present PrinM21 E41.60235 5361 0 Right Front 0 axes 2 Ü 'ÿ/CAJITA~1.GCO bin baw the first line A lot of computerese gibberish. I re-formatted and it did it again. Tried some other things...it did it again. So I pulled the info from the M503 response and reset to factory defaults with M502 and (so far) the printer is fine. I have my fingers crossed. I may tape them that way.

That is a strange model and just a shell. I will assume it was from a scan of the vehicle. I rotated it to what would be body coordinates and when it comes into Cura it is X=.5027 Y=.2187 Z=.6135. If you use a scale factor of 10 then the numbers look reasonable for an SUV measured in Meters. Because it requires scaling to get to meters I believe somebody missed a trick (or two) along the way in whatever hardware was used for the scan and whatever software was used to translate the point cloud of the scan and maybe also in the STL generator. Even scaled up to just fit on my build plate (40000%) and using a .2 nozzle and .15 line width the walls barely slice. There is no internal structure to hold the print together and there is no roof or hood. I don't see any way to slice or print this model without adding thickness to all the panels (doors, hood, roof, etc.). I'm just one person here. Maybe one of the others has a different take on it. Right now I just don't think there is enough model to work with.