GregValiant

Congrats. It had to be triple teamed but it was finally figured out.

If combing is enabled there only 2 z-hops for this cylinder. One at the start and 1 at the end of the skirt. In this 3mf I disabled combing. When you slice it there should be Z-hops of 10mm (easier to find in the gcode). Whether moving up or moving down, the Z-hops occur on their own line Ex.: "G1 F2400 Z12.4". cylinder.3mf

I agree this delays the start of any extrusion at the beginning of a print. I don't like it. Most people don't notice it as it only affects the skirt or brim. The "Start G-code" of some printers includes thick and heavy purge lines that mitigate this. @Marky, the final line you have highlighted is a G1 line, not a G92 line. It advances the filament from -6.5 to 0 at 4200mm/min. So the filament does indeed end up at the nozzle. I believe the initial under-extrusion is due to oozing rather than the numbers in the Gcode and although it looks like it should work (the numbers do add up), there is no pressure at the nozzle and so extrusion doesn't start immediately. In my case that is for anywhere from 30 to 120mm. For parts with a maximum build plate footprint (that I can't use a skirt/brim on) this delays the extrusion of the first layer of the actual part. It also can end up with the nozzle dragging around a "string of beads" that ends up in the area of the print. The Search and Replace workaround (that I described earlier) works. In Marky's example it would SET the extruder to -6.5 with the filament still at the nozzle ready to extrude. When the later G1 F4200 E0 line advances the filament - there is a serious prime which will sometimes leave a blob. If I could measure the amount of oozing (which ain't happenin' because it's temperature and time dependent) that blob could be adjusted to nothing and extrusion would start as we expect. One fix for this would require the addition of a setting to the Travel section. "Initial Print Prime" (new keyword {retraction_print_prime}??) that would effect that single line in the Gcode. Instead of "G1 F{retraction_retract_speed} E-{retraction_amount}" it would be "G92 E-{retraction_print_prime}. That would leave the filament at the nozzle, but set the extruder location back. A few lines later the filament advances to 0 as it does now, but the filament starts at the nozzle, not retracted, so it results in immediate extrusion start which is what we want. A second fix is to add "purge lines" to the Start G-Code of your printer. MaxX size prints require a snatch-and-grab to get rid of the purge lines before they become part of the print but that doesn't happen often.

In the print menu on your LCD do you have a command to "refresh" the card? It's an internal M21 to initialize the SD card prior to the printer accessing it. If you power on the printer with the card in the slot it should initialize on it's own. A more radical approach would be to send M502 to the printer and reset the mainboard to factory defaults. You would lose your steps/mm, PID and so forth but you could write them down ahead of time and re-enter them after the reset. In the meantime you could print via the USB port.

The latest Cura version is 4.8. It's for 64 bit systems. The last 32 bit version was 2.3. SmartAvionics has ported Cura 4.8 into a 32 bit program for Windows 7. So I would suggest downloading and installing a newer version. You can keep your old version if you like. What operating system are you using? I can't duplicate the problem on Win10 and Cura 4.8. When I slice your file it looks good. Did you try to open @Torgeir's 3mf file?

You can try blowing out the SD card slot in the printer. I know the Ender's don't like high capacity memory cards. I think 32gb is the limit. I have problems every so often with the SD card, but so far re-formatting has fixed the problems.

I refuse to ignore it until I stop chuckling. Congrats on finding the problem.

Ahh. The problem is in the Time Display in the Cura information box. @nallath may be able to help. I'm sorry that I completely misunderstood the problem.

When I slice something with Cura and don't use a plugin, the times are in the gcode file like this: ;FLAVOR:Marlin ;TIME:8086 ;Filament used: 7.42636m ;TIME_ELAPSED:57.548524 ;LAYER:1 ;TIME_ELAPSED:92.389761 ;LAYER:2 There are no units. The time is in seconds and does not display anywhere. If I want the time displayed I use a plugin that will insert M117 lines (and identical M118 lines) into the gcode. The remaining time appears on the LCD and is bounced back to my software console by the M118. The gcode file is altered by the plugin and that is noted at the beginning of the file with ";POSTPROCESSED" and within the gcode file it takes this form. ;TIME_ELAPSED:57.548524 ;LAYER:1 M117 2/259 | ETA 2H13M M118 2/259 | ETA 2H13M My point is that Cura by itself does not perform any time function beyond TIME and TIME_ELAPSED. Your printer planner and firmware know how big a file is and how long it's taken to get to the current point in the print and displays (usually) the time elapsed and the % of the file that has been processed. In addition MatterSlice and Simplify3D (the two I checked) don't put any time information into the gcode file. Elapsed time and the "%" completed will still display on the LCD.

There was another model pilot that showed up here a while back. The thread is HERE. He built some beautiful jets. I don't think he wants me flying his either. That's my little GB Sportster in the middle of the nice planes.

Are you using the post processing plugin "Display Progress"? or something different?

I was young. I didn't need no stinking chainsaw. I climbed the damn trees with a fishing line wrapped around my foot. Attached at the other end was my father laughing his butt off. I never understood why he wouldn't let me fly the beautiful 6 foot PBY Catalina that he built. It's not as if trees were growing in the lake!

It depends on the printer. Some need a bootloader installed first. On others you can simply load from an SD card. It's hard to believe that M106 and M107 weren't enabled in the firmware. Controlling the fan is very basic to 3D printing. You never mentioned the printer manufacturer or model.

I added an over-ride to the definition file to describe Extruder 2 and that seemed to be the ticket.

With the Initial Fan Speed set to 100% and Regular Fan Speed Height at 0 (Cura layer 1) you should see this in the Gcode as the fan should be at 100% right from the start. ;LAYER:0 M106 S255 ;Layer cooling fan at 100% ;TYPE:SKIRT Using the settings you show you will see something like this. ;LAYER:0 M107 ;Layer cooling fan off ;TYPE:SKIRT then later... ;LAYER:1 M106 S255 ;Layer cooling fan 100% ;TYPE:SUPPORT Open the Gcode file and search for M106. The units are PWM so they can be from 0 (0%) to 255 (100%). If they are there, and if you can turn the fan on using the LCD control, then it's a firmware problem. If there aren't any M106 lines then it's a Cura problem because they are supposed to be there. EDIT: The original 4010 layer cooling blower on my Ender 3 Pro would not start to spin until the M106 setting was 30% (PWM 77). It had sleeve bearings. The current ball bearing 5015 will start to spin at 12% (PWM 31) and will continue to spin as low as 8% (PWM 20). So it's possible that the start-up speed of your layer cooling blower is high and the initial M106 settings are just to low to get it to spin. With my original 4010 - if I asked Cura to increase fan speed to 28% over 5 layers the fan would get the signal, but it wouldn't start to spin.

I understand regarding the copyright. It sounds like they did their homework on how to set up Cura. Adaptive layers is good at horizontal surfaces that aren't quite flat. It's also good for domed features. For those types of geometries it can do a good job softening the "step height". On that piece since it's printed vertically I don't think you'd need it. I'm more of a mechanical guy though. @kmanstudios may chip in. He does a lot of artwork and may be able to advise better. Just to be clear, I see the patterns in the preview and I'd guess that is the adaptive layers doing that. In the printed part, are you talking about the seam looking things - kind of like tree branches or the veins of a leaf or the fainter more numerous markings? I wouldn't expect to see those heavier ones on an airfoil. This is where it would be really handy to be able to play with the model in Cura. Just so you know, you're asking questions about an RC plane from a guy who has planted a couple in trees. I wasn't very good at U-control either. After an afternoon of flying, all 4 planes would fit in a 5 gallon bucket.

I wrote a piece of software to run my Ender 3 Pro from the laptop. Everything is done by sending commands to the printer. I don't have to use the knob for days at a time. It also prints by sending commands to the printer which sends back the SD card file list to the laptop so I can pick which file to print. I send the command and it prints from the SD card. No Ultimaker printers use USB printing anymore and as a consequence the USB Printing plugin hasn't been updated in a long time. There are also problems because it sends M115 to check the temperature every 3 seconds. Sometimes that can get truncated to M1 which is a stop command. The LCD button has to be clicked to resume. Throw that in with Microsoft pushing middle-of-the-night reboots and I absolutely agree with gr5...I can't think of any pros either.

When I export an STL file the only requirement is that it is in the positive octant. Exactly where in the octant doesn't matter. I don't know whether or not there is any location information in the file. Mostly I don't pay attention to where the part is in space so long as it is legal for the STL translator. If I need to make an assembly in Cura then Cura has to be fooled. I create a model build plate 1mm thick and larger than the assembly (up to 230 x 230 for my Ender 3 pro) in the CAD software so that my assembled parts are on the top surface and within the periphery of the plate. I union a part to the build plate, and export the STL, and then undo the union. I move to the next part and repeat. All my STL files then have the build plate in them and since Cura always brings parts in by Center of Geometry the 0,0 for each of my stl's is identical and it doesn't matter where the real part is in any axis. Once my parts are all in Cura I can move them all to 0,0,0 and then sink them 1mm into the Cura build plate so the CAD build plates disappear. Taa-Daaa. Slice and dice baby, Cura has been fooled into becoming an assembly modeler. Any holes or angled parts are correct in space without having to fudge them around in Cura. Then it's time to figure out the overlaps and/or per part settings and it's all good. Until I notice I forget to move the Z-seam and I have to start all over.

I bring in a support blocker and it is 10x10x10. I select the "Movement" tool and either drag it around, or set explicit values in the dialog, to get it near where I want it. Then I select the "Scale" tool and usually turn off "Uniform Scaling". Then I can grab the grips and pull it to size, or explicitly enter the sizes in the dialog box. After that it's just fine tuning the location by going back to the movement tool and dragging it around. There are some instances when using the "Settings for Overlaps" tool that placement and size can be very important. That can take a while to get just right. For a feature like that overhang (your green arrow is pointing to) it should just take a minute to set up since in that instance, close is good enough.

Yeah, it's hard to tell what's going on without seeing your settings. After posting your profile, on the right end of the "settings search" box is a drop-down for settings visibility. One of the options is "All". When they all show up go down to "Cooling" at look at all the settings.

You know you have this VB guy trying to pound his way through Python. I got it to work but my head hurts. There are 2 extruder files and one def file in the zipped files. The Extruder files go into Cura ...\resources\extruders and the other goes into Cura..resources\definitions. I was able to add the printer and set the second extruder up. Whether I did it correctly, I have no idea, but it looks good to me. wanhao_d4s.def.zip wanhao_d4s_extruder_1.def.zip

I use a very old version of Inventor. I have to "explode" a parametric model down to a 3d solid in order to use the "STLout" command. When I explode a model, it loses everything but it's final shape. There are no more extrusions, combines, intersections or cuts. A very basic 3d solid gets translated to an STL and exported. Is that what you do in Fusion? I ask because your images of the model make it appear that there are some left over characteristics of a previous version of itself. That might be what Cura is seeing when you slice it BUT neither I nor Kmanstudios had problems slicing so my theory could be totally wrong. Sorry I can't be more helpful.

What exactly is happening that's troublesome? Is the printer processor locking up? Wrong temps? Although the order of the commands is different they appear to be workable. Cura explicitly calls out T0 at the start and the other file does not. The other file has M107 P1 (turning off the layer cooling fan of the second extruder) and the Cura file turns off the fan of the active extruder which appears to be T0.

@kmanstudios look at the near face in both of @rodcoronadoh's photos. It looks like there is a slot at the bottom of the sliced image. Also look at the near top right edge. In the Preview image the entire top is planar but in the sliced image it looks like there is a step and the outside half sticks up a couple of mm...non-planar. And the area above the hole in the far wall looks like it has a shelf right at the top of the hole. It looks like two different parts to me. I also sliced the downloaded model and it was fine and it looks like the preview image above (posts on the bottom, planar top surface, and no slot or shelf). RodCoronadoh, did you happen to make extensive alterations to the model in Fusion?

If you will post the stl file and do a Save Project and post the 3mf file somebody can take a look. Did you happen to have Adaptive Layers turned on? It might be a feature of the "Dynamic Quality" .16 layer height profile.