GregValiant
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Posts posted by GregValiant
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Post the gcode file you sliced for Marlin. Make sure it's one with the pause at height enabled.
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This is an ortho view of the "c" in plastic. This is with a .2 nozzle selected. That gap makes it look like Cura is not acknowledging that it is part of the body of the model(?) or there is a tiny gap between the model and the letter.
This is also with a .2 nozzle but I've flipped the model 180 into the orientation that Migael shows ("h" is up). The layer is the part of the "p" that disappeared. The letter portion is all outside walls.
And this is the immediate next layer up. 1 outer wall and 2 inner walls.
For my next trick I flipped it 180. This is the portion of the "P" that was 3 outside walls. You see that it is now 1 outside wall and 2 inside walls.
It is now the "c" in plastic that is 3 outside walls and will disappear when printing.
I know no one has asked for it but my professional opinion is (drum roll please!)...I don't know. On the one hand we have a model that appears to have problems. On the other hand it could be a bug. There is evidence for both.
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Here is the view in MeshMixer. The magenta areas are where MeshMixer has found errors. When I attempt to fix the errors all the letters disappear.
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When I opened the file I received the "Model is not Watertight" warning. I used the tools in Cura but they didn't help. With the words horizontal it sliced and everything was there. When the lettering is vertical it comes out like you show - partial "h", l's are missing, etc. .
I am in compatibility mode so I don't get the nice representation but it looks like the lower portion of the "h" is gone as well as the serifs on the left side of the upright of the "h". The "p" has been altered and instead of a radius it is cut straight across. The missing letters are missing in their entirety rather than just portions being ignored. That sounds like a model issue as well. Out of curiosity - did you paste the lettering onto the surface or did you bury them in the main model and just let a bit protrude?
I have rotated and sliced the model a couple of times and now different letters are missing. The end "cs" was there and now it's gone and the entire "h" is back. Horizontal is OK, Vertical is a mess.
EDIT: The differences occur due to the model rotation. CCW as you had it is missing some letters. When rotated CW different letters disappear and other come back.
Yes, GitHub is the proper place for a bug report. Make sure to include a 3mf file when you fill out the form for the bug report. Take another look at the model though as there may be something going on there.
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There is a strange artifact in the model file that seems to be having an effect on the slicing.
I can't get rid of it. It moves up and down the Z on it's own. It can't be selected. Sometimes it disappears, but re-selecting the model it shows up again. You need to go back into Fusion and fix this.
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Where is the middle finger? Are you being nice to keep from offending our tender sensibilities? Or is it up there floating in the air someplace and causing the part origin (which is the center-of-geometry) to show up WAY off. I think that's why it won't slice, it's still way too tall. At 5% it will slice, but it shows as being almost 200mm tall.
(PS I made one of these in high school and used it as the shifter handle in my car. When I took my mother for a ride she would always bring a glove to put over it.)
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Ultimaker has the good grace to include 3rd party printer definitions in Cura. Those definitions are created by 3rd parties and submitted to Ultimaker for inclusion in the program. If there is a Tenlog definition file in your 4.0 setup you could copy it to "Cura 4.8\resources\definitions" and restart Cura. It should show up, but I'm not sure if all the variable names and such are the same. It might be missing some settings.
The alternative is to add a Custom FFF printer and make all the adjustments to Cura settings so it matches your own printer (2 extruders, firmware flavor, build plate size, etc). The firmware flavor is the most important so the printer understands the generated Gcode. BTW that's a nice looking machine.
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The orientation thing I can understand. XY resolution is determined by Line Width while Z resolution is determined by Layer Height. A .4 nozzle at .4 line width with a .2 layer height will have twice the resolution in the Z.
Have you tried Adaptive Layers?
Why not just use Prusaslicer? Cura is my goto slicer, but I have a lot of slicers installed and play with them from time-to-time. I don't use the same hammer for everything.
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Let's say you've made your daughter a doll house and it is an exact 1/100 scale model of your own house right down to the fence around the yard.
You can paint the real fence around your yard with a 100mm brush. You cannot use the same brush on the fence around your daughters doll house. You would need to scale the brush down.
A ledge that was 1mm wide at 100% is now .35mm wide and maybe less than 1 nozzle / line width. The only fix I've found is to scale the nozzle along with the part. If your previews are with a .4 nozzle then switch to a .2 nozzle and .2 line width and you will get at least some of the detail back. It's going to print a lot slower. The alternative would be to go back into the model and scale certain features up so they don't disappear when the model is scaled down in Cura.
Other things to play with are Support Distance from the model, Z overrides XY, and maybe Adaptive Layers.
And thank you for putting the "L" in your screen name.
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With that many parts on the build plate the chances of one failing and taking the others with it are pretty good. A clogged nozzle 30 hrs into the print could be a disaster.
It was my bad. I see it is 2+ days to print. But 53 hours running continuously is tough on the machinery.
My advice is to split this up into 3 or 4 models at a time. I know you have a big build plate but it isn't necessary to fill it.
If you can't alter the Platter.stl file then use support blockers and set them to keep a bunch of pieces from printing. The image below is 1 big support blocker set as a cutting mesh. You can add more and scale them and move them like you would any other model. Even with that support blocker the print is 22 hours. If it was me I would block out a couple more for the first print and then uncover some and block others for the second and third prints.
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"The strange part of it does print the smallest detail of logo. The dot on the I."
Does that mean that the model prints correctly with all the detail?
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Well you aren't going to get .32 layer height and .6 line width out of a .2 nozzle. That is a lot of flow for a .4 nozzle and the .2 nozzle only has 25% of the area of the .4 nozzle.
Start out with the layer height settings at 0.1 and don't be surprised if you end up at .08 .
A rule of thumb is that the line width should match the nozzle diameter so start with 0.2 for all line widths. The rest of the settings don't matter as much. They will have an effect on the print but dropping to the .2 nozzle is mostly a flow thing.
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Now you are going off into the realm of Finite Element Analysis and Strength of Materials. There might be tables that would describe what you want. There have been some posts here from people who were researching FEA and trying to export the models from Cura with different infills. That isn't possible, but maybe they continued by altering the CAD models they were using.
The strength also depends on the type of loading the model sees. Compression, Tension, Torque moments, or a combination of the three. The part geometry comes into play. Are there holes? How to the holes affect the physical properties?
At any rate, you are well beyond what can be expected of slicing software.
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PLA is less flexible than PETG. I'm not sure about ABS. Regarding torque loading, wall thickness is your friend. Consider the driveshaft on a rear wheel drive vehicle. It's hollow.
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Yes. You can add a support blocker. Move it and scale it to the size you want. Then select "Modify settings for overlaps". The 3 default settings are fine, just add "Infill Pattern" and set it to what you want. You can also add "Infill Density" and have that different in the overlap area as well.
Here the model has a Grid infill at 20%. The overlap area of the support blocker is "triangles" at 10%.
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Well don't feel bad about your knowledge of Gcode. Nothing jumps out because there isn't anything there. I wrote a little macro and read the Gcode file into MSExcel and pulled all the E values out and took a look. Here are the numbers...
There are 71,543 extrusions. Disregarding the retractions and primes - every E value is greater than the E value in the previous line. Cura will purposely reset the extruder when the E number gets close to 4166mm of filament (10,000mm3). There were no resets back to zero after the first layer started. The max E is 2863.61797.
There are 1254 retractions and 1253 primes (the last retraction in a file doesn't get a prime since the print is finished). In every case, the retraction was 5mm and the prime was 5mm.
So there it isn't. I'll think on this some since the weather sucks and I'm stuck in the house anyway. Right now I don't know what to tell you. The long retractions you are getting aren't in the gcode. There is no M83 in the file so the extruder is not being set relative positioning. I guess you could try re-formatting the SD card since they need that once in a while anyway. The fact that the XYZ files are working would seem to point a finger at Cura but in the case of this gcode file at least, Cura is off the hook.
Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.
EDIT: My printer is an Ender 3 Pro. Close enough. I had an almost empty roll of filament so I printed the file. There were no problems.
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No one has posted a whole problem gcode file or 3mf file yet. Somebody will need to see the problem in order to have a chance of figuring it out.
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Nice. I'm always in favor of a good work-around.
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When I open the file the "assembly" is at 0,0,0 and hanging off the build plate. It won't slice because it "doesn't fit the build volume".
With the model selected, right click and select "Ungroup" from the bottom of the menu. Then right click again and choose "Select all models". Then right click yet again and choose "Group models".
With the new "group" selected - choose the top tool of the left toolbar and make Z, Y, Z all "0". The model will move onto the build plate and will be sliceable.
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I guess the plugin is one way to go. There are others.
You could alter your Home Offset Z in the printer.
You could adjust the Z offset in the printer ABL configuration (if you have one).
You can push the Initial Layer Flow to 120% or something like that.
It's all about getting that first layer down. I started out by kicking the initial layer flow up. I knew it was a crutch, but it got me going with good first layers. As I got better and more consistent at bed leveling, I gradually dropped it back down and now it's at 100% with the rest of the layers. A washed build surface, wiped down with alcohol, hairspray for adhesion, and a piece of parchment paper to level is what works for me. Every machine and every person is at least a little different, you just need to find that one thing that works for you.
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2 hours ago, shoe said:
"When is the retraction an issue? During printing Infill?"
Not retraction itself - the number of retractions in a small area can cause a lot of unnecessary movement, especially if z-hops are enabled. The printer would be constantly retracting and priming and jumping up and down, as opposed to just moving to the start of the next extrusion.
"Why is increasing the multiplier better then increasing the infill density?"
They work together. The multiplier gives thicker internal walls. The density increases the number of walls, but they are thin and weak. As the density approaches 100% the fact that the walls are thin becomes less important since they get very close together. At lower densities and a higher multiplier, your internal grid is spread out but each internal wall is a rib (or gusset if you prefer) in it's own right. It's a question of balance.
"In tension?" What do you mean? Isn't driving a car over a block something like "tension"?
Driving a car over a print is compression. Consider that concrete is excellent in compression, but if you grab both ends of a concrete tube and pull on it, it will come apart pretty easily because it is poor in tension. They might make roads out of concrete, but you would never want to make the cables of a suspension bridge out of concrete. You can do things (like you are) and adjust the internal structure to increase compression strength. When it comes to tensile strength, you are pretty much stuck with layer adhesion as a limit.
"Did you ever experiment with "overlap"? For example "infill overlap"?"
If you have a print of 3 walls or less, infill with a high overlap can leave artifacts (marks) on the outside of the print. This is more noticeable at high speed as there is going to be some wobble in the print head as it stops to make a turn.
"...Things like a slightly blocked nozzle..."
That's a printer / maintenance problem. Increasing the nozzle size to a .5 or .6 can alleviate the problem. They just don't clog as easy. The price is that the prints aren't as "crisp" and details can disappear. Moving down to a .2 will increase the likelihood of a clog, but the prints are "sharp" and details better defined.
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I can open the file in Notepad++ but Cura tells me the file may be corrupt and it won't open it.
At 161mb and 5,480,369 lines that's the largest Gcode file I've seen, and at 4+ days to print it's also the longest.
The first move in the file is G28 to home the print head. After homing it stays in the area of the left front corner to print the skirt around a part. All the early gcode is consistent in that area. There are no moves above X100 until line 9434 in the gcode. The MaxX in the file is 297.036.
The problem is either that the file size is making your printer sick, a bad memory card, or a glitch in your firmware. The printer is making a move that is not in the gcode. That's never a good thing.
The image shows the gcode file read into AutoCad. There are no movements off the build surface of 300 x 300. This is through Z 24.75. FYI The magenta lines are travel moves.
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The problem is often with the model. If you would post the STL file or even better, load the model in Cura and do a "Save Project" and post the 3mf file here.
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You have to remember that Cura doesn't know where the build plate is. It can only act on the settings. The printer determines the first layer height through your leveling because it is you (or the ABL) that tells the printer "OK, you're at zero now". You need to either adjust the ABL system or practice getting the feel of the piece of paper.
That is the standard start code for an Ender 3 Pro. (It was developed by "trouch.com" and submitted to Ultimaker for inclusion in Cura). I can see that your retraction is set to 6.5 and your initial Layer Height is 0.12.
The purge lines are 0.3 high and at a very heavy flow rate. That is as it should be. When the actual print starts the line
G0 F6000 X75.651 Y108.659 Z0.12 tells the printer to move to the XY start point at a height of 0.12. Then there is a prime to E0 from E-6.5 and then the extrusions start with the print head at Z0.12. THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE PRINT HEAD IS 0.12 FROM THE PLATE. It only means that it is 0.12 above Z0 and you told the printer where Z0 was.
If the purge lines aren't printing correctly then change the four Z0.3 values to Z0.24.
Strange behaviour: Oscillating print bed
in Improve your 3D prints
Posted
Put a finger on the Z coupler of the lead screw and see if you can feel it "oscillating" back and forth. I don't know enough about stepper motors to advise but it would seem that either the mainboard isn't settling down, or the stepper can't decide where it should be. Swapping wires with a different axis motor would be a good test. If the problem moves to the 2nd motor, its the mainboard. If the Z stepper still oscillates then it's the motor.