GregValiant

The Ender 3 Pro has disallowed areas for the clips. They make the available area smaller in Cura but don't really help as far as the printer goes. The firmware only understands uppercase letters. Any lowercase command will be ignored. The Auto-Home position will likely be off the build surface. It's just a function of where the end stop switches are located. Auto-Home the print head. Use the LCD to move the nozzle 5mm in from the left edge of the build surface and 5mm in from the front of the build surface. With the Z at 0 select "Set Home Offsets" on the LCD. That let's the printer know where to put the Gcode 0,0,0. In Cura, in the Machine Settings, make your build surface 225 x 225 in the XY. That will make the center of the Cura model area the same as your printer center point. Negative X and Y moves beyond the Home Offset 0,0,0 may be possible but you shouldn't need or want to do that. Better to move the Z up to 15 or something and then let the Gcode file move the print head to the start of the print. If you put a skirt around your models you really don't need the purge lines that are in the Ender 3 and Ender 3 Pro Cura definition files. You can put semi-colons in front of those lines and they will be ignored. I like that because from say X0 Y0 Z15 Cura will make a straight line move to the start of the skirt and likely miss the clips. I use a single clip in the middle of the front and two in the back. That keeps my print head from shooting the clip into my eye.

Put a semi-colon in front of the two M280 lines. They are the ones that may be bouncing the Z up and down. The G4 line appears to be a pause so the stepper motor can finish it's move. You can probably comment that out as well. Run it like that and see how it goes. As I mentioned, the typical auto-leveling is G29. You can try replacing the G80 with G29. I don't hold much hope for that. I would lower the bed a couple of mm and let it work in the air just to see what's going on and to keep the nozzle from marring the build surface. Whether it's Matter Control sending the Gcode, or the printer reading the SD card, the movement of the printer should be the same. This is that experimenting thing I mentioned.

If you post the Gcode file and a 3mf file (with a model loaded use File | Save Project), somebody can look at it.

This might actually be a bug. This is the second model with this problem in a week. If you change the "Inner Wall Line Width" to .3 the gap goes away. It's such a small part, why not change the infill density to 100%? That makes the gap go away as well. This problem seems like it comes up when there is a small dimensional difference between the top feature and the base feature. Cura typically puts the walls of the top feature on a solid base but in this case (and the other) this doesn't happen unless other settings are fudged. EDIT: Here is the other instance. "Gap in Wall"

I loaded the "test.failed.3mf" file. With the Ultimaker 3 active it's just as you say. It only slices with adaptive layers on. When I switch to my Ender 3Pro and my normal profile it slices as it should. With the Ultimaker 3 active I can't load my profile so I couldn't check any further. Another reason I couldn't check any further was because when I tried to switch from the Ender back to the Ultimaker 3, Cura crashed hard and closed.

It looks like you have to use the November 14 builds for the 4.2.2. There are two listed. I have no idea which would be appropriate. If you go over to Reddit (the Ender 3 group) maybe somebody can explain what the difference is between "with adapter board" and "without adapter board". It might be that one is for the TFT and the other for the LCD? I have no idea. The two displays show information differently so you should be able to tell which display you have by checking photos on Reddit.

Good call. I haven't played with 2.3 much. Adding a custom profile locked it right up. EDIT Didn't completely lock up. It took 10 minutes to add the profile though.

The cube file is smaller and more importantly, doesn't take as long to print. What printer are you using? What version of Cura? If applicable - when is the last time you checked your hot end for clogs or a gap?

There are two. Ultimaker_Cura-2.3.1-win32.exe I believe is the last Ultimaker release for 32bit. Smartavionics has a version of 4.x that he ported to 32 bit Cura-mb-master-win32-20201121.exe I have both installed on a Win7 desktop. They run fine.

Don't let Geert scare you off. It's not as simple as he makes out. #1. It's a machine. To work correctly the frame parts need to be either parallel or at 90° to each other. If the X beam (that the print head moves left and right on) isn't at 90° to the uprights, parts will be angled and leveling will be almost impossible. The Y build table is on a beam and that beam has to be parallel to the side beams that the rubber feet are on. If the Y table is running up and down hill you can level it (because it moves past the nozzle at the same distance), but again, the parts will be tilted. So get a carpenter tri-square and start measuring stuff for square and parallel. You can loosen screws and make the little adjustments necessary so the machine has it's best shot at getting things right. Grab the print head and see if it wiggles or rotates. Do the same with the Y table. They should move smoothly in their tracks with no wobble, twisting, or other motion. Just back and forth on their beams. The belts should twang like bass guitar strings. If you are leveling with a piece of paper use a store receipt or parchment paper. Something thin gives a better feel and your consistency will go up. The build plate doesn't have any switches or locators on it to tell the printer where it is. It's up to you to get it level and at the right distance from the nozzle so when the printer spits plastic it gets squished to the plate. A fella named Chep makes youtube videos that he calls Filament Fridays. He's pretty good. Take time to go through a couple of them. He's kind of Creality specific but all these machines have a lot in common.

I posted a couple of questions on the MarlinFW site. I wanted to know about the issues with the TFT screens not responding to M117 or M0. They threw me out. I poked around for a few days trying to figure out what was happening with the Creality 4.2.2 and 4.2.7 boards, but everything turned into a dead end. There was one poster here who said that a firmware change fixed the M117 and M0 problems, but then he disappeared and never explained what firmware version or where he got it. Do you know what board you have in the printer? The only info on mine is printed on the mainboard. If you know the mainboard model number then you should be able to figure out what firmware to flash. One of my mantras is "Never upgrade an operating system." But in the case of some Creality printers with TFT screens and I think the 4.2.2 boards, they need a fix. Good Luck with it.

A little food for thought... The first line of the vase mode file is an extrusion. It went from a previous point that is no longer in the gcode, to X30.642 Y0.099 E640.51694. In your patched code you are defining the start of that first extrusion as X24.189 Y2.189. Is it close to where it was in the first file? Is it on the correct extrusion path for the vase mode file? You know it wasn't calculated to be on that path. In this case since it is such a short distance it probably doesn't matter. There are certainly cases where it does matter. If retractions are involved then there would need to be a prime as well. I would do it this way: G0 X24.189 Y2.189 ;TIME_ELAPSED:1773.432893 ;LAYER:20 ;TYPE:WALL-OUTER ;MESH:LAMP_SHADE v2.2 wall_0.6_mm.stl G92 E640.51694 G1 X30.642 Y0.099 E640.51694 ;Turn this into just a move that you know is on the vase mode extrusion path G1 X24.511 Y0.1 Z4.303 E640.72085 ;The G92 line sets the extruder so it is correct at the start point of this line. G1 X24.423 Y0.917 E640.74819 It's real close to gr5's suggestion. The difference is that without having the exact start of the first extrusion, we ignore it, get to where we need to be, and move on.

I believe I found a use for "Mesh Fixes | Remove all Holes". The back legs aren't on the build surface and require support. I randomly set it to 10% scale because it came in sized for a Jolly Green Giant. Sinking it into the build plate 2mm worked to flatten the bottom. I'd use a brim because the contact patches of the rear legs is pretty small for the lean angle they end up at before they merge into the rest.

I was wondering how it worked out. "...slight blobbing on the side of boat..." In Cura, go to the Mesh Fixes settings. There is one for Maximum Resolution. If it is set at .025 or something set it to 0.50. If the processor in the printer takes too long calculating moves the printer stops for just a split second and leaves a blob. Increasing the resolution number may help. It isn't a problem in straight lines, but going around circles and curves it shows up. "...there is a clunking noise..." Probably mechanical. If you grab the print head - can you wiggle or rotate it at all? Same with the bed - can you move it other than fore and aft? The print head has 1 roller mounted on an eccentric cam. By loosening the lug nut and rotating the big hexagon shape you rotate the eccentric and the wheel will adjust it's distance to the rollerway. The bed has two eccentric adjustors and they will both be on the same side of the beam it travels on. The belts should twang like guitar strings. A general screw tightening can't hurt either. Someplace, something is sloppy and it sounds like is in the X. Do you have Acceleration and Jerk control turned on? Low settings like 500 Accel and 8 Jerk will make for softer starts and stops. When they are turned off then Accel and Jerk are essentially infinite. At high print and travel speeds it's tough on the machinery. The white one looks good. Bowden tube printers suffer from movement and flex in the tube. They take more retraction to get the same effect at the nozzle that a direct drive gets with very short retraction. Not a good/bad thing, it's just different. If the retraction distance gets much over 6mm you'll start to pull molten plastic into the end of the tube and it will cause a partial clog and result in under-extrusion. I'm a bit surprised the start up gcode worked first try. I thought for sure you'd be fooling with it for a week. EDIT: One more thing - printing via USB can be troublesome. Microsoft sends out an update that restarts the computer, the Matter Control slicer sends gcode too fast or too slow, and there's more. Printing via the SD card is much preferred.

OK. I've had my coffee. Sorry about the PLA color, but it's what was left over from the water filled stuff that Amazon sent me. It's hard to photograph though. Nice looking SUNLA silky silver that has no layer adhesion. Attached are a Gcode file and a 3mf file. I went with tree supports in those. For the print below I only supported the box around that one hole. In this image you can see the faceting of the curve. The STL resolution is low to medium so it's not a problem. There is an artifact to the right of the top hole. It looks like the printer bounced after making the turn for the hole. You can just make out an artifact on the left wall. That was from the wall flexing as the printer made the turn. The tall thin walls could use some support as they build up. Maybe a 1.6 x 3mm rib on the inside if the design could accept that. Z seam was set to "right" and you can see that the right wing wall has blobs on the outside edge. The left wall. Again, you can see the facets on the curve. Changing the Mesh Fixes | Max Resolution didn't change anything. It's that way in the STL file. Good Luck! GV-camera__Cover_GoPro.3mf GV-camera__Cover_GoPro.gcode

Tomorrow. It's late.

Your .25 resolution numbers should be OK If it stutters going around curves you might want to bump it up a bit. Your Accel and Jerk numbers are reasonable as well. For the Enders, if you get Accel much over 500 and Jerk much over 8 and with a fine STL, the line segments are very short around curves so there are a lot of Gcode lines to process. The combination of resolution, accel and jerk, the speed of the printer/processor, and any slop in the drive train cause issues with print quality. The trick is to find the sweet spot where you get good resolution, you aren't over-taxing the physical machine (bad corners and layer shifts), the print head isn't stopping because the processor can't keep up (intermittent blobs), prints have good finishes and are dimensionally correct. What's needed is a calibration model that has curves and lines and circles. The cube is a decent tool but can't show you the whole story. Back off on the resolution of your model. These are decent printers but they are by no means a high end printer. I know I can print some models very fast to the point where the hot end's ability to deliver plastic is the limiting factor. Those models don't look so good, but most of what I print is functional details rather than art so I don't care. Layer adhesion and part fit is usually more important to me than finish quality. Come to think of it, post the STL of that model (unless it's proprietary or a paid-for model) and your gcode file as well. I am just finishing a print and there isn't going to be much left on the spool, and I always use my leftovers for practice.

Try re-formatting the SD card and blow out the card slot in the printer. Have you ever used Cura to send a print over the USB? If you have, and you know the computer and printer can communicate, then you can hook it up to the computer, start Cura, load a gcode file (or slice something) and go to the Monitor screen. Try sending G28 from Cura and see if it the printer homes. If that stuff doesn't work you can try sending M502. That will do a full reset back to factory defaults. You will lose your Home Offsets and Steps/mm calibration stuff. You should be able to get those from the printer before you reset it and then you can just re-enter them afterwards. When this happens though it's often the SD card.

It's a Creality thing. Good Luck.

No problem. I got to quote a Chinese philosopher to. That doesn't happen every day.

Check the size of the build plate in Cura at Your Printer | Manage Printers | Machine Settings. Make sure that Center Origin is NOT selected. On the build plate in Cura the Red/Yellow/Blue origin icon should be in the left front corner.

I edited the previous post.

You may have to do some experimentation. Nothing in the Gcode will hurt the printer, but it may not understand a command and it will just sit there. This first suggestion uses the code from the Matter Hacker file plus a couple of lines that I threw in: ;Custom Pulse XE start GCODE G21 ; set units to millimeters M107 ; fan off M140 S{material_bed_temperature_layer_0} ; start heating the bed M104 S160 ; start heating the hot end but not all the way yet M190 S{material_bed_temperature_layer_0} ; wait for bed temperature to be reached M109 S160 ;Wait for the hot end ; settings from the Matter Hacker start_gcode G28 ; home all axes M280 P0 S160 ;Reprap command that appears to set stepper motor 0 (the Z?) to 160 degrees rotation G4 P400 ;Marlin Dwell command 400micro-seconds M280 P0 S90 ;stepper 0 to 90 degrees G80 ;Bed Leveling Marlin uses G29 or M420. According to the RepRap site nobody uses G80 but it's in Cura. M109 S{material_print_temperature_layer_0} ;wait for the hot end to finish heating G1 X5 Y5 Z3.01 F1800 G92 E-5 ; Set the extruder so the first move to E0 results in a prime. ;End of Start GCODE It's ended up a hybrid of what was in the Matter Hacker file, and what was in the Cura file. I'm wondering about the commands in bold type. They are the ones that I expect may need some experimenting. Copy your existing start gcode from Cura into a text file so it doesn't get lost. Then Copy the above snippet and make it the new start Gcode in Cura. Slice something small like a calibration cube and see how it goes. If it hangs the printer, you'll have to power off to reset it. If it works you can abort the print and smile.

Sister Mary Josephine is going to be very disappointed in me.

There is some contradictory stuff going on. First and foremost is to figure out what firmware you are actually running. Do you know? It looks like Matter Hacker took Marlin firmware and added their own commands from RepRap firmware. Secondly, does your printer have Auto Bed Leveling?