GregValiant
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Posts posted by GregValiant
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The initial purge line is hard-coded in the Start Gcode. The rest of the file is calculated by Cura.
0.1 initial layer height...I would make it equal to or just more than the regular layer height. With such a thin first layer there might not be enough room for the filament to escape from the nozzle if you miss the leveling by only a little bit.
Under Mesh Fixes change the Maximum resolution and Maximum travel resolution to 0.5.
Under Experimental you have Use Adaptive Layers enabled. Turn that off for the Benchy. It's a special use thing.
All I see in the Cura settings and the printer settings is that low initial layer height. Sometimes Volumetric extrusion can get inadvertently turned on. In the printer - make sure "Main | Control | Filament | E in mm3" is turned off.
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Pause At Height is not good when Adaptive Layers are enabled, or when Z-hops are enabled. In the case of adaptive layers, since the layer height varies and since a search for the Z height is vary specific, the chances of entering a Z that is actually present in the file is like picking a number for the lottery. When Z-hops are enabled the Z jumps up and down and Pause at Height picks the first instance of the Z that it comes across. That may not (often is not) the working Z height but rather a Z-hop height. When the script continues after the pause it will seem to skip a layer or two. It doesn't actually skip a layer but rather prints it at the Z-hop height.
Using the PauseAtHeight Plugin with it set to "At Layer" works well.
Creality has been playing with the way their boards interpret Gcode commands. They don't seem to feel it's necessary to inform anybody of what they did. For instance it has just come up that M117 doesn't work on the 4.2.x boards and there have been complaints that M0 does not work to pause the print. In regards to Creality machines - neither problem appears to be related to Cura or Marlin.
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The short answer is no. This has come up before usually regarding multiple parts on the bed. It isn't just a software issue, but a hardware issue as well - as in "something might crash". As an example, it wouldn't work with my printer because the part cooling duct is in the way. I agree it could (in a small number of cases) speed things up and probably reduce stringing for filaments like PETG. It's like non-planar slicing in that it is really dependent on the shape of the print head.
FDM is just not a fast process.
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50 to 60 for PLA. Give it a wipe with 70% isopropyl alcohol. I use hairspray as an adhesive. "Glue sticks" work well also.
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What printer? What firmware does it have?
Please post a Gcode file here.
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If you could post a problem Gcode file and use "File | Save Project" and post the 3mf project file they might shed some light on the subject.
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Ohio State is up by 3 touchdowns at the half and an Arachne print has finished.
Same model, same settings, mirrored using Cura. On the left we have Arachne and on the right is 4.8.0. The printer is an Ender 3 Pro.
There is some Z-banding on the Arachne print up to about 1/2 way up and then from there to the top they are really close to being identical. The 4.8.0 version was printed first. I will let the Cura Team analyze the banding. The parts were printed one after the other. The color makes them tough to photograph.
The movement of the layers of the base of the Arachne version went down oddly. One loop on the right hole, one loop on the middle hole, and one loop on the left hole, then start over on the right hole, until the inside wall was built. The outside walls went down normally with 3 loops around each in turn before moving to the next hole.
Those of you who know about such things will recognize that the Honda Goldwing in my profile is fitted with dual Weber IDF carburetors and topped with velocity stacks. These are my take on old style Stromberg ram stacks from early V-8 drag racers of the 1950's and 60's. I thought they would make a nice change of pace at shows. Nobody will ever notice the banding since a light must be held at just the correct angle to show them. My luck will be that the sun is at just the right angle when the judges come by.
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Transmission ratio sounds like it. As delivered mine was x80, y80, z400 and e93. For your reference, mine is now:
M92 X80.34 Y80.56 Z398.59 E97.89
So they didn't change much, but they did change. I measured XYZ with a digital caliper and then verified with a calibration cube. I'm quite proud of the fact that the cube is now 25.00 x 25.00 x 25.00.
I wrote this application for windows. It allows me to run all the SD card stuff, printer calibration, leveling, and tuning during a print, from my laptop rather than using the LCD. There is a readme file and instructions. You might have to talk your anti-virus into letting it install because it is an unsigned app. Happy New Year.
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I found this in a Marlin file "gcode.cpp" in Marlin 2.0:
case 117: M117(); break; //M117: Set LCD message text, if possible
Elsewhere in Marlin files it specifically states LCD or TFT as the screen type. I'm wondering if the TFT screens just aren't configured to pass a message. I think the Ender 3 v2 has a TFT screen and I was looking at it as a printer for my son.
I always use a plugin to put the layer on the screen. It would be annoying not to have that to inform me when a Pause is coming up for a color change.
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It appears that your printer doesn't support M117 at all. I would have expected an M117 message to show up where your image shows "Printing". Below that line is the filename. The printer just pulled that up because you told it the file to print. The printer doesn't read the time from a file. It knows how large a file is and it knows how many bytes per second it is eating so it calculates the remaining time based on bytes remaining and bytes/second that it is going through as it reads the file.
At any rate, a quick trip over to Reddit revealed that the 4.x.x boards don't support M117. I wonder what else Creality isn't telling anyone?
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No. Retractions are on their own line in the gcode file. You can adjust the amount of retraction and the speed of retraction, but as you have found out the head doesn't move during a retraction.
Oozing (or Stringing) is often a function of printing temperature and retraction distance rather than of retraction speed. Bowden tube printers have much "give" in the bowden system and can handle retractions of 6.5 or more. When retractions get too long they pull molten plastic up into the bowden tube. That creates it's own problems. Fast, long retractions are the normal fix for stringing.
White filament has a lot of colorant in it. I print white PLA at 200 and almost every other PLA at 210.
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When talking about 3d printing, patience must be the first word.
You are quite welcome and a Happy New Year to you.
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Not the printer. You mentioned a "post processing script". There are several available in Cura and I was wondering which one you were using. Cura by itself does not add an M117 line.
Next to the slice button is an icon with a crossed hammer and wrench. It brings up the Post Processing dialog. There is one called "Display filename and layer on LCD" but it puts the line together like this:
M117 Printing My Model - Layer 0 of 49
"My Model" would be the name of the STL file that was sliced to create the gcode file.
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Congrats on getting it working. I tried with a feeler gauge but I didn't care for it. I have to use hairspray for PETG and I just got in the habit of using it for PLA as well. PETG pops off when the glass cools. PLA can be tough to get off. I'm not opposed to using my little Harley tool on the putty knife and giving a print some tough love.
The steps/mm as set up from the factory will be pretty close. They will change some as the machine wears in. I changed to an aluminum extruder top and it came with it's own gear so that necessitated a re-calibration.
As for the Layer number not showing up, what plugin are you using?
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On the printer mainboard are the "drivers" for the stepper motors. The processor tells each driver how many steps to send to turn each motor, and the timing, so that each motor reaches it's destination at the same time. How many steps are sent per mm of movement varies from motor to motor and from printer to printer. When a gcode command tells the extruder to push 100mm of filament and only 90 get pushed, then the print will be under-extruded.
Pull out the filament and take the bowden tube out of the extruder, then put the filament back in until it just appears at the end of the fitting. Use the LCD and tell the extruder to move 100mm of filament and measure how much actually came out. Check the LCD for your current E steps/mm. The formula is (How much we asked for) / (How much we got) X Current E steps. Enter that in the LCD as the new e-steps and do the experiment again. When you are satisfied that the extruder pushes 100 when asked to push 100, it is calibrated. On the LCD select "Save Settings". The XYZ steps are similar and effect the dimensional accuracy of a print. When you tell the X axis to move 100mm it should move 100 and not 103.5 or 98. Same formula applies. (Expected Movement) / (Measured Movement) X Current steps/mm.
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Throw away those old gcode files. You will have to make new ones with origin at the left front.
If you look at the first post by AJames you will see the settings. His photos are from the Labists website and "Origin at Center" is NOT checked.
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You can see in the photos that the blue/red/yellow origin mark is in the center of the build plate. Click on your printer name. Manage Printers / Machine Settings and select "Origin at Center". Close Cura and re-open it. Go back to manage printers / machine settings and de-select "origin at center". The "origin icon" should be in the lower left corner. If it is not then you may have discovered a bug in Cura.
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That works for me too. The silica gel packs come back to life after being dehydrated. I'm in Florida so humidity is a way of life.
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You aren't the first person that has happened to. You will also run into the "shelf life" thing. I usually buy from Matter Hackers but they run out. I bought some PLA from an Amazon seller and although it was vacuum packed with a silica gel pack, it was loaded with moisture. The little steam explosions were exciting but produced really bad prints. Fortunate for me our oven has a Dehydrating function that runs the exhaust fan and I can turn it down to 115 degrees. 6 hours and it was good to go.
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In Cura, there is a virtual build plate whose size is determined by those numbers you showed.
On the printer there is a real build plate. Unfortunately, the printer doesn't know where the build plate is. It only knows where the Homing switches are. It is the Home Offset numbers that tell the firmware where the build plate origin is.
My build plate glass measures 235 x 235 with a 1mm beveled edge. I move my nozzle 2.5mm in from the left edge of the glass and 2.5mm in from the front edge of the glass, and the Z at "0" and select "Set Home Offsets" on the LCD. In Cura I have the build plate size as 230 X 230. So you see that 2.5mm from the left + 230 "X largeur" in Cura + 2.5 on the right = 235 which is the actual width of the glass.
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I have an Ender 3 Pro and M117 works fine on my 1.1.5 board with stock LCD. The caveat is that it only displays the first 21 characters of a text string (and a bit of character 22). Anything beyond that doesn't display, but it might in fact be there but the display isn't long enough to show it. It is possible that your board is only displaying the middle of the string.
The original Creality printers with 8 bit boards did not understand file names beyond 16 characters. I don't know if your 32 bit board has the same restriction (that Creality never told anyone about). I always truncate the names on the SD card to something simple. Internally, your mainboard may be using the DOS 8.3 file name.
Regarding print quality - The basics are always true and getting a first layer down is the most important thing.
Slice with .2 layer height and .4 line width. If you are using PLA then print at 210 with the bed at 60. Print speed at 35mm/sec. Travel speed at 120. If you have calibrated your E-steps and have your bed is nicely leveled a calibration cube should print well. After that tune ONE thing at a time. The printers are pretty good and when calibrated both mechanically and in the firmware, they can produce excellent results.
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"I am confused."
Welcome to the club.
I like to use Grid as it gives strength in all three axis. With the Infill Density at 15% set "Infill Line Multiplier" to 3. You will want to play with the infill type and the line multiplier to see what works best for a particular model. I also increase my "Retraction Minimum Travel" to a number (15?) that keeps retractions down. That keeps the number of z-hops down and can decrease printing time. Lots of infill means a slow print.
Walls 2.0 thick and Top/Bottom 2.0 thick. With the Grid infill at 15% and multiplier at 3 you can drive a car over a printed block. In tension? Now that is a whole nother story.
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Slice a model with Cura. Save the Gcode file.
Open the Gcode file with any text editor (like Windows Notepad). You will see the information like this...
;FLAVOR:Marlin
;TIME:18130
;Filament used: 22.5997m
;Layer height: 0.2
;MINX:37.377
;MINY:80.504
;MINZ:0.2
;MAXX:192.628
;MAXY:149.496
;MAXZ:44.9
;Generated with Cura_SteamEngine 4.8.0 -
It was gr5 who was Mr. Hands there.
One thing you will definitely learn about 3d printing is that there is more to learn about 3d printing.
Strange First Layer sliced in Cura 4.8
in UltiMaker Cura
Posted
Under "Shell" make sure Initial Layer Horizontal Expansion is de-selected. You might want to check your line widths as well.