GregValiant

I'm not part of the team either. I find that working on problems like this does increase my understanding of the software and printing process. In this case, I couldn't get MeshMixer to fix the problem (but it did find it). I hadn't used NetFab before and it worked well. It is an AutoDesk site and you need an account. It's painless. I've written up a couple of bug reports but they were cut and dry. One of them the team was already aware of so they rolled it into the previous report. This one, you can write it up, but with a faulty model involved they won't be able to reproduce the problem and it will fall by the wayside. So writing this one may be an exercise in futility. Good luck - and yes, no more surface mounts. Bury the letters even if it's only .a fraction of a mm.

Sorry Nitro20. This appears to be a Creality problem. M0 and M1 should be enabled in the stock firmware and either one should pause the print. The "Disarm Timeout" number is to keep the motors from losing position during a pause and I would set it to 1800. That's 30 minutes. The rest of your questions regarding firmware and so forth are also questions for Creality. I've never seen a need to alter the firmware on my Ender and I don't want to have to learn how. You can try searching for answers or posting your questions about firmware over on Reddit.

Well, he does sound like he has a translation problem. Did you add the printer in Cura as a custom FFF printer? Cura may be acknowledging that it doesn't have a definition file for the printer. The warning says "may not" not "will not". The important thing is what does the Labists printer have to say about the Gcode. Does it go to work or does it just sit there thinking deep thoughts? The operating system of the printer determines the "Flavor" of the gcode that Cura generates. As long as you have the right firmware entered in Cura, the output gcode will be the right flavor for your printer.

Yeah, in 4.6.1 with the "h" up almost all the lettering disappears. With the "h" down there are a couple letters missing. Fixing the model....hhmm. OK, I went to NetFab and had the model repaired. Here it is sliced in 4.8.0 with a .4 nozzle. Orientation doesn't matter. Everything is there. @Migael, the reason I asked if you buried the lettering into the model is that I do a lot of this and the surface I want the lettering on isn't always flat and may in fact be a compound curve. Sometimes I want the lettering to flow with the surface and not be planar on top. When the letters are buried into the model (with enough sticking out to print), there is never a problem having the letters become part of the model. Sticking them on the surface can result in what happened here. Moving the letters .01mm into the model may have fixed the problem. Teamwork. You have to love it. It took 5 of us, on at least 2 continents, 9 hours but I think the problem has been identified. Of course it's already been printed using Prusaslicer but better late than never! 304534236_steunschepversie_fixed.stl

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.

Post the gcode file you sliced for Marlin. Make sure it's one with the pause at height enabled.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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?

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.

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.

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.

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%.

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.

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.

Nice. I'm always in favor of a good work-around.

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.

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.