GregValiant

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.

"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.

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.

Very good. If your home offsets are correct in the printer, then a centered print in the Cura virtual build plate should print in the center of the printer's real build plate. At the start of a Cura gcode file there will be some dimensions. ;MINX:37.377 ;MINY:80.504 ;MINZ:0.2 ;MAXX:192.628 ;MAXY:149.496 ;MAXZ:44.9 (MAXX + MINX) / 2= 115 and (MAXY + MINY) / 2 = 115. My build plate is 230 x 230 and by checking those numbers I know that the print will be centered on the build plate.

I read the Gcode file using a macro in MSExcel. It found 59,878 Z moves and none went down by more than .2mm. That isn't enough to crash the head. Since you sent the file via Octoprint as well as by SD, that eliminates the possibility of a bad SD card. I'm not sure what to look at next. Sometimes a piece of infill or the edge of an overhang will stick up. When the print head comes by again later it catches the part sticking up and pushes the model over. I suppose it could get cocked and catch on the nozzle to leave a mark. I increased my Z-hop height to .5 because of things like that (but it never got caught on the nozzle).

In Cura, check your machine settings. "Origin at Center" should NOT be checked. The bed size and height must be entered correctly (a square is a special kind of rectangle). In the printer itself, your Home Offsets must be correct. Typically X and Y will be small negative numbers and Z will be 0.

There are no Z moves in that file larger than your Z-hop height of .2mm. Whenever it goes up .2mm for a Z-hop, it comes back down .2mm to the working height. According to the settings listed at the end of the gcode file, Adaptive Layers is turned on. [metadata] position=0 type=quality_changes quality_type=adaptive setting_version=16 Varying the layer heights to the model geometry is what Adaptive Layers is supposed to do.

I looked into M118 a bit. It appears that it is meant to send a message back to the print server. The response should be "echo:blah blah blah" in Marlin. My firmware is Marlin 1.1.8: Sending M118 Hello World results in the printer responding: echo:HELLO WORLD ok That appears to be the expected result per the Marlin site. Sending M118 X51.00 Y48.00 Z15.80 T1 the response is: À ok So the response sent from the printer back to the server is the single ASCII character 192 instead of "echo:X51.00 Y48.00 Z15.80 T1". Sending M118 X51.00 Y48.00 Z15.80 T1 HELLO the response is echo:HELLO ok Sending M118 with anything that looks like an XYZ position results in a character 192 response. Good Luck!

If you use cooking type "parchment paper" or a thin store receipt you can get a better feel for leveling. Here is gr5's THE_VIDEO.

The STL file doesn't help because it doesn't have any settings in it. Please provide a "Project File" so people can tell how you set up Cura to slice the model. As with many "character" models, this model has problems. It is not "watertight" and that model file is HUGE. Try printing something simpler, but that needs some support. You still haven't mentioned what printer it is. You might need to calibrate your E-steps. There are numerous "Flow" settings in Cura. Search the settings for "Flow" and make sure they are at 100%. Make sure you have "Retraction" set. Start at 5mm. No clogs in the nozzle? No blockage in the hot end?

There are a lot of flow settings in Cura. One of them is Initial Layer Flow. Set it at 110%. You didn't mention your print speed but make the Initial Layer Speed 35. Make no mistake, that is a crutch and not a fix, but slow and heavy can make up for problems until you get the routine down. @gr5 has a good video on bed leveling / adhesion that he will share when he gets out of bed. It will teach you the right way so you can throw away the crutches.

Most of the Ultimaker crew appears to be on holiday. I have "An" idea but I have no way to tell if it's the "Correct" idea so at this point I will keep it to myself. Somebody will respond. @Smithy? @gr5?

Good job picking that up. Trying to diagnose things from far away ain't easy. (On the other hand, I think we did a fair job of surrounding it. Another month or two and we'd have nailed it down!)

There is a search bar above the settings. To the right is a drop down menu where you can select "All" to show all settings. Or you can just Search for "Coasting". You had Coasting enabled when the 3mf file was generated. The model will print fine (provided all your other settings are good).

If you could post a gcode file showing the behavior that would be good.

Next to the "search" box at the top of the settings is an icon. Click on it and select "all" so unhide all the Cura settings. There are a lot of settings under "Support". One of them is an option called Support Placement. If "Touching Buildplate" is enabled then those gaps won't be supported. Change it to "everywhere" and the supports will show up. That is a fussy model. The small features on the ends of the legs would print best as your second photo shows. If the sides were parallel instead of at a small angle it would print best laying down with a support blocker over the horizontal holes. This looks like a case where the part is designed to release from a mold, rather than be FDM printed. I like it like this. When you open a 3mf file it will have all the settings and the printer (Ender 3 Pro in my case). You will need to switch back to your printer and look carefully at the settings to assure that they will work for you. There is one support blocker to keep support from the small horizontal holes. zTensioner_Bracket.3mf

That was odd. The 3mf file crashes my Cura 4.8. I have to guess then, and I'm guessing you have "Coasting" enabled and your preview is set to show extrusions. There isn't any extrusion during that portion of a move that is the coast, and so you get a blank spot. It doesn't crash 4.7. Yep, coasting is enabled.

One of the reasons I have chosen not to move to Auto Bed Leveling is the complexity. It isn't just a sensor that gets mounted near the nozzle, it's a whole set of motions controlled (and saved to memory) in the printer. The board in the Ender prints well but there isn't enough memory for anything else. I'm not changing boards either. Reddit is full of people who bought printers "upgraded" from a board designed for their printer to some random board they heard about, and now their prints suck or more often, the printer no longer does anything. Mine works, I understand it, it's as simple as I can get a machine with 4 motors, 4 fans, two computers, a bunch of wheels and pulleys, and a 250 degree piece of aluminum right in the middle. I love my parchment paper. A piece will last weeks and when it finally does tear, I don't have to load a bootloader and re-flash it. I just walk into the kitchen and grab another little piece off the 50 foot roll. Anyway, that was my ABL rant. I could go on about calibration too but I'll keep it simple...it's a machine, parts wear, belts stretch, it doesn't always get the exact same filament. It needs tune-ups from time to time to keep it at the top of it's game.

This is your CFFP Spiral...gcode file printed on my Ender in PLA. I changed the Bed and Printing temps and put in an M221 S125 to push the Flow to 125% because I'm too lazy to change nozzles. There was still extreme under-extrusion after the raft finished so I used the LCD and tuned flow to 150% and it was better. All the layers are there. The problem is with your printer. I am guessing it's in the ABL settings, but I advise going over the whole thing and calibrating it. There is no good reason to have to run flow down to 70%.

Auto Bed Leveling

You are aware that your extruder is set up in Cura with a 0.3 nozzle? Just checking. Because your second extruder has a 0.4 nozzle.

Leave the nozzle loose by 1/2 turn. Cut the bowden end exactly square. Shove the bowden in down to the nozzle. Put the lock clip on. Heat up the hot end. Tighten the nozzle the rest of the way so it seals the bowden end. Do an internet search for an all metal hot end.

PITA. It was at about this point in my own adventures (3rd stock hot end) that I went with an all metal hot end. It isn't perfect but it's much better. I went back and read where I was betting on a hot end clog. Right now that bet is looking much better than it was a couple of posts ago.

The extrusion got very thin mid-print. That isn't the same as stopping altogether. The E motor doesn't get hot = not a Vref problem or softening of the filament as it goes through the extruder. A clog at the end of the bowden tube would not clear itself and extrusion would remain poor. A partial clog in the nozzle got cleared when you pulled the filament. The down side of that is there isn't any preventative maintenance you can do. If it clogs, it clogs. If it would have been the bowden tube blockage there are some things you can do to prevent it, but a clogged nozzle, I don't think there is. 90% of the problems I had with my Ender were from the hot end of the bowden tube clogging. I may have had a nozzle clog once, but I probably blamed it on the hot end and fixing one fixed the other.