GregValiant

I'm sorry, but what do you mean by a "block thingy"?

I wrote a bit of Visual Basic code I use to read gcode files into AutoCad. I brought in one of the boat files and it shows a helix all the way up. It's pretty close to a perfect helix too. No jig-jags at all. Looking at the 3d print from that boat file under a microscope I don't see anything that could be taken for a seam. I was pushing a lot of plastic to make a thicker hull but that shouldn't make any difference. A seam line is a seam line. I'd like to stare at that Gcode file for a bit. Can you put it up here?

You need one of the moderators for help here. Gr5 or Maht come to mind. I draw my own stuff so if there is an issue like this I add a feature (big circle or something) 2 layer heights tall where I want it to sit in the slicer. It's a way to fool Cura into producing what I had in mind. I know, it's a workaround and not solving anything, but it gets the job done.

I wonder if there is something in the model file that is causing it. To my knowledge, slicers don't make things up. It looks like you've tried manually moving it...how about rotating it in space. Maybe a different orientation will help. If it fits within the build volume you shouldn't need to slice it into smaller pieces.

This was posted in January and there hasn't been a follow-up. I wonder how he/she made out. Cura has been updated twice since then. Sometimes I find it helpful to just think on stuff for my own knowledge...and I did. +1 on No Z-Seam. The Z value changes incrementally and constantly as the nozzle goes around the shape. Since it is a single wall construct, there is no sideways step either (i.e.: to a second line of wall). There really shouldn't be a Z-seam. Another way to look at it is there is only 1 layer. I've printed a 3 piece 650mm sailboat hull. There was no z-seam with Cura 4.6.1. Looking at the Gcode - within every 360° movement of the nozzle around the part there were 140 discreet steps in the Z and at that point it was 1 layer height (.20mm in my case) higher. A .0014mm step every 2.5° isn't really noticeable.

If you do a search on ThingiVerse for Mouse Ears you will come across some that you can download. They are like poker chips. With your part in the slicer, you add a mouse ear to the end of long thin parts of the print at bed level. Think of an octopus arm with a catchers mitt on the end. The poker chip doesn't tend to warp upward although they will need to be trimmed off later. There is a bit of a learning curve with PETG. Mostly, you have to learn how not to burn yourself on the bed or nozzle. You'll be running them very hot.

I'm saying I hope so. Good Luck with it. There is more information available if you do a search for "Pausing" +Repetier. There is also a little bit of information on the MonoPrice site.

And this is general advice... It's a "practice" thing too. I found that nozzle temperature varies more by color using PETG. Some colors can get pretty stringy and have to be run cooler and slower. Warping becomes more of an issue as long narrow features want to lift off the bed. Make sure that your new Bowden tube is cut exactly square, and that the nozzle butts up against the tube just before it makes contact with the inner steel tube of the hot end. You want a good seal there.

There are 4 Pause at Height scripts in the Cura extensions. One is listed for Repetier (which I think the MonoPrice printer uses). The one that seems to work with the Ender 3P/Marlin is simply called Pause at Height. It inserts this code ;TYPE:CUSTOM ;added code by post processing ;script: PauseAtHeight.py ;current z: 5.2 ;current height: 5.0 M83 ; switch to relative E values for any needed retraction G1 F300 Z6.2 ; move up a millimeter to get out of the way G1 F9000 X190 Y190 G1 F300 Z15 ; too close to bed--move to at least 15mm M104 S0 ; standby temperature I would change this line so the Hot End doesn't cool down M0 ; Do the actual pause TO RESUME you must click the button on the LCD M109 S215 ; resume temperature G1 F300 Z6.2 G1 F9000 X85.054 Y112.572 G1 F300 Z5.2 ; move back down to resume height G1 F3000 ; restore extrusion feedrate M82 ; switch back to absolute E values G92 E749.35974 From what I can see it does everything you would want it to...Lift, get out of the way, wait for the filament change, get the temp up to what it was, go back to where it belongs, and reset the extruder in case some filament was extruded during the color change. A nice tidy bit of code that should work with the Ender 5, but will not with JGord's MonoPrice (Repetier doesn't support M0 as a pause code).

Are you refering to one of the Pause-At-Height plug-ins for Cura?

Slowing down may have been the key. I can almost convince myself that I'm seeing some layer shifting there in the right image but it appears to be only in the cape which is not possible. You might want to check your belts though. It can't hurt.

When I imported the models into Cura it reported an error "The model is not manifold". I haven't seen that before. It mentioned that the Highlighted areas (polka dot area in your top image) contained extraneous surfaces. The model did slice and does not show the red "Outer Wall" lines between the cylinder and the vertical feature. It sliced as a single piece with infill between the two features. I had Support turned off.

This is a good one. Malegelebi may have given the best clue. His comment regarding the ABL indicates to me that it is indeed a Marlin issue. An invalid mesh? That makes more sense to me than Marlin just making up moves which I have to say is what it looks like.

Well, the cone is not connected by anything until it merges with the gantry thing. It's non-symmetrical as well. Unless the support wrapped around it I think it would fall over. And if the support did wrap around it, the head would crash. I think I'll stick with 2 pieces. One could be the cone and gantry (without the base) printed upside down. The second could be the base of the gantry. They'd need locating holes/pins but no support would be required.

Perfect. Thanks for responding with the fix.

That happens once in a while and I never figured out why. It's like there are bubbles under the plastic. I've washed the glass, re-coated with hair spray, and using the same roll of PLA it didn't do it. I've heard people blame it on the PLA having absorbed moisture but I don't know about that since the same roll printed fine for me the next time. Then another day it would do it on freshly cleaned glass with a different roll of PLA. Like I said, I never chased it down.

That is much closer. Now, go back into Machine Settings and change the width and depth of the build plate to 225 x 225. Then on your machine, do Auto Home. After it is home, move the X axis 4mm. Move the Y axis 8mm. Z must remain at 0 so make sure the bed is low so the nozzle doesn't drag. Back up to the Prepare screen and click on "Set Home Offsets" You should be good to go. To double check - raise the Z a bit and move the print head to X112.5, Y112.5 and it should be right in the middle of the build plate.

Hold on. There are a bunch of negative Y numbers in there and the X values are all near the left edge. Don't bother to print that yet. It looks like the machine has been set up with "0" in the middle of the build plate. In Cura, select Monitor / {Your Printer} / Manage Printers / Machine settings and make sure that "Origin at Center" is NOT checked. Then slice it again.

In Cura - check the machine settings for your printer and make sure the build plate size is correct. It should be 235 x 235 x 250. Oh, and in Cura 4.4 you couldn't select an Ender 3 Pro as a printer, but in the new versions you can. If you haven't done it already, in Monitor use Add a Printer and under Creality you can select the Ender 3Pro. It will come in with the correct settings for your printer.

I think I'd be inclined to make two separate details (the stand with locating pins and the cone with matching locating holes) and glue them together. That would allow laying the stand on it's side and only the locating pins would need support. The cone could then be printed upright with no support. When it's possible, I put 1.85 holes on both pieces and then cut short bits of filament and glue them in as locating pins. That would make for no support on either piece.

The Z endstop is hard against the Z switch. I don't think a negative Z is actually possible IF the Home Offset Z is zero. In Pronterface send an M503. Looking through the response find the line that is M206 and check the Z value. If it isn't zero then you need to reset it. Send M206 X{whatever your X is} Y{whatever your Y is} Z0 Then level the bed using the good old fashioned piece-of-paper method and then start a print and see how it goes. You can abort the print after seeing how it starts. You didn't mention if you are using a BLTouch or some other automatic leveler. If you are, then doing the above has taken it out of the equation. If you level the bed again using the Auto system and then print the same file, how does it look? If it starts out low again, then the problem is in the auto-leveler system.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Do you mean it's angled off the bed somehow? Air printing in the left front? If the bed is level I don't understand how it could do that. I installed 4.6 and now 4.6.1 and there haven't been any issues with the 3 Pro. Create a gcode file of any model using - Cura 4.6, .2 layer height, with a skirt for bed adhesion. Open the file in Notepad and scroll down until you find a Z value. It should look something like this: G1 F300 Z0.4 G0 F4500 X75.844 Y52.594 Z0.4 ;TYPE:SKIRT G1 F300 Z0.2 ;This line is the "drop down" to the working height. G1 F1500 E0 G1 F3000 X76.798 Y52.659 E0.03254 I had a situation where it appeared that my bed had warped. It turned out that I had been adjusting the left front and right rear screws excessively and the bed had become bowed from the uneven pressure of the leveling screws. I took the glass off the bed and using a small block under the nozzle (about 5mm high), I leveled the bed with no build surface on it. That fixed it.

You have to remember that layers in Gcode start at 0 and layers in Cura (don't know about the others) start at 1. It's easy to forget when your looking at the model in the slicer and you're in a little bit of panic mode that you have to subtract 1 to get the layer number for the "Find" in the gcode file.

If it was already layers past the fail then you probably did the best that can be done. If you send M27 the printer will respond with the byte location of where it is right now. That would have been useless information in your case. I've got a digital caliper to measure a print and check the height. Knowing the height gives me the layer. Then the gcode file can be truncated and a couple of lines added to go to the correct Z and reset the E before the code starts up again. That sounds like what you did.

zoev89 mentions altering some Gcode to finish a print. I was having trouble with prints when I started out (mid December) and it annoyed me that the printer knew how many bytes it had digested, but not what line it was on. So I've written a routine in Excel Visual Basic to get the exact line number of the byte...or the byte of the start of a layer...or the byte of any line number. I kept going and it turned into a whole printer interface for talking to the printer and tuning prints. Anyway, now I can jump right back into a file without having to truncate the GCode. It's really close to seamless too. Quite pleased with myself about that. This bicycle project put some miles on the Ender. The body of the rear cafe piece with the Red Wings on it was a 44hr 2 color print for the front half, and a 22 hr print for the back end and yes, there is a door and latch. The whole thing is on a slider to access the door in front. There are 37 printed pieces on the bike. The Red Wings have black backs with white inserts and then the red feathers and wheels were printed on top of that sandwich. Now I'm thinking about a fairing. Just have to figure out where to put the seams, glue joints, and screws. The "Hardley Davison" is 2.9ci of butt shaking terror at 25mph. The long angled piece of PVC is a fishing rod holder. The short piece with the NOS logo on it is the toolbox. The cafe back end slides off and is replaced with a store bought tackle box. I'm really intrigued by the thought of maybe plating some stuff. Oh boy, another learning curve. The main thing I've learned about 3d printing though is that it's all about the flow.