GregValiant

Are those the same files as before? If there is an error in the code within the file then it won't load. Cura only loads files at startup so if you loaded them when Cura is running then close Cura and restart.

Without knowing your settings there is no way to tell what is going on. With the model loaded and Cura ready to slice with your settings - use the "File | Save Project" command to create a 3mf file. It will contain the model, your settings, and your printer. Much better to check than just the STL. Post the 3mf here. I sliced that STL at .2 layer height and at layer 51 the pupils of the eyes start. There isn't anything below them so they will fail without support and getting support out from below that delicate structure isn't going to end well. Regarding the time involved...FDM is not a fast process. You aren't allowed to complain until the prints get over 40 hours. When you wake up to a pile of spaghetti covering something that for 30 hours had been a perfect print THEN you get to complain as much as you want. What printer did you decide on?

There aren't any cavities in the block so the models are overlapping each other. @3dsolutionsBelgium You will need to do as Gr5 says and go back to CAD. Make copies of the letters, "subtract" the letters from the block, and then put the copies into the cavities when you open the files in Cura. Here is an example. I altered the files in MS 3D Builder. GV Test Block W-Cavity.3mf

Do you happen to have the plugin "Startup Optimizer" enabled in the MarketPlace? It simplifies the loading of Cura (to speed it up) and I believe one of the things it does is cleanup the number of printers available. If it is enabled then disable it and restart Cura and the printers should show up.

Load the model and set Cura up to slice. Then use the "File | Save Project" command to create a 3mf project file. Post the 3mf file here. Somebody will look at it but it will probably be on Monday.

I've written this little app. It's more versatile than Cura in regards to communicating with the printer as you can actually view the responses from the printer. It checks the baud rate up to 250,000 and the Com Ports from COM1 to COM40. It's for Windows only and is unsigned (that costs money) so if you decide to try it you would have to fool your anti-virus into letting it install. I've been under the hood on this today. If you use it please let me know if there are glitches. This does not send Gcode files over the USB but rather controls printing from the SD card from the computer keyboard rather than the knob on the printer. Connect the printer to the computer and then start the app. There is a readme file. Greg's SD Print Tool

Ya know @gr5 this has come up so many times. Eventually we have to hit on an explanation that people can read and understand the first time. I'm going to give it another try. There are two build plates. There is the virtual one in Cura that you've made 220 x 220. There is the real build plate on the printer that is 235 x 235. As Gr5 explained, the bed "X" divided by 2 and the bed "Y" divided by 2 gives the midpoint. But aligning the "virtual" build plate midpoint to the "Real" build plate midpoint is the main function of the Home Offset setting. Moving the Home Offset position moves the "virtual" build plate around on the "Real" build plate. You want to center your 220 x 220 Cura build plate on your Ender's 235 x 235 build plate. 235 - 220 = 15 and so a 7.5mm safety zone on the left, right, top and bottom is what will align the Cura build plate to the Ender's build plate. Put a piece of painters tape on the printer build plate near the left front corner. Measure 7.5mm from the left edge of the build plate and 7.5mm from the front edge of the build plate and mark the tape with an X at that location. Auto-Home the printer. Using the LCD knob - Move the Z up 2 or 3mm. Move the X and Y and position the nozzle directly over the X you made on the tape. Remove the tape. Drop the Z back down to 0. On the LCD click on the "Set Home Offset" command (on my Ender it's in the "Prepare" menu). Also on the LCD click on the "Store Settings" command (on mine it's under the "Control" menu). Move the Z up again and move the X to 110 and the Y to 110 and I betcha that nozzle is right in the middle of the build plate. When you Auto-Home the printer you will see that the X and Y location on the LCD are your Home Offset numbers. They will likely be negative because the Auto-Home location is in relation to the Home Offset location which is 0,0,0.

I read that article. It made sense to me so I picked up one of these Mosfet boards and printed a box for it. It sits in back of the printer. It has an LED and I can see when the bed turns on. There was a slight difference in prints. Mostly I'm glad to get that current flow off the mainboard. Wiring was easy. The wires from the mainboard to the bed get cut. The mainboard feed becomes the signal line for the Mosfet. The other terminals are power in from the power supply and then the old wires are power out to the bed. In regards to your print it does look like a mechanical issue. The extrusions on the side of the pilot house look to be wobbling. You have some ringing around the hawser hole in the bow as well. The line on the hull where the deck meets the hull is a well known phenomenon. I think doctoral thesis have been written about it. Go back over the printer for the umpteenth time and see if something is loose or bouncing or vibrating. All vibrations can end up in a print. I'm not an UltiMaker guy though. Maybe @gr5 has a take on this.

The "Fill gaps between walls" setting is gone. The "variable line width" of 5.x versions replaced it. In the Wall Settings section of Cura are new settings to adjust this. Try lowering your "Minimum Line Width". The default for a 0.4 line width is 0.34 so try making that 0.30. There are other settings too play with as well.

Well there ya go. I assumed it was a cookie cutter(?) It's that time of year and they do present unique challenges. When 5.0 came out I decided to move to it although I really liked 4.13.1. The 5.x versions of Cura are decidedly different but I think the complaints like "5.x ruined my prints" are way over-blown. There are different commands to control the line width and starting out - 5.0 did have a lot of glitches with the dialogs and controls as well as with slicing. There is also a definite learning curve involved when moving to the 5.x versions. 5.2.1 is a step in the right direction but there are still some slicing issues that need to be addressed (particularly with the Windows version) and I am confident that they will be. It seems like everyone wants more options and now that there are lots of options everyone wants the big "Easy Button" instead of spending time actually learning the software. Anyway, you are welcome and Good Luck both printing and making whatever it is you are going to make with that.

This is in the Cura X-Ray view and your model is on the right. The red area is an error in the model. Go to the Cura Marketplace and load the Mesh Tools Plugin. It runs a check on models when you open them and would have told you that the model has problems. The model on the left was repaired in MS 3D Builder. I had to rotate the model on the Cura build plate to get it to slice. That's a known bug in 5.2.1. But repaired model sliced at 200% and 300% as well.

Set the "Wall Transitioning Threshold Angle" to 20°. You might consider dropping the line width to .35 as well. This is with both settings adjusted.

It sounds like you opened a gcode file instead of a model file. If the Layer Slider works without having sliced it then it's a gcode file. You can also open that "bad" file in Notepad and see if it is just a mis-named Gcode file. . Try another STL and see if it will slice.

I was Detrimental? I try not to do that. Instrumental is more what I aim for. Skirts get the flow going and that's about it so on a large part 1 is good. Small parts might need 2 or 3.

"...which has you print a topless cube with a single wall." I would respectfully disagree. When the ratio of "Volume of Extrusion Out" to "Volume of Filament In" is 1:1 you are at 100% flow. 1.75 diameter filament has a cross sectional area of PI x r² = 2.405mm² The cross section of any extrusion is "Line Width" x "Layer Height". When a "single line wall" is extruded it is unconstrained on both sides and so it spreads out from the perfect "rectangular" shape into a flattened oval. It WILL be wider, but the volume is correct at "100% Flow" provided two things have been done correctly: You have calibrated the E-steps on the printer. You have measured the exact diameter of the filament and entered that number in the "Diameter" box of the Printer Settings in Cura ("Printer Settings" must be loaded from the MarketPlace). An extrusion that is 0.20 high x 0.40 wide x 100.00mm long is 8mm³. The filament is 2.405mm³/mm 8mm³ / 2.405mm³/mm = 3.32640mm of filament. If I tell Cura (and consequently the printer) to run at 85% flow then where does that missing 15% of the volume come from? It can only come from the Line Width. To calibrate the flow - Calibrate the E-steps, get the filament diameter right, and then.... Load a regular flat topped calibration cube in Cura and scale the cube to 75 x 75 x 1mm tall and slice it with all Cura flows at 100% and then print it. Look at the top skin with a decent magnifying glass (a microscope is best) and it will tell you if you need to tweak the "Flow". Trust your eyes. If it looks good, it's good. If I tell Cura to use 0.40 line width: The index distance between the extrusions of a skin will be 0.40mm. If I also tell Cura to run at 85% flow (because a single wall "calibration" cube told me to) then each extrusion will be 0.34mm wide. That is going to leave a noticeable gap between the lines of extrusion and is by definition "under-extrusion". But all your single wall prints will have precisely .40mm thick walls.

"99% of printers don't need to be calibrated for extrusion steps/mm." Uh-Huh. When your printer is from the bottom of the barrel you calibrate the E-steps. 100% of Creality printers (and 100% of their clones - Tevo, Anet, Geeetech, et al) must have the E-steps calibrated. (And then someone talks the owner into using a single wall "flow calibration cube" and they end up horribly under-extruding anyway.) So @betowars there are some things you can check to make sure Cura and the printer are on the same page. Generally though - if it is a mismatch between Cura and the printer (like one set to Volumetric and the other to regular) it's a lot worse than what you have there. There are a bunch of videos out there on calibrating the e-steps. You should be able to change the setting from the LCD / control panel. I do it as part of my periodic maintenance routine. Once they are set though then it's as @gr5 explained...they don't really change.

I forgot to mention that I print PETG at 105% to 107% flow. It is the same diameter as my PLA so it is likely a material property thing. Could be my cooler print temp as well. I have say the quality and finish of the prints is excellent, they just take longer.

The model has some errors in it. They look minor to me but you never know. The screenshot below is from Mesh Mixer and the 4 balls indicate errors. I didn't have any trouble slicing it as received. I'm attaching a repaired model. Load it into Cura and get Cura ready to slice and then use the "File | Save Project" command and post the 3mf file here. It will contain your settings and your printer. There are a couple of things you can check: If it is a dual extruder printer then make sure you haven't disabled one that was set to print the skirt or support. If the model barely fits on your build plate then try using a 1 loop skirt with the Skirt Distance set to 1mm. When you are in "Custom" settings mode - to the right of the Settings Search box is an icon with three lines on it. Click on it and set the visibility to "All". G17 P80_fixed.stl Here is the report on your model from https://formware.co/OnlineStlRepair. Not bad. There was a "Crystal Dragon" model on Github and it wouldn't slice. It had 400,000 errors in it. The term "DUUUHHH!" comes to mind. --> 9 Naked edges (?) --> 3 Planar holes (?) --> 0 Non-planar holes (?) --> 1 Non-manifold edges (?) --> 2 Inverted faces (?) --> 0 Degenerate faces (?) --> 2 Duplicate faces (?) --> 0 Disjoint shells (?) -> Repairing: 100.00% ----- Repair completed in 15591ms ------ -> Vertex count changed from 29326 to 31838 (+2512) -> Triangle count changed from 58697 to 65672 (+6975)

This is all about "Definitions". Remember that your model is solid through-and-through. When you add a Cutting Mesh configured with no walls, no top or bottom it creates a "cavity" in the solid model, not a "hole" into an open area within the interior because there is no open area in the interior. When it slices it looks open because of your settings (Lightning infill), but it ain't. if you change the Infill Pattern to Grid you'll see what I mean. The model is set to have walls and bottom layers so Cura puts walls around the cavity and bottom layers (of the model) on the top of the cavity because that is now a "floor" within the model. You could set it up like you have and with that cutting mesh taller than the thickness of your Bottom Layers. Slice the model and print it. As a post-process finishing step - cut the top out of the cavity with a drill, dremel tool, or a hobby knife. You can take that big cutting mesh and just set the "bottom layers" to 0 and move it up off the build plate. That would leave the sole of the shoe but keep bottom layers from forming over the cavity. This is option 2. The cavity mesh is 3mm tall and the big cutting mesh is 2mm off the build plate. So it interferes with the floor of the cavity but not the floor of the shoe itself. (The light may show the Lightning Infill as shadows within the model.)

I've printed quite a bit of PETG on my Ender. I found that printing as cool as I can get away with and at 35mm/sec is a good thing. I'll print PLA at up to 150 but PETG is a lot better when put down slow. I typically print PETG at 225° with the bed at 80°. A lot of models require elephant ears to keep them from warping off the bed. I also raise my retraction distance to 6.5 (PLA at 5.5) and set the retract/prime speeds to 25. A lot of the stringing can happen because PETG tends to collect on the nozzle a lot more than PLA. When that blob on the outside of the nozzle gets to a certain size it slides down, touches the print, and then is like a second extruder that just makes a mess.

You can't do it in Cura. Any portion of a model that hangs off the build plate will keep it from slicing. That means there is no way to block a portion of a model and allow the other portion to print. You will need to use Blender, MS 3D Builder, or Mesh Mixer or another application that can modify STL files. I use MS 3D Builder. It isn't very intuitive but it does a nice job. if you subtract 2.2mm diameter x 10mm long cylinders from the model you can stick a piece of filament in the hole and use them for locating pins when you go to assemble. Locate the locating pin cylinders and subtract them before you cut the model up. They will be precisely located in each piece of the assembly. Here is a globe I cut in MS 3D Builder. You can just make out the little holes where the filament pieces will go. The 4 pieces will glue together very precisely to make a globe.

I hate being yelled at. Try to calm down. Go to Thingiverse.com and pick a simple model like a calibration cube. Extract the files from the zip folder. Start Cura and open an STL file that you downloaded. There is a big blue button in the lower right of Cura that says "Slice". Click on it. Once it slices that button will change to "Save to disk". Save to disk. Copy the saved gcode file to an SD card Stick the SD card in the printer. On the printer there will be a command like Print from TF. Select that.

That might be because the USB to Serial drivers aren't installed on the port. Have you tried other USB ports on the computer? When Cura was installed it should have installed the port driver. In the screenshot you can see that the USB port is listed under "Ports (COM and LPT)". The "USB-SERIAL CH340" is the driver and in my case my printer is connected to COM11 which is the port name.

If the temperatures aren't mentioned in the Startup Gcode then Cura will add them before the StartUp as a safety to prevent cold extrusions. Your startup gcode is missing the S parameters from the heating lines. Syntax errors will be ignored by the firmware. From what I see on the MarlinFW site, Marlin doesn't use "G130" to set the stepper motor voltage. You might need to use M907 instead. The syntax for a dual extruder printer would be "M907 X20 Y20 Z20 E20 B20". "E" would be Extruder0 and "B" would be Extruder1. Frankly, I've never seen the stepper Vrefs adjusted in the StartUp gcode. You can use Cura replacement patterns (keywords) that Cura will replace with the correct numbers when the Gcode is created. M104 S{material_print_temperature_layer_0} ;Start heating the nozzle. M140 S{material_bed_temperature_layer_0} ;Start heating the hot end. M109 S{material_print_temperature_layer_0} ;Wait for the nozzle to get to the set point. M190 S{material_bed_temperature_layer_0} ;Wait for the bed to get to the set point. You can see that the S parameter is in there. The Curly brackets tell Cura that there are keywords in there. Something like this would work. It would be a bit different if an ABL is involved: G21 ;Metric values G90 ;Absolute Movement M82 ;Absolute Extrusion M220 S100 ;set feed rate to 100% in case a previous print was tuned from the LCD. M221 S100 ;set flow rate to 100% G28 ; Home all axis G0 F3000 X1 Y1 Z20 ; move to wait position G130 X20 Y20 Z20 A20 ; lower stepper Vrefs while heating or M907 X20 Y20 Z20 E20 B20 M104 S{material_print_temperature_layer_0} ;Start heating the nozzle. M140 S{material_bed_temperature_layer_0} ;Start heating the bed. M105 ;Report temperatures M109 S{material_print_temperature_layer_0} ;Wait for the nozzle to get to the set point. M190 S{material_bed_temperature_layer_0} ;Wait for the bed to get to the set point. G130 X127 Y127 Z40 A127 B127 ; default stepper Vrefs or M907 X127 Y127 Z40 E127 B127 G92 E0 ;zero the extruder G1 F900 E10 ; purge nozzle G92 E0 ;zero after purge G0 F3000 X10 ; move over G0 F2400 X25 Z.3 ; drop to wipe height G0 X140 Y1 ;Slow wipe G0 F2400 Z10 ; Raise Z

Yea, that will work. "Save Settings" might only work if changes have been made(?). The M500 should always work. Within Cura - the Cura coordinate system relating to the model has it's origins at the middle of the build plate so as far as setting up a slice or arranging models goes, the numbers you see will relate to the mid-point of the build plate. Then, when Cura creates the gcode, those coordinates are translated to the Origin Point in the Machine Settings (either Center Origin which would require no translation, or for most printers to the left front corner). That's what causes the most confusion. OK time to fix this: Get a tape measure and measure the actual Width (X) and Depth (Y) of the bed. For this example let's say it measures 350 wide by 250 deep. Subtract 5 from each number to create a 2.5mm safety border around the periphery of the bed. Go into Cura and enter those new numbers (Ex: X=345 x Y=245) into the Machine Settings as your Width(X) and Depth(Y). Back on the printer, Auto-Home the print head. Move the Z up ~5mm. Move the X until the nozzle is 2.5mm in from the left edge of the print surface. Move the Y until the nozzle is 2.5mm in from the front edge of the print surface. Drop the Z back down to "0". On the LCD select "Set Home Offsets" and then "Save Settings" (or send M500). On the LCD move the Z up again and move the X to 172.5 and the Y to 122.5. The nozzle should be in the middle of the print surface. If it isn't let us know. Next test is for max size. On the LCD send the nozzle to X345 Y245. It should be 2.5mm in from the right edge and 2.5mm in from the back edge of the build surface. If it comes up short then additional adjustments will need to be made. By adjusting the Home Offset location you can get a print that was centered in Cura to print in the exact center of the build surface.