GregValiant

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.

I see that the "CAD integration" plugin is available with the subscription. It appears to be a universal translator for CAD files from AutoDesk, Catia and 10 other CAD packages including Solidworks. That is considerably more capable than the Solidworks plugin that was included with the freeware version of Cura. It's a 500mb download as opposed to Thopiekar's 2.9mb download.

Hello all. It would be helpful to know the Make, Model, and gcode "Flavor" of your printer. I don't recognize it off hand. On your printer's LCD - within the menus are there commands for "Set Home Offset" and "Save Settings" (could be called "Store Settings")? I ask because this looks to be a problem with your Home Offset location and if those commands are available then it should be a quick fix to adjust it. If they aren't then its a bit more complicated but doable. As @gr5 mentioned, the typical situation would be to stay against the switches after auto-homing. That move to 175,125 and then being only 25mm or so from the left edge is really odd. Does it have a USB port and/or an SD card slot?

This is a popular problem. Passing the STL or other model file along is OK for some topics but in your case folks would want to see your settings. With the model loaded and Cura set up and ready to slice, use the "File | Save Project" command to create a 3mf project file. Post that file here. It will contain not just the model, but also your printer and all your settings. In the Travel section are two settings you will need to adjust. If you hover your mouse over them the tooltips will come up. "Retraction Minimum Travel" "Max Comb Distance with No Retraction" You want to set those up to insure there will be a retraction when the nozzle moves from one tower to the other. After you get that right then you can start on dialing in the Retraction Distance and the Retraction/Prime speeds. Good starting points for those on a bowden printer are 5.0 and 30mm/sec. Most folks end up at 6 or 6.5 and at 35 to 45mm/sec.

That has to be in your settings. Make sure you are in "Custom" so all settings are available. To the right of the "Search Settings" box is an icon with three lines on it. Click on that and set the visibility to "All". Set the "Top Layers". "Bottom Layers", and "Initial Bottom Layers" to zero.

What is a "BioActive Scaffold"? (Please use short words.) If you are trying to print a bunch of single extrusions in an alternating grid pattern then maybe printing a cube with "Lines" infill, no walls and no floor is what you need. You can specify the distance between the infill lines. You can also specify the angle of the lines. A 0.4 nozzle with a 0.4 line width and a 0.4 layer height and the Infill Line Distance at .8 would look like what you have there. With the Infill Flow at 78% (difference between the area of a .4 diameter and a .4 square) you might get round sausages stacked up with .8mm gaps between them.

That is probably how the firmware is set up. Try clicking on the button and select the "Resume Print" from the menus (it should say "Resume Print" instead of "Print from TF"). If that doesn't work then you'll have to experiment. Since my firmware is different I won't be able to debug it.

There are a couple of problems there. The thin sections of the letters are to thin to slice (the L's and E in particular). Load the model and set Cura up to slice. Use the "File | Save Project" command to create a 3mf file and post the 3mf file here.

In the Walls section you have the Wall Ordering set to "Inside to Outside"? The "rounded" corners are often associated with the Accel and Jerk combination. 500 Accel and 8 Jerk are good starting points. Going into a corner, slamming on the brakes and the accelerating out is OK for Lewis Hamilton and can be handled by some printers, mine isn't one of them. I generally run the Accel at 1000 and Jerk at 10 for largish models and 500/8 for smaller models. Your model has a lot of straight runs but when a model has a lot of direction changes in a small area (like printing small text) then my printer starts to dance around and all the vibration can end up in the print. The "Extra prime amount" is in "mm³". The length of your under-extrusion x LayerHeight x LineWidth should give you a good base point for the setting. Remember - that setting is going to happen on every prime, not just the one you are focusing on. I have to repeat here though - I think something is going on with the printer. I printed the model and it came out fine so I don't think we are looking at some sort of bug here. I think you may need to send a M503 query to the printer but you need something to read the response. You can use PronterFace/PrintRun or I have a little app I wrote that you can have. I see that your printer definition uses the default Cura setting of 299 billion mm/sec. It is safe to assume that your printer is actually less than that. If the Maximum E speed in M203 is low at "15mm/sec" or something, then it just isn't snapping the filament forward on prime in order to start the extrusion. This is the M503 response from my Ender. The Maximum feedrates are in the highlighted "M203" line.

I added a bug report on Github as #13899.

I checked the model with @ahoeben's Mesh Tools plugin and the model has some minor issues. This is the Cura Prepare stage in X-ray View. The red areas around the base are errors in the model. MS 3D Builder was able to repair it. They are minor errors and didn't seem to affect the slice, but it's good practice to check for errors before putting a lot of time and effort into a print. Your nozzle looks to have started under-extruding at around layer 230 or so. That didn't fix itself as the print continued upward and so things got weak as it grew taller. That really needs to be addressed before you try again. I would guess that the bowden tube isn't tight against the nozzle and a plug of plastic is causing a partial blockage there, but it can be caused by other things as well. Going along with that I would turn off "Retract before Outer Walls" and increase you "Z-Hop Distance" to 0.5mm. You really don't want the nozzle hitting those tall skinny pillars. Wobbling prints. A brim 8mm wide (with the brim distance set to 0.1mm so it's easier to break off). Make sure the bed is clean and you may want to use hairspray or a glue stick to aid the bed adhesion. If that print lifts at all then the walls won't build straight. The front wall has buttresses that help hold it vertical. The rear does not. Your printer is a "bed slinger" and as the bed starts and stops in the "Y" those pieces that will comprise the back wall will want to wobble as they get taller and top heavy. After slicing you can go into the Gcode file and at about layer 200 add the line "M201 Y250". When the printer sees that line it will drop the Maximum Y Acceleration to 250 and so the starts and stops of the bed will be a lot smoother than at your default 400mm/sec². (If you don't enable Accel Control in Cura then the printer will use it's defaults and for your printer that is 400 (from the printer definition file).) Here is what I would do. I added 3 x 25 x 115 support blockers and placed them at the rear wall pieces. Then I configured them to "Print as Support" with an XY distance of 1.0 and a "Z" distance of 0. Next I added more blockers but configured to "Print as Normal Model". They are small at 1.2 wide by 6mm long x 0.6mm tall. There is a set at 35mm off the build plate and another set at 70mm off the build plate. What will happen is the supports will grow and the little tabs will connect the model to the supports at Z=35 and Z=70. So as the back wall grows it will be glued to the supports and keep them from wobbling. I think that needs to be done for at least the rear walls. The side walls are wider in the Y and shouldn't wobble, but as AHoeben says, the nozzle can whack them and they will want to move as they get taller. So there you have it..."break off" supports that are only attached to the model at intervals. I changed the Brim to Inside and Outside and "Brim Replaces Support" is enabled as those support pillars are only 3mm wide and could use some help. Good luck. This isn't an easy model. You could also build some custom supports in CAD and set those models to "Print as Support" with the Cura "Per Model" settings.

I looked at your settings. They are conservative and shouldn't be stressing the printer mechanicals. I don't see any reason in your settings (or in a gcode I made up from your project) that would cause this behavior. If the belts slip then layer shifts can happen, but rarely (almost never) do both belts slip at the same time to throw a print off by 45°. It only takes a second to check the belt tension. They should twang like the strings on a bass guitar. If the "slippage" problem is always occurring at the same time interval after the start of a print - that could mean a bad stepper driver chip on the mainboard that gets glitchy once it warms up. Also check that your mainboard cooling fan is running. Early Ender 3 Pros had to have the layer cooling blower running or the mainboard fan would not turn on. My printer is also an Ender 3 Pro so I know a bit about their hot ends. I went with a Micro-Swiss when I finally got fed up with the constant clogging of the stock hot end. Do you have a plastic extruder on top of the extruder motor? They have a 100% failure rate. Cracks develop around the pivot hole and can be seen if you take the pressure arm of and look at the underside.

I thought that @MariMakes explained quite well that Ultimaker has nothing to do with the SolidWorks plugin. I don't use Solidworks but I did try to contact "Thomas" as there have been other inquiries about the plugin. I didn't get any response and it appears the plugin has not been updated to use the Qt6 controls that Cura migrated to. There is a thread HERE about the plugin. You can also try to contact the author (whose screenname here is @thopiekar) yourself. You can also visit his Github page HERE.