GregValiant

@mer10 can you post the STL or a project file? This really shouldn't be an issue. The settings "Minimum Support Area" and "Minimum Support Interface Area" are involved.

A save is a save and you can only do so much as homing is always an issue. Marlin actually has codes to make restarts very precise BUT things have to be planned ahead. My Ender 3 Pro has a maximum Stepper Disarm time of 14400 seconds (4 hours) that is much higher than the default 120 seconds. If I am doing a long print or an "iffy" print I add M84 S14400 near the beginning of the file. If I have to pause for some reason, or if something bad happens with the print, I have time to configure a script to restart from any location within the file. I actually automated this and included it in my printing app. Here ya go...Greg's Toolbox for Windows. There are instructions and a readme file. The program is unsigned and if you decide to try it you will probably have to fool your anti-virus to get it to install. There is also an uninstall. Below is a shot of the "Recovery" page. It requires some practice but for the most part you just need to make sure the initial prime of the extruder isn't going to leave a blob. In the textbox in the screenshot is a recovery script. The program will send the script and restart a gcode file from the byte location within the file. There is no need to create a special file for the restart. I don't know your printer but Gcodes are Gcodes and it should work provided your firmware supports M26 and some other commands.

That will work. I have my own system using Pause at Height. Instead of using the retraction options - when I insert the new filament I push by hand until the color changes and then do a retraction of 5 or 6mm (my retraction distance) and grab the hanging sausage with tweezers. When I click on the LCD button to resume the print I snap my wrist as the print head moves and break off the sausage. I get excellent restarts like that. If a restart happens to start in support, that's the best as it gets thrown out anyway.

That opened as a project for me. A 3mf file is actually an archive (like a zip file). In the screenshot below the top file is your 3mf file is opened with 7zip. The file below is an "export" of the model from your 3mf file. Note the size of the "Cura" folder in each. The 3mf MODEL file is missing the settings and printer configuration. That doesn't mean your install is working correctly. I open a lot of project files and haven't had any issues. Occasionally on Github someone will pass along a 3mf model file instead of a Project File with their bug report.

Being able to use water soluble PVA supports is a primary reason to go to a dual extruder machine. You have considered a split mold? You have to get the part out somehow.

Cura has things called Post Processors that can add things or replace things in the final gcode. Two of them are "Pause at Height" and "Filament Change". You can find them at "Extensions / Post Processing / Modify Gcode" and then "Add a Script". Both can be used to change colors during a print. You could have printed the base, paused at the completion of the last base layer, and then changed filament, and resumed the print with the new color. Supports work when you do it this way. It takes a bit of practice to get it just right but if I were you I'd scrap the base that is there and use Pause at Height. I could walk you through how to print that second model on the existing base but it's involved and requires very specific slicing of the top model and very specific "one-off" startup gcode. Much easier (and in the long run much better) to cut your losses now and use Pause at Height. You can do a lot of things with Pause at Height on a single extruder printer. The little camper/sleigh is an assembly with 4 pauses in the body. The coasters were printed with a single gcode file with 4 pauses in it for color changes.

Thank you sir. I hope all is well. @Armatron That's it then. If you want a nice print it will need high resolution on the printer settings and will take longer. The model file you have is excellent so drop the layer height, slow down, and start the print at 6AM and then close the door. A decent paraphrase would be this line from Jonathon Edwards song "Shanty"..."Fill it, light it, shut up and close the door."

@kmanstudios long time no hear from nonetheless. How about if you pretend time is not an issue and give it a slice? I'm good at printing "angle iron brackets" so this is a bit out of my comfort zone. Mr. Buonarroti would be horrified if he saw what I would do to it.

I used a laser scanner to shoot cars that had been in accidents. Big files. I had to snail-mail the scan data over to another guy who was in our Chicago office and I believe he used Rhino to post process them into something I could deal with in Inventor. Our system worked for what we were doing (recreating accident scenes for lawsuits). We weren't going to FDM print anything though and we didn't try to create model files. (I tried to open one of the point cloud files in Inventor. My computer thought it was a pretty good joke.)

First the Print Start problem: I think it's in your Ending Gcode and considering that it is well written I have to believe it's intentional. A print ends like this: G1 X83.029 Y95.364 E1176.83319 ;Last extrusion of the print. ;TIME_ELAPSED:52974.955103 G1 F1500 E1170.33319 ;Retract 6.5mm (per your retraction settings in Cura) Following that the ending Gcode has these extruder commands: G92 E5 ; set extruder to 5mm for retract on print end M117 Cooling please wait ; progress indicator message on LCD G1 X5 Y5 Z183 E0 F3000 ; This is an additional retraction of 5.0 so the filament is now 11.5 back from the nozzle. G1 E5 ; re-prime extruder ;This leaves the filament 6.5 back from the nozzle. After this existing line: G1 E5 ; re-prime extruder Add these three lines: G92 E0 G1 E{retraction_amount} G92 E0 That will take up the 6.5mm slack that is occurring now and your prints should start better. The {retraction_amount} is a Cura replacement word and Cura will insert a number when the gcode is created. The curly brackets are required. The Pieta: That is a very nice model. I'm more of an industrial guy @kmanstudios hasn't been around much lately but he's more of the artsy type and would be a better choice to give advice here. I did take a shot at slicing it. I don't know how appropriate it would be for your printer. If you open the 3mf file Cura will ask you if you want to "Update Current" printer and profile. I would strongly suggest that you change both to "Create New". That way your current printer and profile won't be overridden by my setup. This came out at 9:11 and that is mostly due to increasing some of the speeds. Remember that these are suggestions as you know your printer best. GV_pieta.3mf

That's not really printable with FDM. It would require a lot of support and then you would likely destroy the model trying to remove the support. Those cross members at 45° would be particularly difficult if not impossible. I think you would need to break it up into pieces that could be printed flat and then assemble them. I would think a jig would be required for the assembly. There's lots of pieces there. Does it need to be "exact scale" and exactly identical to the end design? If a "stylized version" would be acceptable then that would be the way to go.

Select the text you want (or the insertion point) and then use the keyboard shortcuts. (On Windows CTRL+C will work to copy.)

Ah. It was Murphy.

Every printer has a "sweet spot" where it just works well. On some that is a narrow range and when you get outside of it the print quality falls off. I tried to calibrate and tune my Ender 3 Pro for a wide sweet spot. That allows small models to be printed with precision and a good finish and large models to be printed with speed and still maintain the good finish. I have three Ender 3 Pros installed in Cura and I have 3 settings profiles. 1 each for PLA, for PETG, and for TPU. The reason for three printers is that I wanted different startup gcodes for each material. Ex: Putting down purge lines with TPU at 40mm/sec wasn't going to work. The three settings profiles give me a good starting point for each material. After that it's all about the model. Do I want Normal or Tree supports. Do I want to go slow and have nice precise corner features or can I just smoke through it at 120mm/sec because it doesn't matter. I found that giving each model it's own love works best. Getting 3 hours into a 6 hour print and having to abort because it's coming out unacceptable is in and of itself unacceptable.

This is all about prepping the file as a true STL object. I go back a few years on this and things probably have changed... Scanning creates a "point cloud" and each point is on a surface of whatever you scanned. Your Lightwave 3D should be connecting the dots to make triangles whose edges all connect to enclose a volume. That would represent a true 3D object for export as an STL. I would go back to Lightwave and give it another shot. Play with the options. If the edges don't connect then Cura won't be able to slice it as it won't represent a true solid (mesh). It sounds like that might be what is going on.

You're a puppy. You have a .5 nozzle and the 0.3 Initial Layer Height is fine in most cases, but this model has text on the bottom and you want good definition. Drop the Initial Layer Height to 0.2. HA. I caught you cheating. You were going to use these to beat the grandkids at their game weren't you? WEIGHTED DICE!!!! It will always come up "2" (or maybe 3...I dunno.). Using the lightning infill it's all on one side. I would change that to grid so it's centered. It's a small model and will print quick. It's too bad they didn't chamfer the edges of the numerals. It would have totally eliminated the need for any support. You may be able to print this without support though. I don't use supports on XYZ calibration cubes and they come out fine. In most cases and with a .4 nozzle I consider 3 walls and 4 top/bottoms to be a minimum. With black filament there shouldn't be an issue but sometimes the infill can be seen or even leave impressions on the outside when you use less than 3 walls. You have that .5 nozzle though so 2 should be fine. I think the numerals will be crisper if you set "Extra Skin Wall Count" to 0. Again, the model is small. On a larger model it wouldn't matter. Enable "Monotonic Top/Bottom order" for this model. Monotonic can cause a lot of extra movement but it leaves a nicer finish. Infill - Grid at 10% density (cheating your grandchildren...terrible). You have a lot of flows set to 105%. That may indicate you need to calibrate your E-steps. If you have a magnifying glass inspect a top surface. The extrusions should be flat and welded together. Gaps (under-extrusion) or ridges (over-extrusion) can be tuned by adjusting the flow but your base should be with all flows at 100%. Don't use a "single wall calibration cube". Just sayin'. You really don't want the speed changing all the time. Good consistent pressure in the nozzle gives more consistent results. When you speed up and slow down for different features it causes the nozzle pressure to fluctuate and that will transfer to the print. I changed the infill to grid and the line directions to [45,90] so the "4" on top will be better supported. I will post the 3mf file I created but you have to promise not to cheat babies. Back to football. GV__LM2SE05MM_d6.3mf

I don't think it melted. It looks more like you have a partial blockage in the hot end. What printer is that? On a bowden printer - if the bowden tube backs away from the back end of the nozzle it creates a gap and molten plastic can get pulled into the gap creating a blockage. Not enough to miss steps, but enough to cause severe under-extrusion. It's a popular problem with Creality hot ends and a few others.

The model won't stick to the support as well if the support has a chance to cool. That's a problem on a small model like that because the nozzle is coming back while the support interface is still pretty hot. You get good bonding when none is wanted. Support on angled surfaces present a bigger problem than when you support a flat ceiling. Once again it's a cooling thing. The best solution for small models is to print two parts at once. If stringing between the prints is an issue then you may not want to do that but it's a pretty good option as the prints have more time to cool. Cura has a setting in the Material Settings for "Support" flow and for "Support Interface" flow. You might try setting them back to 90%. Weak support is easier to remove. In the end, all of us have to do some bench work to clean models up.

It will need supports no matter how you do it. Have you tried with a flat side on the build plate? To print with a point down you will need to tweak the supports.

I don't know that I've ever seen that before. Are you confident in your bed leveling? (Maybe that corner or side was too low.) Have you tried printing that on a different area of the build plate? Something to check on the printer is that all 3 axis are perpendicular to each other. A carpenters square will work.

It is possible to restart the gcode from any point within the gcode. Homing and synchronizing the axes are problems. The main problem is that with so many models on the build plate - is one going to come loose? That would be a concern. The second problem is that re-homing does not guarantee that the 0,0,0 will be EXACTLY the same as it was for the start of the print. I have found that there can be a layer shift of up to 0.5mm. The end stop switches are not perfectly "repeatable". To print the gcode starting at a Z of 9.3: Open the gcode file in a text editor. Do a "Save As" of the existing gcode file to give it another name. Delete everything in the gcode file before the line ";LAYER:91". Paste in the code below as a new "StartUp Gcode" at the very beginning of the new file. You are responsible for checking the numbers. The "Z" must home at an open spot on the build plate. I have chosen X200 Y160 because in your photo it looks like that position is open to safely drop the Z. X120 Y0 also looks to be a good spot. Insure that the nozzle starts out at least 10mm above the prints. You can move it manually if you must. M140 S40 ;Set Bed temp M190 S40 ;Wait for bed M104 S212 ;Hot end temp M109 S212 ;Wait for hot end M105 ;Report Temps M220 S100 ;Reset Feed rate M221 S100 ;Reset Flow rate G28 X Y ;Home the X and Y at whatever Z they happen to be at. G1 F2400 X200 Y160 ;CHECK THIS it looks like this position is open so the Z can home at this point. G28 Z ;Home Z M106 S191 ;Fan at 75% G0 F1200 Z19.3 ;Move the Z to restart height + 10 G1 E15 F1500 ;Prime the nozzle. You need to be ready to grab the extruded plastic with tweezers. G4 S2 ;Pause for 2 seconds to allow you to grab the plastic with the tweezers. G0 F7200 X22.91 Y43.132 ;Move to XY restart location of the first extrusion of Layer 91. G92 E1252.28641 ;Set extruder -4 prime G0 F300 Z9.3 ;Drop 10 to Resume Z G0 F7200 ;Set travel Feed rate ;LAYER:91 ;Your existing layer line at a Z of 9.3 The X, Y, Z and E numbers above were taken from your file. YOU are responsible for checking my work. If you were printing from the SD card then you may need to re-format the card. If part of that file was written to "bad sectors" on the card then yes, there could be a gap in the code. If you were printing via USB it has it's own issues and can "pause" abruptly. That doesn't sound like what happened.

You can print one at a time no problem. Adjusting the temperature for each model isn't terribly difficult but there is no automation for it. In the "Per Model" settings - temperature is not an option. If you use Search and Replace with "LAYER:0" then ALL instances will be found so you end up with the same temperature everywhere anyway. You could use Search and Replace with the Model Name as a criteria. It would be clumsy and tedious. Every model starts on Layer:0 so what you can do is open the Gcode file in a text editor (like Windows Notepad) and search the Gcode file for Layer:0. At each occurrence add a line: M104 Sttt where "ttt" is the temperature you want for that model. If you are printing a skirt for every model then the temperature change should occur within the skirt and when the model starts it will be at your set temperature. If you set the Skirt Distance to 1mm and make them 3 or 4 loops then they won't take up too much real estate on the build plate. Here is an example: ;LAYER_COUNT:127 ;LAYER:0 M104 S205 G0 X10.505 Y95.645 Z0.2 ;TYPE:SKIRT ......................at the next Layer:0 ;LAYER_COUNT:127 ;LAYER:0 M104 S210 G0 X10.505 Y95.645 Z0.2 ;TYPE:SKIRT If you want to wait for the temperature to change you could use M109 instead of M104.

Hey...I got one right!! That setting and Remove all Holes are specialty settings. They aren't for everyday use but when you need them they come in very handy.

Go down to the Experimental settings and turn off "Make Overhangs Printable". If it isn't visible then select "Custom" settings and then, 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".

Two models. One assigned to each extruder. 40 instances of M109 and 80 instances of M104. 40 of the M104's set the inactive extruder to standby temperature. 40 of the M104's bring the inactive extruder up to print temperature while the active extruder is working. The actual placement of those M104's is per the "Heat Up Speed" in the printer settings. The M109's all occur right after the tool change. I think it is safe to assume that it is to insure that the hot end is up to temperature before it starts extruding. The single M104's occur like this: G1 F1500 X47.671 Y46.102 E156.54109 G0 F7200 X46.361 Y45.999 M104 T0 S220 G1 F1500 X59.456 Y32.904 E158.08096 G0 F7200 X58.591 Y32.354 When paired with an M109 they occur like this: T0 G92 E0 M104 T1 S180 M105 M109 S220 G0 F4800 X192.945 Y160.926 Z3.2 G1 F600 Z3.1 G0 F4800 X188.45 Y159.253 Z3.1 M204 S800 ;TYPE:PRIME-TOWER G1 F600 Z3 G1 F1500 E16 The prime occurs over the prime tower.