GregValiant

I came across a term in one of Sir Terry Pratchet's Discworld books regarding "women of negotiable affection". I think it also applies to the business models of certain companies many of which are in east Asia. Now to the bug. When you are a lazy, old, amateur hack and work late, you should never be surprised when you miss something. Your M503 response has the G29 lines and they include a "J" parameter. That caused an error in my string parsing routine because I truncated the M205 string after searching for a "J" instead of before. That bug is fixed in the new link below. You don't need to uninstall. Running the Setup file will over-write the previous version. Greg's Toolbox When I loaded the program on my sons laptop it didn't display correctly. Do the dialogs show all their controls on your computer?

I don't know about the crash thing. Does the computer come back by itself or do you have to shut it off and bring it back up? The Cura files shouldn't be corrupted by a crash. There are some files that get written to during a session and I suppose they could be an issue if your computer problem is a memory issue. That all goes beyond my knowledge.

After you create the gcode file you can open it in Cura. The gcode reader is a separate program and doesn't have anything to do with the slicer part of Cura. You'll get an accurate representation of how it will print. It looked fine to me and all that extra stuff was missing from the gcode. Somehow it seems like it's a visualization problem but like I said, chasing it down seems like it's been difficult.

Hello. This is the Ultimaker Forum and so the Creaity version of Cura is not supported here. You would need to go back to Creality for support for their slicer. My printer is an Ender 3 Pro so I'm aware that my previous sentence is useless. Why not move up to a newer version of Cura? I'm not saying it will fix the problem you are having but 4.13.1 was really good and the new features of 5.x make it worthwhile. You don't have to uninstall your Creality version to run an Ultimaker version.

"I'm just confused" Welcome to the club.

@Opaaleks the code below is the 5.1 definition Ending Gcode G91 ; Set Positioning to Relative M83 ; Set Extruder to Relative G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder G1 E-4 F3000 ; Retract 4mm of filament G1 Z0.2 ; Raise nozzle .2mm G90 ; Set positioning to absolute G1 X{machine_width} Y{machine_depth} ; Park print head G91 ; Set Positioning to RelativeG1 Z10 ; Raise nozzle 10mm M106 S0 ; Turn off part fan M104 S0 ; Set nozzle temp to zero M140 S0 ; set bed temp to zero M84 X Y Z E ; Disable X Y Z and E steppers In Manage Printers and Machine Settings "Ending Gcode" if you change that BOLD line to G1 X0 Y0 then the head will park at the left front corner. If you remove the Z from that last line and make it M84 X Y E then your Z can't drift down into the print. That is a problem if the Z system is a tad loose.

There is THIS THREAD here that has some info. The RepRap WIKI has separate listing for BFB firmware commands. It doesn't appear to be complete but it is somewhere to start. HERE is a little light reading on additional BFB commands. You could try hand-coding a brief Gcode file with the file name extension of ".bfb" (instead of ".gcode") to see if it works. Commands like G28 appear to work. You can heat the hot end with M104 but it looks like M109 (wait for temperature) isn't supported. I guess you could put in a G4 command to act as the "wait". If you can get the machine to fire up the bed and hot end then most of the movement commands would appear to work and so the machine should print. How it would handle things like Accel and Jerk might be a problem. You could simply shut them off in Cura. Figuring out a proper StartUp gcode is a key here. The Ending Gcode shouldn't be too bad to figure out. I see that G90 (Absolute Movement) is supported but G91 (Relative Movement) is not and M82/M83 are not supported. Those two things together mean that movement within the Ending Gcode to get the nozzle away from the print will be in the XY only and there won't be a retraction. It also means that the firmware only understands "Absolute Extrusion" or it only understands "Relative Extrusion". Good Luck!!

Welcome. The side of your spool states "1.75mm" as the filament diameter. Your settings are telling Cura that the diameter is 2.85mm. That's what is causing all that under-extrusion. A quick view and I see your layer height at .04. That ain't happenin' as the printer just isn't capable of layers that thin. Make that 0.20mm. Lower the bed temperature to 60°. If you are too close to the filament "glass temperature" it stays soft and will want to spread on the build plate (elephant foot). If that filament is as old as the machine it has probably absorbed water and will give poor results. It's still good for learning though. When speeds change from one area to another (skin to infill to outer wall) it changes the flow rate through the nozzle. When starting out leave them all the same as your printing speed (50 is good for now). Slow your travel speed to 120. You want to develop a baseline of what the printer can do. As you progress you will want to change things for each model. For most prints I consider 4 tops/bottoms to be a minimum and 3 walls to be a minimum. When you go thinner than that then infill can leave blemishes on the outer surfaces. A fellow named CHEP has a set of videos on YouTube he calls "Filament Fridays". He's kind of Creality centric but 3D printing on any machine is similar enough that the basics are all the same. Cura 15 was regarded as a good version (some versions have been better than others). Cura has progressed to version 5.1 and at some point you will want to upgrade. What you are getting used to in 15 will transfer directly to 4.13.1 but the 5.x versions are slightly different and some folks have had trouble making the change. Thingiverse has a lot of models. Most folks start out by blinging their printers. A lot of those things are solutions to problems that don't exist BUT you're printing and learning. Here is my contribution to solutions for nothing. Just what the world needed...a diesel powered printer.

On the Ultimaker Cura Github site. When you post a new issue you will get an option to make it a bug report or Feature Request.

That bug appears every once in a while and has been documented on GitHub. It's the cockroach bug. You can see it but you can't get rid of it. This is layer 11. You can see all the lines going back to the origin. They don't actually exist. The upper part of the model appears to have finished and it hasn't started yet. In the Line Type settings - if you toggle "Only Show Top Layers" you can get it to look like it's supposed to. This is Layer 11 in the gcode file that I opened in Cura. No weird lines and the slider works as it should.

Thanks for that. You actually the first person to get back to me on whether there were any problems running it on other machines. I have a question in regards to where that error occurs...Does your printer use "Jerk" or "Junction Deviation"?

I wasn't aware it would be in ASA so yeah, print speeds will be lower. I don't know that you can get a lot better than that. Slower speeds would clean it up just a bit more but if you intend production then that will hurt more than it helps. When I show someone a print they never notice things like Z-seam location or elephant foot. They might notice print quality if it's bad. I'm pretty fussy and if I think a print is acceptable then it isn't likely that anyone who doesn't 3D print would notice any flaws it might have. FDM prints are not going to be the same as an injection molded piece but even a nice injection molded part will have parting lines and vent circles and other flaws that are part of the process.

When the letters are vertical like that, and they have 90° sides they require support. I would have added chamfers but that is a personal choice and definitely would affect the "look". Ignoring the Fuzzy Skin for a second - that model could be printed pretty fast so call it a print speed of 75 and with the blocker set to 30 or 35mm/sec Inner and Outer Wall Speed. That will keep any mechanical "bouncing" out of the letters while the printer zooms through the rest of the print. You could do that with a second blocker that just covers the letters rather than going through the whole part. The Fuzzy Skin causes so much additional movement of the print head that I don't know if adjusting the speed higher on the main print is useful. It would boil down to Accel and Jerk as to how fast the thing actually prints. When I print horizontal letters I may add a blocker to slow down just the lettering. It's especially helpful for narrow fonts which are tough anyway.

I have the glass build plate on my Ender 3P. I haven't had any trouble with adhesion with PLA. For PETG I always use AquaNet Super Hold hairspray. You know your printer best so these are just some thoughts rather than suggestions. I'm just looking at the picture and these would be my settings for PLA. I did move to an all metal hot end when the stock one died. Skirt instead of brim because that part has so much surface area on the plate I'm confident it wouldn't lift on me. Infill density 10% and Infill Layer Thickness 2X the Layer Height so it only does the infill every other layer. Combing off because no one is really going to see that piece and combing moves can add a lot of time. 50° bed 205° hot end as those are my norms. I print Silky PLA hotter as it has poor layer adhesion. Print speed at least 75 and maybe even 100 for the skins. That includes the first layer and I set "number of slower layers" to 0. Small parts I might print at 30 to 35. For a big piece like that I just want it done. Accel 500 and Jerk 8. Those are the defaults. You have a heavy Y system and too much accel on the Y is a bad thing on a bed slinger. I wouldn't bother with the draft shield unless the printer location is actually subject to drafts. I have an air conditioner vent above my printer so I printed a deflector for it. PLA isn't very prone to warpage so as long as there isn't a cool stream of air blowing at the printer it should be fine. When printing PLA I always run my initial layers at 105% flow. I want that squish in case I missed the leveling by a bit (I'm a paper leveler). I can't remember the last time I had a bad first layer. I wipe the build plate down with alcohol between prints. I start with the layer cooling blower at 0 and at layer 6 it's at 100%. With those numbers and a print speed of 75 - a 220 x 220 x 5 rectangular solid comes out to an 8:32 print. There is a trick you can play with Accel. If you put M201 X1000 Y500 in your start up gcode then you set the Accel in Cura to 1000mm/sec². That M201 line would limit the Y to 500 and so X moves would be quicker at 1000 but Y only or XY combination moves would be at 500. The printer can live with that. When you have simple shapes like that you can export them from CAD at a lower resolution. Lower resolutions result in longer line segments in the toolpath and they are more efficient (at the cost of not looking as "smooth" in the print). You could also turn up the "Maximum Resolution" in the Cura Mesh Fixes section. Finally (I've been waiting to change colors on my current print) a print speed of 5mm/sec at .2 layer height and .4 line width works out to 0.4mm³/sec flow rate through the nozzle. That's just too low. If you are having layer adhesion problems slowing down below 25 isn't going to help.

Now those letters look well attached to the body. Much better.

@Kotaztrafee I like to start any Cura session with a clean slate. I reselect my printer, and then the profile so they reset to my defaults. Then I use the Setting Visibility tool and set it to "All" so I don't miss anything. When that is done - then the tedium of going over the settings to adjust them for the particular model can begin. After all that careful planning I'll start the print, kick back in my chair...and THEN notice that I forgot to move the Z-seam.

Once a community member or company submits a printer definition to Ultimaker it needs to be reviewed and then may be included in the next version. If someone has submitted a Pull Request for your printer (and it looks like that was done) then upon approval it could be included in the next release of Cura. Definition files contains things like the machine size, whether it has a heated bed, the Gcode flavor, StartUp and Ending gcodes,...things like that. If there is an AnyCubic definition for a printer model that is close to your Kobra Max you could use it as your base printer. You would then go into Manage Printers and Machine Settings and change the Printer Name, the bed size (and maybe some other parameters) to match your Kobra Max model printer. The as yet unapproved definition contains this: "machine_heated_bed": true "machine_width": 402 "machine_height": 452 "machine_depth": 402 "machine_gcode_flavor": "RepRap (Marlin/Sprinter)" "machine_start_gcode": G28 ;Home G1 Z15.0 F1200 ;Move the platform down 15mm G92 E0 G1 F200 E3 G92 E0 The machine Ending Gcode appears to be the same as for any AnyCubic printer.

The letters on this coaster are 1.2 wide so printing with a .4 nozzle was no problem. This was sliced in a 4.x version. Cura 5.1 needs some settings adjusted (like Split Middle Line Threshold) to print single-extrusion width letters. If the line width matches the width of the font then there is no "second" line required in the letters and the H's, E's, R's, etc. are hard to print because they have dead ends. There is no continuous motion for the entire letter and all those extrusion starts and stops in a small space cause the letters to lose their "crispness". An example of the problem is printing a hair comb with .4mm wide tines. At a .4mm line width the extrusion goes out one tine, moves over, and then extrudes back creating the adjacent tine. That will leave a string connecting every other tine. The preferred path would be to go out and come back on the same tine. Adjusting the minimum line width so the toolpath is "extrude out, move over a tiny bit, extrude back" ensures there is no jumping from one tine to the adjacent tine. They would all be connected at the root instead of every other tine having strings connecting the blind ends. I hope that was clear enough. The bottom line is that single-line-width letters are tough.

That looks good. You can check it again after creating the gcode by opening the Gcode in a text editor like Notepad. Then search for "M25".

Follow the link in my previous post. Then follow the instructions in the old post.

Back to the present. Extruder 0 uses 2.85 filament and Extruder 1 uses 1.75 filament. Is that correct? At the beginning of Layer 43 the code switches to T1 and T0 is done for the duration of the print. T1 M109 S225 ;Heat extruder 1 and wait G90 G92 E-8 G1 E0 F200 ;Restore E position G1 E8 F200;defaultpurge G92 E0 G4 S1 G1 E-8 F1000 G92 E0 ;Extruder1 Start G-code END M104 T0 S0 >T0 is finished M105 M109 S215 >Initial Print Temperature M104 S225 >Print Temperature M104 S215 >Initial Print Temperature So what I am seeing is: Extruder0: "Print Temperature" = 200° "Initial Print Temperature" = 190° "Final Print Temperature" = 185° "Standby Temperature" = 100° "Build Plate Temperature" = 0° Extruder1: "Print Temperature" = 225° "Initial Print Temperature" = 215° "Final Print Temperature" = 210° "Standby Temperature" = 150° "Build Plate Temperature" = 0° So it seems Cura is using the numbers you input. When T1 starts the last run it starts at "Initial Print Temperature". If you make all the temperatures equal to "Print Temperature" then this is the result: T1 M109 S225 ;Heat extruder 1 and wait G90 G92 E-8 G1 E0 F200 ;Restore E position G1 E8 F200;defaultpurge G92 E0 G4 S1 G1 E-8 F1000 G92 E0 ;Extruder1 Start G-code END M104 T0 S0 M105 M109 S225 You can see that those last M104 lines are missing and Cura sets the temp at "Print Temp". I notice that you are a fan of different speeds for different line types. I would respectfully suggest that you make all the speeds the same (other than maybe Outer Wall Speed as it affects the finish look). When you bounce the speeds up and down you are bouncing the Flow Rate of filament through the Hot End up and down.

I just read your screen name. This was last years Halloween costume. I went for "Bender meets James Bond". Got the first place trophy with it!!! Here is the Tricky Dick "Double Cross" medallion. It's all about the little details.

Understand that doing this crap is how I learn. It's self serving. It doesn't matter how the surface is shaped (that the text is embedded into). The blocker does the heavy lifting to keep Fuzzy Skin from the area of the text. There will be extra walls and tops/bottoms but that's just a bit more plastic and a few minutes of time. That model I used in my last post is a calibration shape I came up with. The lettering was added in MS 3D Builder. If it was a real model I would have altered the text so it went on normal to the surface instead of half-wrapping which skews the text.

"That does look damn near perfect!" Thanks for that. We're supposed to know what we're doing here. I try. I download and open a LOT of STL and 3MF files. Yesterday I cleaned out my downloads folder, got rid of about 20 printers from Cura, and deleted a bunch of settings profiles. So this is a cartoon of what I did since what I actually did is gone. The blocker is configured as a cutting mesh with Fuzzy Skin selected and then disabled. It has been rotated 45°.

It is possible to split a file with the bottom printed with a 0.4 nozzle and the top with a 0.2 nozzle. The problem happens during the pause when you swap the nozzles. They won't be exactly the same length. With some beforehand experimenting you would know the difference and could use a "G92 Z" command to adjust the Z to account for the different lengths of the nozzles. Another option would be to print the bottom file with a 0.4 and alter the ending gcode so the machine stays hot and the print head moves to a position where you could change nozzles. That gcode could end at that point. After changing nozzles a second file would print on top of the first. You cannot home the XY axes after changing nozzles. The endstop switches aren't accurate enough and you will likely introduce a layer shift. For the model you show in your post it probably doesn't matter because the lettering actually has no relation to the base below. A G28 Z would be needed. You could move to some open place on the build plate and home the Z where it's clear to drop down. Then raise up to the working height and print. @geert_2 does some nice experiments (and documents them really well) so he is a good choice to discuss printing small fonts. I have printed a lot of lettered models but I go for wider letters which are simply easier. You want to make sure your "Retraction Minimum Travel" and "Max Comb Distance with No Retract" are set to distances less than the distance between the letters. A lot of stringing between adjacent letters can cause a mess. Using Z-Hops can be a good idea as well.