GregValiant

I have a lot of printers installed in Cura and one of them is a UM 2+. A project file will over-write the definition I have, but I don't actually own a 2+.

Use the "File | Save Project" command and post the 3mf file here. I haven't seen that in my own prints.

For a non-Ultimaker printer it's likely something in your StartUp Gcode. Post a problem Gcode file here. To check for yourself, go to Manage Printers and Machine Settings and check the StartUp Gcode. After the G28 homing move the nozzle should move to put the purge lines down on the left, or move directly to start the skirt/brim/raft. There should not be a G0 or G1 move to the midpoint.

If you watch the bowden tube where it goes into the locking fitting on the hot end while you move the print head back and forth along the X beam by hand, you will see the bowden rotating at least a little bit. That is an unavoidable problem as the bowden would twist if it didn't rotate. Within the fitting are knife blades that cut into the bowden to keep it from backing out of the fitting. As the bowden rotates, those little knife blades cut deeper into the tube. That causes the tube to loosen and a gap eventually forms between the end of the bowden and the heat break. In your new hot end that is well above where the gap used to form at the back of the nozzle. What I do about it is every 30 to 35 hours of print time I take the hot end apart and clean it out good, and trim 4 or 5mm off the end of the tube and then re-assemble it. I do the same just before I start any longish print. These machines run for hours at a time and they don't complain much. Some preventative maintenance can go a long ways towards keeping the complaints to a minimum.

When you changed the hot end you had to change the thermistor? Did you run the Auto-Tune routine and adjust the PID settings? The recommended retract distance wasn't sufficient for me either. I did back down my retractions and at 5.0 for PLA it's been fine. When I print PETG I run the retraction distance at 6.5 and that hasn't been a real problem either. I do clean out the hot end prior to long prints just in case and I dropped my PETG temp by 10° and that helped as well. If you have not calibrated your E-steps, then that would need to be done. Over-extrusion can make stringing worse as the pressure in the nozzle is higher and so it takes longer to bleed off. In the Cura Marketplace is a plugin for Calibration Shapes. It adds different models and then you select the Cura post-processor for any model and the setting will change at the layers you pick. There is a retraction tower available as well as a temperature tower.

That sure looks to be mechanical. What printer are we talking about? If it is not an Ultimaker then: Are your belts tight? The trolley wheels are all adjusted correctly? The hot end hold down screws are tight? If it is an Ultimaker then maybe @gr5 can help.

I've set up the project file with what I think you want. The printer is set to your 200 x 200 x 200. The StartUp Gcode has purge lines in it. The Ending Gcode is mostly the stock Creality ending. You will also get one of my profiles. It's a fast one and you can remove it if you want. GV_xyzCalibration_cube.3mf

No. The gloss is there after you wash off the hair spray. I worked hard to keep the gloss from making the image difficult to see. Taking photos of prints can be tough. I print on the textured side of the glass on my Ender. Prints do pick up the pattern and that silky silver did as well. So the bottom layer does look different than a top layer would. It was necessary to print those like I did so I could avoid all the support structure.

The G29 is the Auto-Level command on a lot of ABL equipped printers (M420 is used by some printers). You can delete the line or put a semi-colon in front and it will become a comment instead of a command like ;G29 The StartUp Gcode prepares the printer for what is to come when the real print starts. The Ending Gcode shuts down the printer and if you want, it can slide the bed forward so you can remove the print easier. The standard Creality StartUp and Ending Gcodes should work fine. If you like the purge lines then leave them in else you can comment them out with a semi-colon. Bring in a calibration cube or benchy, set Cura up to slice, and then use the "File | Save Project" command. Post the 3mf file here and I'll take a look. Being familiar with the common G and M commands can help you to understand why the printer does some of the things it does. The MARLINFW.ORG site has a full listing. Not all of them will be supported by your firmware. You don't have to memorize them but knowing what G0, G1, M104, M106 and other standard ones do for the printer is helpful.

If you use hairspray and wipe it around a bit I would think it would work. These rain bonnets for my carbs were printed like you are doing that model. I didn't have any trouble with stiction. I went with a font with serifs and that usually doesn't work as well. (I was getting fancy.) You can see that all the centers of the two-piece letters stayed down so the black could go on top and seal them in place. Hair spray is water soluble as well so you can wipe the print with a wet rag and it will come off.

In the mid-top of the preview screen there is a drop down for "Line Type". Make sure you have them all turned on except for "Only Show Top Layers".

@EXEYE, If you think of it as "models have features" it might be easier to get your head around. Your boxes have vertical features that enclose a space. (Consider the space as a "hole" in the top surface of the model.) Let's say we have Cura set up for .2 layer height, .4 line width, 3 walls, and 4 top/bottoms (skins). Your vertical features have an outside surface that faces outboard, and an outside surface that faces inboard. Cura will try to do loops around those features. Each loop is considered a Cura "wall". If there is air on one or both sides of a wall it is considered an Outside Wall. If there is model on both sides of a wall it is considered an Inside Wall. In the Cura preview, Outside Walls are red and Inside Walls are green. If your vertical features were 5mm thick Cura would put an outside wall around the inside of the hole and an outside wall around the outside of the model. Those would be backed up by two inside walls. The remaining space gets infill. The model ends up with 3 .4mm walls around the outside and 3 .4mm walls around the inside with a gap of 2.6mm for infill. The thickness of the vertical features determines what will fit. In the case of your model, the long sides of the feature only get one "Cura wall" loop which by definition is an outside wall (air on both sides). The short sides of the vertical feature gets two outside walls (1 facing out and 1 facing in) and two inside walls. There is no room for infill. (The chamfer on the corner gets an extension of the long outside walls and so the middle line there is red. (That's part of the variable line width capability of Cura.) If you want the long portion of the vertical feature to be thicker, you should add thickness to them in Cad. It looks like the boxes will nest. In that case the upper "female" portion would get thicker on the outside. The lower "male" portion would get thicker on the inside. Because of that difference between the upper and lower portions, you really need to do the change in the CAD software rather than trying to make adjustments in Cura.

There are three lines there (down, over, up). It is likely that your printer can make the moves. My Ender's X and Y are 80 steps/1mm so 1mm/80steps would be .0125mm/step. That would be the smallest movement it can achieve in X and Y.

Right click on a model and choose "Select all Models" then right click on any selected model and choose "Merge Models". Depending on how they were arranged when they were exported they may jump into position. That's the plan anyway. When Cura brings a model in it is centered in a Bounding Box. The midpoint of that box is the location of the local X0, Y0 of the model. The Z0 is the lowest point of the bounding box.

My guess is that you have Z-Hops enabled at 0.2 hop-height. When using "By Height" the plugin (per your example) looks for the first instance of Z=2. If Z-Hops are enabled then the Z-Hop move is the first Z=2 and at .2 hop height the first instance occurs if there is a retraction at the end of gcode Layer:7. It's a known glitch. Another glitch is when using Adaptive layers because there might not be an exact height that you enter because adaptive layering fudges the layer heights. "By Layer" works as expected in spite of Z hops or adaptive layers.

Trying to help with this from far away isn't easy. If you could save a 3mf project file (File | Save Project) and post it here we'd be able to see your settings. Even knocking off the 8° you are still at 227° (for comparison I print PETG at 225° and PLA at 205°). Have you run auto-tune on your hot end? The P.I.D. values are likely off if you changed thermistors and didn't tune for the new one. I think there is more than one thing going on but the main problem is the heat. If you know it's running 8° cooler than the reading then you might place your set point at 210 - 220. At 235° the PLA is running out of the nozzle like water. Post the 3mf project file. You know that one thing I will suggest is going to a .4 nozzle. Trying to pinstripe something with a 4" house brush isn't easy.

If a successful slice is dependent on the orientation of the model on the build plate then I wouldn't worry about it. You still need to take a close look because if nothing else you might come across places where you might want the supports different, or you notice that some branches of tree supports are growing in mid-air, things like that. You can make adjustments for those things in Cura, but you need to know what is going on in order to do so.

The Cura Team seems to be buried not just with Cura itself but in updating all the development tools and instructions for collaborators. That particular post-processor is part of an extensive app (Greg's Toolbox) for printer communication and controlling SD card printing from a connected PC. Additionally it is for Windows only as Visual Basic doesn't port to Linux or MAC. If you are running under Windows then send me a PM and we can talk. This is the "Combine Gcodes" interface. Constructive use of "Pause at Height" simplifies the process. (The information in the dialog box happens to be what I used for that vase print I posted.)

"...seems like development on S3D is dead in the water..." From what I've read, they were based in Cincinnati Ohio and as of about the 1st of this year their offices were vacated. One of my post-processors combines gcode files in order to print one file with certain attributes on top of another file with different attributes. It works very well. Much thought must be put into how the two files should join together at the transition layer. I wrote it because it is handy to have around. If an "amateur hack" can do it I'm sure a real software engineer would have no trouble. This one is conventional with infill and at .4 line width up to layer 165 and from there up it is spiralized with .6 line width.

In regards to errors in models: There are serious errors like "not watertight" that can confuse a slicer and keep it from slicing, and there are lessor errors that allow a model to slice but cause it to slice incorrectly. Those are the kind that are difficult to figure out when a model is highly complex. The third kind are errors that don't matter. The model slices correctly in spite of them. You don't have the first type of error but the second type requires a close eye on the preview to insure that the model will print as it should. If it does look as it should then the error is of the third type which just don't matter. @kmanstudios and @cloakfiend do a lot more "fine" work than I do. Maybe they would have a suggestion on how to print something like this successfully, and what pitfalls to watch out for.

Within the Travel section is "Layer Start X" and "Layer Start Y". You can move them near the Z seam. That may have an effect on Combing and consequently the Z seam scar. In the Walls section is "Z Seam Relative". I don't know how much effect that will have on a single model but it can make a difference sometimes on where the Z seam shows up when islands are being printed. The model is a nice piece of work. I hope it prints well for you. Regarding any errors in the model...MS 3D Builder has a repair utility that runs automatically when you Open and then Import Model (which moves it to the workspace). I have found it to be pretty good. There are also on-line utilities as well as things like NetFabb which is included with Fusion360. You have so much work into it you should check it to make sure it's not only watertight but that there are no duplicate or degenerated faces.

I have to print the silky PLA's hotter and the layer adhesion is still no good. They probably have the same colorants as the PETG's. It's a shame too as I can get Silky Silver PLA to come out looking "chrome like", but for anything that needs some strength it isn't good.

I have a little app for debugging. It runs through the gcode and the printer moves around but there is no extrusion and the Z stays at 10mm all the time. It's handy for things like this. It moved from the skirt to the part with no problem. I agree that bad sectors on an SD card would cause that. Sorry I missed that. When the printer's Home Offset is set correctly the prints end up centered on the build plate. I can't help with adhesion promoter because I don't print ABS (my printer is in my office and ABS fumes are toxic). @gr5 is really good with build plate adhesion issues. Maybe he has a suggestion.

Here's how I do most PETG models. In this particular case I wanted the fan to come on when the inside deck printed so I added the Search And Replace to take care of that. SSGregSpFish.3mf I started out printing PETG at 235 but after doing a temp tower I've dropped it to 225. It isn't near as soupy. Retraction is 6.5 and print speed 35 with the outer walls at 30. Flow is 105% with the supports at 100%. I got sick of printing the same Benchy all the time so this is the Sport Fisherman version. The filament is the MH Build series (the cheap stuff) from Matter Hackers.

I was pretty sure I wouldn't find anything and I didn't. The print would go down fine on my E3Pro. Changing subjects...I don't understand why you have "Origin At Center" checked and then you compensate for that by having those "-150mm" nozzle offsets.