Slashee_the_Cow

People fear what they do not know. I do not know what is probably 15 workbenches by default with completely different workflows for each one. I do know something which uses an extremely basic C-style syntax and whose entire functionality fits in this cheat sheet:

Based on the screenshots, it looks like it's because the lower set of circles juuuuust intersect the outer wall, which leaves a tiny gap that needs to be filled. If you'll excuse my Paint skills: It will print as much of the outer wall as it can in a continuous line, so the circles win on the distance factor. That's why it prints bits to fill them first, so then it can do the long run with all the interruptions already taken care of.

I use @ahoeben's Printer Settings plugin which makes them show up in the sidebar: (As the description says, only change things with it if you know what you're doing - you're much better off just setting the speed and acceleration in the speed section of the print settings rather than accidentally stuffing this up. Or maybe you do know what you're doing 😉. Still, be careful.) The settings themselves come from the printer definition file - or more specifically in this case, they don't come from the printer definition file because the definition file doesn't set them, so it just inherits from the basic printer template (fdmprinter.def.json and no, don't ask me why the numbers in that are so ridiculous) and uses the values from that. (Good artists copy. Great artists steal. Lazy artists just leave a blank canvas, apparently.) I won't even try and say I'm the most knowledgeable person when it comes to stuff like this. But I'm 100% sure I'm more knowledgeable than some people. Like whoever spent five seconds on the definition file for your printer just putting in the right size values and calling it a day. Or whoever wrote the definition file for my printer (Ender-3 V3 SE) which is one of the reasons why I use my own custom definition file. Which is a pain whenever I try and share a project with someone because I have to get them to add it to their config folder. (This is exactly the sort of thing that Universal Cura Projects were designed for. Too bad it's bugged and you still need the definition file from the person who made the project) Creality's website made (there's an even faster one out now) a big deal about how my printer could accelerate at 5000mm/s². Main problem with that is it can't. Manual says it can accelerate at 2500mm/s². But getting the settings from the printer itself reports it can do 4000mm/s² 🤔. Only took me two prints to manually lower the max acceleration to 1000mm/s² (for PLA). The first was an extremely simple test print. The second was a slightly more complex (in that it wasn't just a primitive solid) print and in a couple of places after it finished printing a bit and zoomed off towards the next one at 4000mm/s² it actually pulled parts of the print with it because they hadn't dried yet so they ended up warped. The contest between (mostly Chinese) printer manufacturers for the fastest printer could learn from Dr. Ian Malcolm: "your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should". (If you’re sure you’ve heard that but can’t quite place it, you probably haven’t watched Jurassic Park recently enough) On a scale of 1-10 where 1 is PLA and 10 is TPU, I'd put PETG at about 7 overall. But the really important differences are temperature and speed: Temperature: I run TPU at 220°, but PETG at 240°. I'm not a material scientist so I have no idea why these completely different kinds of plastic print best at different temperatures, but they do. Speed: TPU goes best driving like your grandma down the highway: at about a third of the speed limit, max. I usually run it at 20mm/s. 15mm/s if there's some finer details. PETG can handle itself a lot better: for basic stuff I run it at 50mm/s. If there's details... I'm usually not using PETG but if I am, I just knock it down to 40mm/s. (n.b. trying to print fine details in TPU is usually a fool’s errand) Retraction: I mean, you set it ultra high for TPU because it's so soft you know there's next to no chance you can fully retract it anyway (string city on travel moves). PETG isn't soft like that but it just gets really stringy and wants to stay connected at both ends, so you just try and keep a bit of control over it rather than letting it roam free in the pastures. On my printer (with a direct drive extruder so numbers aren't an apples-to-apples comparison) I retract PLA 0.8mm, PETG 1.5mm and TPU 2mm. It's not going to be as stringy as TPU, but there's still cleanup required. When manually purging (have the hot end hot enough to print, hold the lever on the extruder and force it in yourself) PETG because I just switched to it, a couple of centimetres sticking out of the nozzle I can sometimes pull to about a metre long before it actually detaches from the nozzle (although it's this stringiness which gives it its flexibility). One important thing to remember about printing PETG (or TPU, FWIW) compared to PLA is you need your filament dry. And I don't mean don't spill your coffee on it. Well actually you shouldn't do that either, but they're hygroscopic - absorb moisture from the atmosphere, and if they're too moist when you try and print they'll tend to go into a mushy mess. Some people store their filament in bags with desiccant and just recharge the desiccant when it's absorbed all it can. Too much hassle for me. I bought a filament dryer (not very expensive) and run it with my filament in there for a few hours before I print. If it's going to be a long print (anything of a decent size in TPU is because of how slow it prints) I actually leave it in there (there's a hole for filament to come out) on a lower temperature while it prints. Probably not necessary, but I'm that kind of crazy/paranoid/prudent (depends on your point of view). The cheater's way is to warm your printer's bed up to 50°, put your filament on there, cover it with it a towel and let it sit for a few hours. (Unlike my filament dryer, you probably shouldn't print while your filament is drying with this method)

They picked up the New Matter MOD-t I left on the kerb outside my house for a council clean-up a couple of months ago? If so: don't bother. The motherboard had a seizure and quit working about four years ago.

If you could share the Cura project file (.3mf, set it up then go to File > Save Project) that would really help. Also what version of Cura are you running?

Generally whenever you're going to test something (like using a tiny nozzle for the first time) it's better to do it with PLA since it's more forgiving and doesn't have problems other filaments do (like how PETG is stringy). Also worth noting that as you get down to this small, the resolution (steps/mm of the motors) of your printer can come into play, especially on cheaper printers. I'm not saying your printer is cheap. I've never looked up its price 😄 Now if I may do a Big Bulleted List™: Your layer height is so low it's asking a lot of the printer to be able to both move the head and feed the correct amount of filament accurately. Most "standard" profiles for a 0.4mm nozzle use a 0.2mm layer height, so try upping your 0.2mm nozzle to 0.1mm, at least until you can get things a bit more dialled in. Not a problem, but having your line width at 0.22mm sort of defeats half the purpose of a small nozzle (a 0.4mm nozzle can generally do 0.24mm accurately). The guideline for line width is 60-150% of nozzle diameter, but the starting point is usually the same as your nozzle diameter (so 0.2mm) but then you can set the thin will width lower (0.12mm). *scrolls down to "Minimum Wall Line Width"* Okay, yeah, having that at 0.28mm is going to cause you problems given you set your line width to less than that. I'd set it to 0.14mm myself, but you can try going down to 0.12mm. Consider increasing Infill Line Width to 0.3mm. Nobody's going to see it and it's going to be stronger. That printing temperature looks a bit low. I usually do PETG at 240°. Often you have to increase the temperature if you're using a big nozzle so it can heat it up the whole way through at a high flow rate, but it doesn't work like that the other way around: even a little bit of filament needs to be the same temperature to go down successfully as what you'd get out of a 0.4mm nozzle. Your flow settings are all set to 90% - that makes it look like you need to calibrate your printer's E-steps because you're compensating for underextrusion. I don't know if that's what's happening here, but if it is, you're much better off calibrating the printer. Your flow rate is low enough to begin with; you don't need to make it any harder for the printer. Unlikely but plausible explanation for lower flow rate: you want to be able to break it easily. Don't worry, using a 0.2mm nozzle will make that easy enough to begin with. 50mm/s is about as fast as I'd print PETG with a 0.4mm nozzle. With the higher precision required of a 0.2mm nozzle I'd knock that down at least 10mm/s. Yes, I know I've said a couple of times now that reducing the flow rate is bad. This is justified bad, so it's alright. Those acceleration settings... holy %(#@ing #!#$^($ with a %^=#$%^&. Lower them. Now. Like, maybe 300mm/s, tops. Especially with PETG. PETG is stringy and wants to stay with the nozzle on one big string so at a higher acceleration rate it's just going to be dragged behind the nozzle than dry enough to stay where it is. Retraction speed: I'm not sure I often see extruders capable of retracting that quickly... even if you can, you probably don't want to do it that fast because it'll probably just make the stringy bit currently in the hot end want to stay hot and stringy instead of coming backwards with its friends. 40mm/s would be my suggestion. And probably don't need quite 8mm (I see the profile you're using is called "TPU") - PETG requires more retraction than PLA but less than TPU - been a while since I had to tune retraction for a Bowden extruder, but... 6mm? Turn that fan on to 100% (well, maybe take it up to 100% over the first five layers or so). We want PETG to dry as quickly as possible as opposed to string. *Looks through printer settings* I'm pretty sure your printer can't print at 849,270 times the speed of sound (yes, ran the numbers, jokes have to be based in truth). You might want to have a look at that profile. And despite the pissing contest for "fastest acceleration" between printer manufacturers, I'm pretty sure yours can't go that fast. And it shouldn't. Not even the default acceleration, except maybe if you're running specialty high speed PLA. Also 10,000mm/s² acceleration for the extruder? The only thing I've seen feed that quickly is me at a buffet, and even then only when I'm desperate to finish before my free parking runs out. Hope that helps you with your print and/or breaking some world speed records.

In this case I just needed Microsoft's surprisingly good 3D Builder app (included in Windows 10, can download it from Microsoft store in Windows 11). And all Microsoft's surprisingly good 3D builder app needed was a couple of hours of processing time to fix it (average fix time: < 1 minute). Good thing I just upgraded my CPU 😄. Doesn't always work so I do have a bigger toolbox (all free!), but they can get a lot more involved: Meshmixer: is actually pretty old by today's standards, but it's good for analysing models and doing some specific kinds of fixes rather than having just a "your model is invalid, click to fix it" notification like 3D builder does. Made by Autodesk, which means it's surprising that it's free... although the website does point you towards their other software before you get a download link. Meshlab: For working with STL files, this is the Swiss army knife that a Swiss army knife would use. So many options for working with models that you won't know what at least half of them are. But if you know (or can figure out) which fixes your model needs, they're in this. Free and open source. One warning though: it has no undo button. So remember what stuff you do that works because if something messes it up you'll probably have to do it again 🙂 FreeCAD: As a CAD program, this is not at all what it's designed for. But hey, you can load a mesh and manipulate it instead of just running filters on it like the other two, so if a part needs to be moved... Free and open source. Main warning is that the learning curve looks like this: _| ̅ (@jaysenodell will probably say FreeCAD isn't that bad. He says a lot of things. Statistically, nobody is correct all the time.)

Fixed it.

Try disabling automatic slicing and then just slice manually when you change settings - sometimes it can get caught up on one. Also, if you could share an example of a Cura project (.3mf, in Cura set it up then go to File > Save Project) that works in 5.4 but not in 5.7.1, that could help us diagnose the problem.

Unfortunately the author of that plugin has switched to working on a different slicer and removed all of their plugins from the marketplace. I wouldn't worry too much about custom supports if you're new anyway, the supports generate by Cura (either regular or tree) work well in almost all situations. Even now, I very rarely bother with custom supports. If you want, you can try installing the plugin manually by downloading the latest version of it to somewhere on your computer, then just drag & drop that file into Cura. Please remember that since it is no longer being actively maintained that compatibility with current and future versions of Cura cannot be guaranteed.

The white bits indicate points where it starts extruding after a move - in this case that's the Z seam, where it starts printing each layer. It'll do a white dot for anywhere it starts extruding on outer walls because where it starts can be visible sometimes. Playing around with the Z seam options in your print settings (often the easiest way to find which options hide the Z seam best) if I set Z Seam Alignment to Shortest and Seam Corner Preference to Hide Seam puts it away in this corner:

Either I don't understand tools (highly likely) or that thing looks like it'll only be useful to contortionists and people who have enough time to pull their finger out, rotate around the bolt a bit, and put their finger back in. Many times.

Go into Special Modes and change Surface Mode to Surface Normal: Surface:

If you could provide a Cura project file of your print (.3mf, in Cura go to File > Save Project) that would help a lot more than just having the model because it'll contain all your print settings. Your problem here is that the wall sections are tiny. They're a single wall thick. Assuming I'm getting the scaling right; the file doesn't use mm for units so I just resized it to fit my bed (best case scenario). Basically, the print head makes a quick stop then moves to the next one. There's no way to do that cleanly, even if you have the best retraction settings in the world (although it might not retract over that short a distance anyway. Here it is step by step: Start of layer: This little bit here is the first part of the layer it does, probably because it's closest to the Z seam (I'm just using the stock "standard quality" profile). Print head zooms off and starts to print walls: Now comes back and does outer walls. Notice how it's doing a tiny little hump at each section? That's as far as it can go out (and come back in) without going into an area so thin it would have to stop and move back into the centre, because Cura prints the outline as a single, uninterrupted line (where possible) Finishes the outer wall, starts coming back for this bit: Goes to the closest part along the route it was travelling and does that little bit: From here I'm turning travel lines on. It travels to the next closest bit that needs to be done: Prints that little bit: Travels to the next closest part: Prints that little bit: And... repeat: Your finished wall section: The bits which are more noticeable are probably the ends, not the starts, since they'll get pulled away from their position because they're not dry yet. So how do we fix it? Go to Walls > Minimum Wall Line Width and set it to the lowest advisable setting, 60% of the nozzle diameter. 0.4mm nozzles are fairly common, that gives you a minimum width of 0.24mm (although whether that's enough depends on how big you're actually printing it): Now instead of doing one thick wall where it can't go back, it does a thin wall out and then back in. This still won't give you a perfect print: Especially if your printer has a Bowden extruder (you put the filament into a thing somewhere on the frame which has a tube leading to the print head). It'll hopefully be a lot better, but it'll be constantly changing the flow rate between what it takes for one fat wall (between the bits that go out) and thin walls (for the bits which go out) and there's no way the extruder is going to be able to keep up. It'll almost certainly lead to overextrusion or underextrusion (or a bit of both) in these sections. Also FWIW, this isn't the problem but significant portions of your model don't have any surfaces with the normals facing outwards: Some programs don't produce very good STL files, so it's probably not something you did. Blender has problems. SketchUp is notorious for producing files with these sorts of problems. But even CAD programs which should be able to produce the best output files possible still stuff up sometimes.

The yellow colour of the input box is just a warning, not a flat out "can't do this" problem (that's when it turns red). It could be a combination of any or all of the settings listen in that error message. If you could sure the Cura project file (.3mf, in Cura go to File > Save Project) then we can have a look at all your settings to see what combination it might not agree with.

Blame Microsoft: Now there's a cause we can all get behind 😄 Thanks for the update (some pun intended), happy to hear it's working for you.

If you're in the basic settings, click the Show Custom button: Then change Walls > Wall Line Count to 0: And now you have a print without walls:

There's still three solid layers of skin between the design and the outside, I think they were just confused about the appearance of just the design as skin on layer 5 which was otherwise infill.

I've found that ironing works fine even on small areas. There's no way to turn it off manually but you can create a support blocker, turn it into a cutting mesh and turn off ironing for that bit: (I'm not sure if the forum will crush the image above so hard you can't see the difference so here's a close up) I posted a slightly more comprehensive tutorial about how to make a support blocker and turn it into a cutting mesh here.

If your bed is level but you have to constantly adjust the Z offset, that sounds like it's most likely something with the printer. That I can think of off the top of my head, here are some possibilities: The bed isn't flat The bed is moving (or not moving when it should) during printing because at least one of the parts that hold it on the Z axis is either too tight or too loose The Z axis motor/s (not that familiar with the printer) has developed brain damage and isn't staying still when it should The motherboard has developed minor brain damage and isn't controlling the Z axis correctly The printer's firmware has gone haywire and is applying an auto bed levelling mesh completely wrong (FWIW I have an ABL in my startup gcode, but that won't help you if it's reading or using the ABL data wrong) Your startup gcode has a home command (G28) which turns off ABL, and doesn't have a command in to turn it back on. My E3V3SE automatically turns ABL back on after being homed but I don't know about other printers. If you want to be sure then after a G28 there should be either a G29 (performs auto bed levelling) or M420 S (which enables the ABL compensation from the last time it measured it) The effect of almost all of those could diminish as your print gets further up because filament is great at sort of "filling in the gaps" where needed. Even if ABL says a part of your bed is 1mm below another part, it generally stops taking the ABL data into account and just prints completely flat after the first 5-10 layers.

This isn't a problem; it's working as intended. Your cutout is 1 layer deep and you have Top/Bottom > Bottom Layers set to 4, so every part of your print will have four layers below it. For everything except the cutout, it's layers 1-4. But since the cutout is on the first layer and there's no material, the four bottom layers above it are going be 2-5. It's using the same type of fill as the layers below it. It's there to make sure all parts of the print are equally strong. It's not going to be noticeable at all from the outside because there's still 3 layers which are completely skin between it and the outside, and it's going to make the inside stronger.

Here you go: (n.b. You may want to add supports. I'm just in preview mode without them to show it slices successfully.) PlayerCharacterPosedFixed.zip

By the looks of it, your model becomes solid at that point and it's filling those areas with skin (what's going down everywhere around your cutouts on layer 1). If you could share your Cura project file (.3mf, in Cura get it set up then go to File > Save Project) and be a bit more specific about what you want to happen vs. what is happening we'll be happy to have a look at it.

Yeah I get the same problem as you. It's actually sort of funny in that it's often hard to tell much of anything in X-Ray mode but this one is blatantly obvious: That thing has fewer faces pointed outwards than a meeting of Introverts Anonymous. It's giving my usual repair tools a bit of a challenge so I'll see what I can do and be back later.

Any chance you could upload the STL so I don't have to sign up to download it? Copyright not a problem since you're allowed to share it as long as you attribute the creator.