Cura is adding a solid layer in the middle of my model

[nick-foley 5]

I am trying to print what is more or less a vertically oriented tube, and about halfway though the print, Cura tries to add a fully filled layer of material over the entire volume (ie it is printing rings, and then all of a sudden, it tries to print a disc). It is only happening when i slice with thin layers, but for this print, thin layers are exactly what I need.

See the below screenshot for what Cura is doing:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hnjm4jauzgpke9x/Capture3.PNG

I've checked the STL in several programs and there is nothing in the model file that should be making it do this. Here is a link to the STL (64mb file) for anyone who wants to replicate the issue:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3pnewmxhwqgppxc/Open%20Sonnar%20v0.10.STL

Anyone know why this might be happening?

 

[gr5 2,172]

Uggh! This happens all the time with the new Cura. It drives me crazy. The quick solution is to play with the 4 "Fix Horrible" checkboxes. Note that there are only 11 possible ways to check as checking A and B at the same time doesn't do anything differen than B alone.

I'm going to guess you need the last checkbox only to fix this. But every time is different.

The problem is that the new steamEngine is much dumber about inside versus outside (solid versus air) than the older slicer. The new slicer ignores layers above and below the current layer. So. Any tiny error (extra interior walls) freaks it out and causes issues just like this.

The other solution is to use the older cura: 13.03 is my newest cura of the older slicer.

The final solution is to clean up your CAD model - if you look at your model in Cura "xray" view - anything that is red is a problem spot that you would have to fix.

Instead I recommend you try all 11 combinations of the fix horrible checkboxes one at a time. Maybe write down what you tried as you go. Also try to get the problem to occur with thicker slices (e.g. .4mm) to save time until you find the correct combination of checkboxes to fix this.

 

[nick-foley 5]

There's nothing red showing up in X-ray mode... I'll play around with those boxes then.

 

[nick-foley 5]

No luck. Just tried all possible STL repair checkbox combinations and none of them prevented the problem from happening.

I guess, for now, I'll clean the print up manually.

 

[illuminarti 18]

You might also want to try simplifying the STL file a little bit. 60MB is an insanely large file for something that's not particularly complicated in terms of the geometry. Looking at it in Meshlab, most of the detail is in the innermost curves of the screw threads, where the mesh seems to get exponentially denser, to the point that you're rendering detail that is far beyond anything that the printer could reproduce. Somewhere in all of that, the slicer and/or the geometry are getting confused - looking at it in Netfabb, it sees a bunch of issues with the degenerate faces in the STL, but doesn't seem able to clean them up - and I suspect that's what is confusing Cura into thinking that there's a solid layer in there somewhere.

Perhaps if you decimate the mesh, you'll be able to smooth over whatever oddity is confusing the slicer.

 

[illuminarti 18]

I reduced it to 100,000 faces, from 1.6m - as George just described http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/2912-curaengineexe-has-stopped-working/?p=21180. That reduced the file size to just 5MB, making Cura far more responsive, and fixing the slicing problem when I tried to slice it.

 

[nick-foley 5]

Awesome. Thanks! I guess I need to make meshlab a regular part of my workflow.

 

[Daid 306]

(Back after 2 weeks vacation)

 

Which settings are you using? I just pulled the model in my latested Cura-dev version and I'm not seeing the filled layer with 0.1mm layers. I'm wondering if it's something I might have fixed or a setting difference. (my settings are on defaults)

 

[illuminarti 18]

IIRC, Nick was using 0.07mm layers, and I sliced it with 0.06mm layers, and I got the bad layer. I was using Cura 13.06.5 (since the New Support stuff isn't available for Mac yet.... :-( )

 

[samclarke 0]

I had this happening I moved the model to the center and it disappeared