Array of Poor Corners

[charlesrkiss 0]

I've had some luck with tolerances, and was able to make some adequate prints. This doesn't mean I know what I'm doing.

 

I realize there are some jerk and acceleration settings to make, but I'm not sure which quantitative amounts would be most helpful (see below).

 

Does anyone know how to improve these mm-scale corners? It looks like the machine is going across the gap, leaving print matter behind, but also burning (or too much heat). IDK. 

 

There are different prints in these photos, but they all have the same problem with corners. How does one print corners best? My printer is not Linear Advance capable, atm. 

 

I am using a 0.2 mm tip on the Ender-5 S1, with 100 mm/s print acceleration, 10 mm/s jerk settings, 206 °C nozzle temperature (74 °C bed), ABS. I thought using a smaller tip would print sharper corners.

 

Thank you!

28_129.cup.gcode 28_cup.stl

Edited April 15 by charlesrkiss

[Slashee_the_Cow 268]

I've never seen any ABS print that cool (unless that's a typo and you meant 260°). I always ran mine at 255°. Until I stopped bothering using it.

 

It would help if you could provide a Cura project file (.3mf, get it ready to print then go to File > Save Project) so we can see all your print settings.

 

ABS is very hard to work with. If you're lucky, it has the adhesion of a wet paper towel. If you're not, it has the adhesion of a dry paper towel. It's also so temperature sensitive it warps if you even look at it funny (I put my printer in a tent, second to fourth best thing after a printer with an enclosure).

 

About your print settings: drop the jerk. If I'm going for quality I usually drop it to 4mm/s. This is especially important since jerk is the amount of speed it is allowed to instantly change at a corner.

 

It's highly likely it has very little to do with print settings and more about ABS' lack of adhesion and how easily it will warp.

 

A smaller nozzle won't really print sharper corners, just thinner lines, although that will help with the appearance of sharpness. Remember that a nozzle is round and filament will ooze a little bit so you will never get perfectly straight, flat edged lines.

 

If you're printing straight onto the bed you need to make sure it's as level as humanly possibly even before you run ABL (if you have ABL, far too many Enders to know them all). Assuming you can level it manually (you can't on printers like the E3V3SE). People will suggest various kinds of paper to use as a guide for how close the nozzle should be, back when I had a printer you could level manually I used a feeler gauge at .08mm.

 

However my ultimate suggestion? Don't bother with ABS unless you have a really good reason to. People insist it's stronger than PLA, it isn't, just a little less brittle (if I want something which is less brittle so it can have a bit of bend, I use PETG). Also the fumes from printing it are poisonous. Plus the aforementioned adhesion and warping problems (I've done prints where it won't even adhere to itself). It's a great material if you're using it in an industrial injection moulding machine (Lego uses a secret version of ABS) but not that great to print with at home.

[charlesrkiss 0]

Hi Slashee,

 

Thank you!

 

You are correct, according to the g-codes, I printed the ABS at 240/90 °C. I printed through a 0.2 mm nozzle using a Creality Ender-3 onto a glass bed with a lot of Magigoo adhesive, successfully.

 

But my luck has since ended on the Ender-5 S1 (hopefully, temporarily).

 

My first prints on the Ender-5, over the last 48 hours, were also on a glass bed with Magigoo. I just got the machine April 12. And I think you are correct, that I was using the wrong temperature settings. But I have since changed those and am running into other problems.

 

I believe I failed to adhere the glass bed evenly to the Ender-5 bed surface. Perhaps the glass bed was subject to inconsistent heating and some movement, because leveling the bed was extremely troublesome and the printing results were equally bad.

 

Photos of the Ender-3 results are those of the four ABS 3D prints (at the top), and the subsequent two images below. The image on the bottom is from the Ender-5.

 

I need to work with ABS because I am subjecting the finished prints to temperatures of 60 - 65 °C (embedding the finished prints into hot wax). 

 

I use an ATM receipt for leveling and use an infrared digital thermometer to check the bed temperature.

 

Frustrated, I removed the glass bed today, I may try to adhere it again, tonight or tomorrow, using something more substantial than adhesive spray — something that will both adhere and conduct the heat evenly.

 

I expect to receive a PEI sheet on Friday and will try it then.

 

If I try additional prints on the glass bed this week, I will upload photos and the 3MFs. These little squares are small, and thin (and separated from one another by only a couple millimeters. I would like them to pop off after cooling, which is why I use the glass bed, atm.

 

I will try the PEI bed, but these thin ABS prints might just bend with the PEI, and not pop off like a solid object would.

 

Thank you again, your comments are very helpful. I appreciate it!!

 

 

 

 

[Slashee_the_Cow 268]

1 hour ago, charlesrkiss said:

I believe I failed to adhere the glass bed evenly to the Ender-5 bed surface. Perhaps the glass bed was subject to inconsistent heating and some movement, because leveling the bed was extremely troublesome and the printing results were equally bad.

If you're worried about it unevenly heating (and possibly starting as soon as one particular point hits that target temperature, not the whole thing), try editing the startup gcode.

 

Somewhere there should be a line that says

M190 S{material_bed_temperature_layer_0}

 

After that put in the line

G4 S30 ; Wait for 30 seconds

 

As the comment I put on the line implies, that will make it wait 30 seconds after it thinks the bed is heated before it does anything else, hopefully giving the rest of the bed a chance to heat up evenly.

 

1 hour ago, charlesrkiss said:

I need to work with ABS because I am subjecting the finished prints to temperatures of 60 - 65 °C (embedding the finished prints into hot wax). 

You could try using PETG, although if your final parts are going to be this small I'm not sure there'll be enough filament there to keep it from bending (very useful when you want, very annoying when you don't). I know someone who sells 3D printed parts for stuff had a problem with PLA melting while it was sitting in the back of hot mail trucks in the sun, but PETG can stand pretty high temperatures (as in "leave it in the sun all day in the middle of summer" sort of hot, I think). And it's much easier to work with than ABS. The only problem is that it's hygroscopic (absorbs moisture from the air) so you either need to run it in a filament dryer for a couple of hours before you start printing, or keep it in a big bag when not using it and put some desiccant in there.

 

2 hours ago, charlesrkiss said:

I use an ATM receipt for leveling

Not scientific, but about the right height, so good enough. Make sure when you're levelling that you also test the home position of the print head. If you have OCD like me (not abusing a stereotype; I really have it; fun to mess with people who like to keep things tidy by saying "oh, so you must be OCD" and when they say yes I raise my voice and say... well let's just say I could say most of the sentence on childrens' TV, but not all of it) you get it to the point where you can go around to each corner and the home point without having to touch the levelling screws... it can take a little while.

 

2 hours ago, charlesrkiss said:

Frustrated, I removed the glass bed today, I may try to adhere it again, tonight or tomorrow, using something more substantial than adhesive spray — something that will both adhere and conduct the heat evenly.

I've never actually had to use a glass bed, just a PC metal (I think that's what it is) bed that came with my printer so about the only advice I can offer here is that superglue, while adhesive, is probably not what you're looking for.

 

2 hours ago, charlesrkiss said:

I will try the PEI bed, but these thin ABS prints might just bend with the PEI, and not pop off like a solid object would.

While the bed is still warm (or just leave it on the printer and set the bed temperature to "warm" but not "ow it burns"), use a spatula, or a paint scraper, or something with a leading edge, and just sort of work around your print for a few laps. If you're using something with a metal edge be careful not to use too much force or you'll scratch the bed.

[charlesrkiss 0]

JTLYK, I purchased some 3DLAC and Warp-Pro spray adhesives, 200 grams of thermal paste that is good up to 280°C for the underside of the glass bed, bed clips, and a Sonic Pad with Klipper! All this stuff is scheduled to arrive on Friday!

 

I received the top cover today, and it fits nicely.  

Edited April 17 by charlesrkiss

[charlesrkiss 0]

Thank you for your responses, Slashee. I had not read your latest before my response above, I was just adding some more info.

 

You offer some golden nuggets of advice in there! And I will def look into using PETG!

 

I should also mention that the 0.4 mm nozzle that comes with the Ender-5 S1 has a very long shaft, long enough for several threads. I can not yet find a similar (long) nozzle in 0.2 mm and it does have a tendency to leak.

 

I am using way too much torque (at a high temperature) on the 0.2 mm tip. So I will use some teflon tape next time. Thermal resistance of PTFE ranges from 260 - 280 °C .

Edited April 17 by charlesrkiss

[charlesrkiss 0]

The PETG is very interesting. I like the UV resistance and that it can be printed semi-transparent, an important property. The temperature settings are lower, that's nice too. That it sticks to glass and breaks it off, yet nothing can be glued to it is hilarious!

 

I watched this: 

 

The print I'm working on is less than 2 mm high or wide. It's like a flat net that must be lifted from the printer bed and then transferred onto another flat surface.

What will be more demanding in the future I can imagine, will be to print adjacently with a 0.2 mm gap, or less, in between (see image below).

 

It would be amazing if the two prints could be separated later by tearing them apart (without using too much force, that is, e.g, strings).

Any idea if this is possible (see 3MF file), or a meaningful aspiration? LOL

Thank you!

CE5S1_28_array.pair.3mf

Edited April 18 by charlesrkiss

[jaysenodell 13]

I may be silly, but a small nozzel will let you do thin lines. Thin lines allow thin gaps. The big things in my experience will be slowing way down and running cool/cooling so that the corners stay tight and don't merge. 

 

I know @Slashee_the_Cow, what the heck am I doing using small nozzels? i don't know, but I don't like it. I do NOT like it!

[Slashee_the_Cow 268]

1 minute ago, jaysenodell said:

I know @Slashee_the_Cow, what the heck am I doing using small nozzels? i don't know, but I don't like it. I do NOT like it!

@jaysenodell, what the heck are you doing saying you need a small nozzle for thin gaps? You can have wide lines (as long as your filament isn't too gooey, and if it is, probably put it in a dryer) and tiny gaps if you want. The width of the gap is just some multiple of the printer's stepper resolution, and the gap is basically just line width (because you have half a line either side) + gap width, the two numbers are otherwise unrelated. Also, what the heck are you doing using a small nozzle?

 

9 hours ago, charlesrkiss said:

What will be more demanding in the future I can imagine, will be to print adjacently with a 0.2 mm gap, or less, in between (see image below).

 

It would be amazing if the two prints could be separated later by tearing them apart (without using too much force, that is, e.g, strings).

If you print two side by side with a tiny gap (having never tried, pulling a figure out of the air I'd guess start with 0.01mm) then the filament might expand enough to connect the two but have a weaker connection.

Remember: small scale testing is your friend. Don't test stuff like this with two full size prints, just two rows 3-4 squares long so you're not using much filament (or time) each test. If you get the result you want there, then try it on the full size version.

[jaysenodell 13]

1 hour ago, Slashee_the_Cow said:

Also, what the heck are you doing using a small nozzle?

Attempting to repair a sweing tool for a neighbor. I feel this is a bad idea as all the ladies in her group are sitting there with "out of distribution" tools in various states of disrepair... 

 

1 hour ago, Slashee_the_Cow said:

The width of the gap is just some multiple of the printer's stepper resolution, and the gap is basically just line width (because you have half a line either side) + gap width, the two numbers are otherwise unrelated.

This may be creality quality issues, but what I ran into was that a 0.4 snoz could not reduce the flow enough to prevent closing the gap. A 0.2 managed my 0.15 gap just fine. That said I am relying on "slashee speeds" of "dear god, I could carve this from stone faster!!!" to keep things straight and stuck together. I also had to make sure fans were cranked to for PETG to cool fast enough at the corners to avoid pulling/smudging. 

 

See, I've been listening and learnging. Your pontification into the dark recesses of issues pay off! At least for me 🙂

[charlesrkiss 0]

Okay, very funny. But I will be using my 0.2 mm nozzle. Super sharp outside corners are very important.

 

I had no bed adhesion or nozzle problems with my 0.2 mm nozzle on the Ender-3 — printing on a glass plate with Magigoo (and it had no enclosure).

 

I would pour the Magigoo straight out of the bottle, and use a soft tooth brush to spread it around.

On the Ender-5, I just hadn't prepared the glass plate properly, I believe.

 

Today, I just finished cleaning the glass bed for my next Ender-5 attempts: I coated the bottom with some thermal paste using a 1" metal spatula (< 40 grams), and let it sit a few minutes. It leveled itself.

 

I placed the glass plate onto the printer bed, it slid around very nicely, and I subsequently clamped it down. Nothing oozed out the sides (yet, at 100 °C).

I applied the teflon tape to the nozzle threads, a very tiny strip (a couple wraps at about 3 mm wide). The tape is resistant up to 260°C, it says.

 

The nozzle screwed in nicely at 230°C but I haven't printed anything yet to see if it works. I hope it doesn't leak. I didn't torque it down to the umpteenth force, like I usually do, and it still leaks (occasionally).

 

I will try using spray adhesive on the bed first, then move onto other adhesives. The Magigoo is a little sloppy, especially best to completely start from scratch after each application or two, three max.

 

I will report back on the results after a few attempts, probably in a couple days.

 

Thank you so much for your advice, I really appreciate it !!!

 

I will definitely scale down the array to a 2 x 2. Maybe I'll set up different files and print four of them under different settings at different locations on the print bed.

 

I really thought I could just repeat what I did from the Ender-3 days, but I guess not. I thought I would get lucky soon enough.

Edited April 20 by charlesrkiss

[charlesrkiss 0]

I still have to check the Ender-5 firmware, install what is required (if anything), and set up and learn the Sonic Pad. That will be all day Saturday, probably.

 

The attached 3MFs looks okay. For starter temperatures, I will set the nozzle and bed temperature settings to 230:100°C.

I should probably try this print right away and check what's going on. The dimension are supposed to be about 40 X 1.5 mm. If I really want to go for it, I can test the file named "pair," with the 0.2mm gap.

 

And I can double check the speed settings and set them slower than 4:20.

CE5S1_28_cup.4x4.3mf

CE5S1_28_4x4.pair.3mf

Edited April 20 by charlesrkiss

[charlesrkiss 0]

I think I will try printing on the 200 mm square PET tape but maybe I should start at a cooler than the previously used temperatures and heat my way up only if there are adhesion issues.

 

I do not expect any adhesion issues: According to videos I've seen, there are no insurmountable issues with ABS adhesion on PET tape under certain conditions, eg., fan blowing air over the print, etc.

 

I plan to try the PETG on the PET tape, as well. The strings could be an advantage.

 

It's been argued that adhesion is too great, consequently because maybe the compression or the temperature is too high on the first layer. 

But the print needs to come off very easily after cooling (or whenever) without damaging it. And it needs to remain as flat as possible, like a film. It could be described as a net.

 

[There are a lot of variables there!]

I am really excited about this project! I am hoping I can get close to these parameters, and I also expect to have more of my mind blown by the technology! 😄

 

 

Edited April 23 by charlesrkiss

[charlesrkiss 0]

I watched two great videos on 'pressure advance' aka 'linear advance' after watching videos on setting up Sonic Pad. And it seems the corner will have a radius of some significant amount. This would be a tip diameter of 0.2 mm or less in a perfect world (I imagine), or if I added a little more speed relative to the extrusion rate and temperature maybe the longitudinal axis can be stretched out a bit — by fifty percent?

OR, perhaps I can machine a square orifice "tip" as the final step in the extrusion, attach a plate to a 0.4 mm tip — in a more perfect world, and get 90° corners down to 0.001 mm radii (at like 350°C 450 mm/sec). 

 

I'm night-dreaming. 😹 

I'm printing the Sonic Pad test tower stl now. The printing is very quiet but it takes at least ten hours to complete (if nothing goes wrong). I'm waiting and I will probably have to print 1 - 4 more over the next few days if I'm going to be doing any crazy stuff. 

 

Thanks for all your help on this. I think I'm on the right track, the 3D printing community is amazing!

 

 

Edited Thursday at 05:14 AM by charlesrkiss

[Slashee_the_Cow 268]

1 hour ago, charlesrkiss said:

perhaps I can machine a square orifice "tip" as the final step in the extrusion, attach a plate to a 0.4 mm tip — in a more perfect world, and get 90° corners down to 0.001 mm radii (at like 350°C 450 mm/sec). 

 

I'm night-dreaming. 😹 

I'm sure there are some people crazier than you or me out there who are working on that exact thing.

 

Crazy thought I just had: could you make something with as perfect a corner as possible, about equal with your layer height (as long as that's thinner than how far the nozzle) stick it on your bed precisely in position and make the filament use that as a mould for the corners? Although I guess that would only work for a layer or two, tops... maybe not the most practical idea. But hey, I'm trying!

 

2 hours ago, charlesrkiss said:

the 3D printing community is amazing!

We're awesome people making awesome things. Of course we're amazing, and we get collectively more amazing as people learn how to do things like you are!

[jaysenodell 13]

I’m be been thinking about this. I’m assuming the corners are actually walls being printed as single extrusion. Meaning the nozzle is moving though the 90deg while extruding with no stop. 
 

I noticed that infill just prints straight lines overlapping at the intersection. I wonder if a grid infill with the right wall density would get you better 90s. Not sure the other properties would suffice, but perpendicular lines meet at perfect 90s. 

[Slashee_the_Cow 268]

1 hour ago, jaysenodell said:

I’m be been thinking about this. I’m assuming the corners are actually walls being printed as single extrusion. Meaning the nozzle is moving though the 90deg while extruding with no stop. 
 

I noticed that infill just prints straight lines overlapping at the intersection. I wonder if a grid infill with the right wall density would get you better 90s. Not sure the other properties would suffice, but perpendicular lines meet at perfect 90s. 

Walls will never overlap while printing, if they reach a line they've already done they'll travel to do another line.

Infill will overlap because it's not there to look pretty. Going over (or through) an existing infill line will result in overextrusion, which likely means either a lump or the excess filament goes around and makes your corners even more round.

 

Definitely worth a shot though.

[Slashee_the_Cow 268]

Okay so because I have too much time and/or refuse to not take everything as a challenge, here's a project file for a grid with (I hope) 0.2mm wide lines with 4mm between each wall, 0.1mm high (1 layer), I guessed you folks might still be using little nozzles, I can make a fatter version if you want, printed entirely as infill. I think it's changing the flow rates at intersections but it's definitely not making travel moves to avoid them:

It's a UCP so you'll need Cura 5.7 to load it.

UCP_grid - 5x5 0_2mm width 4mm gap.3mf

[charlesrkiss 0]

Okay, you guys: I am going to carefully re-read through your responses (again) and think (harrumph  ... arrghhh) about them more over the weekend.

You both have provided a lot for me to consider! More variables, thanks a lot. 😹

 

Currently, I am preparing 16 consecutive files to run. Each is about 5 minutes, so I will be positioning them onto different quadrants on the Cura build plate, and they will be loaded consecutively after each has completed. In other words, each will have different gcode settings — I imagine this will allowed, that Cura will place them onto the surface accordingly, and does not default each time to dead-on-center.

 

This way, I will not have to wait an hour for the bed to cool in between each 5 minute test. Honestly, I can imagine going through a few rounds of these "sweet 16s" over the weekend.

 

The Cura version I have is 5.7 (an AppImage on Ubuntu), so I will take a close look at your file. I already downloaded it, and I will run it over the weekend! Thank you, Slashee !!

 

Below are some images of the test tower I printed. The yellow dot is an edit pencil I am using to highlight the outside corner "bulge," which is not yet zero. It's a ferocious battle! 😹

 

The markings on the ruler are 0.5 mm. The test tower is illuminated in blue LED to highlight the corner. I have configured the print using vibration compensation on Sonic Pad. The pressure advance ranged in the test tower from 0 - 0.2, I may have to take it higher. 

 

BTW, the PTFE tape is working perfectly on the tip. No leaks and it's been over twelve hours of printing. I didn't have to go crazy torquing the tip, normal torque was fine, and smooth. All I used were two turns of the tape (but I split the tape lengthwise to the correct width), of this stuff, "-450 to 550 Degree F Performance Temperature." It's not thin like the teflon tape used in residential plumbing applications. See link below.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Gasoila-Density-Performance-Temperature-Stainless/dp/B001VY039C?th=1

 

And "Gizmo Dorks Polyester Film PET Tape [sheet]" for the bed is working great!

 

Thank you again, so much, Jaysen and Slashee !!!

 

Edited Saturday at 12:22 AM by charlesrkiss

[Slashee_the_Cow 268]

1 hour ago, charlesrkiss said:

The test tower is illuminated in blue LED to highlight the corner. I have configured the print using vibration compensation on Sonic Pad. The pressure advance ranged in the test tower from 0 - 0.2, I may have to take it higher. 

Is that the Z seam? If it's overextruding just slightly at the Z seam you might want to try turning on Experimental > Enable Coasting and playing around with the settings, it looks like you'd want it fairly low, but I use the setting which is basically the opposite of coasting (Walls > Outer Wall Wipe Distance) so I can't tell you what "fairly low" is - just maybe start at the default and experiment. It makes the extruder stop extruding a little bit before it reaches the end with the idea being whatever is left in the nozzle should be enough to finish off that line without having anything left over to form a blob.

[charlesrkiss 0]

The yellow dot is a cross-section of an axis adjacent to the blue line along the edge of the square. If the yellow dot were cyan it would better match the blue line, which I presume you mean is a "Z seam," ie., the up and down corner of a square (an edge) is technically a seam: If the tip stops there, changes direction, etc., it's a seam. Is that what you mean?

BTW, I have yet to open your file and check it out! Thank you!

 

A casting idea (maybe you said coasting) is also very interesting, to have some sort of a hot 0.2 mm high aluminum mold (sheet) that the tip prints into. It could make atomic levels of precision on the corners, like invisible microchip level of precision (crazy). 

And, implementing a coating on the mold that allows the cold print material to detach, even depositing some atomic layers of itself onto the print (or vice versa, having an aluminum oxide layer come off), or whatever (is also crazy).  😹

I never thought .2mm of precision would not be enough, but the human eye can see this. Notwithstanding, in different contexts, precision looks different.

An improvement on the corner of say, from a 0.2 mm radius to 0.1 would be really significant! Gosh, it could it actually be sharp, which I had never thought of before (I don't think it has to be that sharp).

 

Below is an image of natural crystal for comparison. What do you think these corner radii are? TBH, I haven't really looked at it that closely yet.

 

 

Pyrite Crystals on Marl 

95 x 78 mm

Navajún, La Rioja, Spain 

 

I still have a ton of work to do on this, it seams. 

 

[A back of the envelope calculation of 1355 pixels per 95 mm, to 14.2 pixels per millimeter, is 0.07 mm per pixel, eg., the corner.]

Edited Saturday at 02:40 AM by charlesrkiss

[charlesrkiss 0]

JTLYK, I just added the Klipper Settings (by JJFX) and Moonraker Connection (by emtrax) plugins to Cura — on my journey up the learning curve!

 

I'm still on the flat part. 😹

[charlesrkiss 0]

I disabled all Klipper settings in Cura (apparently), and disabled several Mesh Fixes, "Remove all holes","Union overlapping volumes," etc. I have not even gotten to printing any tests or even the file you uploaded. But that will be happening soon.

 

In this array of sixteen (see attached .3mf file), each set of four squares are 1 mm away from each other (about 1.5 mm high).

I created each set of four squares as sixteen separate files. And I plan to vary the pressure advance from 0.150 to .200, and the "square_corner_velocity" from its default (5 - 8), speeding it up a bit. 

 

Attached is the base file I used. I would select all, deselect whichever, and save as separate files in their respective positions and orientation.

 

Is there a better way to do this without having to write a for loop?  😹

 

I will also have to do a whole testing thing on "coasting," ARGH... (in pirate sounds).

 

I have a broken clip on my RJ45 network cable, that I spent three hours today trying to fix — an 'mcu' connection error I was getting (or whatever it's called) from the Sonic Pad web interface: I could not find any moonraker.conf file, but it was my printer, which was not turned on. 😂

_16_28_4x4.1mm.cup.3mf

 

 

Edited yesterday at 05:09 PM by charlesrkiss

[Slashee_the_Cow 268]

51 minutes ago, charlesrkiss said:

Is there a better way to do this without having to write a for loop?  😹

Better? Yes. Hard? Depends how much you know about programming. Time consuming? Hell yes.

STL files can be plaintext. Cura project .3mf files are just .zip files which contain the model and all the settings (no, really, rename something from .3mf to .3mf.zip if you want to take a look). Could always write a Python script to generate all the files you wanted 🐍

 

If you really want to get creative you could always try using AutoHotkey to automatically manually edit the values in Cura 😄

 

56 minutes ago, charlesrkiss said:

I have a broken clip on my RJ45 network cable, that I spent three hours today trying to fix

I hate those %^(*ing things. Some cables have sort of a "shroud" around the front of the connector to try and keep the clip in place. Notice I used the word "try". What I don't get is that RJ15 cables use the same kind of clip and I never had this problem with dial-up 😠 Although I guess I didn't have six different modems in the same room so there was less chance to break just because there was less cables.

 

1 hour ago, charlesrkiss said:

I will also have to do a whole testing thing on "coasting," ARGH... (in pirate sounds).

The easiest test for coasting/wiping is to make a cylinder so the Z seam is easily visible (and consistently placed). Doesn't have to be very tall (a few mm should have a consistent Z seam except for the first layer or two) and not huge (*/me struggles to find real world item to compare to*), about the diameter of an analog stick on a game controller, maybe a little bigger.

 

I would have said "about the size of a 50 cent coin" but I'm assuming most people aren't familiar enough with Australian currency to know how big that is. Also the coin itself isn't actually round (it's a dodecagon - 12 sides) even though all our other coins are round. Also it's by far the biggest, even though it isn't the most valuable (the most valuable is about the size of the second least valuable one but thicker). It's the biggest currency mystery since "why would a country still make notes bills out of paper?"