Could someone give me gcode/setting to help my prints to print fast with decent quality.

[anadskman 0]

my printer keeps messing up prints by staying on the first layer for the whole time, it goes up and then back down, and i think its the settings ive stripped it down a few times and i don't see anything wrong, the printer is UpToDate. im using a voxelab aquila pro

[GregValiant 1,411]

The gcode tells it where to go and if it isn't going there, then it's likely the printer.

Check the set screws in the coupler between the Z motor and the Z lead screw.  They need to be snug.

After checking, use the LCD control and Auto-Home the printer.  Next, use the LCD and move the Z 25 or 30mm up and see if it goes there and stays there.

[anadskman 0]

It holds just fine, it’s when it’s trying to go onto the next layer it goes up and immediately back down.

this is only happening on the gcode from ultimaker cura, I tried updating but it did work.

I can email you the video of it

Edited May 19 by anadskman

[Slashee_the_Cow 488]

If you post a sample gcode file we could have a look and see if anything's amiss. If the problem is only with Cura, then if you could slice the same model with as close to the same settings as possible in another slicer (and it would print fine) we can try and play spot the difference while we're at it.

[anadskman 0]

ok here is the gcode i was trying to print most recently.

i dont know much/anything about gcode.

CFFFP_spur1.gcode

[GregValiant 1,411]

The gcode file shows an "Initial Layer Height" of 0.28 and then a "Layer Height" of 0.28.

Following the Z values in the gcode layer:0 is at 0.28 and the Z moves upward in 0.28 increments.

Layer:0 - 0.28

Layer:1 - 0.56

Layer:2 - 0.84

.....

Layer:29 - 8.40

Layer:29 is Layer 30 in the Cura Preview and 30 * 0.28 is 8.40 so all of that is exactly correct.

Opening the Gcode in Cura, the preview is also correct.

I removed the extrusions and "air printed" that Gcode file and it was fine.

So the problem isn't in the gcode.

Edited May 19 by GregValiant

[anadskman 0]

so what could be causing this problem, also i can send you the video i recorded of this problem via email

[Slashee_the_Cow 488]

Just now, anadskman said:

also i can send you the video i recorded of this problem via email

Just upload it to YouTube as unlisted and post a link to it here.

[anadskman 0]

here is the video 

i believe the tapping sound it just my phone

 

 

[GregValiant 1,411]

There is a lot of noise in the background could it be the extruder skipping steps?  When the video starts it appears that the nozzle is above the print at maybe layer 4 and I don't see any filament coming out.

[anadskman 0]

33 minutes ago, GregValiant said:

There is a lot of noise in the background could it be the extruder skipping steps?  When the video starts it appears that the nozzle is above the print at maybe layer 4 and I don't see any filament coming out.

yes i noticed that about 30 mins ago and i took off the nozzle and i believe it was clogged so i took out the stuck material, and i think it should be fix, im going to test with a xyz cube and let you know if it worked.

[gr5 2,268]

watch any youtube video about the "cold pull" technique and do that to clear out the nozzle.  Even if you are fine now, it's good to learn this simple technique.

[anadskman 0]

this is how it turned out,

also i dont have nylon for the cold pull.

[anadskman 0]

1 hour ago, anadskman said:

this is how it turned out,

also i dont have nylon for the cold pull.

could someone help me fix this issue

 

[GregValiant 1,411]

That is seriously under-extruded.  There are some things you can check.

Both Cura and the printer have to be on the same page regarding what an extrusion command in the gcode really means.  Usually the E command is in mm's but Cura can be configured to make the E values mm³.  So go to "Manage Printers" and "Machine Settings" and check the Gcode Flavor.  Make sure it doesn't mention "Volumetric".  The printer needs to match that.  On my Ender, I would go to the "Control" menu and then "Filament" and make sure that "E in mm³" is turned off.

Also in the "Machine Settings" click on the extruder tab and make sure that "Compatible Filament Diameter" matches your printer.  It should probably be 1.75 but some printers use 2.85 diameter filament.

Have you ever calibrated the E-steps of the printer?  When a gcode command tells the printer to push 100mm of filament then exactly 100mm needs to be pushed.  The driver chip on the mainboard sends "steps" to the extruder stepper motor to get it to turn a precise amount hence the term "Steps / mm".  There are videos on how to do the calibration.  It isn't difficult.

 

Once that is done you can do another test print.  If it is still bad you may need to take the hot end apart and give a good cleaning.  It needs to be warmed up to get the nozzle out.  Use a proper wrench and not a pair of pliers.

 

Edited May 19 by GregValiant

[anadskman 0]

Have you ever calibrated the E-steps of the printer? 

No i haven't i don't believe that is possible on the voxelab aquila pro. after cleaning out the nozzel i tried the same print again and it was slight better but very similar

[Slashee_the_Cow 488]

Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion. I do not and have never worked for UltiMaker and do not represent them in any way.

 

3 hours ago, anadskman said:

Have you ever calibrated the E-steps of the printer? 

No i haven't i don't believe that is possible on the voxelab aquila pro. after cleaning out the nozzel i tried the same print again and it was slight better but very similar

I always wondered what sort of quality Voxelab printers were like, given the company as a whole is on my "do not buy" list because some of their filament killed one of my printers.

No, it wasn't the clog in the Bowden tube itself that killed the printer. Although I tried printing with it a couple of times after I'd cut that bit off and it immediately clogged both times (except I was watching it, so I was able to pull the clog out with tweezers before it got too big or hardened).

 

The problem was that because it did that severe clog about an hour into a three hour print (just after I'd stopped watching it) no filament was feeding so the hot end was basically roasting the rubber boot that goes around it. This disintegrated the boot enough that next time I printed with some filament that actually worked, as well as printing my model, it had covered the hot end in filament. I tried cleaning it off but once it started solidifying it broke the wires to the thermistor and the printer now refused to do anything because it couldn't detect the hot end's temperature.

 

So maybe I have my answer about what their printers are like 🙂 

[anadskman 0]

Do you know what would be a better printer  to choose that isn’t crazy expensive.

I believe my problem is just the printer itself, because 1. There is no tutorials on it and 2. I think it’s only when the file is a gcode it messes up. So my final question is, is there a way to export files as a .gx in cura

Edited May 20 by anadskman

[GregValiant 1,411]

Some printer manufacturers do odd things to their firmware.  It might start out as basic Marlin, but they make changes and some commands (mostly the "M" commands) don't work the same as UM Cura assumes they will.

There is a discussion about *.g and *.x3g HERE.

 

Voxelab has it's own slicer ("VoxelMaker") you might have to use it in order to get compatibility with your printer firmware.    It might be why there are no "Voxelab" printers among the 300+ printers that UM Cura does support.

 

I know that Flash Forge printers pretty much require that owners use the Flash Forge slicer, and there are a couple of other manufacturers that Cura doesn't support.  It's possible that your "Voxelab" printer is actually a re-branded Flash Forge model.  One of the other "odd" printer outfits is MonoPrice.  It's possible that their printers might be re-branded Flash Forge printers as well.

 

My printer is a Creality Ender 3 Pro and it's about 4 1/2 years old now.  It's been "acceptable" but it took a while to get it tuned in (new hot end, all 4 fans replaced, the layer cooling duct had to be re-designed, etc.).  All the machines that come as kits depend on the buyer having some mechanical skills AND there is a reason they are inexpensive (read that as "cheap"). Most printers are basically 4 axes robots so having at least a basic understanding of Gcode is (in my never humble opinion) pretty important.  It's the language that the printer uses to move and squirt plastic.  It's also pretty simple since any gcode file might use only a dozen different commands.

 

@Slashee_the_Cow has a newer Creality printer.  I think we can safely bet that she has an opinion regarding them.

 

Some of the Chinese companies that build low end machines seem to have gone under.  Right now Elegoo appears to be selling a fair number of printers.  Unfortunately, the reason I know that is because there are so many bug reports submitted on GitHub involving Elegoo printers.

 

There is one thing is an absolute certainty...If you buy a low end printer and parts of it were assembled at the factory, there is zero reason to assume that they were assembled correctly.

 

There is a Voxelab Aquila group on Reddit.  Perusing that may find you some help getting yours going and printing well.

Edited May 20 by GregValiant

[anadskman 0]

Ok, thanks I will test to see if that fixes it and I’ll try my best to get as good setting as the cura slicer provides in voxelmaker

[Slashee_the_Cow 488]

Standard disclaimer again: I don't work for UltiMaker yada yada yada. If I did I'd probably just tell you to buy an S5.

 

11 hours ago, GregValiant said:

@Slashee_the_Cow has a newer Creality printer.  I think we can safely bet that she has an opinion regarding them.

I had an Ender-3 V2 Neo until some dodgy filament killed it. I replaced it with an Ender-3 V3 SE. Doesn't require much assembly (basically just screw the top frame on and plug in some cables). Definitely easier to set up than a lot of other printers, it also has completely automatic auto bed levelling (you can't even level the bed manually if you wanted to) with auto Z offset (which has always been accurate in my experience).

 

The firmware is a little annoying to a power user like me, but for most people it'll be fine. You just put your gcode file onto an SD card, go to the print menu in the printer, find the file, start it printing. I can't get thumbnails working out of Cura, but I can't get thumbnails working out of Creality Print either, so I just roll with it 🙄

 

Has been reliable other than dodgy filament clogging it. Voxelab isn't the only brand on my "do not buy" list 🙂 With the brands I usually buy (and have never had any problems with) it always prints great (except for when I stuff up the settings, but I'm not blaming the printer for that). Having come from the V2, a direct drive extruder is a gift from the heavens.

(FWIW that extruder is also hella powerful - a lot more than it needs to be - one of the times some filament clogged, I had the filament in a dryer next to the printer's tent and fed it in one of the flaps through some spare Bowden tubing - anyway when it clogged and was trying to feed more (but couldn't because it wasn't going out the other end) it actually dragged the filament dryer (with two spools of thread in it) right up to the flap where the tubing went into the tent.)

 

Only problem that's come up with it is the cooling fan for the hot end has gotten noisy before it reaches max speed. Probably just a loose bearing or something I could fix easily, if I could be bothered. Right now I can't be because it only happens for about 30 seconds while it's spinning up and then it's fine (and by that I mean reasonably quiet).

 

The E3V3SE has a couple of other family members, and the naming is totally not confusing. The next one up is the Ender-3 V3 KE, and the one up from that is the Ender-3 V3. You don't need those, unless you really need to print with a material which isn't PLA, PETG or TPU. ABS isn't listed as supported for the SE, but it gets hot enough that you could - although ABS is worth neither the hassle nor the poisonous fumes produced when printing.

 

A lot of the difference between the models is that Chinese manufacturers seem to be in a pissing contest about who can make the fastest printing speed at the highest acceleration, and far too many people who buy them don't realise that just because you can print at 500mm/s doesn't mean you should - most spools of filament say on the side the recommended printing speed, and I never print PLA above 100mm/s (and that's just for infill, walls and such I usually do at 60mm/s). You can get specialty high speed PLA filament but unless you're in a real hurry or feel like joining their pissing contest, it's not worth the hassle (and expense). The V3 (no suffix) also has a different control panel with a touch screen and different firmware (which is based on Klipper) - a screen with a knob works fine for me and from what I've seen around here, Klipper isn't worth the trouble compared to Marlin. 

 

In summary: if you're looking for an inexpensive printer, you could do a lot worse than an Ender-3 V3 SE. I haven't seen anything else in its price range with any particular advantage in specs or anything, except the ones from dodgy manufacturers that come in a box with more pieces to assemble than a $300 Lego model (i.e. not ones worth buying). The real sign it gets the Slashee ✔ of approval is that if I was upgrading I'd probably be looking at Creality first, or if dodgy filament killed this one I'd just get another E3V3SE to replace it.

 

11 hours ago, GregValiant said:

Some of the Chinese companies that build low end machines seem to have gone under.  Right now Elegoo appears to be selling a fair number of printers.  Unfortunately, the reason I know that is because there are so many bug reports submitted on GitHub involving Elegoo printers.

How much of that is because Elegoo's Cura fork uses the same folder for configuration files (%APPDATA%\cura)?

[jaysenodell 18]

I'm a Ender 3 S1 Pro guy. New to 3D printing and with a little bit of help from the folks here this thing has been pretty dang bullet proof. I don't think I would get the pro again. and I can see some reaons to go with "not the Ender 3" but for the price and as a someone new to 3d printing, I think it is a decent choice. 

 

Issues I've had:

• The aluminum bed is not flat. This is a "normal problem" with creality. Prints fine, just expect to sand a bit off any surface you need flattened or prep for a glass plate. 
• Stupid "pro" screen is stupid. Don't get the pro models and things work better for sending prompts to the control screen and such.
• bed level drift if you sneeze. Just don't sneeze. there are "print your own" solutions to this that I haven't done yet. I change nozzels so often that I probably won't ever do the weel locks. 
• Wire harness shortness. The wireharness doesn't allow for folks like me to so things ... like I do. Meaning I'm having to make new sections to move things like filiment runout detetor and screen to alternate locaitons. God forbid I tray to increase the print volume. 
• Not really opensource. As much as it claimes to be opensource... it's not. I want to build a bigger print volume. But with the pro module it's propietary code that I can't get access to. So... voron may be in my future. but that's a different problem for me thanks to klipper. 

[arvidx 0]

My buddy gave up on this printer last year and eventually offloaded it to me in return for some prints.  I have the original aquila and had pointed him at the pro as a great deal at the time.  When I got the pro from him, this was the exact issue...  Luckily after a day combing forums, I found a short on Youtube by 3d Print SOS who has a bunch of videos on the Voxelab stuff.  Yes it's weird gcoding and while I am not sure exactly what in here solves it....  the opening gcode solved it!!!  check the video out and here's the code.  If anyone can tell me more about what parts of the code are actually fixing it I'd love to know, my quick hacking with it didn't reveal it and it's codes that are non standard.  I hope this helps someone, it was rather frustrating...  all credit to 3d Print SOS

Here is the G-Code you need to create the custom printer profile:

 

•Start G-Code:

G28

M132 X Y Z A B

G1 Z50.000 F420

G161 X Y F3300

M7 T0

M6 T0

M651

 

•End G-Code:

M104 S0

M140 S0

G162 Z F1800

G28 X Y

M132 X Y A B

M652

G91

M18

 

•Extruder Start G-Code:

M108 T0

G1 X123.50 Y99.50 F4800

 

 

 

I also needed to crank down the default profile acceleration and jerk iirc, acceleration was auto set to 3000, I use 500 and that helped a lot, Jerk is set to 8, I took both from my original aquila settings to fix other issues like strange underextrusion on curved objects.

 

Edited September 25 by arvidx

[Slashee_the_Cow 488]

Black magic. If it works, then by all means use it, but it seems a lot more than a bit weird. As far as I can find out, the Aquila Pro just runs regular Marlin and this has code which doesn't exist in Marlin. Some of the commands exist in a flavour called Teacup but it's using them wrong for that flavour.

 

•Start G-Code:

G28 < Home printer (measures limits on each axis so position is known and returns to home position)

M132 X Y Z A B < That command in that format is actually specific to MakerBot flavoured gcode and loads the axis offset for the home position; most printers that run Marlin will just reject it as an unknown command. There's also an M132 in Teacup but that's for changing PID values (has to do with heating) and uses a different syntax

G1 Z50.000 F420 < Move print head to 50mm above build plate at 7mm/s

G161 X Y F3300 < Also specific to MakerBot and Teacup flavours, tells it to home the X and Y axes to their minimum position at 55mm/s

M7 T0 < In Teacup it sets the fan speed (but you should run M106 instead) but this command doesn't specify a fan speed, just a tool number (in the case of a 3D printer the extruder, with 0 being the first); otherwise it's only used in CNC machines to turn on mist coolant

M6 T0 < Teacup command to change tool; not sure if that syntax actually works; in Marlin it should just be a "T0" command, no M6

M651 < Only exists in RepRap flavour and performs a peel move after curing a layer. I have no idea what the hell it peels or what it's doing here

 

•End G-Code:

M104 S0 < Cool down the hot end (sets target temperature to 0°)

M140 S0 < Cool down the bed

G162 Z F1800 < In Teacup or MakerBot will make it go to its maximum Z height at 30mm/s

G28 X Y < Measures endstops for X and Y axes and returns to home position for them without affecting the current Z height

M132 X Y A B < See above, but again not affecting the Z height

M652 < Not a valid command in any gcode flavour based on RepRap, including Marlin and Teacup

G91 < Tells it to use relative positioning (movement commands tell it how much to move from its current position than a specific position to move to). No good reason it should be in end gcode when not followed by any movement commands

M18 < Disables stepper motors (so the build plate and print head can be moved freely)

 

•Extruder Start G-Code:

M108 T0 < Interrupts a "wait for hot end to reach target temperature" (M109) command - can result in cold extrusion (which is bad) or just printing at a lower temperature than intended

G1 X123.50 Y99.50 F4800 < Move to X123.5 Y99.5 on the print bed at 80mm/s

 

Quote

I also needed to crank down the default profile acceleration and jerk iirc, acceleration was auto set to 3000, I use 500 and that helped a lot, Jerk is set to 8, I took both from my original aquila settings to fix other issues like strange underextrusion on curved objects.

How fast some printers can print and accelerate these days is ridiculous. My Ender-3 V3 SE can accelerate at 4000mm/s² (according to the printer, the website says 5000 and the manual says 2500) but I limit it in the firmware to 1000 because sometimes the printer thinks it knows better than the acceleration values in the gcode and will just go as fast as it can. 3000mm/s² only counts as "ridiculous" and not "%*#$ing nuts" because the Creality K1 Max can do 20,000mm/s² which sounds like a printer waiting to shake itself to pieces.

 

Jerk is also pretty important: it's how much the printer can change speed instantly at corners. Too high (and often it is by default) and it can cause vibrations which at best will show up as a minor bump in your model and at worst will cause the X/Y motors to miss steps (causing "layer shift" which means higher layers won't print exactly on top of the previous layers).

[arvidx 0]

Awesome answer Slashee!  Thank you so much for the info.  One thing I have run into with the Voxelab stuff is it's supposedly a ways from a vanilla Marlin they are running, some models are fully closed systems with only their slicer from what I understand, but it looks like there may be some way around it with those teacup and cnc looking codes at least with the Pro.  I threw my standard opening code for my aquila at it which is just a profile based on an ender 3 or 3v2 I forget, and got the OPs same issue, and I have found that issue brought up across reddit and some other locations, this video was the first spot I found something, anything that was an actual answer instead of folks arguing that it must be zhop related (and no there was no zhop in the prints). 

For whatever reason without something in the above code, with a file from cura at the very least, when a layer is finished, you can see it advance to the next layer then sit right back down.  Now that you gave me a nice convenient breakdown of the expected vs unexpected codes, I'll give it a more educated shot at narrowing it down.   

I had found one other reference where someone had replied with much less information to a copy of this same set of codes and that commenter also noted there was cnc commands that didn't make sense but must have been proprietary to their firmware.  

I know too little to judge so appreciate folks like you that have already absorbed so much of the sea of knowledge I've yet to begin to swim in!

 

Ax