Surface looks a lot worse in Cura 14.03

[printedman 1]

I recommmend using the TEST2. It's stable, it contains a few fixes but nothing else compared to 14.03. I'm planning to do an official update soon.

 

Test 2 no MacOS version?

 

[Daid 306]

Test 2 no MacOS version?

 

explained before, test1 and test2 only differ on windows.

 

[achim 0]

When I printed this object (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:40635) from thingiverse I saw that when my printer was printing the outer shell, the head wasn't moving smooth. It hesitated for a moment on each layer.

The finished print shows a lot of blobs on the surface of the object.

 

I tested the 'TEST2' version from this threat and the results are better, but on some layers the head still hesitates and therefore there are still blobs on the surface of the objects.

 

edit by gr5: Made image link better.

 

[gr5 2,167]

@Achim - to post a picture click "gallery" on the top left of this page, then click the blue upload button. When done uploading start a new post and click "my media" next to the smile face.

 

it hesitated for a moment on each layer.

 

Only once per layer? Could that be when the Z axis moved? Are most of the "blobs" mostly on the same side of the object? If so it's probably the Z seam. Regardless what caused the hesitation blobs, you can improve those by printing slower because the difference in filament flow from moving to stopped is smaller so the blobs are smaller. In other words half speed will give you half sized blobs.

 

[achim 0]

@Achim - to post a picture click "gallery" on the top left of this page, then click the blue upload button. When done uploading start a new post and click "my media" next to the smile face.

Only once per layer? Could that be when the Z axis moved? Are most of the "blobs" mostly on the same side of the object? If so it's probably the Z seam. Regardless what caused the hesitation blobs, you can improve those by printing slower because the difference in filament flow from moving to stopped is smaller so the blobs are smaller. In other words half speed will give you half sized blobs.

 

The image is now published.

The blobs are not a mechanical issue and it's not a Z-seam.

I have my prusa i2 for more then a year and my prints are oké when I'm using Slic3r.

I saw a video with David Braam and decided to give Cura a try.

Cura is very nice and works great, except this problem now.

I printed this pencil holder with the same printer and sliced with cura with perfect results. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:291008

I also printed this 32 tooth gear sliced with cura on another printer (prusa i3) with the same blob problem.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:185912

 

[deepshots 2]

I've been noticing the OP's issues with the 14.03. It just happens that I print various cylindrical objects with varying diameters and I see that the uneven surface happens in certain diameters... but not all.

For example I have a print that starts with a smaller diameter and then changes to a larger one.... The surface nobbles are visible only with the larger diameter part of this piece. Also many or my cylinders come out perfectly without the knobbly effect.

Because of this I haven't moved yet to the TEST2 version... as most of my prints are perfect.

 

[deepshots 2]

I've now looked more carefully at my prints while printing and I think I figured out why the uneven surface happens. If I have a cylindrical shape about 15-25mm diameter the printer prints it in to a hexagon/decadon/etc... shape instead of a round shape. I can clearly see it in inner part of the walls during the print. The next "polygon shape" is then printed on top of the previous layer in different position so that the corners of the next hexacon/whatever result to the uneven surface...

Imagine some bolt-nuts in a pile so that the every second of them is in different angle.

I've looked in to my .stls also but I don't see any issues there... Also this happened only after the 14.03 so I can't think it could be anything else.

Jussi

 

[Minkeproducts 3]

Dear Jussi,

I was first trying to figure out as well what could be the reason of the rough surface on my prints;

Printed two shapes, shown in http://umforum.ultim...raversionstest/

The hourglass shape printed smooth, while the other one (see pict) had this rough surface, although it is just the same shape.

Pretty funny isn't it?

I use the TEST 2 version now for a while and I am very happy with it, it works fine to me.

 

[deepshots 2]

Did some slicing with cura 14.04. (which I guess is the new name of the TEST2 version

File size of my models has shrank more than half. For example: same .stl sliced with same settings with 14.03 is 12Mb and with 14.04 it is 5Mb.. that is a biiig difference. Where did well over a half of the file disappear?

J

 

[Nicolinux 288]

I guess this was a bug from an earlier version, or at least gcode generation was handled differently. I had gcode with 14.03-TEST ten times the size when compared to 14.01.

 

[yellowshark 153]

 

I posted a similar thread maybe last week but no-one replied.

Cura 14.01

Slic3r

Cause

Looks like I am going to have to back to Slic3r if no-one knows how to fix it - shame as Cura's retraction is so much better

 

[deepshots 2]

After a weekend with cura 14.04 I can say that the surface issues are sorted. Cheers!

 

[chopmeister 0]

Today I tried to print a Yoda bust. The model I used is optimized, so it has less polygons than the one on Thingiverse.

I sliced it with Cura 14.01, 14.03, and 14.05 RC2 (on a Win8.1 machine). Each time I tried to print it the motors were twitching and stuttering on the perimeter lines (but working properly on infill lines). Since I've done a lot of mods to my UM including switching to Megatronics V3.0 at first I thought it could be a hardware/firmware problem. I even tried switching to Repetier firmware, but to no avail. I haven't really seen this thread before, so I didn't know others had issues with the skin quality in recent versions.

The stuttering was so severe, that I still thought something was wrong with my machine, so I tried slicing the same model in Kisslicer - and it worked without any problems with both Marlin and Repetier firmware. I found that the problem in Cura seems to appear only on models with very small features.

I then inspected the gcode in Repetier host, and here are the comparisons:

 

The gcode from all three versions is basically the same. And you can see there's lots of small, jagged segments, which apparently cause buffer errors on my machine.

 

 

The Kisslicer output on the other hand is very smooth.

 

Here the difference is very apparent, especially on the area of the mouth, and the right shoulder.

I must admit that I haven't had any problems printing regular mechanical parts, which don't have as much polygons or small features, and that my machine may very well be more prone to buffer errors for some reason, but still, there seems to be some sort of weird stuff happening with Cura's gcode.

As a side note, the file sizes are completely different:

Kisslicer: 4 MB

Cura 14.01: 6.7 MB

Cura 14.03: 10.3 MB

Cura 14.05RC2: 6.9 MB

I haven't tried the 14.04 versions but I'm guessing it will be the same. Any idea why Cura produces so much more little segments?

EDIT: I forgot to add, I AM printing over USB, so that's a factor, but I've printed dozens of those very same Yodas before, from the same PC, the only difference is that I upgraded to Win 8.1 in the meantime.

 

 

[Daid 306]

Cura tries to be true to the 3D model. Which is why there are so many segments.

It does optimize a bit, but to the point where SD printing works nice.

USB printing might be a latency issue, the speed for USB and SD are both the same (250000 bits per second), but USB printing is much more prone to slowdowns. I hardly believe that this is just due to the checksum codes.

 

[yellowshark 153]

I was going to asked if Release 14 with 14.04 was considered stable yet but make that 14.05. Are we still on Windows release 1 status or do we have the stability following an SP1 release? Currently I am happily using 14.01 and cannot afford to loose the time if things that are working perfectly well in 14.01 are suffering problems in later releases.

No complaints, this stuff takes time and we do not have the resources of MS but right now I cannot afford the time to be a Beta tester. Has everyone moved on from14.01?

 

[Daid 306]

As far as I know the 14.05-RC2 is stable. (RC stands for Release Candidate. So, it's a candidate for a release, meaning there might be minor issues but nothing major)

There also hasn't been any major changes past 14.03, so the 14.05-RC2 is pretty risk free. As I'm working with full speed on a re-write of the GUI.

 

[gr5 2,167]

As I'm working with full speed on a re-write of the GUI.

 

Um - maybe too late but this is an interesting graphical front end to Cura (or kisslicer). It doesn't support SD printing though - USB only as far as I can tell:

http://www.mattercontrol.com/

 

[Daid 306]

Um - maybe too late but this is an interesting graphical front end to Cura (or kisslicer). It doesn't support SD printing though - USB only as far as I can tell:

http://www.mattercontrol.com/

 

Pretty limited in functionality compared to current Cura. But they are nice people :-)

 

[skint 61]

Thanks for the info on this thread. I will update to 14.05 later.

 

[skint 61]

Anyone got a link to 14.05? I cant find it :???:

 

[conz 0]

@Skint:

http://software.ultimaker.com/Cura_closed_beta/

 

[skint 61]

sweet! Cheers Conz

 

[profepaco 0]

So... a comparison

Left, last version of cura, 14.03, 7 hours...right previous version, 14.01, less than 3 hours.

Circles on the bottom, right part, duo to playing with settings.

 

[yellowshark 153]

So I need to stay with my current 14.01 release then!!

 

[Nicolinux 288]

How about the latest beta 14.05?