Difficulty with first print

[ediblepoly 0]

I am trying to follow the instructions here at

http://wiki.ultimaker.com/Newcomer_guid ... t_3D_print

I am new to this and don't fully understand the process of generating gcode and printing objects. I am trying to print the first test object by following the instructions as closely as possible.

At “Step 4: Generating Gcode” most of these steps are confusing and don’t reflect what I see in ReplicatorG. Are these instructions referring to different software? I am using ReplicatorG Ultimaker Edition – 0034. I have the 0.5mm thin wall test object open and am trying to print it.

Here are the steps from the wiki page and my comments. The quoted steps have >> in front of them.

>> In the GCode - choose GCode generator menu, select Skeinforge 35

>> in the model window, click on the "Generate GCode button”

I followed these steps successfully.

>> select the profile " Skeinforge 35 Ultimaker - Quality print"

I don’t see this option. In the “slicing profile” pulldown, all I see is “PLA-Ultimaker-failsave-v1”

>> The profile needs to be adjusted for the first batch of ultimakers.

>> click "edit". This will open skeinforge.

Where is this edit button?

>> find the "speed" button. It's somewhere at the bottom row of all the buttons.

I don’t see a speed button anywhere.

>> set Feed rate (mm/s) to 50

I see this and changed it from 40 to 50.

>> set Flow rate (mm/s) to 50 or slightly higher (depending on the thickness of the filament)

I can’t find a flow rate box anywhere.

>> Click "Save all"

I don’t see a save all button.

>> Close the Skeinforge window.

This window is called “Generate Gcode”, not “Skeinforge”

>> Click "Generate" in the profile selection window. the Gcode will now be generated.

There is a “Generate Gcode” button in the “Generate Gcode” window, I assume this is what that is referring to. I click it and it takes about 10 seconds or so to generate the Gcode.

Later when I click the “Build” button, it seems to generate this Gcode all over again, which is confusing to me. Isn’t it already generated? Then it brings up a Gcode Warning message saying that the pre-run check has found some potentially problematic Gcode, etc.

Any ideas on what I am doing wrong?

[mr_seeker 0]

ReplicatorG 0034 has a lot of improvements compared with the older versions. I didnt had time to change every page, still working on bugfixing a lot of small stuff because of the change from 26 to 34. I hope that the community can help me a bit...

For replicatorG 0034, you can either use Slic3r or Skeinforge 40 (for the quality print settings). You dont have to change anything with Slic3r except setting the right temperature (find the M109 Sxxx, where xxx stands for the temperature in degrees). Skeinforge may need some more changes but I dont know them all.

What errors do you get? Some errors are normal and can be ignored, others are warnings that can break your machine. Its a new feature that has been implemented in repG 0034.

[ediblepoly 0]

Thanks for the help.

I think I got mixed up because the options appear to be in different places. I found the "Edit Slicing Profiles" menu. I completely missed this before because I was looking for it after I clicked the "Generate GCode" button.

I am still unable to print the test object.

Here's what I am doing. I think this is right according to my interpretation of the instructions, but I'm not sure.

I use the control panel to put the nozzle right at the blue tape near the center of the platform.

I set the temperature to 215 degrees for PLA.

I close the control panel, then click the build button.

It regenerates the GCode and while this happens I can see the temp monitor drop to about 183 before I get to an error message that I bypass to start its printing. (Can you print without regenerating the GCode each time?)

It drops the platform about 3cm, then the extrude gear rotates CCW for awhile. The PLA is not moving since its already against the nozzel, but the gear moves nonetheless. Then the extruder rotates backwards a little and this seems pulls the PLA away from the nozzle. Is this extruder movement normal? The platform rises. Then it starts the print pattern, but nothing is coming out (which is expected because it pulled away the plastic from the nozzle). Its about 1mm above the platform at this time. This is higher than I set the zero point to be. Sometimes I can get it to extrude plastic if I manually open the feeder and push up on the PLA, but at this point, the plastic is too high to stick to the paper.

The errors I get before printing are:

[18] ReplicatorG doesn't recognize GCode 'M113 S1.0'

[18] ReplicatorG doesn't recognize GCode 'M113 S0.0'

I notice that you cannot use same control panel once the build starts, but do I need to set the temperature in the "Real time control and tuning" screen as well? It always defaults to 200 here even though I set it to 210-215 in the controls before printing.

Is there a way to maintain the temperature monitor through the build?

>> find the M109 Sxxx, where xxx stands for the temperature in degrees

Where is this set at?

Thanks

[mr_seeker 0]

Let us start from the beginning, so it will work properly (I will use slic3r for this demonstration, but it should work also with skeinforge)

- Start replicatorG, make sure the machine is connected.

- Set G-code generator to slic3r

- Click on "Move", make sure that the object is touching the platform.

- Click on "Generate G-code", and select a profile.

- Go to the tab gcode, this will show you the commands that will be sent to the printer.

- Search for M109. This is a command that says "wait for temperature to be reached". You can change this to the value you want.

- Click on "Build", the machine will now check if everything goes well, calculates an estimate and then starts to print. (The estimate is accurate when printing on SD unfortunately).

- If it goes too fast, you can adjust the speed using the sliders. Know that Marlin buffers code, so it takes a little time to adjust the speed.

Building from the model view will automatically start building gcode, its some weird feature that is built in.

The real-time control temperature is just for setting a new temperature, it does nothing except for setting the temperature if needed.

The machine starts too high probably because the Z-axis stop is set too high. What I usually do is making sure that it stops nearly against the bed, and adjust the bed myself using a bit of raw power and turning the Z-axis screw.

The start-up sequence for Slic3r is as follows:

- Home to 0

- Heat up

- Start printing

For skeinforge is it simple: Start printing.

[ediblepoly 0]

Thanks mr_seeker. Breaking it down into steps really helped. It now prints great! I printed out a couple test objects and then a low poly character model. Next I'll tinker with the settings to see what sort of quality I can get. Its really fun watching the Ultimaker work