Cura is great

[greengecko 8]

HI,

this is not to get browny points but rather to thank daid for his great work as he really made my printing with the ultimaker much more enjoyable.

I started about a month ago printing with my ultimaker and pretty soon decided to buy netfabb (fast and easy to use=. At the beginning I got nice results and also used Cura once to update the firmware (somehow more straight forward then replicator), but I liked the interface of netfabb much more.

After some prints I started to see that things that involve jumps are really ugly in netfabb and got into the retraction business. I played with the calibration (not sure if I understood the instructions at all) and could not improve my prints (just strings...)

Then I wanted to print the tin tin rocket

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:16993

, which basically consists of only jumps. So I thought I should try Cura again updated to RC4 and the latest firmware (Marlin RC2 I think).

And immediately had a great success printing the first part. So I started to have a look at the project planner to be able to print more than on piece. And again it worked just great.

So this is not to show off but to encourage other newbies that it is possible to have no strings and great prints even as a beginner. If anyone is interested these were my settings in Cura RC4, standard settings (normal Print quality, layer height 0.2 etc.). I only changed the retraction disctance to the recommended 2 mm. I also added the shim http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:22851 to my extruder and also made sure that it cannot move once attached to the ultimaker (mine wobbled as just hanging it into the holes did not really fixed it into one position).

I printed in Red-black PLA from Ultimaker at 50 mm/s, 200 C using printrun.

You can check my print of the rocket on Thingiverse under thing:22851

As the retraction people use the pyramid to test their setting I attach a picture of the pyramid to this post.

Admittedly there are some strings but they are really finer than hairs and were rubbed off with a cloth very very easily.

Thanks again to Daid for Cura as it really boosted my printing experience and now let allow me to print many more things, which I was reluctant before because of too many strings.

Cheers, greengecko