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Makerbot layer thickness I'm using PETG, the thickness of the filament is 1.75mm, in MakerBot there is a setting for "Layer Height", the default is 0.1mm, I've had lots of messed up prints with this material and I'm thinking it could be this setting that needs adjustment. What layer thickness should be used? Found this: http://forum.makergear.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2593

Unlike PLA, PETG does not like to be "squidged" down, it likes to be laid down. If you use too small a layer height, there is the danger of the filament sticking to the nozzle, rather than the bed (or filament already laid down). Try using a larger layer height -- between 0.2mm and 0.3mm, if you have a 0.4mm nozzle.

Advantages of PETG filament? I was just shopping for filament, and saw some glowing claims about PETG being as easy to work with as PLA, but as strong as ABS, and less brittle. Anyone know if that's actually true, or what the tradeoffs are?

PETG is great stuff to work with. It is stronger than ABS also. It prints slower than ABS and PLA. The formulas vary quite a bit from vendor to vendor. I have used 3 brands, and each of their properties vary. From my experience you do have to be careful with moisture. You'll be able to tell you have moisture in your filament if you start hearing a slight hissing and popping and an increased number of structural zits on the object. Moisture will also increase the problem listed in Mark's post below regarding the accumulation of filament on the nozzle.

First layer rippling and no filament in the certain areas Hello I'm new to 3D printing and I noticed some problem with my print. I've print it 3 times and relevel the bed now, I found that the right lower corner always have holes, some string problem lastly, place where there should be a full line suddenly become string like, and it always happen at the same place It's like my extruder pulls out the filament or fails to create filament in area that should be filled with filament, is it normal or did I set my printer wrong? I'm afraid it might cause holes in my new print. there's also some stringing problem that cause the layer to be uneven. Slicer: Cura 4.6 Settings: my printer is anycubic 4 max pro

From the wispy horizontal lines within the perimeters in your second image, it appears that the nozzle is still oozing material during the travel moves. This is likely causing the hole in the corner and the wispy perimeters too. When the extruder reinserts the filament into the hotend after a travel move, it expects the same amount of material to be in the nozzle as when it extracted the filament, but some material has oozed out during the travel move so that is not the case. I had a similar issue with my printer, and was able to mitigate the problem by increasing the retraction extra prime amount in the material section of Cura. This should compensate for the material loss during the travel move by reinserting the filament slightly farther when starting the extrusion. This solution is not perfect as different lengths of travel allow different volumes of filament to ooze from the nozzle. If you want perfect prints, you may have to tune this to the model you are printing: larger models usually require larger travel moves which would allow more time for plastic to ooze from the nozzle. If you try this, make sure to look for blobs at the start of extrude moves. If the prime amount is set to high, it can create blobs on the side of the model (or inside depending on which perimeter is extruded first) which could cause tolerance issues on more complex parts. Personally, I have also added a small coast distance to the end of each extrusion (located in Cura's experimental section). This allows the nozzle to ooze into the perimeter of the part which should decrease the stringing on travel moves, and thus loss of material on travel moves.

Safe, cheap, heated enclosure solution for New England garage Hopefully this isn't against the rules as it may fall under "opinion" more than a concrete answer, but I'll ask anyway. I live near Boston and it gets cold here. My Ender 3 Pro is out in a detached garage with no heat and I'm pretty sure the garage getting down to about -12 °C (10 °F) has ruined a few prints for me. Also I'd love to print in ABS at home as well and I think I'd need an enclosure for that. Now, the printer technically already has an enclosure. It's in a box made out of plywood with some clear acrylic doors on the front, but I think the box itself has too much extra room and doesn't retain heat well enough (thin plywood?). So my question is, for anyone with experience printing in cold environments, what are some cheap/easy ways to keep the enclosure warm, preferably as safe as possible since I can't always watch the print. I have a small space heater in the garage but I turned it off last night because I wasn't sure how safe it'd be overnight and didn't want to start a fire. Thoughts on stuff like "reflectix" liners for the enclosure that would help retain heat, small heaters, IR lamps, etc...? All preferably on the cheap side.

The easiest step would be to add some isolation on the outside of the box. If you have space inside, there might be a good spot to store some non-flammable insulation, for example rock or glassfiber wool. A different material might also be possible - firebrick is not only non-flammable but also a very good insulator! about 2-3 inches of firebrick can contain the heat produced by a tempering oven while the outside is cool enough to be safe to touch with gloves. However, you should install an extra thermosensor for the chamber temperature - and make sure that the printer enters print halt mode once the temperature in the chamber gets above a critical temperature to try to mitigate fire risks and possibly start a chamber-cooling protocol - which might include aborting the print or activating coolers that rapidly cool down the chamber. As you pretty much are going heated chamber, you might find a spot when you might want to use a flexible hose to pull non-chamber air to supply the parts cooling fan. Also, possibly relocate as much of the electronics to a compartment separate from the printer's heat chamber to ensure the electronics don't get cooked and can be supplied with cooler air.

Adding a Bowden extruder to a direct drive setup I currently have a single extruder (direct drive) Tronxy X8. I am thinking about adding a second extruder, that I would use only occasionally. I really like the characteristics of the direct drive extruder, so I would not want to switch over to dual Bowden. Also adding the weight of a full second direct drive extruder for only occasional use does not seem useful. Is it possible to use a direct drive extruder as main extruder and a (possibly detachable) bowden extruder as secondary extruder? Is there anything in particular that I need to watch out for when mixing extruder types?

I'm an amateur and I used dual extruder printers but never built any. It's probably a good idea, take care about the purge, retractions distances that may vary. On the filament feed side there shouldn't be interference from the different flexibility. Still it maybe good to place one reel on one side and the other on the opposite. Now the most complex thing is to make both nozzle not interfere. A technique is to rotate by few (like 5°) the dual setup to give few millimeter more to one of the two nozzles. If both heads are at the same height, you'll need to keep them hot, and avoid the passive one to leak. It would be good also (but not mandatory) to have a purge routine.

Ultimaker Cura not always telling extruder to retract when traveling I'm having a problem with Ultimaker Cura (v3.4.0) where it doesn't always tell the extruder to retract when performing a travel, which causes the hotend to leave a "trail" as it's moving and not start printing again right away when the travel is over. For example, the extruder does not retract when performing this travel (blue): And yes, I do have "retract before outer wall" enabled.... Any ideas how to solve this?

You probably have the "Combing Mode" option under the "Travel" options enabled for each layer (All). Combing reduces print time by leaving out the retraction, but leads to ugly first and top layers by leaving "scars" on the surface. It can be disabled by excluding the bottom and top layer by changing the setting to Not in Skin or for all layers by choosing Off. The latter will increase printing time drastically! Please note that as of version 3.5 of Ultimaker Cura the options of the combing setting have an additional setting. As of Ultimaker Cure 3.5.0 the options are named: Off All Not in Skin (used to be No Skin a few versions ago) Within Infill (new setting)

Ultimaker 3 printing area? I have designed a model with the dimensions 215x125x12 mm. According to my printer settings, the printing area of the Ultimaker 3 is 233x215x200 mm. But I can not get the model to fit. Why is that? Here are some screenshots:

Yes that happens! It finds its source in various possible reasons. The print bed is not square! There are cutouts caused by the print head; The Ultimaker 3 has 2 nozzles, when you have 2 active, the effective print bed is smaller than with 1 nozzle active; Using a brim or a skirt also makes the effective print area smaller. In re-creating your example, the settings in your projects are not correct (but even if done properly, you will not be able to print it flat on the bed). Take a look at the image below, as can be seen your example still has a brim/skirt reservation, be sure to disable the second extruder (as shown by a cross X before "Generic PLA" at the top). The only solution to print this on this machine is to print it upright:

How can I make this rounded enclosure feasible to print? TL;DR - What needs to be done to the following model to ensure a successful print? As part of a father-son project we're trying to make an enclosure for a digital clock. The idea is to make a 3D printed model of a rocket with a hollow body to hold the electronics. The main body consists of two halves that will press-fit together with some integrated mounting locations for the display, micro-controller, etc. Since this is our first 3D printing project, I would like to know what can be done to the following model to help ensure a successful first print. We have not chosen a material or supplier yet, but I suspect we'll go with PLA since it seems to be quite common, inexpensive, available in lots of colours, etc. The model is not yet complete - there are several details missing, like additional mounting locations - but I was hoping to make corrections to what we already have before too much further, just in case it requires a complete restart. Here are some possibly relevant details and goals: The shell thickness is currently 2.5 mm. We would like the shell to be translucent to allow a glowing effect from some internal LEDs. The nose cone and thruster (not shown) will probably have pins that press-fit into the top and bottom of both halves of the shell to hold them together. There is a 0.5 mm clearance between the lip on the front shell and the detent on the rear shell. The rectangular window will possibly be removed, or made into a flip-open door. There aren't a lot of hard requirements as this is just a learning project, so we're willing to change almost anything about the design, as long as we can fit in the existing clock parts. The Fusion 360 model is available to view online if it helps: Rocket Concept 3

With a couple of minor adjustments, that would print just fine standing up as it is. Alternatively you could lay it down with the open side facing upwards and use a few supports (my least favourite method), or simply make a flat spot on the back to lay on the printer bed. Which is probably what I would do. As far as shell thickness goes - 2.5 mm is pretty heavy duty. You also need to bear in mind that it's best to have a thickness as a factor of the thickness of your bead or your layer height (depends on printing orientation) - assuming you are going to print this yourself. So usually that would either be divisible by the bead width or by the layer height. If you want translucent - easy enough use translucent or clear filament. I'd probably go for 1.2 mm or 1.6 mm wall thickness. I made an angel at Christmas with clear PLA and quite a thick wall (wasn't my model and I didn't bother measuring - but at least 2 mm) and an LED candle lit it up really well. It's much easier doing this kind of thing after buying the printer. that way you learn much quicker what works and what doesn't.

Converting Injection Molded STLs to printable STLs I bought a 3D printer kit a few years ago, and it's been working pretty well, the kit was made with injection molded parts. -- It's similar to a Huxley, and through the years, it's started to turn into a repstrap as I've repaired it with non-printed parts. The parts are all open source and the STLs are provided by the maker, but they're optimized for injection molding, so instead of having flat surfaces, the surfaces usually have a lot of extra support going on -- here's an example of what I'm talking about: Mind you, this is one of the simpler parts. -- But mostly I just want to clean these parts up -- make the edges flat by "filling in" these gaps (because: 1. it will print easier, 2. I can let my slicer handle the infill for me, etc.) Currently, I've been using mostly TinkerCad and trying to make little rectangles and other shapes and boolean union them together to fill these gaps. But this is a lot of work, trying to get it just right without covering up important gaps or leaving pockets in the middle of the part is very time consuming and error prone. Additionally, I'd like to be able to make minor beveled edges so that the parts are easy to peel up. -- I currently do this with boolean subtractions of a bevel shape I made (again, in TinkerCad). Is there any software out there that makes these options easier? -- What's the easiest way to fill in these gaps and add beveled edges? -- I'm hoping to spend no more than 10 to 15 minutes per part. (Right now, it's hours.)

Although the foundation of your question is aimed at getting an opinion, I find nothing wrong with that, as long as answers are provided with an equal foundation based on facts. I'm a fan of Meshmixer (free) but it's not well suited for this project, in my belief (opinion) as it's primarily aimed at organic modeling. On the flip side of this point is the fact that you have a working STL from which to build. Meshmixer will enable you to extrude the portions that sit below the surface level and create a flat plane. You can also "bridge" the elevated portions into a plane, but only if you remove the lower panels first. Leaving them in place creates an unprintable model. Of course, Meshmixer has its own learning curve. Along the same train of thought, Blender (free) is suited for performing similar tasks, again aimed at organic models. Again, starting with your STL makes it less of a complication. Unfortunately, in my opinion, Blender's learning curve is substantially steeper, as the program does many things unrelated to 3d printing. It has spectacular control over the model and if you are able to learn the necessary controls and sequences, there isn't anything you can't do with it. Meshmixer is more intuitive than Blender and therefore easier to learn. You may also find it easier to find YouTube resources for Meshmixer actions than similarly for Blender, mostly because the phrasing of your search will be clearer with Meshmixer. As an example, one would create face groups of your STL. Various segments would then turn colors. You select the depressed face group and say, "cheer up" then delete that group. Using the appropriate tool, which currently escapes my alleged mind, you'd then bridge those faces remaining after the delete. What was once a shallow pool becomes a flat contiguous surface. I would recommend using Lynda.com tutorial material if you can find it. There is also a resource called Honeypoint which somewhat specializes in Meshmixer tutorials. Not out of the question is to engage the free Fusion 360 program and use all those YouTube resources, among others, to import your STL and create extrusions and modifications you require. Our local library has an agreement with Lynda.com which provides free access to Lynda.com's tutorial library. Conveniently for me, it has a great collection for Fusion 360. I've become so accustomed to manipulating models in the above software and other programs that I attempted to rotate your image to see the other side! If this is one of the simpler ones, you have quite a job ahead of you! Be sure to use an STL printability checker program to ensure your resulting models are workable. Meshmixer has that feature built in and a couple online services will repair your model free. One service I attempted to use destroyed the model, while the Microsoft version did not, but created a .3MF format. That added one more step to get it reconverted to .STL, but the results justified the effort. Good luck

Filament being pushed back out the filament hole I just got a Monoprice Maker Select v2 off eBay for $200 and I'm very happy with it (so far). I'm learning a lot, but I've run into this problem that I cannot solve: When I put filament into the extruder (it's a direct drive extruder), it works well for a minute or two and then the extruder pushes it back out the entrance hole where it should be inserted. I have no idea why it's doing this. The weird thing is when it's being pushed back out it curls up, maybe from being pushed back up and being hot? It is unclear to me why it curls. What I have tried: Multiple brands of filament but nothing is working (I'm not sure what type of nozzle is on the Maker Select v2 but I have printed a Benchy once before this with no problems); Unclogging - I took the cold end off and nothing looks jammed in it; Pushed a guitar string through the hot end and no jams. I cannot figure out why it's doing this.

Change the retraction distance, maybe you have a too long distance, that pushes the filament the whole way out.

Help with my G-Code to change filament change mid-print I'm using Ultimaker Cura, and I want to change the filament for a print that I'm attempting at layer 15. The problem I'm having is that I also need to use G-code to load and unload the filament with my BMG extruder. This is the script that Ultimaker Cura created for the post-process to pause at layer 15. ;current layer: 15 M83 G1 F3000 E-25 G1 F300 Z4 G1 F9000 X100 Y100 G1 F300 Z15 M104 S25; standby temperature M0;Do the actual pause M109 S215; resume temperature G1 F3000 E25 G1 F3000 E-25 G1 F300 Z4 G1 F9000 X101.7 Y137.3 G1 F3000 E25 G1 F9000 M82 G92 E763.80547 G4 P1 This is what I usually use to unload my filament: G21 ;Metric Values G90 ;Absolute Positioning M109 S205.000 ;205 Unload G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Positioning G1 E10 F100 ;Extrude 10mm filament G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Positioning G1 E-600 F1500 ;Retract Filament completely G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder M400 ;Wait Command M117 REMOVE FILAMENT NOW ;LCD Message M400 ; Wait Command And to load: G21 ;Metric Values G90 ;Set absolute positioning M109 S205.000 ;Preheat PLA M300 S440 P200 ; Tone M300 S660 P250 ; Tone M300 S880 P300 ; Tone G4 S5 ; Wait 5 seconds G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Position G1 E380 F1500; Fast Feed of 380mm filament G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Position G1 E100 F200 ;Feed 100mm filament slowly G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Position M400; Finish Move So this is what I came up with, will it work? ;current layer: 15 M83 G1 F3000 E-25 G1 F300 Z4 G1 F9000 X100 Y100 G1 F300 Z15 G92 E0; Reset extruder position G92 E-600 F1500; Retract Filament Completely M104 S25; standby temperature M0;Do the actual pause G92 E0; Reset Extruder Position M109 S215 ;Preheat PLA+ G1 E380 F1500; Fast Feed of 380mm filament G92 E0; Reset Extruder Position G1 E100 F200; Slowly Feed 100mm M104 S25; Standby Temperature M0; Do the actual Pause M109 S215; resume temperature G1 F3000 E25 G1 F3000 E-25 G1 F300 Z4 G1 F9000 X101.7 Y137.3 G1 F3000 E25 G1 F9000 M82 G92 E763.80547 G4 P1

First things first imho: M0 to stop the stamp. I dunno which firmware are you using but it should wait you to press a button on the LCD (Marlin does it). After that it run the gcode to unload and load the filament, resume temperature (M109 S215) and go ahead with the stamp. This is my final version: M83 G1 F3000 E-25 G1 F300 Z4 G1 F9000 X100 Y100 G1 F300 Z15 M0 ;Do the actual pause G21 ;Metric Values G90 ;Absolute Positioning M109 S205.000 ;205 Unload G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Positioning G1 E10 F100 ;Extrude 10mm filament G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Positioning G1 E-600 F1500 ;Retract Filament completely G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder M400 ;Wait Command M117 REMOVE FILAMENT NOW ;LCD Message M400 ; Wait Command G21 ;Metric Values G90 ;Set absolute positioning M109 S205.000 ;Preheat PLA M300 S440 P200 ; Tone M300 S660 P250 ; Tone M300 S880 P300 ; Tone G4 S5 ; Wait 5 seconds G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Position G1 E380 F1500; Fast Feed of 380mm filament G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Position G1 E100 F200 ;Feed 100mm filament slowly G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Position M400; Finish Move M109 S215; resume temperature G1 F3000 E25 G1 F3000 E-25 G1 F300 Z4 G1 F9000 X101.7 Y137.3 G1 F3000 E25 G1 F9000 M82 G92 E763.80547 G4 P1

Can parts that have warped (after being printed) be un-warped? I have an on-going project to build a large lampshade in the shape of a geodesic dome. It's made of 3D printed frames that will be covered with rice paper. I printed the parts in PLA over a month or so, but then had to ship them from Europe to Japan due to moving house. Unfortunately, when they arrived a lot of them had warped quite badly. In retrospect they weren't packed very well, and they probably got quite hot while travelling through the tropics in a shipping container. I'm wondering if there is any reasonable way to un-warp parts that have warped in this way. Specifically, if I heat them up again, will they go back to their original shape, or will that just make it worse? Here's a photo to show what the parts look like. The problem was a lot more obvious before I assembled it, but I didn't think to take a photo - here you can see that some of the edges aren't dead straight, but when they're not clipped to the other parts they're a lot worse. The edge of each triangle is a bit less than 20cm in length. I'd really appreciate any tips. It'd be a shame if this project ended up not looking perfect after so much printing time.

PLA stays a thermoplastic in printed shape. And as you saw when unpacking your things, tropical heat and force are enough to get a lasting deformation. Other people had PLA prints ruined from having them sit in the car, I had seen deformation on a purple print I had let sit in the sun on an edge. This also means that the reverse is true: under load to shape the part and some heat you can try to unbend parts. A hairdryer air of about 60-80 °C, which is more than enough to make PLA formable.

How can I determine whether my borosilicate glass is fake or not? Is there actually a way to determine whether the sheet of glass that one has received from a Chinese supplier on eBay is actually a sheet of Borosilicate glass, and not just a piece of normal glass intended for glazing purposes? Are there any laminations, or markings/features, visible under a certain light or if the sheet is viewed at a particular angle? I ask because most of the 200 x 300 mm sheets on eBay are priced at around £16 - £26, but there are a few priced at just £10, which still claim to be toughened glass, although they do not mention the word Borosilicate, such as this one, 300x200x3mm 3D Printer Heated Bed Toughened Glass Clear Build Plate UK STOCK. To paraphrase, "Usually if things seem to good to be true, then they are probably fake." However, I wondered whether it was worth a punt as it is only £10, and then if I would be able to verify its veracity once it was in my hands.

Google turned up this thread: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=96214 There don't seem to be any easy, definitive tests. You have two main options, both of which seem to require a fairly high level of laboratory skill (but nothing fancy in terms of equipment). The refractive index of Borosilicate glass is very similar to vegetable oil (implying no reflection from a boundary if you have a pool of oil on the glass). The density of the glass can be measured too, using a water bath. This should also be able to give a fairly accurate answer. Stress testing seems the most reliable way to determine if you have a 'good' sample, but may be more expensive.

Layer Separation Where A Previous Layer Ends I have a problem with my prints having a small separation gap between layers when I have a corner and the Z layer ends or starts for a partial distance. The gap reminds me of a gap between a print and its raft. Usually 1 layer just seems to be missing in places. I've been printing about a year now and I've tried different temps, line width, layer thicknesses. The problem has even been a problem after installing new firmware. I use Cura V4.5.0 and an Ender 3 printer. The problem is rather difficult to describe so I've attached an image demonstrating the problem.

Almost certainly the material that was supposed to be deposited there was lost (oozed out) somewhere else during travel moves due to no retraction, insufficient retraction, or retraction being skipped due to combing. Make sure retraction is on, at least 6 mm, and try disabling combing or setting the max combing distance very low, around 2 mm or less. If your new firmware is Marlin 2.0, you can try enabling linear advance too. If tuned correctly, it will largely correct for this along with improving lots of other things.

3D printer stepper motors only going one direction and skipping in the other I have built a couple of 3d printers now and I'm having a little trouble with one I'm currently on. I frankensteined this one with two of my other printers that I had built. I took the Arduino mega and ramps 1.4 out of the older one and wired it up to the newer one. When I plug the printer in and try to move the stepper motors they will go in the positive direction and skip and make loud noises when going the other direction. I have taken and separated out all the wires to make sure it wasn't a stray signal. I have also tried turning the voltage up and down on the drivers with no luck. I also swapped cables in case one might have been broken. The next step when I get home I'm going to try is connecting the old steppers and see if they work. After that I am pretty much at a loss. I already search Google and found a couple of things I could try, but figured maybe someone here might have an answer to why this might be happening. Steppers motors from the old printer are the same as the new one the only difference is manufactures. Update: The printers are: HE3d Prusa XI3 Max Micron Foldbot I'm just using the LCD, Ramps 1.4 and Arduino Mega 2560 R2 from the He3d and putting it on the Foldbot. With some other features but those shouldn't matter as they would work on both printers. The board from the Foldbot is the Arduino Mega 2560 built into the Ramps board MXP_PRO_V3.0. I'll try and get some pictures. Also switching steppers didn't work. Going to try to get X,Y,Z axis working separately see if i can find the problem that way. Update: Ok so I attached the old axis up and did a test with the endstops. Basically I think the new endstops must be the opposite of what the other printer was cause when i hold the end stop down the motor rotates in both directions and when i let go then it rotates only in a positive direction. I will see if this is part of the issue. I also believe that one of the motors is bad and that's why it wasn't making any sense when i first diagnose it.

From an electrical standpoint, a two-phase stepper motors (what most 3D printers use) works the same backwards and forwards, the phase just reverses. If you are stalling on only one direction, I would look to see if you have a mechanical bind in that direction. Generally a wiring issue will cause the motor to either not run at all or to run in the wrong direction. A few things you can check: Decouple the motors from their mechanical load and confirm that they all run correctly when they aren't driving a load. If you can't do that, disconnect them all then connect a spare motor to each cable one-at-a-time. Turn each of the axis with your hand and make sure it turns smoothly throughout the entire range in both directions. Note: Some times a binding issue is acceleration related - a loose frame or coupling can cause this. Monitor the supply voltage to make sure that one of the motors is not pulling the supply down causing all the others to stall.

How can I charge an Android phone while it's controlling my 3D printer? I am writing a G-code sender for Android, but I have hit a snag. How can I prevent the phone from discharging while it sending G-code to the printer? I have several Android phones and tablets and they have a micro USB OTG connector, which I can connect to my 3D printer using an adapter. But it looks like OTG has this limitation - it can either accept power when in Device mode, or it can provide power in Host mode. So, while in Host mode the phone can't be charged, so I can't do long prints, which seems like an unreasonable limitation. Any ideas on how to solve this?

See elsewhere on StackExchange: Electronics: Can an Android tablet serve as USB Host and be charged simultaneously through a single port? Android Enthusiasts Using an OTG cable while charging USB charging in host mode [duplicate] You certainly can charge whilst in host mode, but some re-wiring will be required. From the SE.Electronics link Apparently it is possible to charge the Host-Device! --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go Under "OTG Micro Plugs" it says that a USB OTG cable with a 36.5 kΩ resistor between Pin 4 (I suppose its pin 4) and Pin 5 allows you to connect a B-Device (Slave) and (!) a Charger to the Smartphone/Tablet. The Phone and the B-Device can be supplied by the external power source. USB-Power Specifications: http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs/batt_charging_1_1.zip and I just sifted through the docs because I didn't trust Wikipedia's implicit data on which of the three resistances I should use. Here you can find the official Battery Charging v1.2 Spec and Adopters Agreement: usb.org/developers/docs/devclass_docs In this case you want 124kΩ, because you want the OTG device (=tablet) to be the A device (=host). Here are the schematics:

Software for adding supports to 3D printed miniatures in STL file My main application for my 3D printer (Zortrax M200 Plus) is making 28 mm scale miniatures for role-playing games. Basically people and animals at 1:60 scale, which means that things like arms, legs, or weapons are only a few millimeters thick. If I use the automatically generated supports of the Z-Suite software, the supports end up being thicker than the model parts, and are impossible to remove. I had a bit more luck creating support structures with Meshmixer, but am not totally happy with those. So I am looking for other software to edit .STL files to add supports automatically, preferably with an option to edit those support structures easily afterwards. Any ideas? Note that Zortrax printers only work with proprietary Z-Suite software, so the software that adds the support also needs to be able to export the model with the supports into an STL file, not just gcode.

I don't think you'll find automated software to create supports "the way I want them to look." So... It might be worth investigating the "Advanced Properties" of Cura to see how thin, and thinly spaced, you can set its support walls to be. I know there are settings for reducing the thickness at the top of the support, as well as some sort of "top gap" setting, for just the kind of problem you're dealing with.

How to unload filament as cleanly as possible using the extruder motor? I usually unload filament using the extruder motor, with the nozzle around 30 °C below the filament's print temperature. Despite this, often a significant amount of filament is left in the nozzle, and the filament comes out with a long stringy tip. Does this suggest that the procedure might be leaving deposits of melted filament outside of the melt zone (potentially leading to blockages)? and if so, What sequence of temperature/movement controls would be most likely to remove or mitigate the risk of deposits? I am familiar with the “cold pull” technique, but I am looking for the best strategy for a solution using the printer's controls. I usually extrude a quantity of cleaning filament when changing filaments, though I'm not sure whether this would also clean any deposits outside the melt zone. I have seen a procedure called “cooling moves” in the Prusa Slicer code. I understand this is intended to produce a cleaner filament tip upon unloading in a multi-material scenario, and I wonder whether a similar strategy should be employed for regular unloading, although I am unable to tell from the code what exactly is happening. I am using a genuine E3D V6 hotend and a Bondtech BMG Extruder.

There's a bit of a compromise here: Filament cohesion in the nozzle isn't strong enough to remove all residue at higher temperature Extruder motors can't get sufficient grip / don't have sufficient torque for filament extraction at lower temperatures That means you'll always have to purge some of the old filament when changing to a new filament. To easily remove the old filament, you'd want to fill the nozzle, so that there's no large plug of filament that might get stuck in the Bowden tube (as suggested in a comment by Rosalie W), then pull the old filament out; and then purge the nozzle after inserting the new filament. How much you'll need to purge depends a bit on the filament and its color, but I'd guess 50 mm should be sufficient in most cases. As G-code, this might look something like that: ;Unloading G91 ;relative movement G1 E5 F300 ;fill nozzle G1 E-300 F3000 ;unload filament, 300 = Bowden length + hotend length G90 ;absolute movement ;Loading G91 ;relative movement G1 E295 F3000 ;load filament G1 E55 F200 ; purge filament G90 ;absolute movement

Extruder motor does spin - but not while printing I hope someone can poke me in the right direction, I´ve been failing to find a way around this problem and trying for about a week. My setup is pretty custom, I am using a BTT SKR 1.4 Turbo with TMC2208 driver and a BTT TFT V3 display. At the beginning of this problem I´ve added a second Z-Axis to my printer and made the mistake to declare both axes in Marlin (as I am only using one driver, I should not have to alter Marlin for this, but I found that out too late). At this point, I updated Marlin to take my new steps/mm for the Z-axis, but no matter how often I did, the firmware didn´t seem to change anything. Later (out of pure hopelessness) I used the M502 Command, followed by M500 to save and somehow this made my axis work and set the correct steps/mm out of my firmware (at this point, I already found the mistake in Marlin mentioned above). Relieved I started my first print... But the extruder motor (bowden setup) stopped turning and I don't know why. Now, I´ve been stuck with this strange behavior for a week: When I freshly boot the printer, the extruder motor spins (correct length and correct direction). I can do this via M-Command, TFT35 and Pronterface (PC-USB direct to the mainboard). Whenever I start a print, the extruder just stops (motor engaged, but not trying to turn, no skipping steps). No matter how long I wait, even in a 2-hour print, the motor doesn´t spin a bit. After the print and if I cancel the print the motor won´t turn again (tried all the ways mentioned before). BUT when I kill the power to the printer and let it reboot I can use the extruder in all the mentioned ways without any problems. I think this is a software problem, but I can´t find it. Looked through Marlin a few times, adjusted my Start G-code, looked at the existing G-code, I can not find the mistake. I´ll attach a few lines of G-code and my Start G-code (I use Cura 4.8). If someone knows a line in Marlin, I´ll look that up for you - it seems impossible to post the whole firmware somewhere. Start G-code: G21 ;metric values G91 ;relative positioning M107 ;start with the fan off G28 X0 Y0 ;move X/Y to min endstops G28 Z0 ;move Z to min endstops M900 K0.22 ; set K-primus-factor M117 K0.22 ; display K Value on display G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length G90 ; absolute positioning M82 ;set extruder to absolute mode G1 Z1 F500 ;move up slightly G1 Y60.0 Z0 E9.0 F500.0;intro line G1 Y100.0 E21.5 F500.0 ;continue line G-Code: G1 F600 Z0.3 G1 F1500 E0 G1 F1200 X99.215 Y92.699 E0.06147 G1 X99.708 Y92.391 E0.09734 G1 X100.377 Y92.083 E0.14279 G1 X100.743 Y91.958 E0.16666 G1 X101.484 Y91.803 E0.21337 G1 X102.187 Y91.748 E0.25689 G1 X103.552 Y91.72 E0.34114 G1 X118.764 Y91.72 E1.27986 If there are any ideas, please tell me. I am completely lost at this point! Edit: a few mistakes are gone now, formatting and PS.: "blockage of the extruder-motor" after starting a print happens no matter how I start a print (SD TFT/Pronterface/SD Mainboard)

Extruder stops to spin The problem you described seem to be reported elsewhere for TMC in relation to stealthChop mode (unsure, see below) and linear advance. For details look at this comment in Extruder stops during print (Bugfix-2.0.x) #17944. An advice from there is to supplement the G-code with (my interpretation): M569 S0 E ; disable stealthChop for extruder (use spreadCycle) M900 K0 ; disable linear advance There is also another discussion TMC2208 extruder driver shuts itself off in spreadcycle mode with pressure advance enabled #1774 for Klipper. Above summary is just a result of my quick look through, I suggest to re-read these articles with more insight. Also I propose to do following to doublecheck: execute M503 (without parameters) before and after print, compare reports (especially: M92, M203, M204) verify EXTRUDE_MINTEMP parameter in Configuration.h (I am not sure how does it behave during the print) I also saw the remedy: "Then I changed the extruder stepper motor wires and the problem is now fixed", but it is the edge case. Extrusion mode I personally prefer to use extrusion in relative mode, because it allows to manipulate G-code or restart the print from any line. You would need to put M83 in starting G-code instead of current M82, together with enabling Cura setting (Special Modes > Relative Extrusion). I am not sure what happens currently with your filament between in your file's: M82 ;set extruder to absolute mode G1 Y60.0 Z0 E9.0 F500.0;intro line G1 Y100.0 E21.5 F500.0 ;continue line ... G1 F1500 E0 For me it looks like it's retreating 21 mm of filament just at the start of print? So it cannot really print for several consecutive G-code lines, does it? Marlin settings vs EEPROM When updating settings in Marlin like steps/mm you should be aware, that values stored in EEPROM take precedence. Reinstalling firmware will not clear the EEPROM settings. If you want to make persistent change, save to EEPROM and alter the firmware config, to have these values secured for future as "defaults".

Stepper Motor for Prusa i3 We have stepper motors with these specs: 1200 mA 4 V 3.2 kg • cm Are these enough for building a Prusa i3 3D printer? (I live in Turkey and these are the specs of the NEMA 17 they sell in here)

Awful answer, I know, but it depends... on where you are going to employ them: are they are all, or just some, of the axes, or; just for the extruder? If they are for use in translating movement of the axes, then the weights of: the y-axis plate; the x-axis carriage, and; the print head, will all come into play - amongst many other things. With a torque of just 32 N • cm1, they seem, at first glance, to be a little underpowered - a torque of 44 N • cm (4.5 kg·cm) is the recommended minimum. Also, the current, of 1.2 A, seems to be a tad on the low side, 1.5 - 1.8 A is recommended. There are some great resources on the RepRapWiki. See: NEMA 17 stepper motor, and; Stepper motor The minimum (recommended) specifications, for a Nema 17 stepper motor, are: 1.5 A to 1.8 A current per phase 1 to 4 V 3 to 8 mH inductance per phase 44 N·cm (62 oz·in, 4.5 kg·cm) or more holding torque 1.8° or 0.9° per step (200/400 steps/rev respectively) You may be able to get yours to work, but is it worth the hassle, just to save a few quid? Best to get the recommended, and most popular steppers, which are: Kysan 1124090/42BYGH4803; Rattm 17HS8401, and; Wantai 42BYGHW609 Obviously, you don't have to use one of these three motors - other stepper motors can be used. On the Nema 17 Stepper motor link, above, there is a table of a number of stepper motors, of various makes and models, that have been proven to work. Further Reading Motors, a thread on the RepRap forums - specifically for the Prusa Mendel v2, so not entirely related to the i3, as the steppers for the z-axis are less than those for the x and y axes, but it is a good informative read nevertheless. 1 I assume that you actually mean either 32 N • cm, or 3.2 kg • cm.

What type of plastic can be used to produce your own filament? I'm considering purchasing Filabot or some similar filament maker. What kind of plastic can I use to produce my own filament? Can I use any type of plastic or just specific printable filaments? Can I also mix different types of filament together or only one type at a time?

Filament manufacturers (for example, Colorfabb) also sell pellets, price per kilo would be about 10 times less than the same plastic in filament form. Out of household garbage only ABS can be easily extruded into filament with Filabot-grade machine. PET AKA plastic bottles looks promising as well. You can also use certain products "off-label". For example, string trimmer string (line) is simply a nylon filament and can be used as-is in modern diameter-agnostic hot end.

Getting rid of hardware parts smell (GT2 timing belt) I ordered 10m of GT2 timing belt for a printer I want to build, however, the chemical smell from the belt is completely unbearable, in the sense of it gives me the feeling it is destroying something in my nose (and my nose isn't even particularly good). I tried to leave the belt outside in my garage for about three weeks now, but the smell has gone only so much. I naively assume it is the chemical to make the belt soft and bendable, would that even be a health risk having the belt around me for more extended intervals of time? Can I make the smell go away, and what would be the best way to do so?

It's a garbage-quality belt, and it will probably continue outgassing at a steadily-decreasing rate for a very long time. The fact that it has a strong chemical smell is pretty good evidence that it would not comply with regulations in civilized countries (such as REACH). I would recommend returning it or throwing it away and buying from a more reputable vendor. A large fraction of all cheap 3d printer parts these days are ridiculously far out of compliance with US/EU regs and basic common sense for contamination. If you're hell-bent on using a crappy knock-off belt to save a few bucks, you could put it under vacuum to try to suck out the residual chemical gas faster. Just apply the vacuum very slowly / in stages (say over 10 minutes) so you don't get decompression blisters in the rubber. You shouldn't need a hard vacuum, dropping to 0.5-1 psia or 0.05 bar absolute for a day or two should help significantly. No guarantees though.

3d printing for outdoor use: what types of filament are most weather resistant? I'd like to print modifications for my birdfeeder, both to patch over the hail damage from last summer and to try to deter the neighborhood squirrels. I have an FDM printer (and experience with nylon, ABS, and PLA, though don't restrict answers to those if there's something else that's better), what kind of filament would stand up best to daily exposure to sun, rain, snow, etc?

PET(G) is a strong contender. It is very strong and water-resistant, and as such is often used to make pop bottles. PLA has a reputation for being "biodegradable" and therefore it is often discouraged to use PLA outside and/or in contact with water. However, PLA only biodegrades under very specific conditions which it won't generally be exposed to so it can be used (though, as a harder and less flexible material it is more likely to be damaged by hail). ABS and Nylon are good choices as well. Basically, any plastic you have on hand will last for years, even in an outside application.

Marlin customization; additional output after G0/G1 move This question concerns an Anet A8 with customized Marlin Firmware 1.1.9. I need to generate an additional digital output to signal move complete to trigger some data acquisition process. The extruder is not connected and was planning to use those outputs. Which section handles G-code processing and is there an already available option to get the job done? Basically, I'm trying to use the Anet A8 as a computer-controlled positioning system. It involves some other elements which need to be triggered in a stationary state. The requirement is: G0 X10 Y10 after this is complete: set a pin high and low after a 10 ms delay. this after every move. Additionally if I could add my own G-code to preserve the original operation would be ideal.

Which section handles G-code processing? In Marlin Firmware, G-code is processed by procedure void process_parsed_command() in file Marlin_main.cpp I need to generate an additional digital output A G-code that is able to set a port value is M42. You could write a procedure that schedules certain port after a G0 or G1 move, recompile and upload the firmware.

Why do different drivers change the noise of steppers? I've upgraded my stepper drivers. I'm looking to understand why my stepper motors made noise in the first place.

Stepper motors contain two distinct sets of coils. The current in these coils is governed by your stepper motor driver. To move the motor in either direction, the coils are being driven one after another, and in different directions. Imagine this being a normal 3-phase AC motor, but instead of three phases, only two are used. A "full steps" (1/1 "microstepping") would mean switching one coil off and the other on - resulting in a jerky motion to the next position. Real stepper motors have multiple sets of those coils (rather than two like in the diagram) - usually 200 or 400, giving 1.8° or 0.9° of rotation per "full step". Such motion is usually not desired, since the immediate movement of the motor creates noise and vibration. If both coils are driven with less current (71% of the full current, the reciprocal of the square root of 2, so that the total force on the motor remains the same) during the switch from one current to the other, another position can be achieved - a "half step" between two full steps. This can be repeated for higher number of "microsteps", with 16 being the usual compromise. Optimal smoothness - and next to no noise - would be achieved by driving the stepper motor with pure sine waves. The closer a stepper driver can get to that pure sine wave, the lower the noise made by the stepper motor will be: Some stepper motor drivers, most notably the TMC family of chips, can generate 256 microsteps internally, approximating a sine wave quite well. Other stepper motor drivers (like the LV8729) can also handle 128 microsteps, but they require the printer control board to send an individual step signal for each of those steps - which may limit speed because of the additional load on the board's MCU.

Adding a custom printer to Cura I'm trying to enter the settings into Cura for the printer. The manual has a screenshot of what they should be: However, when I run Cura and try to enter the settings I'm presented with different options: How do I translate the settings from teh screenshot into the settings I have available? Should I be concerned about the settings that aren't available to enter? Are they important? Do I need to enter them somewhere else?

Your manual is in another Castle! The manual you look at is for Cura (1) 15.04. You are however using Ultimaker Cura 3, most likely the most recent 3.6. Quick references The machine setup is for the physical settings of the machine - build volume, nozzle diameter, coordinate system and such. The other settings you refer to are all set in the right bar, but you will have to switch from simple to advanced mode, and possibly activate the settings you need.

Why does infill percentage stop the print from sticking to the bed? I've recently purchased an Ender 3 and have had great success with some Cura settings found on a YouTube Tutorial at 0.2 mm resolution. So then I noticed that there were default settings in Cura for the Ender 3. Except printing at 0.2 mm it selects a 20 % infill, and when choosing 0.1 mm it changed the infill to 10 %. I changed infill to 20 % and attempted to print this but there were gaps in the bottom layer and it won't stick to the bed. Is there anything else I need to change in the process? The shape is essentially a cube with a circular hole in the middle, sliced in half.

The more infill, the more material. The more material, the more stress is inside the part while it cools down from printing temperature to ambient temperature. Parts with higher infill density tend to warp more (the edges curl up). But 20 % should be fine, you shouldn't have any issue at that percentage (unless you're printing with ABS/ASA). I think it's a first layer issue, the 0.2 mm first layer gets more 'squished' onto the bed, thats why you get better adhesion. I'm using PrusaSlicer, every default print profile in PrusaSlicer uses a 0.2 mm first layer, maybe there is something like that in Cura too? For example the 0.1 mm PrusaSlicer profile will squish a 0.2 mm first layer onto the bed and changes to 0.1 mm layers for the rest of the print.

Excessive filament powder/shavings near the extruder I'm printing a Tower of Pi on my Ender 3, and I woke up to find this near the extruder: All my attempts to google this led to checking for either a clogged nozzle or the extruder itself stripping the filament, neither of which appears to be the case. It looks like the upper edge of the filament might be grinding against the intake hole, so I looked into lubrication, but the consensus appears to be "don't". Has anyone else had this problem? Is there a name for it, and how do I fix it?

The shavings come in part from the extruder design: there is no fillet on the pulling in side, the filament goes up in a sharp angle and is dragged over a rather sharp edge. It also brushes against the leadscrew. To help with the shavings, you should alter the filament path to try and have a flatter angle than the 90°. A simple rod that pushes out the filament to come in at 80° might already reduce the number of shavings. More might be reduced by opening the entry hole of the filament to have a 1-2 mm phase around it, altering the angle of the edge that the filament runs against to a much lower one and reducing the ability to shave off flakes. I did swap my extruder for an aluminium one, and it has this phase, and since then I have had little to no shavings at that spot anymore.

My MakerBot 2 jams after a couple hours of prints My MakerBot 2 jams after a couple hours of prints. It is a couple months old, and the tip stops extruding after a couple straight hours of prints. I am guessing that there is a design flaw and that the media is melting inside the extruder before the feeding teeth. Does anyone have experience with this?

As you stated, it could be a result of the material beginning to melt before the extruder. Here's a few things to look out for: Is your extruder temperature appropriate for the material? Typical printing temperatures can range anywhere from 200 - 225 °C for PLA (depending on the supplier). Often, if the extruder is too hot, the material will bubble or over extrude. Is the material of proper quality? There's a reason MakerBot Industries wants you to use their filament (besides putting their hands in your pocket book), and that is repeatability. They've tested their filament on their hardware and ensured that the material will extrude with regular print settings. Is the material being stored properly? Sometimes people forget to store PLA in a dry place to avoid absorbing moisture in the filament. If moisture is absorbed, it can perform poorly in the print. Indications of moisture can include a slight steam from the extruder and/or bubbles in the extruded material (similar to overheating). Are the fans operating correctly? If the fans aren't running or aren't running enough, the filament begins to heat further up the extrusion assembly (closer to the drive gear) which can inhibit extrusion. I know that MakerWare/MakerBot Desktop has been updated lately with more emphasis on controlling fans for active cooling, so make sure that your fan(s) are operating for duration of the print as necessary. All and all, your filament is getting too hot. If you can't determine the sudden change, consider printing with a lower extruder temperature from now on. However, if you're using MakerBot filament (or similar quality) then I would definitely verify that your machine is calibrated, wires are fully connected, and settings are double checked. If all is as expected, then you should call MakerBot support (since they're closed source now, they technically have an obligation to help you) especially since the machine is so new.

reducing cross-sectional area Some filaments suggest "reducing cross-sectional area" of the print. Is this referring to the vertical plane or horizontal plane? In other words, if I were to print a rectangular prism, would I want the long side of it printed in the vertical direction or parallel to the print bed?

Based on your link in the comment, the cross-sectional area is the one on the X-Y axis (horizontal). The least area, the least material there is "pulling up" (curling) the layer when the plastic cools down. When it comes to your specific question: if I were to print a rectangular prism, would I want the long side of it printed in the vertical direction or parallel to the print bed? ...the answer is not as simple as "long side vertical", as you want both little warping and strong parts and the two may be better achieved by differen orientations. Personally I would base my choice on the intended application: as the difference between the Z and the X+Y axis is their behaviour under load is substantial. FDM artefacts are anisotropic: they resist very well to compression along the Z or tension along the X & Y axis, but are weak along the same axis if you invert the direction of the force applied. Again: this difference is not marginal but substantial. Keep in mind that "area" is actually "printed area", so you could have a model with a large footprint but a small printed area (think to the bottom of a Tour Eiffel model, or to a pipe standing up). Were I to experience warping or poor adhesion with a specific model, I would reduce the cross-sectional area in the model (by adding relief cuts and/or cavities) or in the slicer (by decreasing the density of the infill) or would tackle the issue fror another angle, for example by switching the bed material (some specialised surface with good adhesion for the type of filament in use) or creating the object I wanted with an assembly rather than in a solid piece... But again: it would be a second-order consideration for me, and I would worry about it only if the problem were actually manifesting for that specific model. For example: say that I were to print the head of a hammer. I would print it with the surface that hits the nail parallel to the printing bed so that the compression force resulting from hitting a nail would be along the Z axis. The link of a chain? Flat on the bed, so that the pulling forces from stretching the chain would be aligned with the X and Y axis.

Auto physical bed leveling? I've never used a printer with auto bed leveling, but my understanding is that most or all of them don't actually level anything, but rather compensate for the unlevel bed in firmware by transforming the coordinates. It seems to me this would necessarily introduce aliasing artifacts in all your prints by making it so that line widths are no longer a whole number of microsteps - I immediately observed such an effect on top/bottom skin when I tried to use steps-per-mm tweaking in firmware to compensate for a dimensional error rather than fixing the mechanical source of the error, and concluded that it was a dead-end approach. If the auto-leveling firmware only makes adjustments with the Z motor as it moves, rather than transforming all three coordinates, it seems like that would be mostly or entirely mitigated, but with slight errors in dimensional accuracy dependent on how tilted the bed actually is. Do any of the printers with (or add-on kits for) auto bed leveling actually level the bed mechanically, with servos attached to the adjustment knobs? Why isn't an approach like that more common?

Automatic bed levelling is not magic; it still requires you to level the bed properly (as level as possible). The upside of automatic bed levelling is that it compensates for small deviations like a slightly slanted surface or a (somewhat large) dent in the surface (as long it is probed and can be digitized by the firmware). It will keep the nozzle at a distance to the bed that it maintains proper distance to the bed for the filament to adhere properly (first layer adherence is key for successful prints). The slight imperfections are smeared out over about 10 mm (set in the firmware), this way you do not need transformations for the whole print (so if you deliberately make the bed very skew, the print will follow the Z axis, not the direction perpendicular to the bed). While systems to level or align the bed exist, it is not very practical and expensive as it requires more parts, that is why it is not commonly used. Apart from the suggested printer in this answer, printers with e.g. 4 ball screw Z movement lead screws exist (mostly printers for companies, not for use at home); ball screws are way more expensive, but also way more accurate than trapezoidal lead screws. A low accuracy is preferable as such systems generally have no guiding linear rods (as that would mean that you fix the plane/alignment of the build platform!).

Good lubricants for moving parts? What materials work well for lubricating moving PLA, ABS, or PETG parts? I'm talking items like the the Gear Bearings or Print in Place Engine. I've played with a few lubricants on my own, including hand lotion, trumpet valve oil, and carmex/vaseline. Of these, the vaseline has worked best for me so far, but I'd like to hear what has worked well for others, or especially if there's anyone here who understands the chemistry involved and could explain what to look for in different situations.

When dealing with lubrication of plastics, any solvent or reactive substance is to be avoided. Petroleum is risky and Vaseline™ is a brand name for petroleum jelly. I've had quite good results using inert lubrication such as PTFE and silicone based lubes. PTFE is the generic term for Teflon­™ and is quite a good lubricant. There are both silicone and PTFE greases for higher viscosity applications. From the Teflon™ link: Teflon's amazing properties are down to its structure. Like most polymers, Teflon has a carbon-based chain. However, instead of reactive C-H bonds which occur in most polymers, Teflon has all its hydrogens replaced by fluorines. These strong C-F bonds are extremely resistant to attack by any other reagents, making Teflon very inert. This means that no other molecules will react with or stick to Teflon. The exception is Teflon itself, which will stick to itself quite readily, forming thick layers or solid blocks. With a friction coefficient of <0.1, Teflon has the second lowest friction coefficient (surpassed only by diamond-like carbon), which makes it perfect for non-stick items e.g. pans. DuPont invented the non-stick pan coated with Teflon in 1956 and have manufactured it ever since. Teflon coatings are so slippery that they are the only material that a gecko cannot stick to. Who knew that gecko testing was a thing? Wikipedia for silicone grease: Although silicones are normally assumed to be chemically inert, several historically significant compounds have resulted from unintended reactions with silicones. Powdered graphite is also a good lubricant if one can tolerate loose powder in some constructions. I've read of others using lithium grease, but not for plastic lubrication.

Print came out like a wafer I'm not sure how else to describe it. There's probably a name for this but I just don't know it. But the bottom few layers came out great, but the rest came out kind of like a triscuit. Below are pics of my print and settings. I am using a delta style printer. Can someone tell me what this issue is called and how to fix it?

The phenomenon you experience is called under-extrusion. Under-extrusion is the effect of extruding lesser filament than required for the print. The result of under-extrusion (depending on the amount of under-extrusion) can be described as spongy prints, gaps in prints/layers, failed prints, etc. As the amount of plastic flow is less than required for the print, the quality and print strength is much lower than that of a normal filament flow printed part. Most severe under-extrusion is usually caused by incorrect filament diameter setting. E.g. Ultimaker Cura (to date, April 2019, the version is 4.0) is notorious for resetting the filament diameter to 2.85 mm after you upgraded to a newer version (because that is the diameter of the filament the Ultimaker machines use) while most people use 1.75 mm diameter filament. From the settings if appears you have set the correct filament diameter (i.e. if you use 1.75 mm filament). Please measure the filament over a few meters and determine the average filament diameter to be sure. In your case it must be something else! A higher temperature causes filament to be more fluid (do check if the temperature you use fits the type of filament you use), so an increased temperature should help against under-extrusion (less friction for the extruder to push the filament through the nozzle). Please do check the extruder stepper; is it skipping?, is the tension the extruder gear exerts on the filament enough to prevent slipping? Finally, blockage of the nozzle; partial blockage of the nozzle can prevent consistent flow from the nozzle. It is advised to rigorously clean the nozzle (e.g. using the atomic cleaning method where you heat up the nozzle insert filament and turn off the heat to pull the filament out when temperature is about 30 °C lower than the printing temperature of the filament) or replace the nozzle. To complete the answer, another source for under extrusion that is seen from the beginning of 2020 of Marlin firmware operated 3D printers is that instead of normal extrusion (where E in the G-code file denotes extrusion of filament movement in units of length), the printer assumes it is volumetric displacement. From the Marlin menu of the graphical controller you can change volumetric displacement to length displacement by disabling volumetric flow.

Turn off OctoPrint server after starting print from SD card I have OctoPrint set up on a Raspberry Pi (OctoPi). I have loaded a number of G-code files to the SD card on the printer. My question is: If I initiate a print from the SD card via OctoPrint, can I then turn off the RPi so I can use it for other things while the print continues?

Your printer will stop printing. So no.

How to cut OpenBeam/MakerBeam? I'm building a 3D printer and I've been looking around for materials suitable to make the frame. I have occasional access to a laser cutter which I could use to manufacture a ply box-type (UltiMaker) enclosure, but I like the ease of adjustment provided by the T-slot beam kits. I don't have any metal-cutting machine tools. Can aluminium beam be cut by hand with a hacksaw to a good degree of accuracy? How does one finish the cut end?

Aluminum of almost every grade is very easy to cut with a hacksaw. I would suggest to mark clearly the cut line and to wrap masking tape at the edge of the cut. Consider to allow for about 2-3 millimeters (1/16") extra material for final finishing. Cut across the line, rotate the part ninety degrees and cut again. Once you have the guide cuts in place, you should be able to manage a square cut by following those guides You will want to have a clamping mechanism available, such as a vise or workbench type device. After the cut is done, use a sharp file to make final adjustments to the length and appearance. Push the file, do not drag it backwards. Push forward, lift away from the work piece as you return, then push again. Pick up a file card, which is a fine metal-tooth brush used to clear the teeth of the file. It is very easy to remove material with a hand file, perhaps three or four strokes to remove 1/16". Your accuracy will depend on the measurement of the lines you create and how carefully you file to the edge of those lines.

Z axis Stepper motors not working correctly I have been searching around the internet for the last 3 days trying to figure this out. My Z axis motors for a pursa-i3 3d printer are not working correctly. I have marlin firmware and using repetier host. I send a command to move the z axis and I get it to move, however I if I send the same command again the motors will sometimes spin the other way. feel like They almost randomly choose which direction they turn. As I said I have been trouble shooting this for a while now. What I am suspecting is the firmware feedrates and acceleration or some setting is not correct. Here is my code: //// MOVEMENT SETTINGS #define NUM_AXIS 4 // The axis order in all axis related arrays is X, Y, Z, E #define HOMING_FEEDRATE {50*60, 50*60, 2*60, 0} // set the homing speeds (mm/min) #define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT {80,80,4000,590} #define DEFAULT_MAX_FEEDRATE {300, 300, 3, 45} // (mm/sec) #define DEFAULT_MAX_ACCELERATION {1000,1000,50,500} // X, Y, Z, E maximum start speed for accelerated moves. E default values are good for Skeinforge 40+, for older versions raise them a lot. #define DEFAULT_ACCELERATION 1000 // X, Y, Z and E max acceleration in mm/s^2 for printing moves #define DEFAULT_RETRACT_ACCELERATION 1000 // X, Y, Z and E max acceleration in mm/s^2 for retracts #define DEFAULT_XYJERK 10 // (mm/sec) #define DEFAULT_ZJERK 0.3 // (mm/sec) #define DEFAULT_EJERK 5.0 // (mm/sec) I tried swapping the drivers around and the motors will work perfectly on another axis so I don't suspect it to be a driver issue. I have been turning the pots ontop of the drivers to make them work but can't make them to go the same direction i want them to. I've checked the wires and I almost sure they are wired up correctly. (could be wrong but have checked it over with a multimeter.) I am new to this and it's my first time building one of these would appreciate any help I can get and and maybe I have over looked something I have tested. Just really want the axis to move in the direction That I say it to move in. More details about my setup is: A Robocraze 3D Printer Controller Board RAMPS 1.4 using A4988 stepper motors drivers and my motors are the nema 17 stepper motors. I currently have the two z axis motors wired in parallel but have tried before using series, however the problem of being unable to control the direction of the Z motors still arises (can easily switch back to series). currently trying with no load just to get the motors turn in the correct direction when I send a G-code command. I am using Repetier host on ubuntu 14.04.5. I have also check the endstops and they are working perfectly, so they ain't a problem (I don't think :p) Thank you, Bobby

So after 5 days of trouble shooting, Bob-the-Kuhn over on the marlin github forum solved it for, anyone else who faces the same issue can head over to github for my solutions. https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Marlin/issues/9287#issuecomment-359428147 Conversation from link: Bob-the-Kun: Problem does not follow the driver. Problem does not follow the steppers. I'm thinking that the Z socket has a problem. Sounds like an open/poor contact. Try bending the DIRECTION lead on the Z driver a little and see if the problem disappears. It's one of the corner pins. Sometimes it's called DIR. If your driver's pins aren't labeled then bend all four corner pins a little. Another option is to move the Z function to the E1 socket. Replace your pins_RAMPS.h file with this one. pins_RAMPS.zip FYI - if this really is a hardware problem then it's the second RAMPS hardware problem within a week. Most unusual. Post reply: Yes the socket I am now assuming is just broken (not sure what exactly but possibly one of the connections), After using for pins_RAMPS file and changed the motors back to series and connected to the E1 slot I successful got the printer to work!!! Thank you very much Z axis is working as I would expect! I am now calibrating the printer as it definitely needs it.

Slicer software capable of working with large filaments I'm starting work on a very large 3d printer that uses very large filament. The idea is to house the entire thing in a shipping container and print things as large as cars. Filament will be some type of epoxy that is to be extruded out of a large 25mm nozzle. A second smaller nozzle using the same material will be used to do finer edges. A third nozzle will be used to produce supports of a different material. I know this is quite different than most 3d printing applications. I am wondering what slicers I should look into using that are adaptable enough to work with these constraints, or if such software exists.

After checking it up, Ultimaker Cura (and possibly most other slicers capable of multi-extruder setups) is able to handle multiple extruders of varying nozzle size and seems to be ok with 25 mm Nozzles or something ludicrous such as 200 mm filament. You should aid its slicing in some way: Dedicate one nozzle to the support structure, that's easy. Design your parts with 2 shells: One is the main body with corners cut to the main nozzle's extrusion diameter. The other is the corners and details.

Small structures are deformed after switching to Duet Wifi I just switched to the Duet Wifi board (used MKS Gen L 1.0 before) and now small structures look terrible. From my observations the hot end moves correctly, but almost no filament gets extruded. On the other hand larger structures look very good. With the MKS board the exact same G-code worked fine. After that I gradually disabled many features like coasting, wiping and even retractions altogether, the quality only improved by a tiny margin. Example print (the two towers should be cylinders): Additional information: Printer: JGAurora A5 Material: PETG Slicer: Simplify3D More info (edit): Hot end temperature: 225 °C (for the affected layers) Bed temperature: 60 °C (I corrected the thermistor data, it's equivalent to 70-75 °C on other JGAurora A5 printers) Nozzle diameter: 0.4 mm Part cooling fan: 100% (improved cooler duct by Da Hai Zhu) Print speed: 50 mm/s (50% for outline) The cylinder is printed hollow because of my infill settings Lubricant is fresh, belts are tightened, so there should be no mechanical issues

The OP found the solution and shared this in comments but has not written a proper answer. The OP found: To complete this, the issue was related to the part cooling fan not spinning correctly. After replacing it the problem was gone.

Controlling a 3D printer with another Arduino device over serial If this is a silly question I apologize but I am trying to establish a serial connection between a 3D printer (Ender 3) and an Arduino Nano over the USB port. I am able to connect the 3D printer to a serial monitor on my PC and send G-code to it and control the printer. I am also able to connect my Arduino to the serial monitor and also send and receive strings. When I connect the Arduino directly to the 3D printer using a USB cable and separately powering the Arduino the 3D printer does not seem to respond to the G-code being sent over serial. What am I missing?

This isn't really a 3D-printing issue as much as it is about Arduino, USB, and how serial connections over USB differ from a generic UART serial connection. For a UART-based serial connection, there are only two devices, and both devices are peers - either can send data to the other with no real restrictions as long as the speeds are set correctly. USB allows multiple devices to be connected, and is much more complicated. One device must be a "host", which manages everything. The other devices can be much simpler as they don't need to be a host. Typically, your PC is the host, and your keyboard, mouse, memory stick, Arduino, printer, etc. are all just attached devices. If you've managed to connect your Arduino's USB port to your printer's USB port, the problem is most likely that neither device has hardware or software to be a host, so the USB connection won't work. There was a "USB Host Shield" for Arduino, but is is no longer in production. Perhaps you can still find one somewhere, or somebody else makes an equivalent. There is also an Arduino "USBHost" library, which is compatible with the Arduino Due only.

How to determine real printing speed (TEVO Tarantula/Cura)? Recently I noticed that Cura always is giving me less printing time than the print itself takes on my TEVO Tarantula with Marlin firmware. The time difference is about 15 %, at requested 50 mm/s printing speed. How could I verify real printing speed?

Printing speed is dependent by the firmware and physical properties of your printer. Slicers typically compute the expected time by assuming the printer will execute exactly what it is instructed to do, but a printer is a real object, with mass and momentum, and stepper motors that have an upper limit for their power output and rotation speed. So for example, the GCODE may say "extrude 200mm at 100mm/s" and the slicer will compute that operation as taking 2 seconds. However the printer will need to accelerate and decelerate at the extremes of the movement, and it may even be incapable of reaching speeds over 70mm/s, so the actual operation will likely take 3 seconds or more. Accelerations and decelerations account for most of the difference between ideal time and real one, and since the number and intensity of those is totally dependent by the GCODE/model being printed, it is not possible to simply multiply the computed time for a given factor (for example 1.15, as your question seems to imply). A large cylinder printed in vase mode will have a printing time much more similar to the computed one that an intricate model with a very complex surface, for example. In recent years, slicers that are maintained by a printer manufacturer (cura, slic3r PE) have become better at estimating printing times for their own printers, as the settings of the firmware are accounted for in the actual estimating algorithm. If you use Octoprint, you may have noticed that the time estimate octoprint gives improves over time, as octoprint will analyse the GCODE and measure the elapsed time, and will be able to guesstimate the real time with an increasingly degree of accuracy.

Migbot extruder loading Has anyone seen a printed bottom extruder block with a cone added to get the filament into the hole which then feeds into the metal tube that connects to the heater? We have a hard time getting coiled filament lined up, the filament curves and takes a lot of twists and tries to get into the hole in the bottom plastic block, and lately we've just taken to removing the fan/heatsink at the end of the servo to guide it in my hand, which is a pain in the butt and likely to wear out screw holes or something eventually. Hopefully this drawing shows what I mean. It would be the 10th picture here, with a cone added above the hole at the lower left. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:852591

If the question is "has anyone seen..." my answer is yes. It's not precisely what you show in the drawings, but close enough and for the same purpose. In the case of a Robo3D R1+ printer, replacing the stock "hexagon" hot end with an E3Dv6 hot end provides for a piece of PTFE tubing inserted into the heat sink. The recommendation from the denizens of the 'net is to slice the top of the tubing in the shape you have in the drawing and to have the tubing extend sufficiently to reach the junction of the hob gear and pinch roller. This took some doing, but I was able to get an appropriate taper to the tubing end that does not contact the moving parts. As the fed-in filament exits the assembly, the small gap between the wheels and the tubing gives the filament nowhere else to go but into the heat sink and hot end. As your design reference indicates a 3D printed part, it might be practical to engineer into that segment a larger hole to take the PTFE tubing and then size the length after the wheels are in place. The above image shows the added PTFE tubing surrounding the filament. Even though the slightly diagonal cut appears somewhat as a cone, it is not. The edges are parallel to the rollers/hob gear. The lower portion has been omitted for ease of drawing, but would extend into a hole drilled or printed in the block holding the assembly, based on the thingiverse link provided.

Is z-axis zero near the hotend? I'm in the process of building the D-Bot core XY printer, and I was hoping to know if the Z-axis 'zero' is near the hot end or near the bottom of the printer furthest away from the hotend? In this printer the Z-platform moves up and down and the nozzle stays at the same height.

Generally, Z-axis zero is when the hot end and the build plate are close to each other. Some printers keep the hot end up at the top, and bring the build plate up to reach it. Other printers keep the build plate at the bottom, and lower the hot end down to reach it. As such, "Z axis zero" doesn't specify top or bottom of the physical printer, it just specifies that the hot end is right up against the build plate, ready to print its first layer. In the printer you describe, where the hot end remains at the top, that's where Z zero is. In terms of the model being printed, Z axis zero is always the bottom of the model, the first layer to be deposited on the build plate. The numbers increase from there, either lifting the hot end up, or pushing the build plate down, depending on the design of the printer.

Should I consider health impact of ABS or PLA when printing cookie cutter? Should I consider health impact of ABS or PLA when printing cookie cutter similar to image below? How safe it is to use ABS or PLA for kitchenware in general?

If it's one-time-use, both ABS and PLA are perfectly safe for use as a cookie cutter. The "food safety" of 3D printed parts is fairly controversial. In fact, whether any particular material is approved by regulators (such as the US FDA) for food contact is much more complex than most people realize. Materials can be accepted for some uses and not others. But there are two major considerations: Does the material leach into the food, or does the food leach into the material? Can the material be adequately cleaned and sterilized between repeated food exposures? Whether leaching is a concern will depend on the kind of contact. For example, nylon will absorb acids but is often used for potable water service. ABS is fine for cold foods but not hot foods. PLA (injection grade) is often used for disposable plastic forks and cold beverage cups, but rarely reusable containers. There is some anecdotal evidence that lots of 3D printing filaments, particularly cheap Asian filaments, contain toxic chemicals in the pigments and additives. Heavy metals like lead, cadmium, strontium, and all sorts of nasty organic chemicals have been found. You probably WON'T get any meaningful leaching of these chemicals in the brief exposure with cookie dough, but to be safe I would only use reputable US and EU filament manufacturers for food contact. I would also stick to filament colors that use non-toxic pigments (eg plain white is almost always safe titanium dioxide) or no pigments at all ("natural" color). When it comes to cleaning a cookie cutter for multiple uses, ABS is probably a much better choice than PLA, because ABS can withstand fairly hot water without losing shape. PLA probably won't survive a cycle through the dishwasher. PETG is perhaps a better choice than ABS for longer contact with wet foods, but may or may not survive the dishwasher. However, the porous structure of 3D printed parts is a serious problem for cleanliness. The tiny grain structure and voids between extruded strands can act as a safe haven for bacteria between uses. This is particularly an issue with cookie dough containing raw egg. A porous surface for raw-food handling would not be acceptable in a commercial kitchen. Now, the odds of actually transmitting salmonella via poorly-cleaned cookie cutter may be fairly low. Lots of people cut meat at home on wooden cutting boards (which are also porous) and never get sick. Properly cooking the food immediately after handling will go a long way towards reducing the odds of harmful cross-contamination. You'll have to decide for yourself whether the risk profile is worth it. One-time use is the conservative choice.

What is the best length of the melting zone in the hotend? There are many hot end designs out thee and one difference is the length of the melting zone. The melting zone is that part of the hotend where the pushed in filament is heated up and therefore starts to melt. Is it better to have a short melting zone, or a long melting zone? What are advantages of each solution. And are there materials that benefit from a short/long melting one more than others?

Short melting zone melts material in small amount which is suitable for thin layers with small nozzles. In opposite long melting zone can heat big amount of filament which is needed for fast printing and thick layers. short melting zone less amount of melted material thin layer heights quality printing with details give more precise volume control with less flow/pressure lag and better retraction performance (thx @Ryan-Carlyle) nozzles: 0.25-0.8mm (available for E3Dv6) long melting zone more amount of melted material thick layer heights fast printing with less details nozzles: 0.4-1.2mm (available for E3D Volcano) Example Example of those hotends are E3Dv6 and E3D Volcano E3Dv6 E3D Volcano with much longer melt zone then v6 Speed comparison video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PQjwvWoGpk Speed comparison graph:

Help preventing warping while 3d printing with polypropylene I am wondering if anyone can help me achieve a good 3d print using polypropylene. I am trying to print custom insoles for shoes and I'm getting some bad warping/lifting (see image). Some details about the print and process: I have a Prusa i3 Mk2S with a Flexion extruder I am using what I believe is a good quality filament (Verbatim PP): https://www.verbatim.com.au/3d-printing/pp-filament/3d-pp-filament.html I am coating my hotbead with clear packaging adhesive (OPP tape) as per the manufacturers instructions. This appears to help quite a bit. Bed heated to 75 degrees. I tried 100 but got hit with the "Heatbed Thermal Runaway" error which I believe indicates that not enough voltage is getting to the bed heater. I've tried printing at 220 degrees and 170 degrees. I've tried enclosing the printer in a makeshift enclosure to reduce the speed that the material is cooling at. Other settings: speed 40mm/s constant, 0.2mm layer height, 20% infill, 3 top bottom and side layers. The print takes about 5 hours and seems to stay down for an hour or two before starting to warp. Does anyone have any suggestions of things I should try?

You should enable the "brim" functionality of your slicer. This adds additional perimeters to the first layer, expanding the base of the model. The larger surface area gives more adhesion.

Anet A8 LCD shows garbage data after done printing I have an Anet A8, and recently updated the firmware to Marlin 1.1.8. My only change was replacing the configuration files by the Anet A8 sample files built in with the firmware zip file. Everything works fine but, sometimes, right after finishing a printing (while doing the "home all"), the LCD shows some weird data, like this: The same happens when push the "confirm", after the mesh bed leveling. I'd like to know why it happens. Is it a Marlin bug?

This is a known problem of the Anet A8 display, it is caused by electrical interference. Pressing the middle button will refresh the display. This is prone to happen when doing long prints. There are some reported successes of people inserting ferrite beads or toroidal rings. No, this is not a firmware issue, this is a hardware issue.

How to choose an extrusion temperature? From what I've been able to find out, online sources recommend around 205ºC for PLA and around 240ºC for ABS. But these are only guidelines, of course. Optimal printing temperature can be different depending on the printer, the filament, the model and other slicer settings. For example, I've had success printing black PLA at 190ºC, but silver PLA of the same brand is giving me trouble. I'm having a hard time figuring out the general rules. So I would like to see a general guide for this, based on (at least) the following questions: Which known factors before a print can help determine the right extrusion temperature? Obvious example: ABS vs PLA What can happen during or after a print when the temperature is too low? What can happen during or after a print when the temperature is too high? An answer to the first question could take the form of a lookup table, or similar. The second and third could help someone adjust their temperature based on the symptoms of a failed print. I understand that the failure or success of a print can depend on many more factors than extrusion temperature, but I didn't want to make this question too general. I may later ask the same question for other settings (e.g., print speed). However, do let me know if this question should be expanded or improved to make it more useful.

Printing temperature basics Manufacturers generally specify a somewhat wide range of printing temperatures, and what temperature you should actually need can only be determined by trial and error: The thermistor in your hotend is not 100 % accurate and may have an offset of a few degrees compared to its actual temperature. Your hotend has a small temperature gradient, the place where the plastic is melted may have a higher/lower temperature compared to the temperature of your thermistor. 2 is further exacerbated by As you print faster, you need more heat. The cold filament rapidly moving through your hotend will cool it down locally, meaning that the temperature will be cooler than what the thermistor measures. Faster prints equal bumps in the temperature up to 10 °C, and for a really slow print you might turn it down 10 °C from where you normally are. This is a minor issue, but different colors of the same brand and material might work better at different temperatures. The pigments used can affect the melting point somewhat. Different brands also might have different temperatures. Some symptoms may give you a guide as to how to adjust your temperature: Printing too hot Small/slow prints may not solidify quickly enough, leaving you with an ugly blob. Stringing/bad bridging. Plastic in the heatbreak may soften, leading to clogging. You might burn/degrade the material (but for this you would really need to go outside of the temperature range). Printing too cool Too much force required to extrude, leading so skipping/grinding of the filament drive. Layer delamination: the plastic needs to be hot enough to partially melt the layer below it and stick to it. Objects printed at a colder temperature tend to be weaker at the layer boundaries. Furthermore, hot prints can sometimes have a more glossy finish than colder prints.

Why can my printer display remaining time but OctoPrint can't? The Prusa i3 MK3 displays the remaining printing time right from the beginning. Image: 3:38 remaining after 0% printing From about 8 prints until now, I would say that this time is quite reliable. Octoprint, however, does not display the remaining time initially and is then far off. Image: Octoprint saying something like "too uncertain" Image: Octoprint says 8.5 hours remaining Why doesn't Octoprint just take the remaining time from the printer and display that? Or can I change a setting so that it does?

Octoprint is a generic application that has to work with a rather wide variety of printers and printer firmwares. The time estimation that is shipped with Octoprint by default is a very basic method that doesn't rely on any specific printer features. This also makes it kind of useless in some cases, and not very accurate. The estimate that the Prusa i3 Mk3 shows is not actually done by the printer, it is embedded in the GCode generated by Slic3r PE. There are M73 commands added that tell the printer how far along the print job is. As for why Octoprint doesn't do this by default, the major reason is likely that this method only works for specific printers and slicers, and only works well if the slicer can actually do good estimates for a particular printer. This is the case for the Prusa because it supports this feature and the slicer is maintained by them and has enough information to make good estimates. But this is not the case for all printers. The feature is also not entirely standardized as far as I understand, e.g. Prusa uses slightly different M73 commands to give estimates for normal and silent mode. There are plugins that can read the M73 estimates, you could try that. I never tried them myself, this plugin seems to do what you want from a quick glance.

Any fix for PLA prints getting more brittle over time? I've been printing small quantities from a PLA filament spool on a Craftbot printer for about two months now. Recently the printed objects have been coming out very brittle. Some structures that printed fine two months ago are now difficult to re-print. The print head gets clogged easily, and when the object does print, it's quite brittle and 1/4" to 1/8" rods will easily snap off if not handled gently. I'll admit to not following the precautions for storage of PLA. It's much easier to just leave the filament installed rather than trying to remove it after each print, so this one spool has just been sitting on the back of the printer for all these weeks now. I'm sure it's been humid some of the days, we've had some rain here. Has the spool of PLA been damaged just by leaving it exposed to room air for two months? Could that be the sole cause of the brittle prints, or are there other possible causes? Is there any way to fix the spool or future prints from this spool, or do I have to scrap it and get a new spool?

PLA absorbs moisture, so keeping the filament dry is a key factor. Aside from that, PLA is naturally more brittle than other plastics like ABS and Nylon Sorry, tried to find a graph to prove it, but couldn't find one. There's a good Google Group discussion and many other resources that go over good storage habits, but as for fixing the existing filament. Try the following: Place PLA in an enclosure (plastic bin, Zip-loc bag, etc.) If you have some, add some moisture absorber(s) Place the tub in a warm environment (naturally or artificially) and make sure the area is dry as possible (not in the shed in the back, by the woods...). Possibly next to a heater vent or space heater in your house? Essentially, you're trying to treat the material. When the material goes through a heat treatment (aka the heat block in the extruder), the mechanical properties are beginning to change. The brittleness can be set by how quickly the material cools. I'm speculating that the moisture does any of the following: Keeps the filament from heating up to the desired extrusion temperature. Burns the filament. The moisture is evaporated, leaving gaps in the extruded filament (under microscope). I looked into this a few years ago and have forgotten most of what I found out, but I'll keep looking and update my answer here.

Auto bed leveling offset issue I'm using an Ender 3 with a new upgraded board SKR 1.3 Marlin bugfix 2.0 auto bed leveling I use EZABL. for the EZABL I followed their tutorial for Marlin 2.0 since I don't use the unified firmware. Offset info : #define NOZZLE_TO_PROBE_OFFSET { 50, -2, 0 } #define MIN_PROBE_EDGE 20 I did try to follow this helpful guide I don't know much about programming so when he said: "As this is the part that defines the array values, you first need to make an array (note that this is a simple solution that many people should be able to understand with limited programming skills, more elegant solutions use the XYZ struct to access the X, Y or Z properties):" constexpr int nozzle_to_probe_offset[] = NOZZLE_TO_PROBE_OFFSET; #define PROBE_X_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER nozzle_to_probe_offset[0] #define PROBE_Y_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER nozzle_to_probe_offset[1] I don't understand where to put the lines above and what value to put. update: error message on compiling Config.h : https://pastebin.com/w7CC5eaC Config_adv.h : https://pastebin.com/qep34T1h

You do not need to adjust the area yourself for Marlin 2.0, please look into probe.h and into this answer. You only need to enable the offsets: #if PROBE_SELECTED && !IS_KINEMATIC #define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_LEFT MIN_PROBE_EDGE #define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_RIGHT MIN_PROBE_EDGE #define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_FRONT MIN_PROBE_EDGE #define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_BACK MIN_PROBE_EDGE #endif

Are there white filaments, that are not so translucent? I find that white filaments are quite translucent and printing 5 layers of white filament onto 2 layers of black filament (at 0.2 mm layers, the white layers being 100% infilled and the underlying black layer covering about 85% of the whole area) produces a slightly grey color on the top. Is that a limitation of the white colour (or the actual material used)? Are there materials, that address this issue to some extent? Adjusting layer thickness while keeping the overall height won't change things, right?

Most of the plastics used for filament are inherently transparent and largely colorless. Color is achieved by adding pigment. Translucent and transparent colors are easy, but opaque colors require large amounts of opaque pigments, and even then, their opacity has its limits - even with black filament! You can probably find very opaque white filament, but beware - too much pigment will affect the raw properties of the filament itself, either in terms of print temperature or things like layer adhesion or stringing/clogging etc.

Using Kinect 360 as 3D Scanner I would like to use my old Xbox 360 Kinect as a scanner for 3D modeling and (hopefully) printing a few busts of friends/family members; however, my efforts have failed in each direction that I have taken. Has anyone had success with this, and if so, how do I fix the issues that I am facing? What I have done so far and the problems that I have had: I have purchased a cable to supply 12V to the Kinect while also allowing USB to a PC. I have installed the Kinect SDK as well as the Kinect Developers Toolkit on my Windows 10 Ultrabook. I installed the Microsoft "3D Scan" app and the "Kinect Readiness" app (not the name, unsure of it at this point) provided by Microsoft. **Issue: ** Neither Microsoft app detects the Kinect when cable is plugged in. The Kinect's light slowly flashes green. Also, my cursor freezes when the Kinect is plugged in. I checked the Hardware profiles and found a notification that I do not have the drivers for the Kinect motor and that no suitable drivers could be found. However, no other details about the Kinect showed up. I uninstalled the SDK and developer toolkits and installed v1.7, ran them in compatibility mode (Windows 8) and same issues arose. I then began looking into using a different program, found ReconstructMe. This too failed to detect the Kinect even when it was manually selected as the scanner. Any ideas? I also have a Linux Mint laptop that I will happily use for these efforts if I knew what software to capture the 3D scan with. It seems that there are several driver options out there, just unsure of what to use besides that. It seems that Blender can be used for some motion capture with Kinect; however, I am unsure of how this relates to my goals.

I tried the same setting old kinect (but for PC - actually with power supply and usb-cable) plug to my surface windows10. After some troubles, it works now ;-) The mentioned MS 3D scan and kinect readiness wont work. It is supposed for the new kinect2 model, because of the new driver. Best you deinstall both. Even the drivers and SDKs. You need Kinect for Windows v1.8 for the old kinect. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40278 RecFusion is a software for using a single or multiple depth cams for getting 3d models. It works quite good with my kinect. It costs 99euros. http://recfusion.net/index.php/en/download

Extruder_2 Stepper Motor does not work I have a FlashForge Creator Pro. It is equipped with the board revision V SF7.7. My Right extruder prints great, however, the left does not work at all. I have tried to diagnose the cause, but at this point, I feel all the mechanicals are working and it's coming down to logic boards. I don't know what and how to test these. The main problem is like this: When I order to Load/Unload Filament the motor does not advance When printing from the left extruder, filament does not come out. I have done the following tests: The hotend works and the nozzle is clear. I can push filament through when it is hot. Teeth are in great shape, unclogged and perfectly aligned with the "V" on the guide wheel. The Stepper motor is functional. I can perform the LED test on both pairs of leads and 3V LED lights are up when the motor is turned. The Stepper cable is OK. I tested continuity on all 4 wires and they are fine. The Connectors are fine and well-seated. Voltage to Stepper Driver board: 5.0V when the machine is powered ON I have however encountered these tests that seemed to show a fail: When I set the left extruder to "Unload Filament" the voltage across both pairs of leads is 0V How can I continue troubleshooting and fixing the machine?

The next logical step is to swap the working board with the one that powers the misbehaving motor. If this fixes the motor but makes the other one stop working, it hints that the stepper driver board might be broken. If it does not fix the motor but the right motor works again, while the left is not, then the motors or the board controlling the stepper drivers might be broken. As changing the driver boards did (as OP said) swap the problem from the left to the right extruder, it is extremely likely that the board that was originally left is defective in some way. Getting a replacement part might be in order, and until then, running with a single extruder.

What is a masterspool? Recently, I have heard people talking about masterspool, when talking about 3D printing filament. What exactly is master spool? Where did the idea come from and when? Is it being widely adopted? Or to be specific, how many distributors/manufacturers have adopted this already, and is it gaining traction? Is this something that I should get excited by? If so, why is it such a good idea?

A masterspool is the practice of printing your own spool out of filament, which will then be used to support your filament you purchase without a spool attached. The main idea is to create a reusable spool and create less waste. (NOTE: I'm in no way affiliated with MatterHackers.com, nor am I an endorser of their products. There is also a version which Village Plastics has created.) On MatterHackers.com website, they state: Filament without a spool? Why are we making this? The short answer: because the community wants it. We had enough questions, comments and plenty of tweets asking if we had plans to pick up the Master Spool concept. Seeing the response and interest within the community made it clear to us: we needed to bring this idea to the States. With a joint effort between MatterHackers and Village Plastics, you can now purchase Master Spool refills from within the US. They are tying to apply the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra to create a cleaner environment for the rest of the world. While they are not the first to create or use a printable spool, they are pretty happy to be pressing forward with the idea of having a reusable spool and selling filament without a spool attached. MatterHackers go on to state: What are the benefits of the Master Spool? Not only is there the benefit of reducing plastic waste, using a Master Spool will also reduces shipping costs for new spools, and limits the clutter from amassing of a huge collection of used or empty spools. Rather than throwing away, trying to recycle dozens of spools, or trying to come up with a way to reuse them in some (like the Spool Tool), using the Master Spool means you can use all those filament scraps you have laying around on something useful and have one spool for all of your filament. As far as where it started, it appears to have originated with this print on Thiniverse created by Dingoboy71. A well known 3D printer named RichRap created the reusable spool which MatterHacker promotes, though they say there are several which will work with their product (Village Plastic says pretty much the same). If you get excited about saving the planet, then you should be excited about this. If you are a robust printer, going through tons (hopefully not literally) of filament per year, this method will save a lot of waste in the long run. Realize there are (as of this writ) only limited suppliers of spool-less filament, though I think the trend for this type of product will increase in the future as the idea catches on. I guess time will tell.

Strange banding on first layer/skin I've been printing for a while with a Creality CR-10S with Colorfabb black PETG economy and all was good. Until today, where on a large, flat print (30x10cm - a small drawer) I can't manage to get a smooth first (or second) layer no matter how hard I try. I tried so far: calibrating the extruder setting different temperatures (range 230-240 suggested by the manufacture is 235-250) slowing down the print (I usually print skin at 80mm/s, I tried this one down to 40mm/s) installing a brand new nozzle levelling the bed The print starts fine but then, randomly, some bands that look like under extrusion appear: Here's a second example of the first layer - I've ripped it off the plate but as you can see the first 50% of it was fine. The problem appeared later in the process. The extruder "clicks", the filament stalls and it's clear that the nozzle is not extruding plastic fast enough. What can it be? All other prints are fine, but I have to say this is the only one that has such a large horizontal surface.

i'd say your extruder driver and/or motor is overheated - really according to your description - when you've printed other things it was fine but this is the first with such big "flat" area usually extruder motor works for some time then stops and starts and so on and again so it has some time when driver cools down but here it runs constantly for relatively long time this overheats the driver and/or motor then is starts to clicks as there is not enough current delivered to the motor what can you do? try to take the cover off check the driver temperature (use electronic thermometer as it can be even 100C) try to cool it with some kind of fan while running the same printout if the diagnosis is fine - you are at home and now you know what to do ;) the one described as E is the one to check and cool down

Heated Bed vs Heated enclosure for large scale printer I'm /relatively/ new to 3d printing (I'm getting pretty good prints from my Wanhao di3 plus, but haven't done any DIY kits or anything) and materials engineering is probably the furthest thing from my area of expertise so I thought I would pose this to more experienced makers: If I'm building a large scale printer (probably a similar size to substation33 - sub33D's 1200x1200 printer) that I'm only going to print in PLA and MAYBE ABS occasionally, can I substitute the heated bed for simply heating the entire enclosure? The idea would be to have a thermistor measuring the ambient air temp inside the enclosure with a heat gun or two to hear the entire enclosure as necessary. I want to do this to try and reduce the cost (significantly as far as I can tell) as it seems 400*400 silicone heat pads tend to go for about 80 bucks a pop. An alternate idea I had was to use two or three heat pads and space them evenly under a glass bed, although I feel that this won't work as well because the heating won't be homogenous... Any input is appreciated :)

I tend to agree with Davo, that you might want both. But I'd probably try the enclosure first. My printer is about 1200 by 400. I looked at options, and found some difficult trade-offs: First, the big heatbed approach: as you know, getting a single heatbed that big will be expensive (and if it ever breaks or fails, you have to replace it all). a big heatbed also draws far more power than a RAMPS board can switch, so you'll have to use the on-board control to control a power relay (solid state or mechanical). a big heatbed will also waste a great deal of power when you're doing small things. Second, the heated enclosure approach: more costly to heat up at the beginning, but if insulated it may be cheaper for long prints (with a bed that large, your prints might take really long, too) because it can retain the heat better. if you keep the air circulating inside, you'll get much more uniform heat, rather than hot first layers and cooler higher layers. consider the effect of the heat on all the other components: motors, electronics, pre-heating the fibers, thinning any lubricants,.... you could save some heating cost and time by providing a way to shrink the space to be heated: perhaps just a partition you can insert when doing smaller prints. It wouldn't have to be nearly airtight to make a big difference. A third option is several small heatbeds: this lets you turn on just the ones you need for any given print still expensive, but cheaper than one big one, especially when any of them fails. there will be uneven heat at the seams, but if you place the boards tight together I doubt it's enough to matter. You could also carefully trim the boards' edges to get the spacing closer to uniform. temperature regulation will be tricky. If you want to support a temperature sensor for each board, you'll have to start hacking at the control software, because (as far as I can tell) there's no provision for multiple heaters. Probably easier to create a completely separate unit with a big power supply, and a simple thermostat for each of the beds, that you just set manually before starting a print. Overall, I think the heated enclosure may be best. I like the hair dryer idea or heat gun idea, of course you'll need a little extra circuitry to switch it, but you can use the usual software for temperature regulation by installing thermistor or thermocouple in the case (just be careful about circulating the air well enough to avoid "hot spots"). You may want to add an extra cutoff to protect against runaway heating -- I had that happen once when a thermistor literally fell out of the mounting hole in the hotend. Something like https://www.grainger.com/product/SUPCO-Thermostat-407L11. Let us know how it turns out.

Standby hotend and bed heating with inactivity timer after print? Is there any G-code command to turn off hotend/bed heating after a specified timeout? I'd like to edit my end G-code to leave them heated to a standby temperature, rather than immediately letting them cool down, to eliminate the delay of re-heating between prints, but obviously it's not a good thing to leave them heated indefinitely.

Pausing You could set temperatures for hotend and bed (respectively M104 and M140 and after that introduce a pause/dwell time with G4. After the pause, you could lower temperatures and proceed the shutdown of the printer, as such the setting of the idle temperatures and dwell time need to be done in the beginning of your end G-code in your slicer. Not powering down Alternatively, you could just not power down the hotend and bed. A typical end G-code consists of de-powering the fans, steppers, temperatures and positioning the head in a parking position, e.g.: M106 S0 ; Turn fan off M104 S0 ; Turn extruder off M140 S0 ; Turn off bed // G91 ; Change to relative positioning // G1 Z30 E-2 F3000 ; Raise Z 30mm (lowers the bed) NEVER DO THIS, IT WILL DESTROY YOUR PRINTER IF YOU PRINT LARGER THAN MAX-Z MINUS 30 MM // G90 ; Switch back to absolute mode G1 X0 Y0 ; Move X/Y to origin M84 ; Disable steppers You could easily change the temperatures to standby values: M106 S0 ; Turn fan off M104 S160 ; Turn extruder to standby M140 S40 ; Turn bed to standby // G91 ; Change to relative positioning // G1 Z30 E-2 F3000 ; Raise Z 30mm (lowers the bed) NEVER DO THIS, IT WILL DESTROY YOUR PRINTER IF YOU PRINT LARGER THAN MAX-Z MINUS 30 MM // G90 ; Switch back to absolute mode G1 X0 Y0 ; Move X/Y to origin M84 ; Disable steppers

PETG and Clear Aligner? There is a material called PETG. In addition, there is a medical solution called Clear Aligner to fix perplexed teeth. Can I use a 3D printer using PETG and make transparent apparatus? The program I use gives transparent apparatus, 3-dimensional output in STL format. Do I get results if I send the STL file to the printer?

No PETG is a material that can only be used in FDM machines. This precludes any internal medical use, as FDM prints can't be made sterile or even hygienic - the sterilization processes would destroy the print, and FDM layers create many spots for germs to grow. Atop that, you can't get the needed precision with FDM - which means any FDM prints are at best waste at worst endangering the patient! In contrast, 3D printed metals and laser-printed nylon can be created and post-processed in ways that do not have layer lines. Resin prints do not have layer lines that offer these discrete hiding spots for germs. They all are made in a fashion that kills germs or disallows them from being embedded and they can be properly sterilized or made hygienic. No! PETG can't be printed completely clear in FDM. By the processing method, air and layer boundaries are included, making prints at least somewhat opaque. Only Resin prints can be fully transparent as they contain neither boundaries nor air. NO!!! STL files contain only surface data and need to be processed into printer readable format. G-code is one of those formats, commonly used in FDM machines and CNC machines. The processing from STL or other surface data into FDM-3D-printer G-code is done by a program called a slicer. Examples are Cura, PrusaSlicer, Slic3r, and many others. Resin printers using DLP use different slicers that create images of the model's crossections together with some sort of machine code for the movement. For SLA machines, the code is entirely different again. Further Reading I highly suggest you read more about 3D printing dental applications before trying anything for dental use, and especially anything that is printed for any medical application!

Can you fix a warped, removeable build surface backing? I have an Ender 3 with a removeable build surface. The build surface backing has become warped - the center is at least 0.3 mm higher than the corners. I'm not sure what the material of this plate is - it's the part behind the BuildTak-clone surface that sits on the aluminum heat bed and is clipped to it. This makes it impossible to level the entire bed, and annoyingly tedious to level it enough just to use the center, since the paper method doesn't work at the corners. Can this be fixed, or do I need to source a replacement for it?

Yes. I rigged up the following setup with blue tape and clips and a pen for tensioning, used the nozzle (unheated) to hold the center down against the bed, and set the bed to 100 °C for about an hour. Afterwards the curvature was in the opposite direction and easily compensated by clips.

Printing 2x slower after upgrading to "MarlinTarantula" firmware I have a TEVO Tarantula printer, recently I have upgraded it's firmware from the stock firmware to marlin 2.0 using this configuration repo. Since upgrading my prints take 2x the time they used to (and the time Cura says they should take). I have tried to increase the printer's acceleration and jerk maximum configuration, but it did not help. In addition, another symptom that is new is that whenever a straight line is printed (for example an infill line) instead of the motors moving in one swift motion, I can see (and better yet, hear) them moving in a different speed. Specifically, it looks like the motors slow down midway and start again. How can I address those issues?

First, Ultimaker Cura estimated printing times are not necessarily accurate for non Ultimaker printers. For Ultimaker printers this is perfectly tuned, Cura estimates the printing times from experience for the UM3E correctly. Please look into question "How to determine real printing speed (tarantula/cura)?" which is relevant to this question and has an interesting accepted answer. Second, changing the MAX accelerations will not work, you should increase the default acceleration: From the TEVO Tarantula Marlin fork you read from the Configuration.h file: /** * Default Acceleration (change/s) change = mm/s * Override with M204 * * M204 P Acceleration * M204 R Retract Acceleration * M204 T Travel Acceleration */ #define DEFAULT_ACCELERATION 1000 // X, Y, Z and E acceleration for printing moves #define DEFAULT_RETRACT_ACCELERATION 2000 // E acceleration for retracts #define DEFAULT_TRAVEL_ACCELERATION 3000 // X, Y, Z acceleration for travel (non printing) moves From the main Marlin source you will find: /** * Default Acceleration (change/s) change = mm/s * Override with M204 * * M204 P Acceleration * M204 R Retract Acceleration * M204 T Travel Acceleration */ #define DEFAULT_ACCELERATION 3000 // X, Y, Z and E acceleration for printing moves #define DEFAULT_RETRACT_ACCELERATION 3000 // E acceleration for retracts #define DEFAULT_TRAVEL_ACCELERATION 3000 // X, Y, Z acceleration for travel (non printing) moves The TEVO Tarantula sources have lower default acceleration values, you could try to increase those.

Failing y-axis home with loud rattling I have an Anet A8 and I currently try to improve the y-axis (with a tensioner and a frame to support the structure). Now after I dis- and reassembled the y-axis, I get a loud rattling noise when homing the y-axis (and also when moving it stepwise from within the firmware). After the rattling goes on for a second or two, the printer halts and asks to reset. During the rattling, the print bed moves much slower. It appears to only rattle at the end of the axis, close to the endstop, however the point at which it starts to rattle appears random. I tried a tighter and looser belt and aligning the frame. When moving the bed manually, it does require some force, but it does not appear to be tighter at the back side of the axis. Also nothing seems to block the path of movement. I noticed that with a tighter belt the rattling starts only closer to the end stop, however it appears like I have to overtighten it to work properly. I got it to hit the end stop this way without halting, however it still produced the rattling sound. Also the y-stepper motor made a high pitched humming noise after this operation. What else could I check or do about it? This is a video showing the print bed with the rattling sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0Xhz2GtUYQ View from below: https://youtu.be/oTEuZUWD0ZM This is the motor mount: And this is the tensioner with the support frame:

From your video, it sounds to me as though the stepper motor is fighting against the bed movement. That would indicate to me the bed rails on the X-axis are not square to the bed movement, which would cause binding of the linear bearings on the bed. To see if this is the issue, loosen the threaded rods in all six places (three placed times two rods). Loosen the belt tensioner so it is not causing any issues. Then see how the bed moves. If the bed is freed up, tighten the nuts on the threaded rods two at a time on the same plane (each plate of the frame). At each tightening, ensure the bed continues to move freely. Measure the distance as accurately as possible to ensure the frame continues to stay square and are parallel to each other. Once you have tightened all of the nuts on the threaded rod, then re-tighten the belt tensioner. If none of this solves it, it could also be an issue with your linear bearings. If your Anet A8 is a Chinesium clone, the bearings are not what I'd call "top notch". I replaced mine with Igus Drylin bearings and have not regretted the $10 investment. There are other printed options you could go with as well, which you can find on thingiverse.com.

Small part bed adhesion I am trying to print a model that has (at the start of the print) several small parts attached to the bed. Some of these parts have bed contact 2.5mm x 20mm. After a few layers, if there are any imperfections in the previous layer, the hotend is bumping the imperfection and knocking the part loose. I am using a genuine Prusa i3 Mk2s with Filaform PLA. I am slicing with PrusaControl and using the "Generic PLA" settings, which is giving me 215/210 degree hot end (first/other layers), and 55 degree bed. I have the fan enabled. The print bed is clean and dust free How can I improve bed adhesion for these small parts, ideally without adding brims etc? Thanks

One technique is to add your own custom brims to the model. A couple of "Mickey Mouse ears", attached to each end of the piece, may be enough to keep it in place (and will also be easy to remove).

What are the "magic numbers" on a Monoprice Select Mini? What are the "magic numbers" people refer to regarding print resolution on the Monoprice Select Mini?

The "magic numbers" are optimal values that work particularly well for the layer height. Michael O'Brien derived these numbers by reverse engineering the mechanics of the Z-axis stepper motor. Using these values as your layer height will generally improve your print quality over using round layer heights such as 0.15, 0.2, or 0.25 by eliminating quantization errors. To see an example of this, print a copy of 3DBenchy at 0.15 and 0.175. On the 0.15, you will see some wavy patterns on the curved bow portion compared to the 0.175. This is the result of inexact rounding. Layer Height (mm) 0.04375 (results may vary)* 0.0875 0.13125 0.175 0.21875 0.2625 0.30625

Z motors work synchronously ToyRep I have a problem with Z direction. As you know it has two motors. And my problem is that one sometimes goes to the different direction (so basically one is screwing and another one unscrewing). It is like random, sometimes it is ok, sometimes this one goes to the different direction. Could you help me, please? Wiring is like in building tutorial. The tutorial is here http://reprap.org/wiki/ToyREP_Build_Manual . I am using Marlin and Pronterface. Code I took here http://reprap.org/wiki/ToyREP_User_Manual

The problem was in the wiring of the motor. According to different sources it says to check wiring, everything seemed ok, but I've found one wire was damaged.

Would appreciate advice on unclogging hot end [Makerbot Replicator v2] My Makerbot Replicactor V2 constantly jams. Usually when I go to use it after it's been off for a few hours the filament has jammed and I have to take off the front fan to remove the filament. Today, after going through the usual rigmarole of having to take the front fan and fan guard off, remove the filament, cut it and then load it back in I found that there was another problem. It appears something is jammed inside the hot end itself. When I loaded the filament back into the machine, it took it but nothing came out of the nozzle, instead it all pooled up around the aluminium mounting block where the filament feeds through. Here's a couple more pictures, the last one is basically what happens to me on a regular basis: http://imgur.com/a/2jvnP How should I go about fixing this? I've already cleaned the extruder nozzle, but unsure as how best to proceed with this. I would prefer to get this fixed fairly soon as I need to 3d print files for a uni assessment piece.

For molten filament to jam at the inlet to the thermal barrier tube like shown here, there must be something wrong with the cooling in your setup. The cold zone needs to be cool for the extruder to work right. It looks like the cold zone is not staying below the glass point of the plastic, so the filament softens and mashes into a jam. Here are some common causes of jamming in Replicator 2 extruders: Printer's environment is too hot. If it's in a hot garage, move it indoors. If you have it inside an enclosure or cabinet, open it up to let it breathe. All-metal extruders with PLA are very sensitive to ambient temp. Not having good contact between the heatsink and the cooling bar. Normally, just bolting them together is fine, but a small amount of of thermal grease (like Arctic Silver) smeared over the contact surface can help too. Not having the fan pointed the right way. You want the fan to blow ONTO the heatsink: this provides more turbulent flow and better cooling. This means you should not see the fan sticker when everything is assembled. Fan dying and and spinning too slow. A new fan can be a good idea. (24v fans only!) Or you can try gently peeling off the fan sticker and adding a single drop of light oil (like 3-in-one) to the bearing, then re-attaching the sticker. Using non-stock thermal barrier tubes that do not have the correct internal geometry. Lots of people sell bad tubes that don't have the "secret sauce" (internal diameter step). The four good vendors I'm aware of for this part are Makerbot, Carl Raffle, Micro Swiss, and Performance 3D. "Floating" the thermal barrier threads by tightening jam nuts on both top and bottom of the cooling bar. All-metal extruder designs require good contact pressure between the thermal barrier tube threads and the cooling bar, to ensure maximum heat transfer. The best approach is to put one jam nut below the bar to forcibly push the thermal barrier tube threads into the cooling bar, and no nut on top. (Using just one nut on top is better than two nuts, but worse than one nut below.) It's also possible that there is some material partially blocking the nozzle, which is contributing to molten plastic backup up and jamming. What I would recommend right now is removing both the nozzle and thermal barrier tube from the printer, and either replacing them or fully cleaning them out. There are multiple options. You can preheat the hot end with the cooling bar in a vise or on a metal surface with no fans attached, to heat up the plastic in the thermal barrier tube and allow you to push the blockage through with a small allen key. Then do something to REALLY clean it out, like nylon cold-pulls, or cooking the parts in a blue flame such as a torch or gas stove. Then check for internal debris with something like a toothpick. Once you can see through the nozzle orifice and there's no junk inside anything, reassemble everything properly and try again.

Thermal runaway when power on I get the error "Thermal runaway on E1. Reset printer." today on my Tevo Tarantula when powering on the printer. The display shows the error and the speaker beeps loudly everytime I power on the printer or reset it. I use the firmware https://github.com/JimBrown/MarlinTarantula, because I can switch E0 heat nozzle to E1 wires, without soldering; PID's for nozzle were configured, and works fine before I replaced the power supply. Recently my power supply was broken, and today I installed new power supply, clean nozzle, several times start bed leveling, and on fourth time of homing error appeared. Power supply voltage tested with a multimeter and the voltage of power supply is 12.06V. Note: several times printer started bed leveling.

Issue is solved! Root cause was a broken thermistor circuit at board and broken thermistor. I disconnected all wires and power, measured board and thermistors resistance: E0 = ~120 Ω, (E1 and Bed) = ~700 Ω. I swapped pins for TEMP_0_PIN and TEMP_1_PIN within Marlin for Tevo firmware at pins_RAMPS.h as described in answer on question Change hotend thermistor input in Marlin, changed thermistor and everything prints fine.

What's the best printing technique to produce splints (a device to immobilize a body part)? One of the most interesting field in which the 3D Printing is being considered is the fabrication of biocompatible devices and parts for a medical applications. For that I am interesting in knowing what technique are used for the fabrication of splints or cast used for the immobilization of human body part, also which material is compatible with this technique?

For anything where there is an open or bandaged wound, you should NOT use 3D printing, and should use sterilized medical equipment to prevent infection and heavy metals infiltrating the bloodstream. SLA/SLS 3D printing may be the best option for replicating the complex structure of the splint you have pictured above, as FDM printers have difficulty reproducing those structures. However, FDM printing CAN reproduce it, and generally FDM printers have access to a wider variety of materials of which models can be printed with, so they may be the best option overall. For something to immobilize a body part that has been broken, you may want to use a stiff material such as ABS or Carbon Fibre, However PLA may work still in these cases. As for something to support a body part, Flexible or Semi-Flexible materials may be desired, such as Ninjaflex (TPU), Nylon. As a disclaimer: I am not a medical professional, This is not medical advice, please consult a properly licenced medical professional first before using 3D printing to solve a medical ailment.

3DTouch sensor fails after probe deployment and triggering I'm using a 3DTouch sensor (from Geeetech) on a self-build CoreXY printer (HyperCube Evolution). The sensor worked perfectly until not being used for a month. The symptoms are that it fails to deploy the pin on the second probe deployment so basically it fails after the first probe is triggered by the raised platform. On homing Z (not only for G28 or "home all" but also for G28 Z to "home Z axis") and goes into some sort of a fail-safe mode where the LED keeps flashing. Sometimes it does deploy and finishes the homing instructions and continues to the G29 instruction (note that double probing #define MULTIPLE_PROBING 2 is enabled in the Marlin 1.1.8 firmware) and show similar symptoms as described above for the G28 command. Note that failing to deploy the probe sometimes leads to a rising build platform that does not stop, other times some fail safe kicks in and the bed lowers and aborts the print. To lift the fail-safe condition, a reset of the sensor is required (this can be done through the LCD or by command M280 P0 S160). What I have done to solve the problem is to isolate the wires from the 3D touch sensor as I was under the impression that this was related to electromagnetic interference (therefore when the sensor is probing, the bed and heater cartridge are not powered momentarily), but that did not help. Any suggestions and solutions to get it working again are appreciated.

After troubleshooting I have managed to fix the sensor problems. (Please take note of the update at the end of the answer below as the problem started again shortly after the so-called fix...) Digging into several posts I found this post that hints to a solution: After readjusting, the sensor worked and I was able to produce a print, but the next day it failed again... What I found is that the bed and extruder are NOT shut off while probing although that should have been enabled in Marlin 1.1.8. I assumed that this de-powering is only during the actual probe lowering, so very short. So I figured that this might be an EMI problem. In a last resort I updated to Marlin 1.1.9 which has the functionality to shut the power off for heater and bed and everything now seems to work perfectly. I now see that the de-powering is a bit longer and in fact the extruder temperature drops slightly, this has never been seen with the previous firmware version. Update: Not long after the "update"/"fix" the problem manifested itself again... Further troubleshooting revealed that it was a bad connection of the connectors of the sensor that got temporarily "fixed" as the cables had been fiddled with during the firmware update.

Enclosed volumes with stereolithography 3D printers I have no prior experience with stereolithography 3D printers. For a research application I am considering the SLA approach but I have a more basic question. I would like to use SLA in order to print porous structures from ice cores. Using X ray tomography I have raw data of very high resolution 3D images of the cores. The idea is to use this information in order to print representations of these cores to perform a diffusion study. Some of these cores come from depths below 50 m thus the snow has compacted in such way that volumes of air are occluded. My question is if it is possible for SLA printers to print in such enclosed volumes. Imagine for example a solid cube with a gas bubble in the middle. Is that possible for an SLA printer and if yes will the bubble contain air or the liquid resin of the printer?

The bubble will contain air, but this will vary by printer. Most resin printers lift the printed part out of the bath slightly after each layer. Some printers, however, don't lift the piece completely out of the bath. This will cause the resin to become entrapped. Once those entrapped pockets of resin are exposed to light, they will also undergo photopolymerization. It may be possible however to program those printers to lift the part completely out of the resin for each layer.

How close should the nozzle be to the substrate? I have my nozzle close to the substrate that I am printing on, so that a piece of paper can just about slide underneath it freely, without catching. Is this the right way to do it?

This photo isn't exact, but may help Edit: Whoops! Forgot to include source. This is from the Wanhao User Manual/Build Guide. I can't quite find the webpage at the moment.

Knotted String as Replacement for Toothed Belt I'm at a location where I don't have easy access to toothed belts for my printer (a RepRap Wallace). While trying to look for some solution, I saw some talk of using fishing line as a belt, along with a log of admonitions of Don't. However, as I have easy access to fishing line, but almost no access to a toothed belt, I was thinking of using multiple strands of fishing line with regularly spaced knots to simulate a toothed belt. However, Google didn't help much with either usage or possible Gotchas. Is there any possible issues that I may face with this solution?

I’m going to recommend not using a fishing line with knots. Probably the biggest problem you’ll have using the fishing line with knots is if the knots are not perfectly spaced, movement along the X or Y axis is not going to be consistent. This could result in weird deformations in your print. Depending on how you tie the knots they may not grip the teeth of the gears quite well enough to prevent slippage. Both of these issues will mean that you will not get very good quality prints assuming the print doesn’t outright fail. You would be better off waiting to get the correct belt then attempting to use fishing line.

Z Steppers just hum, vibrate and don't move at all As I said in the title there is some issue with my z axis steppers. They will make a humming sound and vibrate a little but won't actually spin. I'm fairly sure this is an issue with the firmware (but I might be totally wrong) since they turn when the wires are switched with the ones for the Y axis and swapping the driver board for a spare had no impact on them. Any help would be appreciated. I am using RAMPs 1.4 and marlin firmware.

Try connecting Y-motor to your Z ports. If Y-motor will behave like Z-motors, then there's problem with your Z ports, be it hardware or software. I'm not a RAMPS user, but have heard that there is voltage regulator for every motor port. Sounds like your motors may be underpowered.

Where to get smartphone shapes from, to create a case all by myself? I'm looking for some kind of collection of shapes of smartphones, so I can design a case that will fit certain models perfectly. STL, or any other kind of 3d file. Lots of companies produce cases for smartphones, do they have the shapes straight from the manufacturer? Do they reverse engineer every model? I'm asking here because I couldn't find a stack exchange site that would be a better fit for this kind of question.

I'm not aware of a source for STL files or engineering diagrams, but you can do the measurements yourself fairly easily. I did this to make credit-card-slot cases for my Moto G4 and the fit turned out very good. Start with a digital caliper and measure the maximum length, width, and depth of the phone, ignoring rounded corners. Next, trace the phone on a piece of paper and use a straightedge to extend the flat parts of the sides to a bounding rectangle, and measure how far from the corner the curved part extends in each direction before meeting the flat part. Finally, if the sides of the phone are rounded too, estimate how thick the phone would be if you extended the curved edge to a full semicircle. At this point, you can approximate the shape of the phone as the convex hull of 4 spheres scaled appropriately in the x, y, and z directions, if the sides are curved, or the convex hull of 4 cylinders scaled in just the x and y directions, if the sides are flat. In the former (spheres) case, the approximation will be thicker than the phone, and you have to slice off the top and bottom to match the arc segment that's actually present on the sides of the phone. There are ways to do this exactly but I found it doesn't need to be precise and you can just eyeball it. In order to make a usable case, you'll also need to measure the distances of camera lens, buttons you want to expose, etc. from reference points. This is straightforward with a caliper. Here's my result, following this procedure:

Grease for PLA sprocket I am attempting to construct model tank tracks with accompanying wheels and sprockets. All parts will be printed in PLA. The tracks will be driven by electric motors. What would be a suitable grease for this project to minimize friction without damaging the plastics.

I use cosmetic vaseline - petroleum jelly. Usually it is white to transparent and odorless. It's cheap and available in all drugstores and cosmetics stores. As suggested by Tom van der Zanden I'm adding additional info about interactions of vaseline and plastics. I've found many web sites which claim that vaseline can damage plastics but none of them really proved that statement. There is nothing about it neither on producers sites nor wikipedia or any other believable sources I've found. So according to it and my practice I'm pretty sure that vaseline won't damage popular plastics (including common filaments). The only information I've found is that vaseline can damage natural rubber but I cannot confirm that on my own. Of course it might not be true for some materials so be careful and check the interactions first on invisible side or on refuses.

How to slice rounded corners in thin walls with Cura I'm trying to print a small box with 1 mm thick walls. The box has rounded corners. Cura slices the rounded corners with straight internal lines instead of rounded lines: The reason for these straight lines is that Cura is using infill to fill the walls, because it determines that there's not enough space in a 1 mm wall for three 0.4 mm passes. This causes the walls to have small imperfections in the final print. I was able to solve this by increasing the model wall thickness to 1.2 mm (to allow for 3 0.4 mm lines), but even then it wasn't doing it as a single continuous line, but instead breaking it into short lines at the corner: Is there a way to avoid this issue without increasing the wall thickness, and have 3 continuous lines?

Fixing the model My solution to this problem is, to increase the thickness in such corners by 0.05 mm by pushing the inner wall's radius towards its center. This allows some extra space as a round corner is not actually saved round but as a pattern of straight wall facets, and those can get squished together just enough to make the slicer believe the wall is too thin for a proper wall. As you see, the new corner rounding starts a little bit before the outer one - in this exaggerated model I use 1 millimeter extra - violet are the normal corners 10 mm apart, black is the new inner corner, the light blue area between them is the extra bulk that will massively reduce the problem. origin of the error As an example, let's put the number of facets to 1 and 2 when we form them from the rounded corner. The more facets there are, the closer the distance between the walls will get to the full wall thickness, but it will always stay a fraction below. How does the model fix work? Well, we shifted the inner corner away, and with 2 facets we get a fidelity to the intended wall thickness of 96.21 % instead of 92.39 % for the non-modified wall - and with even more facets the fidelity gets better more quickly. However, there is a point where your gaps will start to diverge in the corner, so just using a tiny alteration is advisable - in our model case, 9 facets (a 10°) is the point where the inner wall will start to become more distant to the outer wall. That's why I only need such a tiny bit of extra space if I export the model with the most fidelity in the .stl generation my CAD has available. making it work in the slicer Another thing I do when I can't alter the model is, knowing that I usually slice width a line width of 0.45 mm. In case such a corner appears, I can then alter my line width in the slicer down to 0.44[5] mm (or more) and get pretty much the same result at the cost of possibly needing to account for errors in other areas.

Octoprint: Reducing Camera Lag Time? I've got a webcam (Logitech ProductID_2470, according to my Mac) attached to my Octopi running on a RPi 3B. I am able to get the video on the Octoprint display page, but the lag is huge: over 50 seconds. How can I diagnose the problem and reduce this lag time?

This was due to a slow Wifi connection. It was fast enough for the low bandwidth of printer commands and status reports, but the video feed was overwhelming the connection. Adding a Wifi repeater increased the bandwidth and fixed the issue.

Can't connect printer to repetier-server on RPI3 I'm struggling to connect a K8200 printer to a rpi3 running repetier-server 0.86.2 armhf. Everything works fine on a PC with the 0.86.2 windows version, but on the Rpi i'm stuck on the second step of the printer setup : I define my firmware, Marlin, my baudRate at 250000, then I tried every port that seems involved (/dev/serial/by-id/usb-FTDI_FT231X_USB_UART_DA00DDXD-if00-port0, /dev/serial/by-path/platform-3f980000.usb-usb-0:1.2:1.0-port0, /dev/tty/USB0, /dev/tty/AMA0, ) but whatever I may try, I'm stuck on "En attente de connexion", that forbids me to go to step 3, as to see my printer connected. I tried to use the reset button on the printer board, as unplugging-plugging the USB, with no more luck. /var/lib/Repetier-Server/logs/server.log don't shown any error. Note : CartesianVirtual port still works fine... What else can I do ? Is there other relevant logs anywhere ? I'm unsure if this question should have been adressed to rpi, 3d printing or linux community, I'm sorry if I offend anyone :)

Thanks to the repetier team on git hub, we found that the problem came from a permission issue on /dev/ttyUSB0, as the user repetierserver couldn't access it. Other people reported that these commands solves the problem: sudo adduser repetierserver dialout sudo adduser repetierserver tty but in my case it seems I need to run : sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyUSB0 in order to solve this.

Resume print but no extrusion Had a print stop about 20 % through and read through some old questions (3+ years) so I'm posting again. Apologies if it's in here some where... Found the layer to restart, deleted everything from layer 0 to layer 77 (in my case) The set the E value to the value in layer 76, but still no extrusion. Using Ultimaker Cura. I can dump this but really want to know for future issues with larger prints... EDITED AFTER ANOTHER ATTEMPT: (Same effect) Sorry, I'm at a loss also made change to G92 code subtracting 5 Here is the start sequence: ;FLAVOR:Marlin ;TIME:41644 ;Filament used: 21.0489m ;Layer height: 0.2 ;MINX:29.678 ;MINY:92.227 ;MINZ:0.2 ;MAXX:198.806 ;MAXY:194.503 ;MAXZ:65.6 ;Generated with Cura_SteamEngine 4.6.1 M140 S50 M105 M190 S50 M104 S200 M105 M109 S200 M82 ;absolute extrusion mode ; Ender 3 Custom Start G-code G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder G28 ; Home all axes G1 Z2.0 F3000 ; Move Z Axis up little to prevent scratching of Heat Bed G1 X0.1 Y20 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move to start position G1 X0.1 Y200.0 Z0.3 F1500.0 E15 ; Draw the first line G1 X0.4 Y200.0 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move to side a little G1 X0.4 Y20 Z0.3 F1500.0 E30 ; Draw the second line G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder G1 Z2.0 F3000 ; Move Z Axis up little to prevent scratching of Heat Bed G1 X5 Y20 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move over to prevent blob squish G92 E0 G92 E0 G1 F2700 E-5 ;LAYER_COUNT:328 G0 Z15.6 G92 E1744.14148 ;was G92E1749.14148 ;TIME_ELAPSED:19808.769206 ;LAYER:77 ;TYPE:SUPPORT G1 F2700 E1754.14148 G1 F1500 X73.481 Y110.942 E1754.14217 G1 X74.078 Y110.968 E1754.16204 G1 X74.527 Y110.792 E1754.17808 G1 X75.311 Y110.007 E1754.21498

The line you added: G1 E1749.14148 asks the printer to extrude 1.7 meters of filament. The firmware likely has a feature to ignore such excessive requests as bogus. Then, subsequent extrusion amounts are also huge (1.7m+) relative to the current extruder position (0) and also get ignored. What you meant to do was: G92 E1749.14148 which means "set the logical extruder position for its current physical position to 1749.14148 mm" so that subsequent extruder positioning commands are interpreted relative to that initial position.

How to make moving parts not stick together? I am new to the 3D printing world and I would appreciate if someone can give me advice on how to 3D print moving parts without them sticking together. I recently 3D printed the predator pliers from Thingiverse and it came out very nice except for the fact that the parts where stuck together and I could not move any of the pieces. I had to use an Exacto knife to loosen the parts and in doing so my predator pliers broke and I was very sad. The printer and the settings that I use are: PowerSpec WanHao Duplicator I3 PLUS 3D Printer Ultimaker Cura 3.4.1 Black PLA Plastic 1.75 mm 0.4 mm nozzle 60 °C Bed Temp 200 °C Extruder Temp 20 fill (usually-sometimes more) Layer height 0.15 UPDATE: I printed a PIP from thingiverse and it worked out perfectly. All the parts move.

If parts stick together after printing, the positioning or extrusion is not working optimally. This can be related to various issues: Positioning of the head is not correct; this could be related to incorrect belt tension, incorrect steps per mm, streched belts. The extrusion process is not working optimal; this could be related to over-extruding (incorrect steps per mm for the extruder, incorrect multiplier in the slicer, filament too hot) or the first layer height is incorrect (too low, so the lines spread out and tough each other). Extruder calibration is explained in more detail in this answer. A very good start to verify what exactly your tolerance problem is is to print this tolerance test. Basically, these are diabolic shaped objects in a slightly larger outer shape object. Please slice this STL file with your favorite slicer to obtain the G-code for your printer. When the print is ready, you use a screwdriver to turn the diabolic shaped objects from large to small tolerance, the last one that does not turn is the maximum tolerance of your printer. So when printing in place hinges, you should use tolerance values higher than the one that did not turn.

PID tuning 50 W cartridge in Marlin Recently I decided to upgrade my Geeetech A10 (GT2560 v3.0 board) with E3D Chimera, Marlin 2.0.3 and more powerful 50 W heater cartridge. I wired everything up and tried to PID tune the hot end, but I got a problem. When the tuning ends and I use the values with M301, the values are too agressive and the hot end initially overshoots more than 15 °C. After that the temperature is rock steady. The tuned values are P=9.4 I=0.47 and D=46.4. I tried to change the values according the wikipedia table to no overshoot (P=3,13 I=0.47 and D=123.7), but it just made the temperature unstable. I also tried to tune the values manually but with no succes. I even tried to use zeros for all three gains but it just oscilated ±10 °C and still overshot. My guess is that the cartridge is too powerful for the Marlin PID tuning. Is there a setting in the firmware where I can set the PWM value for the PID tuning? To slow the heating down? I tried to use M301 E1 P0.25 S200 C10 but it seems that it didnt use the P parameter. Or is there a way to manually tune the values without the printer? I've got an Arduin Uno and RPi Zero availible. Or do I have to buy another less powerful cartridge?

Besides the P, I and D values, you may also have to tune PID_FUNCTIONAL_RANGE and PID_INTEGRAL_DRIVE_MAX. Basically, the functional range disables PID control when more than the set number of degrees away from the target temperature and just puts the heater to zero/maximum power. The integral drive max parameter limits the value of the integral term of the PID controller. The RepRap wiki notes: (note this wiki is dated! some options might not be available) In Marlin, the parameters that control and limit the PID controller can have more significant effects than the popular PID parameters. For example, PID_MAX and PID_FUNCTIONAL_RANGE, and PID_INTEGRAL_DRIVE_MAX can each have dramatic, unexpected effects on PID behavior. For instance, a too-large PID_MAX on a high-power heater can make autotuning impossible; a too-small PID_FUNCTIONAL_RANGE can cause odd reset behavior; a too large PID_FUNCTIONAL_RANGE can guarantee overshoot; and a too-small PID_INTEGRAL_DRIVE_MAX can cause droop. My hunch is that the functional range may be too small; the PID doesn't kick in until close to the desired temperature at which point you will already have overshot the target (due to the high power heater and delay in the measurements). Once you've overshot the target temperature the integral term starts growing (negative) which causes the massive undershoot.

3D printing for storage card shell? I know nothing about 3D printing and I was wondering if it is a good candidate for what I want to make. I want to make a custom game cartridge which looks like this: Basically it's like a SD card in a custom shell. Now I can produce the inside as a thin PCB (0.6mm-1mm). But I was wondering what the best (and cheapest) way to prototype (and maybe make a small run production) the outer shell would be. The entire cart is about 2mm thick, so each half of the shell would be at most ~0.6mm thick. Is this something I can do with a typical 3D printer? How would I "attach" the two halves together?

With the experience I have with my 3d printer you can make (almost) everything you can draw with it. 0.6mm parts can be 3d printed but will not be very strong though. For joining the 2 halves when they are so thin, I think the best solution is to glue them together. With the things I make for myself I mostly use small screws or small nuts and bolts but with 0.6mm parts I guess this wil not be possible.

Filament residue sticks to bed and wont come off There is filament residue on my glass bed that is so thin that it wont come off. I have had residue buildup for over a year now and none of it has come off. This residue appears with both the PETG and the PLA filament I have. Is there anyway to remove this residue?

I would try a single edge razor blade at a low angle used as a scraper. If you can't feel the blade catching in the residue, it probably isn't an issue. If you must get rid of it you don't have good choices of solvents. Maybe you can burn it off by placing the class in an oven through a clean cycle. With luck the hearing and cooling won't break the glass. If you can't scrape it off with a sharp razor blade, I would just let it be.

Connecting (Anet A8) 2004 display to MKS GEN L Was anyone able to connect the default Anet A8 (2004) display to a MKS GEN L? I've tried direct connection with re-wiring, and see white squares there, but I'm only able to see white squares on the screen as on screenshot: Wiring: The code that is currently used for the display : Config.h uses #define ZONESTAR_LCD. Also #define MOTHERBOARD BOARD_MKS_GEN_L Config_adv.h uses #define LCD_PROGRESS_BAR Pins were left as they were in config file. Also I've tried replacing them with this numbering (which comes from MKS spec): 35 16 25 29 5V 37 17 23 27 GND

I've got the Anet A8 display working on a RAMPS 1.6 (which basically works exactly the same as a RAMPS 1.4 board). Note that at first connection I got exactly the same display when I connected the LCD to the EXP1 and EXP 2 headers using the "smart adapter". To get the Anet A8 display working on a MKS GEN L (which is basically a RAMPS board as the pin layout of the RAMPS configuration are used in the firmware of the MKS GEN L) you need to forget about the EXP1 and EXP2 headers and the "smart adapter" for the Anet A8 display. Instead you need to connect the Anet A8 display to the AUX2 header. The only thing you would have to do (from the hardware side) is to switch the cables that are connected to the pin 1 and pin 2. I used Dupont connectors and cables. Pin 1 on AUX2 is VCC and pin 2 on AUX2 is GND, this is reversed on the Anet A8 display. From the software side you need to set the following constants: #define ULTRA_LCD // Character based and #define ZONESTAR_LCD Please note that in the photo you still see the "smart adapter" with flat ribbon cables, but they are not connected to a screen, the reason for them being there is I also tested the full graphic discount controller in a previous session. The Anet A8 display is connected to the flat ribbon cable on AUX2 just above the top-left most stepper driver. UPDATE: At the time of writing and the use of an older Marlin version, this required to set #define ULTRA_LCD. In Marlin 1.1.9 you do not need to set #define ULTRA_LCD explicitly, this is now intrinsically set by #define ZONESTAR_LCD. To elaborate on this, the #define ZONESTAR_LCD sets the constant #define ULTIPANEL which sets constant #define ULTRA_LCD in Conditionals_LCD.h.

Creality CR-10 problems with extrusion while printing I have an extrusion problem with my creality CR 10 3D printer while printing. I am using a standard 0.4 mm nozzle with a 1.75 mm diameter PLA and I use Cura as my slicer. This printer worked perfectly fine and I stopped using it a few months ago right after the problem started. When I try printing a .gcode file, the first layer is very thin but visible (it seems like the glass bed is engraved). However, after the first layer is complete, the extruder stops working properly. It moves forward then jumps backwards so it looks like the filament isn’t moving (I can also see the extruder’s marks on the filament). Also, the axis seem to move fine in all directions as I’m able to see a clear first layer. However, when I go into the “prepare” menu of my printer and move the extruder, it works great as the filament flow is very smooth. Hence, the problem is only visible while printing. I don’t think there’s a problem with the .gcode files as I printed them perfectly fine beforehand.

Clearly you're having an extrusion problem. Extrusion problems usually come either from a clogged nozzle (as @Adam S. said) or from the extruder it self. To determine where the problem is located I would first do a flow rate test using this. When doing this test you can determine if the extruder is grinding the filament or if it's not grabbing it too much. After the calibration of the flowrate you can be certain that the printer is (by .gcode) pushing the correct amount of filament. If the problem persist I would first do an unclogging (since it's cheaper than the following option) using something like this. If both previous options do not solve the problem, I would highly recommend you to by a mk-8 like metal extruder. After a while, the plastic one that comes with the printer loses force and you'll lose steps. Personally, I had a similar problem where the first layer was printed in a droplet pattern and was solved by changing the extruder to a metal one. Try these options and if the problem persist you could upload some pictures of the first layer or a video. Other possibilities I think of are that the filament is having trouble passing through the Bowden tube or maybe you'll have to reasemble the hotend.

What causes gaps in small region fills and how to prevent them? I saw this cool Nuka-Cola bottle opener. I made it: As you can see, nasty gaps have appeared in the text. What could've caused them? I am sure I set the filament diameter correctly. So why did the Slic3er not generate enough paths here to fill the letters properly? I used Slic3er and Repetier Host. My printer is Prusa i3 MK2 1.75mm. The material I used was PLA.

I had a similar issue as described in this question. Curiously, yours is almost opposite as my raised lettering was OK, but the surrounding areas were poorly filled. I came to the conclusion that Slic3r was simply not able to properly handle the geometry in my part. I tried with Cura and had great results!

Bed design for magnetic easy release when printing PLA I print on a glass bed covered with BuildTak. Prints stick well, release is difficult. They sell a mod, self adhesive magnetic sheet that holds a steel plate which in turn you put the BuildTak on making it easier to get your prints off by twisting the flexible steel as opposed to chiseling your print off a glass plate while attempting to not peel chunks of the expensive Buildtak off. Magnetic sheets have different strengths proportional to thickness in milimeters. I can get 0.03 mm locally which provides 85 lbs pull per sqft. and was wondering if this might work. It's hard to find the stronger pulls, 0.045 mm and 0.06 mm which can pull 115 and 145 lbs respectively. I'd prefer cut my own new bed sandwich rather than pay 90 bucks for one. Has anyone made a bed using adhesive magnetic sheet> What thickness magnetic sheet has worked for you? What thickness steel are you using? Assume it has to flex easily to twist the part of and also flexible enough for the magnet to pull it flat. With respect to the comment by tbm0115: I don't think you need that much magnetic pull for this application. Adhering basic coin magnets to a material in a large array should secure the material appropriately for a desktop printer. I see where you are going with coin magnets. Have you tried this? In the original Makerbot Cupcake this is how it was done though with larger build surfaces you get warp on metal plates. Most metal sheet comes from the plant on a roll. Though your metal looks nice and flat, temperature changes will cause it to warp and as you know with SLA printers, a changing bed can cause a failure. This happened on the original Makerbot replicator 1st release followed by using a machined plate as a replacement.

Follow up: I used the 6mil magnet, cut a sheet of thin steel, (about .5mm) to fit, added a layer of Buildtak and now it's much easier to remove prints, build surface is very flat. I assume you could deform the metal beyond the magnet's ability to flatten it but it works quite well. The metal was cut with sheet metal snips, risky as they can bend the sheet. Probably better done with a saw though.

OpenSCAD weirdness with imported STL I've tried to remix this model: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:90933 (Bauhaus chess set) by scaling it down and inserting little magnet holes into the pieces' underside. My SCAD file looks as follows: difference() { scale([0.5,0.5,0.5]) import("Bauhaus2Set.stl"); translate([ 6, 11 ,0]) cylinder(h=20.5,r=2.5,center=true,$fn=20); // WTH? // King/Queen translate([ 6, 11 ,0]) cylinder(h=3.5,r=2.5,center=true,$fn=20); translate([-6, 11 ,0]) cylinder(h=3.5,r=2.5,center=true,$fn=20); // Rooks translate([ 6,-11.5,0]) cylinder(h=3.5,r=2.5,center=true,$fn=20); translate([-6,-11.5,0]) cylinder(h=3.5,r=2.5,center=true,$fn=20); [...] Note the third line with "WTH?" - I've done quite some trial-and-error, and if I remove that line, then I don't get any subtracted holes anymore when I render the whole thing (F6). In preview (F5), the holes are always present, but in the final render, I need to include the larger subtracted cylinder or it won't work. The STL file seems to be fine in itself, what's going on here?

I see you've accepted cmm's answer, but I'd still like to take a stab at the mechanism of the failure based on your comment on it: Excellent explanation, thanks. The "WTH" cylinder is centered on the queen piece, and that has a sphere with lots of faces on top. So it looks like the "kink" is inside the queen where the sphere and the base cube overlap, and by accident, my trial-and-error removing of cylinders also removed just the right spot. My guess is that if you look at the triangle set of the STL file, you'll find the interior of the queen contains the parts of the cube that are inside the sphere and the parts of the sphere that are inside the cube; they may not even be clipped to meet each other properly where they cross each other's surfaces. Sadly there are lots of tools producing invalid STL files like this. The longer cylinder is probaly sufficient to overlap with where the cube and sphere cross, forcing OpenSCAD to break down the model in that region and recompute the mesh where the components overlap. Without that recomputation, the differences likely end up interacting with just the "sphere part" of the STL mesh. This explanation also seems to be consistent with the description of the thing on thingiverse: I much preferred the style of Bauhaus set that TeamTeaUSA's designed, but there was a lot of fiddling with the queen and the knight wouldn't print without supports. So I nestled the queen's sphere further into the body so it would print standing up, added supports for the knight and plated the whole thing. where it looks like the creator took someone else's STL files and moved parts around to create an overlap, likely without proper tooling that could regenerate a valid mesh.

can the intel sense "xyzprinters 3dscanner" work on amd prossessors anyway? i ordred a xyzprinter 3d scanner today on ebay, bechause i through it would work with my quick new windows 10 pc setup. but when i tested the scanner compability i downloaded here now, it says that all settings on my pc is compatible, but exept from the prosessor i have, the amd ryzen 7, 8 core. it says that my computer is not compatible with the xyz scanner bechause i have not the intel 4 or newer intel prosessor, but instead of having intel prosessor, i have an amd ryzen 7, 8 core prosessor. will the xyz 3d scanner work anyway, even if i have not intel but as quick as an old intel 4thgen prosessor is, i have an new amd ryzen 7, 8 core? (i have also 32gb ram memory and nvidia 1070 mini graphic card with 8gb ram in and windows home 10 64bit and 3 usb 3.0 ports on my pc. and a corsair motherboard).

Here are some ways a program might indicate incompatibility: There is something in the code that is actually incompatible -- such as some Intel-only DSP instructions. They are using an Intel library or source code that is licensed only for use on Intel processors. They added a check to their code to be sure the processor was powerful enough to handle the load, and they forgot to consider AMD or other processors.

Printing screws - is the output usable? (M3 or M4) I just want to ask if anyone has successfully printed a screw (M3 or M4). Is the printed output usable as a screw? What printer is capable of printing screws? I am using an M3D printer - is there a configuration to successfully print a screw that is usable? Can anyone share a picture of the best 3D printed screw?

well... it's hard to imagine printing M3 or even M4 I haven't try but I haven't because I'm pretty sure it's not possible (on my printer of course) but some time ago I've tried M8 which is of course way from your needs it was printed on 0.1mm layer height it went ok into the nut without any problems but the strength is not very high I suppose I know the quality is poor but even such bad photo shows issues

Extruder motor making a knocking sound, nozzle is not clogged I've been trying to print anything for the past few days. Every time I go to print something the printer stops pushing plastic out and usually the motor makes a knocking sound. My original thought was that my E-steps were off (because they were) but I solved that and I still have a problem. Then I noticed that I was struggling with getting the PLA filament to feed into the nozzle. I assumed it was a clogged nozzle and possibly heat creep (because I was a dummy and used my old, bowden retraction settings on my new, direct extruder). I cleared out the clog and I'm able to feed plastic through after disengaging the idler arm. Though, I do struggle getting the filament into the nozzle. Maybe it's due to the Hemera's tight tolerances or due to a misalignment in the hot end, I'm not sure yet. Once I do get the plastic in, it quickly and easily pushes through and spits out of the nozzle so I think that my nozzle isn't clogged. I did do a cold pull the other day. But I've noticed that my extruder is making a knocking sound, as if someone was gently rapping on my chamber door. I also see that the gears move one step back and forth. It looks to me that the motor is stuck or frozen. I'm pretty sure that it's not skipping steps. The sound happens at varying heights and not just the first layer. The first time I noticed it, it was printing the cabin of Benchy. Z > 1 mm when I finally decided to ask this question. The sound is kind of loud, but that's most likely the resonance in the machine than a symptom, stating it nonetheless. My setup: Printer: Creality CR-10S Extruder: E3D Hemera Nozzle temp: 205-220 °C Retraction: Initially 5 mm at 40 mm/s, then 0.3 mm, then most recently none Motor Vref: just north of 800 mA. (I've read somewhere that the Hemera motor wants 800 to 1000 mA) I'm just not sure what could be wrong here. I feel like I checked all the steps and I'm just missing something.

A knocking or clicking sound does not imply you have a problem, it implies that you could have a problem; it can be the characteristic of the extruder. My own designed 2.85 mm filament, 1:4 speed reducing belt driven extruders make clicking sounds while extruding (independent of the layer height), I have verified that no steps are lost and the printer extrudes exactly the requested amount of filament (2.85 mm filament requires a lot more pressure for the same nozzle size, the noise is coming from inside of the metal Bulldog housing, not the stepper adjacent, it is not stepper nor filament skipping noise). A clicking sound in combination with gears losing position as you describe (or filament skipping back) does mean that the pressure in the nozzle is too big for the extruder to push it through. If the gears loose position, this means that the stepper is not powerful enough to push it through, this means that more current or a more powerful stepper is required (the latter option is due to the design of the extruder not possible). If the filament skips back while the gears are in place the tension/grip to the filament needs to be increased. In troubleshooting this problem it is best to increase the current to the stepper close to the upper side of the specifications of the stepper and see if the knocking sounds disappear. This should not be a problem for such a priced and tested extruder system, i.e. considering the reputation and quality of E3D this extruder must work out of the box unless you have received damaged components.

Updating Marlin Firmware - Step by Step Guide Note: This question is meant as a wiki to include all steps that are needed to update your printer with a self configured Marlin firmware version. The answer is a wiki that is currently in development and can be seen (and edited) by all users. I have a printer and need to update my Marlin firmware to get some stuff done to my liking, especially to make sure I have TRP, have power loss recovery and then do a PID-tune. I am also not sure if a bootloader is flashed. So what I need is a step-by-step guide to: prepare my printer for flashing configure my Marlin firmware get my new Marlin firmware onto my printer

Step 0: extracting old settings & setting up The first step is to get yourself a printing software that has a Console or Terminal like present in Repetier Host, Pronterface (as part of the Printrun software suite), OctoPrint or any other tool (e.g. serial connection with PuTTY also works) that allows to communicate with the printer to extract the settings we already have. Once we have the software installed and the printer connected, send M503 and copy the old settings into a file for later use. Next, we need our development surroundings. Usually, you want to use Arduino IDE (but the PlatformIO plugin as part of Visual Studio Code can be used for both Arduino based microprocessors as 32-bit processors), but you need to know what kind of board the control board of your printer is derived from because some boards have native IDEs that work better for them. Step 1: Choice of Firmware By some metrics of early 2020, about 80 % of all shipped machines run Marlin in some fashionneed citation. The most prolific versions of Marlin at that point are often cited to be 1.1.9 and 2.x. Since anything before 1.1.9 is very much obsolete and needs an update anyway, we will look into 1.1.9 and 2.x only. Version 2.x was developed to include 32-bit microprocessors, but is compatible with 8-bit microprocessor printer boards. As the version jump indicates though, 2.x is pretty much an entire rewrite, so do your choice and jump to the correct next step. Marlin 1.1.x Typically, you start by grabbing a blank Marlin 1.1.9. The next step is to alter the static settings of the printer to match yours in Configuration.h - best use the settings from what we pulled earlier via M503 as a start. Alternatively, you can search for a configuration of your printer between known configuration files. You should at least need to adjust these: For communications and filament diameter: #define BAUDRATE 250000 // Generally expected filament diameter (1.75, 2.85, 3.0, ...). Used for Volumetric, Filament Width Sensor, etc. #define DEFAULT_NOMINAL_FILAMENT_DIA 3.0 Choose your correct temperature tables, and make sure to turn on the one for the bed if you have one! #define TEMP_SENSOR_0 1 [...] #define TEMP_SENSOR_BED 0 Next come two blocks that set the 'this is ok' temperature area, for the hotends and bed respectively (only hotend shown here). // Extruder temperature must be close to target for this long before M109 returns success #define TEMP_RESIDENCY_TIME 10 // (seconds) #define TEMP_HYSTERESIS 3 // (degC) range of +/- temperatures considered "close" to the target one #define TEMP_WINDOW 1 // (degC) Window around target to start the residency timer x degC early. The next slot is an important safety feature: Mintemp and Maxtemp. Unless you seriously, positively know your hotend can do more than 275 °C (which means you have an all-metal hotend), DON'T touch the Maxtemp, but you might set Mintemp to 0 °C if you like. Next come PID-Tuning settings, you only need to work with those if you know what you are doing. The next step is important also: make positively sure that these two lines are exactly as follows, no stray // in front to comment them out. This is TRP. #define THERMAL_PROTECTION_HOTENDS // Enable thermal protection for all extruders #define THERMAL_PROTECTION_BED // Enable thermal protection for the heated bed If your printer is a CoreXY or similarily uses 2 belts for moving along 2 axis, you look at the Mechanical Settings tab and alter it there, otherwise we skip further to the Endstop Settings. Enable (remove the leading //) the max-endstops if you have them, the rest is usually not necessary on most consumer-grade machines, then go further to the Movement Settings. From our M503 we grab the settings to fill out the following: #define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT { 80, 80, 4000, 500 } #define DEFAULT_MAX_FEEDRATE { 300, 300, 5, 25 } If you have a probe, you look into Z-Probe Options and follow 0scar's guide here, skip it otherwise until you find the next snippet. Fix that one up to fit your bed and movement area. You might need to set values for the endstop to bed origin distance. These offsets, X_MIN_POS and Y_MIN_POS, need to contain the correct values to center the bed; see "How to center my prints on the build platform? (Re-calibrate homing offset) ". // The size of the print bed #define X_BED_SIZE 200 #define Y_BED_SIZE 200 // Travel limits (mm) after homing, corresponding to endstop positions. #define X_MIN_POS 0 // Value of zero means that the origin of the bed is at the endstop #define Y_MIN_POS 0 // Value of zero means that the origin of the bed is at the endstop #define Z_MIN_POS 0 #define X_MAX_POS X_BED_SIZE #define Y_MAX_POS Y_BED_SIZE #define Z_MAX_POS 200 Next, uncomment (remove the leading //) the following line: //#define EEPROM_SETTINGS // Enable for M500 and M501 commands If you want to have a special pause position, uncomment and define it in //#define NOZZLE_PARK_FEATURE #if ENABLED(NOZZLE_PARK_FEATURE) // Specify a park position as { X, Y, Z } #define NOZZLE_PARK_POINT { (X_MIN_POS + 10), (Y_MAX_POS - 10), 20 } #define NOZZLE_PARK_XY_FEEDRATE 100 // X and Y axes feedrate in mm/s (also used for delta printers Z axis) #define NOZZLE_PARK_Z_FEEDRATE 5 // Z axis feedrate in mm/s (not used for delta printers) #endif We are on the finishing stretch, just a few things in this file remaining! Select your language with the line: #define LCD_LANGUAGE en Turn on the SD-Card slot by uncommenting //#define SDSUPPORT The last step we need to alter in the Configuration.h is choosing the correct LCD controller. Uncomment the line corresponding to your printer - you might need to use a generic option. Marlin 2.x Again, grab the 2.x marlin, either the blank base or a preconfigured version. For some printer styles (like Delta), you have to take a specialized set. Then we look at our M503output and set our communications Baudrate and our motherboard (or the board it is derived from), then the number of extruders and the filament diameter: #define BAUDRATE 250000 #ifndef MOTHERBOARD #define MOTHERBOARD BOARD_RAMPS_14_EFB #endif #define EXTRUDERS 1 #define DEFAULT_NOMINAL_FILAMENT_DIA 3.0 Next we go to thermal settings! We need the correct temperature sensor table for hotend and bed, possibly we could lower MINTEMP to 0. Don't touch MAXTEMP unless you know what you're doing and have a full-metal setup and you know your machine can take more. #define TEMP_SENSOR_0 1 [...] #define TEMP_SENSOR_BED 0 Our next step is making positively sure that TRP is on. Make sure these lines have no leading // #define THERMAL_PROTECTION_HOTENDS // Enable thermal protection for all extruders #define THERMAL_PROTECTION_BED // Enable thermal protection for the heated bed #define THERMAL_PROTECTION_CHAMBER // Enable thermal protection for the heated chamber If the printer is a CoreXY or similar, enable the style in the mechanical settings area. Enable (remove the leading //) the max-endstops if you have them, the rest is usually not necessary on most consumer-grade machines, then go further to the Movement Settings. From our M503 we grab the settings to fill out the following: #define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT { 80, 80, 4000, 500 } #define DEFAULT_MAX_FEEDRATE { 300, 300, 5, 25 } If you have a probe, you need to set it up - 0scar has a partial guide - and it is all in the Z Probe Options area! Otherwise, go on. We need to go down, and in the middle of the Probe setup, we find the bed settings. Set them up to fit your printer and possibly the offset from the home-switches to the build volume corner. // The size of the print bed #define X_BED_SIZE 200 #define Y_BED_SIZE 200 // Travel limits (mm) after homing, corresponding to endstop positions. #define X_MIN_POS 0 #define Y_MIN_POS 0 #define Z_MIN_POS 0 #define X_MAX_POS X_BED_SIZE #define Y_MAX_POS Y_BED_SIZE #define Z_MAX_POS 200 Down to Additional Features we go! Let's turn on the EEPROM by uncommenting (removing the //)... //#define EEPROM_SETTINGS // Persistent storage with M500 and M501 ...and think about how you want to set up your preheats or where to have your special park position. But then comes the last part, which we really need to do: Set up the interface. Start by changing the language and turn on the SD-Slot by uncommenting the lower of these lines: #define LCD_LANGUAGE en //#define SDSUPPORT Our last stop on setting up the basics is LCD / Controller Selection. We need to uncomment the right one here. If you don't find yours, use a generic one. Step 2: Preparing the Board There are 2 variants here: either you use a bootloader, or you prepare a .hex file for overwriting the whole firmware. In either case, we need to know what board we have, so we can compile with the correct encoding and setup. You might need to install a proper extension! 2.1 - Bootloader A lot of boards come with a pre-flashed bootloader, which makes installing and revising software very fast. But not all boards have one flashed. Flashing a bootloader needs you to have an Arduino and some cables or a different ISP or AVR programming tool. Complete instructions can be found here by Greenonline and here by Robert Lo Giacco and jpa. Or you take your control board to your local maker space and ask someone there to help you flash the bootloader - most maker spaces have at least someone that has an Arduino and can help you! 2.2 - .hex file In this case, we don't need to do anything in this step. We'll have a different installation process though. Step 3: Compiling & Installing Firmware Depending on your choice in the previous Step, you have to follow the corresponding branch here: 3.1 - Bootloader If you have set your bootloader, now installing firmware is as simple as connecting your computer with the printer using a direct connection and doing a compile & Upload command. 3.2 - .hex file After preparing your .hex file, you can upload it with one of the variants shown here by Greenonline, Trish or Thomas Weller Step 4: Finishing touches Seeding Directly after installing up our new firmware on the printer, we need to seed our settings. Connect to the printer via any Console or Terminal (see Step 0) and use these commands M502 M500 PID Tune Then we run a PID-Tune. For the first extruder we send: M303 E0 S200 C3 It will run the machine some and return values named Kp, Ki & Kd. These directly correspond with P I & D. Store them into the EEPROM and save with the following: M301 P##.## I#.## D##.## M500

how to split a 40" model into 5 parts to print seperate I currently have a model in fusion 360 of cylinders with the largest being 40" diameter in a specific pattern as seen below. My printer is a Ender-3x with the build plate dimensions of 8.7" x 8.7" x 9.8" I need to break this model into 5 pieces of exactly equivalent length so I can print same piece 5 times to equal a full cylinder

You've got several options: Generate full-size STL, cut via software later If you just have an STL, you can use software such as Meshmixer to modify it. In this case, a plain plane cut would suffice. Modifiy the design file A better way is to go into the design file (in your case fusion) and modify it there. In your case, it's rather easy: add a construction plane choose the right constraints, e.g. an angle to the XZ plane or a distance to the XY plane choose the model Edit > split model choose the construction plane you made rinse and repeat If you want to get rid of parts that became superfluous after this, use the remove option, not the delete option, as the later tries to make sure that the object never was made in the workflow.

Easy way to refine a 3D-model for 3D printing by removing internal geometry I have been given a proprietary 3D file of a real world item from an item manufacturer with the obligations not to hand it out to anyone to produce a print in a low single digit percentge scale of the object. The object model I was handed was given in STL format, and contains even the tiny geometry of the internals. The first set of files given did come with walls that became too thin to be printable in some areas, and I had to ask them to thicken these parts, which they did. Now, these files still contain tons of redundant internal geometry), like bolts that would be M20 or something IRL. The technical design is actually produced in a 1:1 scale - and thus much of the item's complexity is retained in scaling and slicing, because I was provided with neat, nested shells that don't intersect at all. A tiny piece of internal geometry after slicing for illustration without giving much about the actual object (which is under DND). ALL of this internal is superflous, waste of material and additional print time. The STL of this item contains (according to Meshmixer) about 40 shells, most of them representing single bolts, while the really relevant parts are all in the shell 1. The really problematic part is though, that even ditching these 39 superfous shells, the space reserved for them and a lot of internal geometry is left behind when I try to get rid of the internal geometry. Saturday I tried for hours to simplify the model first and then stitch away tons of the internal geometry with blender, but while this did reduce print time greatly for the internal cavities were gone, the simplification did mess up other parts of the model to a degree that wasn't nice anymore and it messed up the scaling. Also, it was very time consuming - 6 hours or more - which makes this a very bad time-effect ratio. The print with the retaining 2 % of the vertices was... ok, but not as nice as with the half million vertices from the original file, mainly because I had to simplify the model first to even have a chance to see into the model to get the internal cavity vertices grabbed and removed/merged, before fixing any holes left from the mercyless treatment by Meshmixer's auto-repair feature. Is there a way to analyse a model for internal structure and remove them for slicing without having to remodel a 500k vertex / 50 MB object in its full? It would be best if such a way was somewhat automated. My setup usually uses Cura as a slicing engine, my modeling softwares of choice are - in this order - Fusion360 or DesignSpark Mechanical. If nothing else helps and I have to attack singe vertices I do my way around Blenderauto-updated via Steam. Meshmixer I usually use only to fix up models before slicing.

About 10 minutes after writing the question, it suddenly dawned on me, that I was not using Meshmixer to its full potential, and especially not a simple property of Cura: Cura can discard all parts of a model, that are intersecting a closed volume and thus are inside another volume - fixing intersecting shells this way. This option is called "Union Overlapping Volumes" Meshmixer can, using the meshmix tool, add simple and somewhat complex geometries to specific places in given size and orientation. Now, these two parts can be used to get rid or complex internal geometry by intentionally setting it up an intersecting shell. Usually intersecting shells are a no-no for good 3D design, but by having something - for example a cylinder - intersect just the internal geometry and enclosing it, these parts vanish in the slicing, if the slicer is set to fix intersecting shells by ignoring internal geometry. Cura does so with a simple setting, one that seems to be on by default in the 3.3.1 distribution. So the odd solution to how to reduce a model's internal geometry without impacting the outer look can be this at times: Manually add geometry, that (fully) encloses the internal geometry and turns it into an intersecting shell, allowing (some) slicer softwares to ignore this part. To illustrate, almost the same area of the object before and after the added cylinder: As one can see, the structure became much simpler, as the cylinder cuts away all the internal structure (the 'spokes' and 'axle' one might want to identify from the left picture, but that would be a misidentification) is gone. Much less internal geometry is retained and instead it is now filled with a cylindrical space of nice and fast(er) to print infill, here "Quarter Cubic". While this is just a partly automated solution - demanding the manual addition of the intentional intersecting shell - I am yet to be taught about a fully automated way.

How to get Sunlu PLA to adhere to the printing bed? I have a Creality Ender 3 that printed a spool of Sunlu PLA with no issues, so I bought a second to replace it, just in a different color. The problem is I can’t get it to stick. The bed is level, I’ve tried printing at different temps, even adjusted the fan, but no luck. No matter what, the print still only partially sticks to the bed before eventually being knocked loose by the nozzle, if it even sticks at all. Mostly it just extrudes in a spaghetti ball next to the nozzle. Does anyone know how I can fix this issue? I have tried everything! Update: More info for those who have asked: I have adjusted the temps of both the hot end and the bed to various temps within what is recommended with this filament (200-230 and 50-90 C) The bed is level I have attempted prints with both the plastic and glass beds (glass bed has never been printed on) Attempted to use hairspray While the print is somewhat sticking, it now produces a glob of pla while making its first pass down, which it then hits and completely unsticks. I think the glob is caused by the pla not sticking to the bed from the very beginning but am unsure. Hope this helped!

Level the bed Make sure that the bed is level. The nozzle must be equally high over heated surface, otherwise only part of the print will have chance to be smeared and adhere properly. Clean thoroughly First thing I do when I notice that increasing bed temperature does not work anymore, is washing the glass with soap or detergent. Some advice to use also isopropyl alcohol. My impression is that the main mistake is to use alcohol to wipe the glass instead of dismounting and thoroughly cleaning the glass from any grease. This is a bit more work, and for me works great. Applying alcohol, brake cleaner or similar no-trace solvent could enhance the effect (as suggested by FarO). Reduce the air flow Disable fan for the first layer (or even more layers above). Isolate the printer from environment - e.g. buy or build enclosure. Remove any drafts. Ensure that ambient temperature is not cooling prints down too fast (for example printing in garage or shed may fail until the space is heated). Use kapton tape You may like the idea to put kapton tape on the surface (only glass?). Wide kapton roll would be needed to cover big area at once, to cover the whole glass with good quality and in reasonable time. Created surface should be as ideal as possible, because any bubbles will cause later trouble, it is not easy but doable. The outcome is great. Any accidents with hotend should be avoided, and prints removed with some care, to remain tape undamaged as long as possible. (I use 50 mm tape. And I save this surface for printing ABS, and only occasionally for PLA, because it sticks so well that I had problem to remove prints saving the surface, even after cooling down.) Apply adhesive You can use adhesives like hairspray, glue stick or even better a dedicated adhesion spray. It is suggested especially for larger parts, which tend to wrap without this kind of adhesive aid. There is no one good solution. You may want to experiment, starting from cheap and widely accepted to commercial and wildly advertised products, with regards to your local market. Look for example links at the bottom. Expand line settings for initial layer Make sure that amount of extruded material is correct. This mean proper calibration regarding settings like: steps/mm for E axis, flow rate. Small difference in amount of extruded filament will reduce the quality of the rest of the print. Bigger differences may ruin print at the initial layer, and for sure will spoil the rest. Use slicer settings to increase line width for first layer. Values of 120-140% are standard settings for improving adhesion. Slightly increasing height of initial layer may also help to overcome bed surface roughness or slight leveling errors. Decrease speed to 20 mm/s or less Reduce printing speed for initial layer to 20 mm/s or even lower, and raise it carefully after trouble is really resolved. (In my opinion it is better to decrease speed to let plastic melt and stick, than to increase temperature.) Modify temperature The temperature of heated bed should be high enough to keep the initial layer of filament within glass transition zone. This usually means more than 60 °C for PLA (between 50 °C - 80 °C depending on contents). (I usually print at 70 °C, and raise to 80 °C when meet issues.) Increasing the temperature of nozzle also may improve the adhesion. But it may also be temporary success, because of negative effects related to temperature differences, and for example cause wrapping - ruining especially wider prints. So decreasing the nozzle temperature is also an option to check, when wrapping is observed. Experiment with more advanced techniques If you are still failing, then try experiment following many advices around (contrary, but sometimes working). If the firs layer adhere to the bed, but problems appear later, then other advanced techniques may help - like slicing model with additional structures (brim or raft). The best advice may depend on kind of heated bed, surface or environment. This checklist may be of some use: 3D Printer Bed Adhesion: All You Need To Know. Also there are many troubleshooting threads on the web, like this on Reddit: SUNLU PLA+ will not adhere to build surface, or; this on Thingiverse: SUNLO PLA+: does not stick..

3D printing filament resistant to steam I need to replace the lid of my water kettle and am searching for a filament, that is suitable for this purpose. The requirements are: Stable at 100°C (212°F) Resistant to steam/moisture Food-safe Has anyone experimented with this or similar purposes?

Referring to the table provided in 0scar's answer, the key challenge with high temperature materials is the gap between the glass transition temperature (bed temperature) and the extruder temperature. Polycarbonate for example is listed as usable up to 121°C, printing on a bed at 80-120°C, but requiring an extruder temperature of 260-310°C. This extruder temperature is potentially going to challenge the mechanical, thermal and measurement properties of a printer. In this application, you don't strictly require 100°C operation, so Nylon (80-95°C) and ABS (98°C) might be worth trying. Even if one side of the part is at this temperature, immersed in steam, the opposite side is exposed to air and convection cooling. Providing there is sufficient thermal insulation and internal rigidity, the upper shell of the part is likely to support it. However, if the inner face does start to flow it may take some time before a problem is apparent. So long as the material is not soluble, absorbing moisture may not be a major issue. When it comes to being food-safe, this is a huge can of worms, and you're really looking to investigate 'how much of a risk' rather than get a go/no-go answer.

Prusa i3 MK3S 3D printer PETG printing problems I am using a new Prusa i3 MK3S 3D printer kit. I print lots of things using PLA and PETG. After a week of great performance I noticed that when printing some objects with PETG filament I often encountered a problem when there's intense stringing, infill gaps, artifacts, the object sometimes detaches from the plate. I use the Prusa Slicer and Cura and print with the temperature 230/90 °C, speed max. 300 %.This problem occurs rather regardless of which infill methods I choose. I see this problem more often when printing models sliced with Cura. Sometimes everything goes fine, but most of the time I need to stop the print due to the model collapsing, detaching from the surface, its parts collapsing due to infill gaps. The printer sometimes makes some 'clicking, cracking' sounds when printing with PETG. My filaments come from Fiberology. Surprisingly, I have run the selftest, XYZ, Z calibrations and all the other ones without any errors. The wizard told me that the axes are perpendicular and it gave me congratulations. All the other tests went nearly perfect as well. I do not encounter any problems using PLA, just with PETG. I try to maintain the filament properly (keep it away from moisture, in a closed box). Sometimes (rarely) I get crashes. The filament often builds up on the hotend and I remove it. I do not know what to do, the build went very well and there are no errors, even though I am a new user and this is my very first 3D printer. I have searched the web and I haven't found people reporting this exact same thing. Could You help me? What can I do to improve the quality of the prints, perhaps maintain PETG better (maybe I'm doing something wrong) and most importantly, solve the problem?

230 °C is way too cool for PETG and will result in underextrusion unless you print really slow, and poor bonding. Underextrusion in turn leads to stringing because of pressure build-up. I print PETG at 250 °C.

How do I know if my BLTouch is faulty or firmware is faulty? I just got the Ender 5 Plus with BLTouch set up today. I was having some massive issues and determined that my leveling was off because the BLTouch was flashing red and not connecting. When I turn on the printer there is about a 50% chance that it will probe correctly by deploying the pin and correctly retracting it. However, I'm having about a 75 to 90% fail rate on auto leveling where it is doing measurements. I've checked the wiring and it looks correct, but not sure what else to check. The fixes I've seen say updating the firmware, but all show firmware at 1.70.0 BL. Mine is at 1.70.2 BL. So I'm not sure if there are more firmware updates to apply. I do not know how to check which BLTouch I have. And I've been able to make it get to printing 2 times, but something is off because it is stringy at 1 point of the build on the first layer. No adhesion basically. So that is the problem I'm trying to fix, but can't get to it because the BLTouch fails so often on the first part. The only way I've found to fix the BLTouch consistently is turn off machine, pull the pin down, push it up, then turn on the machine again. Is it possible this is a firmware issue or is just the BLTouch is likely faulty?

Try calibrating your Z offset Based on this answer it sounds like the flashing red means there isn't enough clearance between your bed and your probe for it to operate. You might try raising your Z axis up a bit to let the probe achieve the minimum clearance necessary for deploying the probe. My guess is that your Z-offset isn't quite right and it isn't raising up enough to allow that minimum clearance. I recommend calibrating your Z offset and see if that resolves the issue.

How can I print in multicolor with Ender 6? I'd like to make multicolor printing on Ender 6, but it seems that the filament change (ADVANCED_PAUSE_FEATURE) doesn't work (it works on my Ender 3). Can you help me how can I solve that? How can I make the ADVANCED_PAUSE_FEATURE available on Ender 6?

Enabling ADVANCED_PAUSE_FEATURE requires a rebuild and upload/install of a new Marlin firmware. The option is found in the advanced configuration file (Configuration_adv.h). Please change: //#define ADVANCED_PAUSE_FEATURE to: #define ADVANCED_PAUSE_FEATURE Rebuild and install the firmware.

3Dtouch triggers way too close Today I finished building and adjusting a Prusa-Clone printer. The brain is a 32bit board with Smoothieware on in. To run the auto bed leveling routine I installed a 3DTouch (BLTouch clone, sorry low on cash). After many headaches, I got everything working fine and I'm happy with the result. Except for one thing... When the 3DTouch is probing, it is triggered when the nozzle is about 1 mm from the bed. If I set the probe higher, the nozzle crashes onto the bed. If I set the probe lower, the probe would be on the same level of the nozzle, not so good for print time. Anyone with similar experience or how to sole it? google doesn't show up much regarding this. Thanks in advance!

That it triggers when the nozzle is about 1 mm from the build plate is how it is supposed to work. The installation manual describes how to setup the sensor. The mount needs to be adjustable so that the distance between the bottom of the sensor (not the pin) needs to be 8.3mm above the tip of the nozzle. When taking the above distance into account, the probe should be hitting the build plate first when it is extended. When the probe triggers, it triggers at a certain distance from the nozzle. It is this distance that you need to add as an offset so that the printer knows where the actual Z=0 is. To determine the offset, you home the printer, then lower the head until a piece of paper gives a little drag when pulled under the nozzle. From the display you can read the offset, e.g. -1.4. With command M851 Z-1.4 you set the offset between level and trigger point. Use M500 to store the new settings.

Slicer for 32 Bit Operating systems? I currently only have access to an old, 32 bit OS and need to slice a couple things. While there are a lot of slicers around, most popular ones, for example Ultimaker Cura 4, need to run on a 64 bit operation system. What somewhat recent (late 2018, 2019) options offering common abilities are there that run on older computers?

The last version of Ultimaker Cura that supported 32-bit Operation Systems was Cura 2.3.1 of 2016, which of course has a lot of items not yet in it and doesn't fit the demand of offering some update at worst from 2018. 32-bit support is starting to fade from the support of projects, as 64-bit makes a lot of things much easier and faster and 32 Bit Windows likewise is pretty much a dead-end branch with Windows 7 Support being discontinued on January 14th, 2020. For example, the Slicer project says on their documentation of the May 2019 4.10 version: "We do not make 32 bit builds available." Yet there is rescue with the Slic3r-Family! Slic3r 1.3.0 is open source, available as 32 and 64-bit versions, and was released in November 2018, making it somewhat up to date. You need to customize a lot of settings in it, but it is after all quite a powerful slicer - for which you have to write your own Start Code, define your filament settings and machine. Repetier Host 2.1.6 is likewise a 32-bit application. It's technically a console with slicing features and uses one of several engines to slice - including the Slic3r and Slic3r Prusa Edition engines, which run on 32-bit. In comparison to Slic3r, I find its UI for placing items a little more user-friendly. It does pull the settings from Slic3r, if you have that installed. Slic3r Prusa Edition/PrusaSlicer is a derivate of the Slic3r project. 2.2.9 was released in December 2019. It too runs on 32 bit systems. It is, UI-wise, even more comfortable than Repetier Host and is somewhat similar to Ultimaker Cura 4.