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Reason behind geometry of heater blocks? I understand the principle of why a heater block is used. Helping to reduce temperature variation as the filament is extruded using the heat capacity of the block. But I’m wondering why it takes the form it does? I imagine it is cuboid in shape just for convenience as it’s easy to machine? From a surface area to volume ratio a cuboid appears to be one of the worst shapes to use. Note: I am currently doing a project which requires me to increase the tool clearance of the nozzle of a 3D printer. Hence why I am exploring alternative print head configurations and heater block design trying to minimise the profile of the print head as much as possible.

A heater block has its shape designed simply by the necessity of the needs and the ease to manufacture them. Functionally, a heater block serves as: a structural component holding the following components in a well-known position to one another: heatbreak nozzle heater cartridge thermosensor a transmission medium of heat energy from the heater cartridge to the thermosensor and filament path. this dictates the use of high thermal conductive metals a thermal energy storage to equalize the heating pattern of the heater cartridge. While this dictates the internal geometry of the block, it does not say anything about the external geometry. This is chosen entirely because of manufacturing, which strongly prefers square items in a vise with stop positions to allow repeatable machining. While other heater designs are existant, for example wrapping a heater wire around the meltzone, the use of a machined structural element that houses bought components saves a lot of time in assembly Quality Control and subsequent repairs, as each component (heater, thermosensor, block) can be rejected or replaced on its own. This makes the machine all in all more serviceable.

What do I do when I have a little filament left? I just printed my first thing, now there's very little filament left in my Monoprice Select Mini v2. What do I do about it? Yank it out? Try to print out what's left of it and hope it all extrudes safely? I'm not sure what my next move here is. Is doing either, dangerous to the safety of my machine? I haven't seen any guides or information on this and I'm afraid I'm going to break something.

Heat the extruder up first, then remove the filament. You can remove the filament either by reversing the extruder using a command such as G1 E-100 F200, by using your printer's controls/LCD (if it has one) or simply pull the filament out by hand. To this end, most extruders have a lever that you can push to disengage the drive gear to make it easier to pull the filament out. You can just heat the extruder up to printing temperature, but a perhaps better approach is a cold-pull, where you heat the extruder up just barely enough to be able to remove the filament (to, say, 120-180°C) and then pull the filament out. This has the advantage of removing more of the old filament and perhaps also taking some debris that may be stuck in the nozzle with it. Trying to print it all out won't work because once the last bit of filament goes past the drive gear, you won't be able to extrude the rest of it. Feeding in a new bit of filament might push the old filament out, but it could just as easily get jammed.

QIDI x-one2 : Fan screws not holding filament feeder stepper motor in place I noticed a knocking noise one day on my QIDI and things seemed fine at first glance, then 7 hours later my print only had 3 layers. So I figured it was a jam, and I cleaned it out but every now and then I heard the knock again which cause incomplete prints. When I went back to remove the front facing cooling fan I noticed one of the screws that go through the fan to the stepper motor wasn't secure. This was causing the filament guide to rock out of place periodically until it got worse and worse. I've been trying for hours but the screw just won't "catch" on the stepper motor that feeds the filament into the extruder. The screws aren't stripped because I can take the motor off and screw them directly into it with no problem. It's as if they aren't long enough anymore or that they're bent. Has anyone else had this problem & found a solution that works consistently?

I just had this same problem and my solution was to push the motor as close as I could up to where the screw goes, because they weren’t lined up. I hope that helped.

How do you 3d print from an existing part when you have no CAD drawings? We have a toy with some broken parts, an Executivity Gear Master. I don't think it's made anymore. Some tiny parts were easy to break and we'd like to 3d print some replacement parts. We don't have CAD or any other 3D drawings file, just a few of the unbroken parts. What's the best way to get some of these printed? Do I have to turn this into a 3D file first? (Is there a quick way to do that from the part itself?) Or is there a way to do it where I just need the part, rather like getting a spare key cut from a pre-existing key being used as the template? Here's a photo of the part I need to print. Placed next to a quarter for size comparison:

You can't print without a 3D model first. There are various ways you can go about this (or pay someone to do the same for you, ignoring any IP issues). It is possible to generate a 3D model from a sequence of 2D photographs (there is even software which will allow you to do this freehand on a phone). Equipment exists which is specifically designed for this process, and you have likely heard of the services which allow you to get a 3D print of your own body. You can take a 2D photo and import this into a 3D drawing package. Copy the features into a mesh, and extrude it. This might be a good approach for a complex shape, particularly if appearance is more important than precision. For the shape you show here, the simplest approach for anyone with modeling experience is maybe to just draw it from scratch (with a few key dimensions). Your shape is only made up of a handful of primitive shapes. Experiment in TinkerCad which is an online 3D editor to see if you can handle this yourself. It's not clear if you have your own printer, but this sort of part should cost less than $1 to print. Strength might be a problem if they are already breaking...

Issues with OctoPi connecting to FlashForge Creator Pro via Serial Communication I've recently initialized OctoPi onto my Raspberry Pi, proceeded to connect it to my local internet, and then connected it to my FlashForge Creator Pro (2014 edition) Everything seemed to be going smoothly until I tried to connect to the printer; the Pi didn't seem to be able to pick up a usable Baudrate (after being trying out all of the usable ones). For example, when trying out 9600, I would get: Trying baudrate: 9600 Send: N0 M110 N0*125 Recv: ��r># ���& � What should I do to fix the problem? Note that I got the same types of messages back (with garbled 'special' characters) when trying using the "auto connect" feature.

I got the same problem. Auto-detect baud rate was not working too. So I manually tried every baud-rate and finally found one working, for me it was 115200. Good luck!

How to correct XY mirroring? So I made a 3D printer from scratch. It is a RepStrap based on a Prusa i3 running Marlin 2.0.x. It prints fine and accurate, but, The trouble is that the XY plane is mirrored and I don't know how to solve this. I'm using Marlin 2.0.x on an SKR 1.4 controller board. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

First of all, make sure that you have correctly identified the X and Y axes, and that the stepper motors (and end-stop switches) are connected to the correct ports. The hot end moves on the X-axis, and the bed moves on the Y-axis. If you connect the X and Y motors the wrong way round, you will get reversed text. If the X and Y motors are connected to the correct ports, you may need to invert the motor directions in firmware. There are #define statements to allow you to do this.

How do you assure that you print layers that bond correctly? I'm fairly new to 3D printing but I'm getting the steam up and I chug out pieces without much hassle. One thing though is that I have the impression that sometimes, parts are easily broken, and I suspect bad adhesion between layers. I'm printing eSun PLA at 208 °C (212 °C first layer), bed at 50 °C first layer then 30 °C. When I print the Benchy boat, it feels extremely sturdy (even the small chimney is unbreakable by hand), but if I make, say, a 50 mm diameter cylinder with 4 mm wall thickness, It breaks fairly easy along some layer. I don't see any specific error, it "looks" okay. So my question is: How do you assure that you print layers that bond enough? [Edit] I already know that might actually cause bad bonding (low heat, underextrusion, ...) but I'm looking for a way to see when it happens. Here is an image from when I stopped mid print (you can see the little ooze string just at the start at the crack) for checking dimensions. The next layer didn't bond well because, I guess, the already printed part had cooled down when I un-paused the print (say 1 minute later) or maybe the z-axis went off a bit when I touched the build plate. Is the only way of knowing layers bonded correctly, to try to break the part apart?

I think the reason why the large cylinder is breaking much easier than the smokestack would is because of leverage. If you print the same cylinder at a much smaller scale it might be more difficult to break it. Think of taking a wooden stick, if you try to snap it by holding both hands near the center, it would be difficult but if you push on the very ends, the leverage will make it easier to snap. I have the tug boat on my desk right now and I was unable to snap it, instead I broke the cabin section just right above the steering wheel. Now to answer your question. One of the faults in larger prints having weak layer adhesion could be a number of things. I think a common fault is under extrusion. If the nozzle has a high enough gap from the previous layer and it extrudes just enough filament to touch the layer but not necessarily push it snug, it could be a weak bond. This is like tape, usually when you want to make sure it will stay stuck, you press hard and rub it in. So I imagine filament shouldn't loosely flow onto layers but instead be pressed hard against the previous layers. Visually this is hard to judge but I noticed getting my first layer very close to the print bed makes every other layer stick very stronger on the previous one. You get a small skirt on the first layer but it does tend to give me a stronger bond between layers. You can easily slice off the skirt with a blade. Increasing the extrusion multiplier could give the same affect without needing to adjust bed height/leveling, but this can end up giving you some nasty walls. Another thing I recommend is to check your Z-axis. This is difficult to measure and best to find out by print quality on tall structures. On my first printer I had the issue where my threaded Z-rods would bind and cause one of the two rods to get a slight bit ahead. This caused a layer split focused on the side opposite of the faulty rod. This made many prints very prone to breaking at that point. I had to rebuild my Z-axis assembly to correct this. Print temperature can help, try raising it up by 5 to see if this improves the bonding. Lastly, try another filament. Filament tends to go bad due to moisture exposure, that is why usually you receive it airtight with a small bag of silica to absorb moisture. If I use filament which has been sitting out for months, just squeezing my part separates the layers in almost a slinky kind of way.

Creating positives for a food-safe silicone mold: safe? First, a little background. A couple of years ago, I was researching making my own candy, and I came across this page: Lego brick shaped gummy candies, describing how to use real Lego bricks as a positive to make silicone molds for Lego brick shaped candy. Now that I have a 3D printer, and inspired by the usual description of ABS filament ("It's the same plastic used to make Lego bricks") it occurs to me that I can now make any positive I want. The question is, would that be safe? I know the filament I'm using is not food safe, but if I create positives for a food safe silicone mold, would toxins leech into the mold? And if so, is there a barrier I can use to prevent this, such as some kind of coating?

In principle, ABS is safe for contact with (cold or room-temperature) food. The two main concerns specific to 3D printing are, assuming you start with a filament that is not itself contaminated: Pores and holes in the printed part which may harbor bacteria Impurities introduced into the plastic during the printing process I doubt that the silicone mold will capture the pores and holes with sufficient detail to be of any concern (it certainly won't capture the internal structure, only the surface). That leaves us with 2. It has been noted that brass nozzles contain trace amounts of lead. This lead can contaminate the printed part, which may in turn contaminate your mold, which may in turn contaminate your food. I don't think this is of realistic concern, since we're looking at trace amounts of trace amounts of lead. The nozzle might also have burnt plastic stuck to it (which might be carcinogenic) so you should make sure to do the print with a very clean nozzle and at a temperature that is not too high. ABS is food safe for contact with cold or room-temperature food. It is however not food safe for contact with hot food, because at higher temperatures the food may leach certain chemicals out of the plastic. Your application is one of low temperature, but silicone is not food and might perhaps leach some contaminants out of the plastic, regardless of temperature. However, this concern is not specific to 3D printing, as it applies to the method of making moulds out of Lego bricks as well. Therefore, making moulds from 3D printed positives does not appear to be different in a food safety perspective from making them out of LEGO blocks.

OctoPrint mjpg-streamer configuration I'm running an OctoPi Raspberry Pi installation of OctoPrint, and the webcam images are too bright. I found some documentation on changing the exposure of mjpg-streamer, see github:foosel/OctoPrint/MJPG Streamer configuration, but I don't understand where, or how, to change these settings.

The commands in your documentation only work with the Raspi camera. If that's the camera you're using, you can use the tools mentioned from terminal on your Raspberry Pi, or over SSH. If you don't have SSH setup and are using your Raspberry Pi with a keyboard and mouse, you can access the command line by pressing ctrl+alt+f1 remembering that ctrl+alt+f7 brings back your GUI. Setting exposure for Raspi camera First navigate to the folder you installed mjpg-streamer. If you installed it in your home folder: cd ~/mjpg-streamer/mjpg-streamer-experimental Then use the input_raspicam.so utility to set the exposure using whatever preset you'd like. ./input_raspicam.so -ex night If you don't have a Raspi camera I'm currently using a Logitech HD Webcam C310 with OctoPrint. I'm pretty sure setting the exposure for that is a pretty standard operation and you shouldn't need to install anything. v4l2 (video 4 linux 2) comes installed with Raspian. To set the exposure for a Logitech camera (possibly others too) first enable manual exposure mode (1 for manual, 0 for auto) v4l2-ctl -c exposure_auto=1 Then set the exposure value with v4l2-ctl -c exposure_absolute=100 replacing 100 with whatever value you'd like. The values start at 1 and have a maximum value of 10,000. These commands can of course be run over SSH. You can also run v4l2-ctl --list-ctrls-menus to see all the options for your camera. Here's a screenshot of my ssh session and my OctoPrint interface for context:

Multipart 3mf file, need to extract one of those parts for printing. I have a 3mf file that has 24 parts in it. I want to extract one of those parts for printing. I have Solid Works, Magics, and NetFabb.

If your 3D file has separate objects and vertices and are just merged together then do the following: Import into Magics; Select part (in the part list menu). Right click (in the part list menu) and select Shell to parts; (Be very careful here) Select the area you want to isolate with the translate tool. If you don't know how to do this just left click hold and drag the mouse to select an area inside a box; Use translate tool to move it a little ahead from the original grouped object (just drag on any axis); Right click (in the part list menu) and select merge part. Should work out fine. Tell me if you get stuck. This can also be done on Netfabb. Not on SolidWorks.

BLTouch not touching bed while leveling I have an Ender 3 Pro that I installed a BLTouch sensor on. After I auto-home, I level bed and it deploys the probe in the right spot, but doesn't go down far enough, then goes back up and stops leveling. I am using the wiring for BLTouch for Z homing on SKR mini E3 v1.2. I am using Marlin Bugfix-2.0 with BLTouch and a few other things enabled. Configuration Files Video of Problem

I think I fixed everything. What I did is I used this guide <youtu.be/y_1Kg45APko> which was a guide by makes'n'breaks on setting the probe z-offset using pronterface and then reverted to the original firmware that was on this page<github.com/bigtreetech/BIGTREETECH-SKR-mini-E3/tree/master/…> Which was the marlin firmware for bltouch for z homing for my mainboard.

In FreeCAD, how do you copy a sketch from one plane to another? I'm using FreeCAD, and I would like to duplicate a 2D sketch on another plane, but I can't seem to find an obvious way to do this.

I’m assuming you are working in the Part Design workbench. Select the sketch and click Edit->duplicate selected object. Make sure that only the sketch is copied (depending on the version, either deselect the plane or click don’t include dependent objects). This will produce a duplicate sketch in the active body (if you want the duplicate in a different body, make sure it’s active first by double-clicking it if necessary). You can then click Part Design->reorient sketch to move it to a different plane. By the way, FreeCAD has a very active and helpful forum at https://freecadweb.org. I highly recommend asking FreeCAD questions there.

New use for extruder port Is there a way to change the use of an extruder port on a 3D printer motherboard to move stepper motors (on y axis) on a 3D printer? This is for a school project, and we have replaced the extruder with a laser for cutting material. We were tasked with converting a 3D printer into LOM 3D printer, the laser is set using the fan port, however we still need two stepper motors to move material from one side of the printer to the other after each layer of material is cut. The mother board we are using is WitBot MKS Gen L V1.0 Controller Board Integrated mainboard Compatible Ramps1.4/Mega2560 R3 with A4988 Motor Driver for 3D.

If you are planning to use the printer via GCode entirely, then I don't believe it would be too complicated. For example, Marlin treats the extruder as another axis and uses absolute values for it (if absolute mode is on, of course). Since you want to have two steppers, you would have to connect them in either series or parallel (usually the Z motors are wired in parallel on RAMPS type boards, but many people are going for series since it has some benefits, one of them being that the torque will be much more similar between the two motors). Of course lower the stepper driver current to the minimum before connecting, then adjust it to whatever value you need. I don't think it will work too well if it has to keep the roll tight - in that case, you could be better off by using only one stepper and some kind of force to hold it tight... maybe a small DC motor at low currents? You can modify your printer firmware and set your own pin assignments for everything, for example in Marlin you have the pins.h file where every pin from the Mega is mapped to different headers and drivers. I don't know if there is any LOM slicer or firmware available, but you could just use GRBL.

Which nozzle should I buy for Anycubic i3 Mega? I'd like to buy a new nozzle for my Anycubic i3 Mega because it's not precise enough - it fails to print small details like 1 mm eyebrows. Currently it has a 0.4 mm nozzle and I'd like to buy a better one but I don't know how to choose one which is compatible with this printer. If you have any advice, please let me know.

According to Anycubic this printer uses the E3D V5 type hotend as can be seen from the linked video of the AnyCubic Mega: The brass nozzle you see is fully compatible with the E3D v6 nozzle and can be found on those typical auction and Chinese websites by looking for "E3D nozzle". They are also available from E3D directly, the designer/creator of the E3D hotend family, and other specialized manufacturers like the Olsson Ruby. These nozzles have a short nozzle (snout) and are screwed into the heater block with M6 threads.1) The smaller the diameter, the smaller the filament traces and the higher the print detail resolution. Note that a smaller diameter causes thinner walls for the same amount of (vertical) walls and may require additional perimeters to get similar strength and rigidity. The maximum layer thickness also decreases, as prints with a layer height above 75 % of the nozzle diameter have very poor quality. As an example, a 0.25 mm nozzle should not print layers thicker than $0.75 \times 0.25\text{ mm} = 0.19\text{ mm}$. As such printing with smaller nozzle diameters increases print time. Also note that a smaller diameter requires more force to push the filament through and could use some extra temperature to make the filament more fluid or reduction of the print speed. Just buy some spare nozzles of different nozzle diameter and experiment what works best for you. 1) - The other popular style of M6 threaded nozzles has a long body and long taper (often referred to as MK8 nozzle; they come in two different shapes). While these might work, they extend from the heater block considerably further and might need readjustment of the heater block (as explained here):

What criteria do I need to be aware of when buying a 3D printer for personal use? I'm interested in designing & 3D printing as a hobby (e.g. printing chess sets, small toys for family etc.) Conducting a Google search has brought up a range of small, cheap printers, but beyond that I don't know how to differentiate them. E.g. selling points include: "liquid light-sensitive resin" "partially assembled" with "very few parts and minor configuration" "Wi-Fi enabled" My question is, which features are going to benefit a small-scale, new enthusiast to 3D printing? PS. The software I intend to use is Windows 10 3D design PPS. I'm not a graphic designer by any means, just a new enthusiast.

Here are few things to consider from my point of view Printing technology The first thing that you need to take into account is printing technology. The most common[citation needed] right now is Fused Filament Fabrication. "Liquid light-sensitive resin" is being used in Stereolitography and Digital Light Processing - the SLA printers I found are less common and more expensive than FFF ones. Price Need to decide on budget. You can buy printer for 60k USD and 400 USD. Quality is somehow linked to price but that's not a rule. You can buy a shitty printer for a lot of money. Printing area Bigger allows you to print bigger things. You need to ask yourself how big things you really want to print. Remember that 3d printing is quite slow process - how often you will want to print big things that will take 60hrs+ to finish? Printing materials What kind of materials you want to print with? Some materials will need higher temperatures so check the max hot-end temperature, some will require heated bed. Assembled or DIY kit You can usually get kits for self-assembly cheaper than Ready-To-Print machines. However, it will require additional skills (i.e. soldering), tools and time to assemble. I am not sure if I would buy DIY kit for commercial use, but as an enthusiast I immensely enjoyed putting my Rostock Max together. Reviews and reputation It is generally safe to buy printer that already has some users. Beware of new magical Kickstarter printers which will "change the 3d printing forever". Reddit /r/3dprinting suggests that your new printer should meet 3 criteria: Printer passes the youtube test - has lots of youtube evidence that this particular printer is working. Printer is out of the pre-order phase. This means that all pre-orders have been delivered. Printer has a reputation of working well among current users. I found it to be a very good set of rules. Upgrade capabilities That's very user-dependent, but this point is very important to me. I want to be able to change and improve certain parts of my printer. Check if you can switch the extruder, replace the hot-end etc. Support I think one of the most important points. See if you can find a forum for your printer and how active community is. It will be immensely helpful if something goes wrong (and it will). Also, company support is very important. What will happen if you need a replacement part or your printer will stop working altogether? This list is definitely not complete. There are many more things that might be taken into account like configuration (delta or XY), multiple extruders, closed cases etc.

SLA resin post-processing: gluing parts together I've recently purchased an Elegoo Mars Pro 3d printer, and I was wondering when printing large pieces that need to be printed in different steps: is there some kind of post-processing to make it more suitable for gluing them? I know of joints and so on, but sometimes pieces are big but not thick enough to be able to put a joint somewhere, so I guess the only solution would be to glue them. Should I use some kind of specific glue to get better results with resins? Is there any process (post-processing, reducing layer height when printing, leave the resin being curated more time...) to improve the sticking of the different parts? Or can we go with any kind of "strong multisurface glue" without any further post-processing steps, and the results should be the same in matters of quality? Thank you!

You can definitely use glue - however you can also brush some of the liquid resin along the edges of the two pieces, push them together and cure them, this will fuse them together. You don't need much, and you need to watch for drip out while curing (don't your fingers in it)

Printer is Confused-Printing in Air Literally So I got my 3D printer (Anet A8) a few years ago and put it together. I couldn't figure out how to use it. Then about a month ago I decided to try again now that I am older and got it to work. I know more than I did by far. I have printed about 15-20 different times now, but then this problem occurred just now that I have never seen before. I tried looking up what it could be and google results in nothing and this exchange leads to one thread that is close to what I am having difficulty with but doesn't really help. I got the stl file from the internet on thingverse, so I am fairly certain they must have clicked the center and arrange when in the cad software to make the item, which is a phone stand. So my print all of a sudden starting printing in air. Here is a picture and thanks for the help.

Here's the pattern. The problem is, you didn't slice the g-code using support. It won't print right without it.

Raw material for 3D printed injection mold If I have to make an injection mold (for resin based raw material) using 3D printing, what raw material should I choose – PLA, ABS, HIPS etc.

P20 mold steel is one standard. Hardened parts are required for long life, depending on the service and material (some materials are quite abrasive). You can get a small number of relatively poor quality shots out of epoxy if it is properly supported by a metal box. Your best bet if you want to include 3D printing in the equation is probably to use epoxy or lost plastic casting from a 3D-printed master. Aside from the requirements of core and cavity with sufficient strength, there are requirements for vents, cooling tubes (bubblers and such like) ejector pins and slides that complicate most real molds. Productivity demands a high heat transfer rate, for very small quantities of expensive parts, thermal design may be less important. Temperatures and pressures are very high in injection injection molding- high enough to melt the materials you mention, and the pressures are in the 10K PSI range, so a 4" x 4" projected cavity will have a pressure in the 80 ton region. If you have sintered and filled metal 3D parts they may be suitable, but from the prices I've seen you'd be better off to use conventional machining. Finish is also very important if you want the part to come out of the mold, with hours of semi-manual polishing not uncommon. If you don't have fine surface finish you will need extreme draft angles. The requirements can be considerably relaxed if you are molding soft parts such as the PVC or TPE overmolds on cables. The pressure is less and the finish less important because the plastic is soft, but the temperatures are still quite high. This is sort of a sub-category of injection molding and specialized machines are used.

Fill hollow part of body in the 3D model Sorry, I'm new in 3D printing and modeling and I need help. I bought a 3D model with a hollow part of the body that doesn't print on my printer normally (with very high resolution (layer is 0.12 mm, the nozzle is 0.4 mm) because the walls are very thin). I tried to make it as a solid in MeshMixer or ZBrush, but I can't. Can you help me, how I can fix this defect? I use Cura for slicing. I know, that I can take a thinner nozzle (0.2 mm) and Cura will slice it better, but I want to make this model solid so I could print it with nozzle 0.4 mm.

This is a problem with the model, you need to make sure that the model isn't hollow. You might be able to get around this though if you use scaffolding, it might recognize the overhand hand build supports for your print inside of your print, you just might have to mess around with the scaffolding settings a bit.

My first 3D printing - I need some advice or tips It is my first time for 3D printing, I read some tips for forms, minimal thickness, angles, round or flat, but I am still not sure if I am going to do all well for the first time. For my college final project, I had to make a small prototype and it requires an enclosure. My concerns are: I am not sure if my design will require supports Overhangs Printing Orientation Here part of my design: Most walls are 2 mm+ thick The lid is a separate file, but it is really simple just a flat rectangle, I believe it is going well the first time

I see this: I had to make a small prototype and it requires an enclosure and this: yes, it is hollow inside How do you intend to get your item inside the result? This part really needs to be two pieces with two separate prints. Basically, a box and the lid, where you leave space for screws, include tabs, or plan for glue connections. Finish that alteration, and the support issue suddenly becomes much easier. Most slicers have options to generate support for you, including limiting support to spaces between the model and build plate. Now you can rotate the angle at the which the part is printed in order to minimize your support needs, or so that most of the connection points for the support will not be visible in the finished product.

E3D V6 nozzle seized into heater block The 0.4 mm brass nozzle in my Prusa i3 MK3 is worn out - the extrusion hole is visibly larger than the replacement nozzles I have to fit. So I’m trying to replace the nozzle. Unfortunately the nozzle seems to be stuck in the heater block. So far I’ve tried: Heating the hotend up to 285 °C, rotating the heater block slightly and trying to unscrew the nozzle with a wrench. (I exactly followed the Prusa YouTube video on changing nozzles). Leaving the hotend at 285 °C for 15 minutes and trying again - I found some other reports online this had helped. However it made no difference in my case. In an effort to try and remove the nozzle from the heaterblock, I’ve now accidentally bent the heatbreak, so I’m going to have to replace some or all of hotend. But I need to get the nozzle out, so I know which parts to order - if the nozzle breaks off in the heater block I’m definitely going to need a new heater block as well. What else can I try to free a seized nozzle? This is the original factory-fitted brass nozzle, and the hot-end was pre-assembled in the kit I received.

Try to, First, remove the heat block from the extruder/heat sink. Heat the hot end to ~ 230 'C. Then try to unscrew the nozzle while holding the heat block with a wrench or plier. Be extra careful with the heat block and with the plier.

Inconsistent Layer Issues I was having some issues with printing, most noticeably in this picture: The layers are very noticeable and sometimes have gaps, and the overhangs don't print very well (although the former is more of an issue). I just calibrated my E-steps so I don't think that is the issue. It was doing the same thing before I upgraded anything (i.e., I had issues on stock hardware). My printer is an Ender 3 with the metal extruder upgrade (which replaces the plastic parts as seen here), an E3D v6, printed fan duct (Bullseye), glass bed, BLTouch, and vanilla Marlin. Pictures of it are also in the below album. The printed upgrades were printed on a Prusa MK3S and don't have the same issue. I am using Hatchbox 1.75 mm gray PLA, printed at 215 °C with my bed at 60 °C. I am using Ultimaker Cura 4.1 but was also having the problems on an older version of Ultimaker Cura (maybe 3.6, but I can't remember which it was). The problems also existed with some Hatchbox 1.75 mm black PLA but I used the same roll on my Prusa MK3S without any issues, so I'm not sure if filament could be the cause (although it is a different printer so it's still a possibility). I have tried at different printing speeds and the problem still persists. I also recently tried varying the temperature during printing (first up to 222 °C then down to 200 °C) with no noticeable difference. Extra pictures here. Model is part of Printable Scenery's sorcerer tower.

These lines could be caused by a mechanical issue with the printer; it looks as if the positioning is not up to par. This can be related to loose belts of the X-axis and Y-axis, or play in your system, e.g. look at the rollers of the carriage. I've experienced an issue with play between the idler mounts and the smooth linear rods on a cheap 3D printer kit myself, but that is not the case here. Just added to explain where play may come from.

What is the best way to connect 3D printed parts? I want to print a model of an animal cell. What I have so far: I managed to use different colors to print out the different parts of the cell. My question is: what is the best way to connect plastic 3d printed parts? Glue? Melted plastic? I need it to have a strong connection and not very visible when used well, and preferable dries fast.

For ABS print, I recommend acetone. It is not a glue, but it will dissolve the plastic a bit and if you apply it to both connecting parts and push them together, they will stay connected after the acetone dries. However, it does not dry very fast and you have to be careful not to destroy the object. For PLA I usually use regular super glue (Cyanoacrylate).

Is 3D printing useful for making everyday objects or is it more for special hobbies? Have people been using 3D printing to genuinely create a number of needed objects in their homes, and if so, what? Or is 3D printing better for special niche interests like art projects, home engineering projects, etc?

Have people been using 3D printing to genuinely create a number of needed objects in their homes, and if so, what? Yes, but in a very limited sense. If there is widespread demand for an item, then it will always be available from stores. This is basics economics: if there is enough demand for something, somebody will step in and provide the supply. The store-bought alternative will almost always be of better quality and relatively cheap. 3D printing can be useful to create a niche part that is needed but not readily available, such as replacement parts for appliances long out of production. This unfortunately takes a lot of time since you need to make a 3D model of the part yourself, which also requires considerable skill. Some examples of items that I made for my home: Custom brackets to hang blinds when the store-provided ones did not fit my window. A special mounting bracket to more easily hang a ceiling light panel. Replacement wheel for a vacuum cleaner. Cover plate for a deprecated telecom socket. Fix for a broken clothes drying rack. 3D printing can also be used to create "trinkets" such as custom vases or similar objects. I would say 3D printing is a bit like woodworking as a hobby: it is a skill that can be used to make genuinely useful items, but going to IKEA is a perfectly viable alternative. Or is 3D printing better for special niche interests like art projects, home engineering projects, etc? It is ideal for this. I do not know of anybody who has a 3D printer specifically for home use. However, there are many hobbyists that use 3D printing for another primary purpose that occasionally find their 3D printers useful around the house.

TEVO Tarantula Z-Axis Lowering Too Far After Endstop Triggered A z-axis homing issue is giving me an ulcer. I'm hoping someone can help with this. As per usual, after the Z endstop is triggered on my TEVO Tarantula the gantry raises a bit then slowly lowers back down to the z=0 point established by the trigger. However, the gantry is now lowering well past the point triggered by the endstop. It's forcing the hotend to press down into the bed, and I need to reset the printer to avoid any damage. I'm at a loss to understand why, and it's making re-leveling the bed impossible. Once I have the bed leveled, an auto home grinds the hotend into the bed. I've done some cable management in the past couple of days but everything is connected where it should be. The endstops are responding, I've even manually triggered them so I know they're working, but the Z refuses to stop where it should. I've printed at least once since organizing my cables but the bed wasn't level and then I noticed this issue when homing the Z for re-leveling. For context, I've had several projects print successfully recently so things had been working fairly well. I haven't made any changes to the Marlin software since originally setting it up months ago. I had been poking around in some settings on the unit but I'm quite sure I reverted everything I tweaked. Regardless, I can't seem to find the menu I had accessed before, and I don't think I've ever had the TEVO successfully save any customizations made via the LCD interface anyway.

The soldering in the Tevo components is very low quality as I replaced/resoldered most of the end-stops. As the gantry goes down - please ensure that the cable is not pulled over (no contact) and there is contact on the edge of the acrylic and the end-stop, also the small acrylic switch holder could bend/slip a bit. Finally, the sensor connection to the main board could be dragged by wires that are connected to the hot-end. To validate micro-switch behavior - lift the Z-axis (about 100mm), then set home position and manually trigger the end-stop switch. That shall lift the Z-axis, so then trigger again to see if that works. You will still have a plenty of time to stop the printer if the switch does not work. If that works, then the reason could be in slipping edge of the black acrylic plate and the micro-switch. Also validate the mechanical connection (if there is a loosening screw (the small on the switch plate)).

Make holes in PLA print I have a print I need to make holes in. I have read some other threads where the answers was in short, "don't, print the holes", and "make sure to make the hole from the top or bottom". The problem is I need the hole in the side of a print with about 1 mm walls. The holes I need is to run a USB cable in and a few to hold 3 mm LEDs. One of the holes needs to be 10 mm. What is my best option? I read that there is a risk it cracks, so I was thinking maybe I can use a soldering iron for the smaller holes? That will melt the plastic and create nice smooth walls, right? Less risk of cracks? The piece will not be loaded in any way, it's just holdin it's own weight. I never anticipated that it would be an issue to drill holes in prints. If I had known it I might have tried more to change the print before ordering it. (I don't have a printer to make a new one with.) Note: The part has already been printed. This is a question about post-printing processing, not modelling for a new print.

You're going to have to drill those holes. The plastic will melt if you drill too quickly. If at all possible, use a slow speed drill, a hand drill, or wrap a cloth around a drill bit and twist it with your hand. If you go too fast, the part will melt. If you press to hard the part will break. Once the hole has been drilled you will need to reinforce it with a metal/plastic tube of the required diameter. Press the tube into the hole. I don't know what your wall thickness is, but try to ensure the tube is the same length. If at all possible you should get flanged tubes like these from mc master car: The parts with the 1/2 inch inner diameter and 5/8 outer diameter should fit your 10 mm requirement. The rest is up to you. Go to mcmaster.com/inserts scroll down to "Other Inserts" then "Tube and tube fittings".

G-Code for resetting to 100% speed I had problems printing parts and I figured out that my children have turned the knob of my Prusa i3 MK3 and set the printing speed to 112%. Since I'm not experimenting much yet, I'm not printing at different speeds than the original speed. I wonder whether there's a G-Code command that I could let Slic3r insert at the beginning of each print to ensure the print starts with 100% speed.

You can put the speed to 100 % by G-code command: M220 S100. The M220command is described here. Know that speed changes sent to the printer have an effect on the next printed layer, it first finishes the current layer at the speed commanded before starting printing the layer.

MakerBot Camera Stream Is it possible to use the onboard camera on the 5th+ generation MakerBot printers to stream or save to a file? I'd like to try and use the stream for customers on my 3DHubs account and they recommend setting up a YouTube stream. However, even if I'm able to stream to VLC Player or something, I'd like to get the video/images somehow.

I own the gen 5, not the gen 5+. As far as I can tell, the camera has not gotten much of an upgrade and the software is also just as limited. That said to be sure I verified on several sites such as this reddit. There are some that claim that the software is open source. I do not think this is true given the parent company. Following even if it was you do not want to use their camera. It is shocking how cheap they went on this ultra premium printer. Which despite printing very well has not been received well. The main issue is that the camera is 320 by 240! That alone is enough to derail your quest I am afraid. Take a look at this raspberry pi project on building your own camera set up. Though really any wireless camera setup should do. Using a Pi has the stand alone advantage.

Help diagnose Z-banding The printer is "Monoprice MP Select Mini 3D Printer V2". This is how my printed fan part looks like: These printers are notorious for their Z lead screw assembly (M4 bolt & nut) so I installed flex coupler and aligned the M4 bolt and motor shaft so that the wobble is minimal. It is still there, but I don't think this amount of wobble would produce something like what I experience. Please check out the timelapse video at the end. I also tightened up Z guide rails (no rattle, very little slop) Moreover the banding appears to be less pronounced and have alot greater period for vase prints (this is extruded ellipse printed along Y axis). I tried: slowing down print by 50 % - no effect on banding. monitored hotend temperature with external probe on the heater block (-+5 °C) The banding appears to be almost exclusively in Y axis direction; for example, the same ellipse printed along X axis: Now, same ellipse in layered mode (seam side) printed along Y axis

This differs from the traditional banding as observed from Z wobble induced banding as e.g. explained in this answer. Your banding patterns clearly seem to form diagonal bands, this is most probably a combination of the lead and the full rotation of the stepper. The most logical explanation is that the layer shifts as a whole in X-Y direction (when seen against the print height, this movement is concentric seen from the top). This means that the next layer is positioned over the previous layer in a concentric pattern. This hints to some sort of defect in your X/Y-plane assembly and should be investigated further. This is difficult to visualize, but this sketch shows the issue for some layers: This could be related to the belts of the X and Y-axis, play on the drive pulleys, non-straight lead screw, guide rods with play, play in general, Z-stepper alignment to the threaded rod, etc. Considering the amount of Z-wobble fixes shared by the unofficial MP Select Wiki, the best place to look for is the Z-stepper to lead screw coupling.

Maintaining fine details while applying smoothing methods I've been reading and experimenting with Acetone vapour smoothing on some printed ABS parts. My problem is that I need to selectively smoothen the printed parts which vapor smoothing doesn't allow. In particular, the cogs, whose sides I was trying to make smooth ended, up with smooth rounded tips, which was a disappointment. An example of what I was trying to smoothen is would be something like this: So how can I maintain fine details (like the cog tips in the image above) while applying smoothing methods to printed parts?

A technique I've used in the past is to make a acetone slurry of the same filament used to print your object, and carefully paint the details you need to smooth. You must be careful and only do a very thin coat or you may damage your print. You can add extra coat if needed to make sure the acetone has evaporatored from the previous coat of ABS filaments slurry.

How to switch E0 to E1 for extruder? I have a K280 3D printer with a MKS V1.5 and Repetier firmware. I’ve damaged the transistor associated with E0 (3rd one on the right) and so that means I need to avoid that. I’ve decided to switch to E1 for the extruder but I have a feeling I need to go in the firmware or Repetier host and manipulate that. I don’t know how and any help would be great. The only info I can access for the firmware is the EEPROM and it seems that I can’t edit the pins. Also, do I need to edit the pin for the sensor or just where the extruder goes?

If you go through the Repetier-Firmware configuration tool for version 1.0.2 you can select the E1 stepper for the E0 extruder (or whatever stepper you want to use for it) in the tools tab sheet. I'm not familiar with Repetier, but if that does not work you would have to switch pin numbers. If you already have a Configuration.h, you can use that one (by loading it into the configuration tool) and alter the E1 afterwards so that you do not have to enter all the other options by yourself. Edit: After some investigation, you can find your configuration file here as described here, so the only thing you would have to do is to load the file in the online tool and adjust the E1 stepper for E0 extruder.

How to slice a model to ensure at least a certain amount of filament per layer? I am designing a part with a material which can bear up to a certain stress. To keep the stress within the design limits, I need to ensure a certain surface of solid material per layer, in other words a minimum amount of extruded filament per layer and a smoothly changing infill ratio so that the infill can transmit the load efficiently to the neighbouring layers. The part has an irregular shape and I cannot simply increase the infill ratio for the whole object because the part is big and it would cost more time and filament. I also cannot build straight pillars of solid material inside the part because there are no regions which are suitable for a continuous pillar. How can I calculate and apply a smoothly changing infill ratio or in general how to ensure that each layer is made of at least a certain amount of material? I use Prusa Slicer for slicing and Fusion 360 for the design. Related questions about variable infill, which however don't answer my question because I need to specify the amount of material and because I need a smoothly changing infill ratio: Different infill in the same part slic3r: Can I vary the infill percentage for different heights of my model?

I think you have a major XY problem. The amount of material per layer is not what determines the part strength. Unless additional material is placed in a manner that reinforces against the stress you're designing for, it's just wasted. Moreover, infill in particular is not terribly useful this way, as infill has to rest upon the support of existing infill below it. If you suddenly increase infill density at a particular layer, it will not provide any significant additional strength because the added lines will be unsupported and will not bond strongly to anything. Even the next layer above them, and the next after that for quite a few layers, will not bond well because the unsupported lines can just bend downward when the nozzle goes over them, rather than providing a surface for the newly deposited material to press firmly against and bond to. Generally, infill is not your main source of part strength anyway. I would start out (especially if you can test; if this is a one-off thing, the material cost is not going to be an issue anyway and just go with overkill) by increasing the number of wall lines (wall thickness). Walls generally provide the most strength, and the amount of material used will be proportional to cross-sectional perimeter rather than area, which typically will vary "linearly" rather than "quadratically" (I use these terms loosely since I don't know right off how to make it rigorous - what the independent variable should be thought of as being). My usual default (and I believe Cura's) is 2 walls; I would expect 4-5 to be very strong, and as long as you keep at least 15-20% infill, probably stronger than what you'd get by any increase in infill percent.

Gnarly filament: just one of those things, or grounds for complaint? everyone. I'm a relative newcomer to 3D printing, so I don't know what constitutes an unacceptably bad spool of filament. About 1/6 of the way into a roll of PETG (and maybe 4 hours into a 6-hour print), an over/under wrap brought things to a screeching halt. I aborted the print, then snipped the filament and started unspooling it, looking for more cross-wraps. I found a ton of them, along with a ton of kinks. I stopped about 1/3 of the way into the spool, still finding kinks and cross-wraps, and said to heck with it. The only way to use it would have been to run the entire length onto another spool, carefully avoiding cross-wraps, and hope the kinks wouldn't affect the print quality. I complained to the supplier but never even got a reply, so now I'm wondering if this is just one of those things I can expect from time to time. Any thoughts & opinions would be much appreciated. Cheers, Glasseyed

Sorry to say it, but MOST wrap-unders are caused by end-users releasing the free end of the filament when handling the spool. It is mathematically impossible to introduce a knot during initial spooling, and all the reputable filament vendors these days have pretty careful free-end control when the spool is taken off the spooler and sent to packaging. Where you may get knots straight from the filament vendor is if they're respooling very carelessly and let go of the free end. You should only see this with very cheap filament. So, it's possible that your vendor messed up, but you should probably rule out your own handling practices first. It's not hard to prevent losing the free end. The nicer spool styles these days have holes on the side-flanges for securing the free end during handling/storage. Or you can print one of many, many filament clip designs from Thingiverse or your favorite model site. If you're very careful with handling and still get knots, switch suppliers. Anyone sloppy enough to repeatedly mis-handle new spools is likely also using extremely cheap material, and there have been a lot of anecdotal reports of very nasty industrial chemicals being mixed into the colorants of low-cost filament.

LCD/DLP resin curing system I'm trying to develop a device to burn a glass slide surface with a special pattern of UV light (between 300 nm and 360 nm) in a 5 cm square surface. I've read several threads asking questions about LCD printers and their way of functioning but I am not entirely sure how they work. So far I have found two methods that explain LCD printers: The LCD screen emits light in UV spectrum that causes the resin to cure. I don't believe there are any LCD screens that can emit at 360 nm. Initially there's a UV light bulb 'behind' the LCD screen which is translucent when off. The pattern is drawn in the LCD screen interfering with UV light's path drawing the image in the plate. If option two is the right one, do you know any devices (uv light and lcd screen) to develop what I want within the 360 nm wavelength? Alternatively, can a DLP projector to emit UV light (by adding a UV light bulb)? Would it still need to be cured?

It's almost always what you call system 2: The LCD screen is acting as a "mask" for the UV backlight, which is a strong bulb under it. This also is the reason that the screen degrades over time and that the machines need replacement bulbs: the heat from the UV source burns out the screen and itself over time. Both parts are consumable, just like the screen. You could technically swap out the light source for any one that fits the machine. However, a 360 nm light source won't help you for printing resins at all: most resins you can buy cure between 395 and 410 nm. Yes, even by curing with an UV light source, you need to post-cure the print. The reason for that is to get rid of any uncured, not washed away resin that still sticks to the surface and that a 3D print right of the platform actually isn't cured fully - especially the inter-layer-bonds are not formed fully and curing in the lightbox increases the stability to the print a lot.

How does slipping Bowden tube affect retraction or does it at all? I have an Ender 3 Pro with upgraded Bowden capricorn tube. The tube will move approximately 1-2 mm during normal operation, though it will not come out of the coupler at all. I have read that the movement if unchanging (constant movement of 1-2 mm) can be compensated for with settings adjustment to avoid retraction issues such that it will extrude or retract "that much less"... I do not understand how this is possible... Im confused by comments that a slipping Bowden tube on the extruder side only, say by up to 2 mm, is "lost retraction"... I have this problem too with the Bowden tube only at the extruder end, not the hotend, and wonder if it is really an issue at all. Here's why... The filament is in direct contact with the gear and wheel of the extruder. If the Bowden tube is only moving in/out of the extruder end of the coupler, there are no "gaps" being created to cause leakage of the filament, etc on the hot end...As the extruder is either pushing or retracting, the filament inside the tube is still moving as much as intended regardless of the amount of play of the Bowden tube... no? therefore, retracting will not be affected at all, nor would the extruding process. Am I wrong and if so, can someone explain to me how this would be? Note, I can see that this movement may cause under-extrusion on the feeding side process, as the machine is expecting say, 0.5 mm extrusion, but then has to compensate (unknowingly) for the slipping out tube during the "push", so not enough gets "out", but should not affect the retraction amount as the filament is still being pulled directly from the gears/roller. Am I wrong and if so, can someone explain to me how this would affect the retraction along with the under-extrusion?

The slipping does result in lost retraction distance. It does not result in underextrusion, lost material (except possibly via having insufficient retraction after the reduction), or anything like that. If your retraction is set to 6 mm, but the bowden pulls 2 mm into the coupler when you retract, those first 2 mm of filament motion do not pull the filament out of the hotend at all. The position of the filament relative to the tube (and thus relative to the nozzle) remains constant. After the tube can be pulled back no further into the coupler, the remaining retraction pulls the filament back through the bowden tube, for 4 mm of retraction at the hotend/nozzle. When unretracting, the reverse happens. The first 2 mm of extruder motion push the bowden tube out of the coupler, and don't move the filament relative to the tube (or the hotend). After that the next 4 mm push the filament through the tube and back to the nozzle orifice. The result is the filament ending up back exactly where it started, but having backed out only 4 mm from the nozzle, not the requested 6 mm. These numbers are just examples but probably about right. If you put the plastic clip on the pneumatic coupler, the slipping should stop, but you can also just increase retraction if the amount after the loss to slipping is not sufficient.

Smoothers for TEVO Tornado printer I have a TEVO Tornado (bought quite recently) and I want to know what is the best type of smoothers MKS smoothers or TL smoothers? Are they the same thing?

The use of smoothers totally depends on the stepper drivers you are using! Note that the TL and MKS smoothers do exactly the same thing. Both use an arrangement of 4 or 8 diodes. Details of the problems with drivers and the working of the smoothers is explained in this blog post. The problem is that some stepper drivers are not able to produce low currents as of the present dead-zone. if we had a way to modify the motor so that with a voltage of 1.4 V there would be no current flowing, then the driver would be able to generate all the currents because it would always be spitting out more than the minimum voltage The diodes prevent current to flow at the cost of a voltage drop; a 1.4 V voltage drop (2 diodes) would prevent current to flow, as such you see diodes in series on the smoother boards. These MKS/TL smoothers help with smoothing out the signal going through stepper motors; e.g. the notoriously noisy DRV8825 motor drivers are known for a stepped sine curve rather than a smooth output. More modern chipsets such as the TMC21xx, TMC22xx, and TMC51xx do a much better job at providing smooth signals, and surprisingly, so do the cheaper drivers like the A4988s! So if you are using stepper drivers that do not produce a smooth sine wave, like the DRV8825 stepper drivers, you could potentially benefit from installing smoothers. This could help with salmon/zebra skin/moire and ringing print artifacts/defects. To quote the popular All3DP 3D printing site from "TL Smoother: Should I Add One to My 3D Printer?": It’s a yes if you’re running DRV8825 stepper drivers. This was what TL smoothers were designed to do: fix a design flaw in the DRV8825. Your mileage may vary based on your printer’s power supply, but you’ll likely see noticeable improvements in print quality. It’s a no if you’re running newer Trinamic stepper drivers. Trinamic drivers have many “smart” features built in that don’t suffer from the same issues as the DRV8825 and already counter electrical noise. As a post from Trinamic notes, adding TL smoothers doesn’t provide any significant benefit; it only increases power consumption and heat generation. It’s a maybe if you’re running other drivers. Other stepper drivers might not have the DRV8825’s design flaws, but they may benefit from the slight electrical dampening created by the TL smoother’s circuit. Considering the smoothers’ low cost (~\$8-15 for packs of 3 or 4), it doesn’t hurt to try it out and let the results speak for themselves.

Difference in weight from Cura to printed model I've recently switched to PETG , and I'm using Cura as slicer and Ender 3 as printer. I'm printing a model which Cura declares to be 35 g, but if I weigh the printed model it weighs 23 g. I'm printing with just 1 line of skirt, so its weight is negligible on total weight. I've replaced the stock plastic extruder with a double gears metal extruder (3Dman 11 Dual Gear Extruder ). I've also replaced the stock springs with metals ones. I'm not having a quality problem, just I want to understand if this difference is caused by a bad configuration that could be improved. Which are the corrections/checks that I need to do in my setup (both printer and Cura) for fixing this difference?

The density of the filament can be specified in the material model of the filament in Cura (Preferences -> Configure Cura... -> Materials and click on the material/filament you are using to slice your model for PETG), look at the value behind Density, the PETG filament I use is using 1.28 g/cm³ (PETG Economy Black -> Specification >). This field is user editable, so you can change it to your needs. Cura calculates the weight based on the deposited volume.

Over-hangs in prints I would like to ask this in more of a general sense than anything, just for people to make note. I am printing out things for people and some files have some edges hanging out the side. I always worry, since it is printing in mid air, that it would screw up the print. But I was able to go, maybe 1mm(I am not to good with metric when it comes to guessing). My question is, how far at 90* from a wall can a printer pull off before it is necessary to have support? This would help me when slicing up files.

It is typical for a 3D printer to be able to manage one-half the width of the nozzle for unsupported layer printing. This frequently calculates out to a realistic 45° from the start point. If you are getting 1 mm extension from a 0.4 mm nozzle you are doing well. It's possible that the layers are not strongly bonded at the point of extension from the vertical wall, but are then strengthened by the layers printed above, if they do not extend excessively. If your part is designed well, the extension will be distributed gradually over more than one layer, allowing that 1 mm extension over 2.5-3 layers without impacting the appearance of the model in an excessive manner. The above does not apply to bridges, as it involves a different dynamic for the printer/slicer software.

Ender 3 Pro Filament extrusion problems I run quite a few Ender 3 Pro's using the same slicer settings (Simplify3D), and just recently I have noticed a very odd extrusion problem. I find that at about the same height on several printers the printer under extrudes by quite a margin. After that, it either continues to under extrude for the rest of the print or it will go back to extruding proper amounts of filament with no problem. This destroys the print and makes it both structurally weak and defective. I am wasting quite a bit of PLA trying to fix this problem so any help would be appreciated. Here is what I have done so far: I first made sure that the hobbed gear is clean. I tried extruding the filament with a very hot temp (240C) there were no problems here and the filament extruded fine albeit, it was not on the bed, just extruding into the air to see if the problem was heat. I tried the same thing as above but with a low temp (180) this also proved just fine again extruding in the air. I calibrated my E steps per mm, those are fine and accurate. I tried increasing my flow rate to 118% I tried switching to a different nozzle I tried switching to a different hobbed gear I tried switching the mechanism that pushes the filament up against the hobbed gear That's about it. Not sure where to go from here so if anyone out there can think of anything I missed, I would love to hear it! EDIT 1: As per @fred_dot_u asked, the elapsed time at the layer of failure is roughly four hours in. I have also attached a picture of one example of this kind of failure below. I would also like to mention that this is happening on several of these printers as I have 18 printers running in one room. Our current theory is that the power draw is simply too high and so the printers are not getting the heat they need, however, the thermistors still register a solid 195C on my printers that are currently running. EDIT 2: Here is another picture of a different model with the same layer failure problem but at a lower layer height. This model was printed along with 11 other identical models on the same bed, all of which failed at the same height.

Based on the image and your report that the problem consistently appears at the same part of the print, this is clearly an (either absolute or net) underextrusion problem, but (mostly) localized to particular layers. I say absolute or net because it might be extruding too little total material, or extruding the right amount of material but losing some of it to unwanted extrusion (oozing/stringing) in the wrong places. Either of these could be related to geometry of the layers involved. One factor here is probably coasting, which you mentioned in a comment you have enabled. The small amount of coasting probably means it's not a big factor, but coasting always underextrudes. That's fundamentally how it works. You should not need coasting unless you've disabled retraction for some reason; it's a hack that's a poor substitute for part of what linear advance does on printers that support it. You also mentioned a 60 mm/s print speed setting. At 0.2 mm layer height and 0.4 mm nozzle diameter, that's 4.8 mm³/s volumetric extrusion rate, which is roughly the limit of what you can expect to achieve with your printer's hotend. If you try to print faster than the hotend can keep up with, the material won't melt sufficiently fast to pass through the nozzle orifice. This will naturally slow it down allowing further melting to take place, but in the mean time the extruder gear will either grind into the filament or (much less likely, I think) the motor will skip steps. Note that print speed settings control maximum speed, which is why you won't necessarily hit problems from having them too high right away, but only at particular layers. In prints with small details, especially with sharp corners, the majority of the printer's time is spent accelerating and decelerating between speeds far lower than the nominal/max print speed, and if you only reach an excessive max speed momentarily now and then, it might not continue for long enough for the material to cool down, in which case everything just works out. Part of why I mention this is that, if you're trying to keep print time under control, setting a higher max speed might not even help you. Usually acceleration/jerk is the limiting factor to how fast you can print. Max print speed should be set according to the extrusion rate the hotend/extruder can keep up with, and print acceleration/jerk should be set according to the dynamical properties of the printer's axes. If you increase them too much you might get rough surfaces, ringing, or even skipped steps/layer shifts, but you can go pretty high. 3000 mm²/s is probably the absolute max I'd try on an Ender 3. I did this and had some success, but some failures; I don't recall what jerk was and it might have been a factor too. The Y axis in particular can't handle acceleration as well as the X axis can, due to having to move the whole bed, not just the hotend assembly. Somewhere between 500 and 2000 is probably reasonable, but I'd experiment a good deal before trying it on a long-running print. One additional method to increase speed might be reducing line widths to less than the nozzle width. This proportionally decreases the volumetric extrusion rate the hotend has to keep up with. But I'm not sure how well line widths less than nozzle width work for outer walls. This may adversely affect part strength too, which might not be a problem for your particular usage case.

How to keep Z-axis motor from slipping when powered down Because of the weight of my Z-axis and the relative ease of its motion, when the Z-axis motor is powered down the bed has a tendency to slip and fall down. Obviously leaving the motor powered solves this problem, but that is not ideal. I am looking for some kind of solution that passively stops the Z-axis motor from slipping; some kind of brake or clutch. Ideally I'm looking for something that I can add onto my current motors and that I could print myself. Commercial solutions (preferably ones that could be replicated with a 3D printer) would also make valid answers.

The simple way to do this is to use a self-locking screw pitch. Pretty much any single-start thread using a sliding nut cannot be back-driven so the load will not fall. Normal 8x8 trapezoidal thread screws will easily back-drive because of the steep pitch. Likewise, a worm drive between the motor and Z stage will hold the load. You would want to switch from screws to belts for the main motion stage in that case though, to avoid having too much total gear reduction. Both of these solutions will limit your maximum Z speed, of course. But they're simple and reliable. Clutches and brakes add a lot of complexity and must be actuated somehow. Designers who want the load to stay suspended almost always simply use single-start screws.

Monoprice Select Mini V2 retraction/stringing problem I have a Monoprice Select Mini V2 and I’ve recently been having issues with little strings that are thick and sturdy sticking off of models: I used Ultimaker Cura v3.4.1 to slice this model: Basic Retraction test using Hatchbox Black PLA filament And the following settings: Layer Height: 0.1313 mm Wall Thickness 1.05 mm Infill: 22% Extruder Temp: 200 °C Bed Temp: 55 °C Retraction Distance: 4 mm Retraction Speed: 40 mm/s Speed: 50 mm/s Z-Hop When Retracted: Off Supports: Off Adhesion: Brim I’d appreciate any advice on how to fix this problem.

The Monoprice Select Mini V2 uses a Bowden style extrusion system. Bowden extruders compress the filament in the tube where the gap between the filament and inner tube diameter allow for the filament to buckle slightly and compress causing a pressure build-up in the hotend. Without retraction this implies that the filament will start to ooze out of the hotend once you stop extruding. From your settings can be seen that you are using retraction. The question now arises whether you retract enough? Furthermore, this stringing can be reduced by setting the correct settings for e.g. print temperature, retraction, coasting, travel speed. It is up to you to find the correct settings; test print objects like calibration prints (like in the image you showed) help you with finding the correct settings. Apparently, the retraction you use still allows for some filament to ooze out of the hotend as shown in your image. This means that prior to the travel move there is still some pressure left in the hotend. A parameter that reduced the pressure prior to the travel movement is called "coasting"; basically you define to stop extruding while the head is still completing the printing moves prior to the travel move. It is advised to explore this setting. Other options to investigate further include lowering filament print temperature or increase travel movement.

Ender 3 stock Bowden tube inner diameter? Worth upgrading? I recall hearing claims that the Ender 3 (maybe only newer units?) has a narrower Bowden tube than some printers that helps with flexible materials, but I can't find any authoritative figures. Does it come with a standard 2 mm ID tube that would likely benefit from replacement with a 1.9 mm or smaller (Capricorn one seems popular), or is the stock tube already comparable with these lower-clearance ones? I'm looking to improve speed and quality with flexible filaments and trying to determine if upgrading (and at the same time, shortening) the Bowden tube is a worthwhile direction.

I disassembled the hotend side of the Bowden setup to check for deterioration (and found an actual hole in the tube!) for the first time since getting a decent caliper, and after making a clean cut to remove the damaged part, measured the inner diameter at 2.19-2.21 mm. I'm not sure if that's enlarged from wear or the original size it was manufactured as, but either way this suggests that upgrade to Capricorn at 1.95 mm (±0.05 mm) inner diameter should make a significant difference vs my current Bowden tube.

Uneven motion in X and Y directions after attempting to adjust Z motion in ADVI3++ A few weeks back I updated my Monoprice Maker Select Plus from the stock firmware to ADVi3++ 3.0.2. I've put more than 20 prints through the machine since then and everything has been fine. One of the few downsides to the new firmware is the Z control. When moving the head up using the control panel, it only moves a millimeter or two instead of the 5 or 10 is used to, meaning it can be a bit of a pain to clear the head out of the way when working with the printer. I wanted to adjust the setting, so I went through the settings section of my new firmware, trying different values for various options to see if one would change what happens when I pushed the up arrow button for the z axis. I was careful to only ever change values for the Z axis, and after each change I set things back to where they were. I never did find what I was looking for, but that will be a topic for a future question. The very next print after doing this came out awful. I can no longer get a clean, straight line. Instead, the edges are all wavy... and it's way worse than simple ringing. On longer linear stretches I can observe the print head does not move smoothly, but rather speeds up and slows down. It never really stops, but it doesn't move consistently, either. It kind of pulses as it goes. I have duplicated this with a known good gcode file, so I know it's not the slice. I can move the bed freely with the printer off, and this started on both axises simultaneously, conveniently after my z-axis experiment, so I don't believe it's a problem with bearings. I've tried restoring factory defaults and even re-flashing the firmware, but it hasn't helped. Any ideas on how to correct this?

Found the problem. The screws connecting the carriage plate to the assembly that connects to the Y-axis belt had loosened, allowing some free play for movements in the Y direction and vibration for movements in the X direction. It just happened to go from nothing to unprintable all at once at the same time I was experimenting with the Z settings.

Ultimaker Original+: print has lumps and small gaps are being filled Brand new to 3D printing and have an Ultimaker Original + using PLA (2.85mm). The nozzle/extruder temperature is 200C and the bed/plate is 60C. I installed the Cura software on my Windows 10 box. I then head on over to tinkercad.com to make a model of a comb. I then exported my .STL file and loaded it up in Cura. I hit the print button. I waited a bit, but noticed that my print was getting lumps in it. Not crazy drastic lumps, but because the object was small, gaps (between the comb teeth) were being filled... not all of them, just some. I tried adjusting the flow rate from 100% to 90% and it seemed a little better (not perfect, still filling gaps), but when I dropped it lower, it got worse. I also tried to lower the print speed from the default of 60mm/s to 50mm/s - no change. (travel speed at 120mm/s) I tried to adjust the bed height multiple times, trying to make sure that it was 100% flat at 180 degrees. What is wrong here? Is the printer over extruding? Is the temperature too high? Is the flow rate wrong? Am I missing something else? Check out my prints: I also tried printing something else: Any help would be really appreciated. Update Okay, so thanks to macs answer, I took another look at the nozzle and noticed a massive leak - I actually dismissed this earlier as "glue" - OMG. Anyways, here is the picture of the leakage: It's very bad. It leaks down and runs over the nozzle. The nozzle also leaks... Is that normal? All I did was turn the printer on, heat up the nozzle to 200C and it started to leak. I suspect that it should not do this... I'm not ready to change the nozzle just yet - I've no idea which one to buy or even where to buy it from (I'm in the UK), so I'd like to get this one working (if possible). On another note, I have checked the filament settings - All good. Heat settings all good too:

What is wrong here? Is the printer over extruding? Is the temperature too high? Is the flow rate wrong? Am I missing something else? It is always difficult to diagnose problems from a set of pictures only, and without the original model to compare it with, but yes, from the pictures it looks like your printer has a severe case of over extrusion, possibly in conjunction with a thermal problem. The first picture in the set is particularly interesting for a number of reasons: The chequered pattern of the top layer looks like being generated by the nozzle "digging" in the layers below and rising the plastic around it. A well calibrater printer should have a top surface with a very subtle texture instead. The teeth of the comb and the gap between them are inconsistent, as are the shape of the tip of the teeth. This let me think your printer actually doesn't operate consistently, over-extruding in some places a lot more than in others. A pinter should be able to accurately replicate its performance along the full length of the comb instead. The plastic has a different finish and colour in different places. Namely, it looks burnt and glossy where the worse print quality is, white and matte where the problems are not so bad. Both the colour and the finish let me thing the plastic in the dark spots have been heated way over its operational range and/or for too long. In essence what I think it is happening (mind it: this is just a theory) is that your printer is over-extruding and in addition your hot end may have issues with keeping its own temperature constant and within the designed limit. Other factors that may also play a role could be: Wrong settings in the slicer as for example a nozzle diameter set to 0.5 mm when it really is 0.4 mm instead, or the filament diameter being wrong. Blobs of over-extruded material forming and sticking to the nozzle, where they take too much heat for too long and burn before "falling" in the print and damaging it. Filament that is old/of bad quality and that has impurities in it, or has an inconsistent diameter along its length (thus causing over-extrusion in places, but not in other). A nozzle that is not well fixed to the heating block, thus allowing molten plastic to seep out from the joint and run down on the outside of the nozzle and ultimately on the print itself. A nozzle that got damaged and whose opening is not circular and/or not matching its nominal diameter. The extruder hobbed gear not e"biting" in the filament and thus the filament slipping at times, thus being inconsistent in the quality of material being extruded. So, here's the the trouble-shooting I would go through at this stage: Check your printer setting in the slicer. Doh! :) Take a close look at how the print works while in operation. Do you see blobs forming and sticking to the nozzle? Plastic seeping out from places it shouldn't? Is the nozzle round and true? In case of doubts, just change the nozzle with a new one (it is a less-than-1€ part anyways), easily outspent by the cost of filament in a failed print. Calibrate you extrusion (and thus your flow-rate) by performing accurate measurements over at least 3 length of filament. Matterhackers has a nice how-to that you can follow for this. Manually check the diameter of your filament (at least 5 measurements at at lest 200 mm distance between them) and adjust the corresponding "filament diameter" setting. Calibrate your temperature by using a test tower. This one has extensive instructions on how to use it in the thing description, plus is customizable directly from thingiverse. Print again your model and see how/if your changes affected the print quality in any way. If the above fails, you could also try to use another slicer, but it's unlikely the problem is with the software. UPDATE I'm not familiar with your printer model, but the updated pictures seems to show the leakage happening between the heat block and the heat break, rather than between nozzle and "whatever". ;) This can actually be caused by two different problems (or the two of them compounding). The two parts, which are normally just screwed together have come loose. If your extruder is not "all metal" (which is normally not the case in most printer), the PTFE tube (the whitish plastic tube the filament slides into) may have dislodged upwards, so instead of being a tight fit in the heat block, it leaves room for the molten filament to seep upwards. In both cases, a reassembly and thorough clean-up of the head is in order. I would suggest trying to find specific documentation for your printer online, but the general process is: warm up the head to printing temperature. All subsequent steps will have to be done at this temperature (wearing protective gloves is highly recommended) remove the filament remove the PTFE tube remove the nozzle remove the the heating block from the heat break wipe as much the plastic as possible (bit drills work well for the hole in the heat block increase the temp a further 20-30 degrees reassemble everything profit Please note: the heat break is relatively fragile: be gentle when unscrewing. When removing/attaching the nozzle is worth keeping the heat block in place with a spanner to prevent twisting the heat break if you can't remove the plastic when molted, you can try letting it cool and scrape it it essential that the re-assembly be done while hot. Metal expands with heat, so what feels firm while cold will eventually become loose at high temperature

How to carve a hollow cylinder along the curved surface in Fusion 360 Let me start with a disclaimer: I'm new to 3D design, to design in general and specifically brand new to Fusion 360. This is my first project. I started by creating a hollow cylinder, with the one end open and the other end closed. For example a hollow cylinder with the bottom closed and the top open. I was able to create such hollow cylinder using the cylinder and shell tools. Now, I wish to carve / engrave a pattern on the shell. I may want this carving to go all the way through the shell (practically making a hole the shape of my pattern); or,I may just want to engrave on part of the shell, but not cut all the way though. My pattern is a sound wave. I have a 2D black and white image of this sound wave. I may want to carve it onto the curved shell, so that it curves around the cylinder. I hope my description is clear. Another way to describe what I'm looking for, is to imagine cutting the sound wave pattern though a 2D rectangle, and then curl this rectangle along its width into a cylinder. How can I do something like that?

If you want it to be engraved, then sketch out the sound wave on the center plane. When you go to extrude, click "extrude from", and then click "from object". Click on the plane you want to extrude from, and then 2xtrude however for you would like to. Another way to do this would be to project the sketch onto the surface, and then extrude the projection.

CR-10S / Ender5+ LCD Touchscreen Firmware Editing How would I go about editing the LCD menus for the touchscreen? Oddly the ender5+ is supposed to be an upgrade but the ender5 (regular) has so much more stuff you can control from the lcd screen. Flow control, PID tuning, etc. With my ender 3 is was pretty easy- you simply edit the ultralcd.cpp, you can then add your own menus and commands. On the Ender 5+ and the CR-10S pro I'm guessing the touchscreen has its own set of firmware files- I am guessing this because I found a set of files for the touchscreen- different color screens and such, but they do not include any uncompiled files nor does the marlin firmware for the CR-10 have any mention of those image files in them. So where do I go next? Thanks!

I've been digging into the sources and from what I understand, it is not very easy to change the menus, you should possess some programming skills to change it. It appears that the screen is operating on its own firmware and the board is running a special fork from Marlin. The screen is identified in code by constant CREALITY_DWIN. It appears that the screen receives/uses precreated images (from this download you find these screen captures). The code references the bitmaps by a number and a base number (ExchangePageBase). E.g. codeline: RTS_SndData(ExchangePageBase + 78, ExchangepageAddr); sends this image: The specific code is found in this specific fork of Marlin in files Creality_DWIN.cpp and Creality_DWIN.h. In order to make your own menu item, you need to add code to send new bitmaps and retrieve the touched position.

Does the X/Y bed orientation of a model affect the print detail quality? My FDM printer bed moves on the Y-axis and the print head moves on the X-axis and raises on the Z-axis. When printing rectangular objects (a model of Notre Dame in this case), are there print detail quality advantages to aligning the model perpendicular to the X or Y axis, or at 45 degrees? Part strength is not an issue and support is not needed. Thanks.

In short: Not really. longer version: It depends. The main culprit of losing details in this case would be the weight and speed of the thing moving. So if you have a heavy X-axis carriage, acceleration and decelerating the carriage won't be instant. Same with the bed (Y-axis). Another culprit can be slop in the system, so check your linear bearings and belt tension. Also keep in mind that you are printing on the bed, so the weight of the Y-axis increases while the print progresses. This shouldn't be a problem for small prints, but if your print becomes bigger it can decrease the quality. Another factor is that every print will bend a little the higher it gets, so if you print a tall slender object, don't accelerate the bed too fast ;) To summarize, for high detailed prints: Lower the speed Check the system for slop (tighten belts, and align linear bearings) Take the lightest axis for the highest detail (keep the weight of the print in mind) One thing that you can do to test your machine is to test the ghosting on each axis (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:277394).

Compiling Marlin 2.0 I've just finished building a new printer and I wanted to take advantage of a 32 bits board I ordered some time ago. The board is an MKS SBase 1.3 I've been researching the Smoothiware firmware but somehow I'm not convinced by it yet. One of the things pulling me off is the Z-Probe behavior. On my Arduino-Marlin 1.1.8 machine, I have a probe which serves as both probe and Z-Endstop without a problem and very elegant implemented whereas on Smoothie, it's not so trivial as far as I've seen. Anyway, there is a branch of Marlin which is not yet for release but for testing and it supports 32 bits boards, being mine mentioned above one of them: https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Marlin/tree/bugfix-2.0.x I have yet to find some documentation explaining how to install it. The closest thing I found is a thread on their GitHub "forum": https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Marlin/issues/8131 It seems that you have to build the project to create a firmware.bin file which you can copy to the microSD card and it will flash automatically to the board... again, no "official" documentation found. I've tried the steps described in this thread but I'm not able to compile for my board as it gives an error no matter what: Marlin/src/gcode/eeprom/M500-M504.cpp:74:5: error: no matching function for call to 'MarlinSettings::report(bool, int16_t&)' Has somebody successfully compiled this firmware? Is there something I might be doing wrong? I'm on a macOS machine, using Atom as editor with the Platformio-IDE installed. Any help is appreciated, Thanks in advance!

Well I found the solution on Marlin's GitHub: https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Marlin/issues/9155 but it might have been solved without having to hack the file since then.

Is it necessary to replace the SMD fuses in RAMPS 1.5 or greater, for use with 24 volts? One of the main hacks for converting RAMPS 1.4 boards to use with 24 V, as stated in RAMPS 24V, is replacing the polyfuses, principally F2 (MF-R1100), with wire and using an inline (car blade or wire) fuse on the heatbed wire (or between PSU and RAMPS) instead1. However, that is for the RAMPS 1.4 boards. As RAMPS 1.5 notes (as well as 0scar's answer to RAMPS 1.4, 1.5 or 1.6?): The RAMPS 1.5 uses small surface-mounted fuses rather than the large yellow fuses prone to breakage on the RAMPS 1.4. The downside is that replacing the fuses becomes much more difficult. Are these SMD fuses rated the same voltages, or greater? Yes, this could be a bit like asking "How long is a piece of string" as it depends upon the manufacturer, but does anyone know what voltage should they be rated for? Ultimately, if they are both rated at greater than 24 V, then there should be no need to replace them. The answer on this thread, Re: Ramps1.4 or Ramps1.5 or ramps 1.6??? states: OK the ramps 1.6 can only handle 12v OR 24V so, that would imply that the intention for 24 V support was there, although, unfortunately, the poster does not post their reference. However, the PDF of the RAMPS 1.6 schematic shows the same rated fuses as the RAMPS 1.4 Nevertheless, that seems like a straight forward copy and paste from the RAMPS 1.4 schematic as it clearly references the MF-R500 PTC, and obviously SMD fuses have been used instead - or are the part numbers the same for the SMD fuses..? I had a google but couldn't see MF-R500 SMD fuses (maybe I didn't look hard enough?). Footnote 1 This is because the 11 A fuse is only rated to 16 V. Note that F1 (MF-R500) is rated for 5 A at 30 V, and as such is sufficient for 24 V operation.

Without knowing the exact part numbers used for F1 and F2 it is impossible to say whether the fuses need to be replaced or not. However, based on the manufacturer provided schematic and BOM we can make a pretty good guess. Looking at the PDF you linked, it states that F1 is rated for 16V. Looking at the BOM spreadsheet it also says F1 is 16V and 30A. Based on the fact that the only two reference documents available say 16V, I would strongly recommend replacing this component for 24V operation.

Replicator+ Motherboard Model What is the make/model of a MakerBot Replicator+ motherboard? I'm assuming that the make is now MakerBot since they are now closed-source.

It might be this board, MakerBot 5th Generation motherboard, (original image) The image was very small, so it is rather blurry, I'm afraid. I have contacted the suppliers for confirmation, and will update this answer, when/if I get a reply. However, according to this eBay item, Makerbot Replicator Motherboard Carriage, it could be inferred1 that the same motherboard (MP6292) is used in the Fifth Generation and the Replicator+ This part is the aluminum carriage that attaches the main board to the printer frame. Compatible with Makerbot Replicator Fifth Generation (5th Gen) and Replicator+ (Plus). NOTE: Motherboard show here is for illustration purposes only! Motherboard (MP6292) is NOT included. Main board presses right onto the carriage. No special tools are needed for assembly. Retaining screw is included. A much clearer shot of the MP6292 Motherboard 1 However, that depends on whether you want to trust eBay descriptions.

How to resume an unfinished project I was printing a lid for a box in my Ender 3 pro printer. But I don't know why it stopped printing and moved aside when it does in finished printings. This happened at midnight and I didn't see it until I woke up. In the hope for a resume I didn't remove the finished part from the printer bed. So now how can I resume this printing from where it left. The total width of the lid was 3 mm and it printed 2.4 mm now only 0.6 mm part left to print.

Provided that the print hasn't come loose from the bed and you know the layer height or layer number, you can edit the original G-code file. The following hints should be taken into account: Don't use G28 or G29 instead use G28 X Y (please ) Manually position the printhead at the correct Z height and instruct the printer to use that height for reference: e.g. when the print stopped at layer 12 with a 0.2 mm layer height (2.4 mm height or use the measured height with a caliper) define G92 Z2.4 Make sure the hotend is primed before resuming printing Cut all the G-code present in the file prior to the layer you want to start printing (e.g. search for G1 Z2.2), but do add bed and hotend heating, e.g. respectively M190 S60 and M109 S200 What you can also do is: Reprint the whole print Reslice the print where you have sunk the print 2.4 mm into the bed in the slicer just printing the top face which you glue on later.

Extruder Clicking without Extrusion Problems I own a DIY Hypercube Evolution equipped with Tevo Titan extruder, Clone Chimera hotend and Capricorn's High-temp PTFE tube. I use RAMPS with Mega and A4988's. During prints, my extruder motor randomly clicks. I touched the filament and during the clicks I'ven't felt any problems with extrusion. I looked at the motor shaft to control if it clicks at special angles or randomly, but it clicks randomly. My prints do look very good: clear and shiny. Do you have any suggestions? (the sound really gives me headache)

Even though you may have acceptable extrusion, any clicking from that area of your printer is likely to be a missed step on the extruder motor. This may be insignificant with respect to print quality, but as you suggest, it is an irritation. If you are confident that your nozzle is clean of debris (which is likely), you could consider to raise the nozzle temperature a few degrees. If the nozzle is not applying enough heat to the filament, it may resist being forced through and a click representing a delay, allows that much more heat to be applied. You should not have to increase by much, certainly no more than five degrees. It's also possible that you can slow the feed rate a bit to accomplish a similar result.

Export STL from OpenSCAD command line, calling module within script? Given a .SCAD file which contains some modules, how can I execute one of those modules from the command line? example.scad module One() { ... } module Two() { ... } render.sh openscad -q -o one.stl --module One example.scad Note that there is no --module option, but that is what I'm attempting to do. The workaround would be to make another .SCAD file e.g. one.scad which includes example.scad, and simply calls One(); within and render that file from the shell file. But this is not ideal.

OpenSCAD doesn't have such an option on the command line, but the general idiom I believe you want to use is have .scad source files which are modules include invocations of the module(s) at the top-level controllable by variables you can set on the command line or GUI customizer interface. Any such invocations will be ignored if the file is used (via use directive) in another file so they don't hurt its status as a library and make it easier to preview/test. So for example you could have: wantOne = false; if (wantOne) One(); and then set wantOne to true from the command line.

Ender 3 Bowden tube popping off I keep having a recurring problem with my ender 3 pro. The bowden tube keeps popping off here (pictured) I've read elsewhere online where people are having a similar problem, i.e. the ptfe tube is actually popping out, but I don't know if thats the case here. It's staying attached to the metal coupler, but that metal coupler is unscrewing during the course of the print and falling out. Any tips to fix it? New one? Some sort of loc-tite to get it to not unscrew? Any ideas?

If the fitting is remaining attached to the PTFE tubing, that would indicate that the threaded end of the fitting is pulling out of the drive assembly. This implies that the internal threads of the drive assembly have stripped out. This is not unusual for a plastic drive assembly. The best solution is to replace the drive assembly. I believe I paid about US$12 for the last one I purchased and it was aluminum, not plastic. A quick search for "Ender 3 drive mechanism" returned a number of choices. One of them from Amazon (14.98) is anodized aluminum and purports to be improved over the original. A less than ideal solution would involve drilling out the stripped threads and installing an insert (sometimes called a Heli-coil™) but that could be as expensive as a replacement mechanism.

Printing rectangular grid I am trying to print an item with a rectangular grid (using PLA on Ultimaker 2+): Holes are 4x4 mm, distance between holes (wall thickness): 1mm. I am printing with 0.4 mm nozzle. Unfortunately, Ultimaker Cura generates G-code which prints each rectangle on its own and in a quite a bad way: The printer head tries to draw a rectangle, then moves in the direction opposite to a last laid line, which with not perfect adhesion of single line messes up the print pretty badly: it often picks up last rectangle side and drags it. Any way to change the way Ultimaker Cura approaches to lay out the grid? I would imagine that long lines that are connected to other lines would adhere to bed much better than individual squares, but I don't see any options that would allow to alter it.

This sounds like you have an adhesion problem if it catches laid down filament, you might want to address that first. E.g. use a PVA based glue or spray to get better adhesion. This will result in not dragging laid down filament. To my knowledge, Ultimaker Cura has no option to choose how you print the squares (direction and start point). However, you could use Z-hop so that it will lift your nozzle (or lower your build plate in your case) prior to moving to the next rectangle. It looks as though you are using an older version of Ultimaker Cura as it only prints one line of each of the small rectangular holes (or are you actually using a single wall/shell), in later versions of Ultimaker Cura this is fixed (e.g. the image below is created with Ultimaker Cura 3.4.1), it will print all walls/shells before commencing to the next small rectangular hole. This way you have more lines deposited which have a possible better adhesion to the increase of laid down material: Further investigation of your image shows that you are using a very fine grating (< 1 mm?) resulting in very limited amount of walls. In your case the version is not that important, but the latter information is just left as a possibility for people that use an older version of Ultimaker Cura. Also note that there is an option to put the brim on the inside of your models (option called Brim Only on Outside), when disabled, this would also increase the surface area for better adhesion. There are also option available to start with the outer or inner wall (option Outer Before Inner Walls), but in this case that would not help you as there is only 1 wall at each side of the rectangular hole.

Strange grooves with ABS I am experiencing strange grooves in my ABS prints; with PLA everything is fine. Some layers seem to randomly overextruded and others underextruded. My parameters: Temp: 240°C Retraction Distance: 5 mm Retraction Speed: 70 mm/s Print Speed: 35 mm/s Combing mode: All Max Comb Distance with no Retract: 5 mm It shouldn't be a problem with the Z-axis or the temperature control. It also only appears on large objects.

Retraction distance, print speed (I don't know about Combing mode or Comb Distance but I doubt that's the problem) have IMO nothing to do with this. Neither would hotend temperature. It shouldn't be a problem with the Z-axis or the temperature control. It also only appears on large objects. You have a very fine X/Y layer so albeit your affirmation, I must raise the idea that it might actually be exactly the temperature control of the heat bed (if you have one) and it definitely seems to be the z axis. How would this problem appear otherwise? You say it affects only large objects, and also that it doesn't affect PLA, does it affect large PLA objects? Photos would be helpful :-) ! My hypothesis is that you have a heat-bed and that the heatbed is changing the z-height. It does so when it changes temperature (because material contracts/expands according to temperature), and heatbeds change temperature all the time. Usually you have the same temperature control method all the time, so small or big objects doesn't change the method, but what they change is the time they stay on the same level; small objects less, big objects much so the z-bulging will be seen if you spend 2 minutes on one layer, while it might be mitigated on a layer taking 20 seconds. What's your heat bed temperature control software / how is it configured? FYI I use Marlin and I get these problems when I don't (correctly) auto-tune the heat-bed pid or use bang-bang beat-bed heating.

Longer LK4 Pro moving to corner mid print My printer is the Longer LK4 Pro, and I just got it 2 days ago. When I started to print some objects, on a certain layer, the printer would stop and move to the far right corner of my bed. What can I do to fix this?

It's possible that the slicer is using a minimum cooling time per layer and the corner is set as its home coordinates. In the settings of your printer you can set the home coordinates and in the slicer you can reduce/remove the time between layers.

After market bed heater for Intamsys Funmat HT 3D Printer I am in college and am doing a team competition to print PPSU filament, and get the best results. This is being put on by the Solvay company, who makes the material. Our team signed up and the university bought us an Intamsys Funmat HT 3D Printer, which said it was capable of printing PPSU. However, the company doing the competition did not release the information that the bed plate must be a high temperature to avoid warping (Greater than 200 °C). However, our plate only reaches a temperature of 160. Does anyone know of any aftermarket heaters that would work with this printer? Maximum temperatures according to Intamys: Chamber 90 °C, Magnetic Build Plate 160 °C, Extruder 450 °C

If you're a brave individual you might try insulating the bottom of your heated bed. You're going to want to get fiberglass or something that can actually withstand the temperatures you're trying to reach; anything past about 230 °C and you'll get organic things like cork and cotton starting to smoke. 200 °C is pretty absurd for a print bed temperature unless you're printing some pretty exotic materials. Aside from insulating the bottom of the bed to aid in heat retention, you might also try getting an external FET chip for your heated bed, like is recommended for the RAMPS1.4 boards since their connectors don't handle high amperage loads well. External FET plus a 24 V PSU might give you the kind of temperature range you're apparently aiming for. Best of luck with that, and try not to set your entire setup on fire, 200 °C really is kind of absurd for an entire print plate. TL;DR: Insulate External FET chip 24V PSU

How do I know if a filament is abrasive? There are tons of fancy filaments around. And a lot are super nice to look at or have super cool properties, like carbon-filled nylon being comparatively far stronger than other material, wood fill is aesthetically pleasing and even just Glow in the dark! But a maker space nearby just banned any of those as abrasive filament. But, how can I know if my filament is abrasive?

A filament made of pure plastic won't be abrasive. The abrasion comes from the added particles. Filaments with added particles of any kind (there are not so many after all: glass/carbon fibres, metals, glow in the dark, wood, stone) will usually be always be advertised as such because they always carry a higher price tag compared to the plain plastic, therefore you know that it contains potentially abrasive particles. Once you know that particles are added, most of the time they will be abrasive: as far as I know, only cork is not, any other kind of particles I listed (including wood particles) may easily scratch brass. If it were your printer, we could discuss how much each kind of particles will abrade, but in your case the ban seems to be complete, therefore only plain plastics (including "plus/+/Pro" blends, like for PLA and ABS) are allowed.

20x20x20 calibration cube size change after switching filament I used to print with PLA and everything in my printer was calibrated. But I got a new type of filament called Poly Hybrid from a friend of mine. When I print a 20 mm cube, the x and y axes are fine but z axis in cube is about 18 mm. Should I calibrate my printer z axis again for this new filament type? Because I couldn't find any option in Slic3r in filament tab to set layer height.

Filament type should have nothing to do with the issues you are facing. This is a mechanical issue or a slicing/scaling issue. The hotend should, if instructed to go to 20 mm height actually go to 20 mm (it did do that before!), it cannot "lose" 2 mm on the way up unless you have a lot of lost steps (e.g. too much load on the carriage pressing it down, but that seems pretty unlikely). Typical variations for Z are in the order of a few tenths of a mm for a properly dialed in printer. Please note that the Z axis is usually controlled by a leadscrew (your printer type and brand is not known, but if you have a Prusa style printer or some sort of a cube you'll have a leadscrew, Delta's have belts), so once you dialed this in, the head will go to the instructed height. Reasoning to your observations: If it was under-extrusion because of lower diameter filament, the last few layers should have been falling out of the hotend (considering the head goes to 20 mm and the print is 18 mm high). This is not the case; you have not described that kind of behavior. The most likely problem is a slicing or scaling problem. The answer to your question is therefore: "No you do not need to calibrate the Z height.". But when changing to another filament you could calibrate the extruder for this new filament; if the diameter is not far off you do not need to do that, but you could if you are into details. Preferably questions like these need to include a picture of the print and the printer type!

Weird underextrusion in vase mode? It's my first time printing in vase mode, and I noticed my printer underextruding badly. The settings have not been changed from default vase mode settings in slicer, and earlier I was printing non-vase mode and the prints came out fine. Layer height is 0.2 mm and perimeter width is 0.3 mm.

Finding the cause of under-extrusion is very hard as a lot of parameters of the print process can influence this. There are some nice websites that describe these problems in detail. From your question it is unclear what you have done to solve the problem, or if you have printed products after the vase mode and shown us a picture of that (this eliminates a lot of possible problems). A nice overview is given by Ultimaker, but other sources may help you to find the root cause, e.g. Simplify3D. If the issue is related to the filament and hot-end, Printrbot, Trideus and Rigid.ink may help you solve the problem. Important is to isolate your problem! Not knowing what printer you have, your printer has (or potentially has) the folowing modules/elements that may be causing the underextrusion: the slicer (highly suspicious), the material/filament and the spool holder (suspicious), the extruder or feeder (suspicious), the hot-end (suspicious), the Bowden tube (suspicious if you have one). Note that to find the root cause you should tackle this by elimination, this way you make sure that certain modules are not causing the problem. Also keep in mind that the vase mode prints a single outline/perimeter shell and won't make any retracts (so the Z axis will continuously rise), in which defects are shown instantly. Please, take a close look at your normal multi perimeter print. How to fix under extrusion! Under extrusion is probably one of the hardest to find the direct cause as there are so many variables to consider. Please find below some of the variables that can affect your printing quality marked in bold face. Material and material settings The material you use needs to be resembled correctly, so it is important and easiest thing to check first if your print is suffering from under-extrusion due to incorrect material settings. The material settings in your slicer (or the material profile on your printer for the more fancy printers) should match the material you are printing. So please check the filament diameter with a caliper and measure the diameter at various points; take the mean diameter of at least 3 to 5 measurements. Furthermore, temperature is also an important factor; too low temperatures will cause that the extruder has to push harder as the material is less viscous due to the fact it is not heated properly. Note that this can also happen if the flow of the filament is too high and the heater cannot keep up. It is these high pressures that cause the under extrusion as it may not flow fluidly. In contrast to too low temperatures, too high temperatures, can also cause problems. Very high temperatures can change the structure of the material, this is often referred to as carbonization causing deposits (clogs) in the nozzle. A word of advice, Please check your filament spool/box (or sometimes a paper in the box or bag) for the proper temperatures. Next to the temperature, other important material settings are the print speed, the layer height and the nozzle size as these properties further define the rate at which the filament volume is deposited. For instance, a too high of a volume flow not only can lead to the previously mentioned cooling of the nozzle, but also is limited by the diameter of the nozzle, you just cannot push more through the nozzle is capable of as the friction will increase (the smallest opening in the system determines the maximum rate of volume flow). If you do, this will lead to under-extrusion. To find the optimum between speed and temperature, a good balance between these needs to be found. A typical way to do that is by the use of printing calibration temperature towers, preferably at various speeds. To print faster, you need a higher temperature, but printing at lower temperatures because of overhangs, you might need to decrease the speed to get a proper extrusion (and maybe also part cooling). Don't just focus on the hot end part, also take a closer look at the filament spool itself, or better, how the spool unrolls. Is the spool of filament unrolling correctly/freely without a lot of friction (does it make sharp bends, or does it go through a tube having friction from its container to the extruder), or is the filament not correctly wound causing tangled filament (which create a lot of friction preventing enough material to be transported to the hot end) which could stress the extruder. For some materials that are hydrophilic (they attract water and trap it in the filament, this happens e.g. with PLA, PVA, Nylon and maybe even more) printing the filament with contained water, the water will turn into steam causing bubbles in the deposited filament and interfere with the flow deposition. This effect sometimes makes a distinct sound like popping bubbles. Always store your filament in a sealed container or bag and use desiccants bags. Moisture can cause damage to the printer as the filament swells when taking up moisture; this could lead to various jams. Last but not least, filament with moisture in it has less mechanical properties after printing than dry filament (up to 33% less). The extruder/feeder and Bowden tube The extruder/feeder pushes or feeds material into the hot end, or into a tube (called Bowden tube). Under-extrusion caused by the extruder is typically characterized by the fact that filament is not properly fed to the hot end as a result of too much friction in the tube or hot end, too less grip on the filament or filament grinding (the extruder gear 'eating away' the filament). Too much friction could even cause your stepper to tick or click, basically turning back as the pressure on the filament exerts so much pressure that the stepper is rotated back; increasing the feeder tension on the filament (by adjusting the screw on the extruder/feeder would fix that). Grinding is easily spotted when removing the filament; it will clearly show that the gear has worn away circle shapes. Furthermore, filament taken out of the printer should show visible marks on the material as imprints of the extruder gear, if completely smooth, the feeder tension is too less. On the other hand, too much tension on the feeder could flatten the filament, which leads the previously mentioned grinding effect. If you encounter grinding, please assure that you clean the extruder by removing the filament powder and chunks the grinding produced and recheck the extruder/feeder tension before continuing printing again. Be sure that the grinding particles have not entered the Bowden tube as it causes friction. Cleaning them regularly or replacing them once a year is advisable depending on the usage (or once every x kilometers of filament). Furthermore, larger diameter filament (2.85 or 3 mm) can cause additional friction (in the Bowden tube or the extruder/feeder) as towards the end of the spool, the filament is wound tight along a small diameter spool center causing strongly bend filament that exerts pressure as it acts like a spring creating friction at the walls of the tubes. The hot-end The hot end can also be a culprit for under-extrusion. Partial blockage of the nozzle as a result of carbonization (buildup of carbon or carbonized material in the nozzle). Even left over material from previous prints inside the nozzle (unflushed residue) may change the volume of the nozzle when the material you printed before needed a higher temperature than the current you're printing. Also try to get good quality filament, it might be that the quality is just not constant for the whole spool. Too clean the inside of the nozzle, a few techniques exist to remove blockage. By performing a "cold pull" or using the atomic method. Both techniques rely on the mechanism to insert the (cleaning) filament when it's hot and remove it quickly at a lower temperature. E.g. see here or here.

Export STL as ASCII or binary? When go to export a model using Fusion 360 or Meshmixer, I see that there are two options. Could the final model be affected by the format chosen at the time of saving?

The two formats contain the same information about the model, but the binary format is much more compact, so it will produce smaller files from the same part but they should work the same. That's to say, if you take the exact same model, save it as a binary STL and as an ASCII STL, the binary STL file will take up fewer bytes on disk. The number of triangles and the dimensions of the printed model will stay the same. There are a couple of important exceptions here: I don't know about Meshmixer specifically, but some tools will have completely different code paths for exporting the two formats. One exporter may have a bug that the other exporter doesn't. The same is true of the slicer, which may have a bug reading one of the two kinds of STL but not the other. In this case, it'll make a huge difference which one you use, but you'll only find out when one goes wrong. This is what fred_dot_u experienced in his answer. Some tools have a way of putting colour information into the binary STL format, which isn't possible with the ASCII format. If your model has coloured triangles, you might find that the binary STL preserves the colours, while the ASCII STL loses the colours. Whether this matters to you depends on what printing technology you'll be using. Most slicers can't use these colours anyway - and subsequently, ignore color information on import. The ASCII STL format is older than the binary format, so you may find some very old software can only understand the ASCII STL files, but unless you're working with such old software, it's usually better to use the binary format. Smaller files don't just save disk space: they're also faster to process and transfer via e-mail or on servers.

Purchasing a first 3D printer What is a good entry level 3D printer that you could use while earning to the next level printer? I found there are so many kinds.

This is going to depend on your particular wants and needs. Initial buy price is a big factor, obviously, but there are some other things to bear in mind: What are you going to use it for? If you're going to use it for printing, say, RPG miniatures, you might want to focus on SLA/DLP (resin) printer because they can produce very good detail at small sizes. But entry level SLA/DLP printers tend to have very small print areas. FDM (filament) printers tend to have larger print areas but they don't tend to be quite as accurate when it comes to reproducing small detail. They have more material choices available to them, though: PLA, ABS, and PETG are sort of the basic three materials that an entry level printer can probably handle. How much of a "tinkerer" are you? Some printers are "open source" which means you are able to modify their firmware and/or hardware. For example, you might be able to upgrade the firmware and hot end of an FDM printer to allow you to print more exotic materials like nylon and PEEK. That ability to tinker and modify your printer is great if that's the kind of thing you value. But it also means you might have to rely less on the manufacturer and more on the community if something goes wrong or you're unsure how to go about doing something with the printer. How much are you going to use it? / How much room do you have? The cheapest printer in the world is still too expensive if you never use it. Plus, it takes up space. This is something you really have to keep in mind: printers need space. Even if the printer itself is small, you might need to buy an enclosure for it. You probably need a workspace nearby to finish your printed parts. I think resin printers need a space to setup a UV curing lamp to fully cure the resin of the printed parts, for example. If you print more than one type of material with an FDM printer, you need a place to store those extra spools of material. You should check out 3d printing sites like those below to read their reviews because they will offer insights into things that might not even cross your mind to consider: All3DP 3dsourced ZDnet CNet 3Dnatives

Can I sell a handpainted large scale 3D model of a copyrighted 2D concept art? The art in question is https://www.instagram.com/p/CIfsO2ZD7Rj/ . I Think the concept artist, Jean Giraud, is dead.

While better fitted to our friends at law.SE, the general gist is: No. Art is protected by copyright, and any adaption (derivative work) requires the OK from the right holders per se. Only 70-75 years after the death of the author (or publication for company works), a work enters the public domain and the copyright expires. There are some exceptions (fair use/fair dealing/...), but media transformation is not one of them. Giraud died in 2012, his estate or heirs - or whoever he/they sold the commercial rights to - own the right to ok derivative Works till around 2087.

Ultimaker Layer Resolution vs Nozzle Size On their website they say the following 0.25 mm nozzle: 150 to 60 micron 0.40 mm nozzle: 200 to 20 micron 0.60 mm nozzle: 400 to 20 micron 0.80 mm nozzle: 600 to 20 micron That confuses me. Why can I go down to 20 micron with the 0.40, 0.60 and 0.80 nozzle but only down to 60 micron with the much smaller 0.25 nozzle? Is that a typo and should say 6 micron?

You need a certain minimum flow rate to achieve consistent extrusion. Flow rate is the product of print speed, extrusion width (proportional to nozzle size) and print speed. If you use a very small nozzle and very low layer height, you'd need a very high printing speed to achieve a reasonable flow rate. Therefore, it's quite possible this is not a mistake and intentional. Keep in mind that Ultimaker uses 2.85mm filament. With a 0.3mm extrusion width, 0.02mm layer height and 60mm/s print speed, you would need a feedrate of 0.06mm/s into your extruder. The extruder might not be able to develop enough force on the filament at such a low speed (which, owing to the small nozzle size, requires a relatively large amount of force). The ultimaker can not print 6 micron layers since the smallest increment the Z-axis can move in is 5 microns. 6 microns is not a multiple of that.

How small can I expect FDM 3d printers to print? I was wondering if this printer(daVinci 1.0) had the ability to print very small objects, like insects, coins, or small nuts. (About the size of 1 -2 cubic centimeters) Here is a link to the printer on the website. The reason I ask is someone asked me if it was able to, but I have not been able to access the actual 3-D printer for use at this time, just manuals which I have looked through. So if the 3-D printer was able to print small objects, would a novice be able to do such a thing? Please let me know if any additional details are needed.

1) If we're talking about FFF/FDM printers: Accuracy of the electronics and motors allows it, yes. But how FDM printers work it might be very hard to lay down layers of molten plastic so small as to preserve little details in the X and Y axis, not much of a problem doing 20 micron layer height though (Z resolution). Check this answer to find out what the X and Y resolution is and what it depends on: https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/a/509/381 You'll need both a small enough nozzle, as well as somehow cool the plastic because since the printed objects are so tiny the nozzle keeps contact with the surface surrounding it and heats it longer, which might melt the whole object or even char it. I've seen very few people do tiny prints with success. And the smallest nozzles I know are 250 micron. Not trying to dscourage you, just letting you know. If it was easy to do I think more people would be doing it and more companies would be advertising their printers as capable of such a thing So you'll have around 20 micron Z resolution and around maybe 200 in the X/Y. If that's enough for you, then you could try. Calibrating it all won't be easy, tiniest backlash will be noticeable. 2) It's a lot easier with curing resin 3d printers (SLA or DLP). Most of them actually have trouble printing larger objects, ironically (trouble sticking to the bed and cracking of the 3d print). Even here badly calibrated lasers would prevent you from doing this and even many Form 1 users have reported their lasers being assembled poorly resulting in poor beam profile. Size of the laser beam profile (aka laser "spot size") is what determines the X/Y resolution for SLA 3d printers. With the Form 2 its 140 micron, unless you'll get a badly calibrated printer. For DLP printers it's easier, it's the resolution of the DLP projector divided from the size of the print area.

BigTreeTech mini e3 V1.2 endstop installation I recently purchased a BigTreeTech mini e3 V1.2 controller for my custom built 3D printer (as opposed to an pre-purchased ender 3). In doing so, I ran into the problem that the endstops I have been using have three wires: Power, Ground, and signal. The mini e3 V1.2 that I purchased uses endstop connections that only have two pins. This can be seen in the schematic below on the bottom right of the controller. I don't know where to buy endstops that only have two pins and have not been able to find anything online. If anybody knows where these can be bought or how the 3 pinned endstops are supposed to be wired up it would be much appreciated.

You do not need to connect the red (+) wire of the endstops. The controller board uses a technique to ensure the signal is 3.3 V or ground, see the top left schematics of this link (will insert an image later!). Specifics about this technology is found here and is explained as using a pull up resistor. What happens is that the signal is always reported as triggered, unless the endstop connects the signal wire to ground. This link shows that only ground and signal are required (will insert an image later!).

How to increase the amount of probing points for a BLTouch sensor in Marlin firmware? I have a new BLTouch that is setup (using Marlin 1.8.7) but I want to increase the probing grid from a 3x3 to something like a 5x5. I am using bilinear leveling with a 3x3 grid. How would I go about changing that?

You need to change the constant value(s) in your Configuration.h file of your Marlin version from: // Set the number of grid points per dimension. #define GRID_MAX_POINTS_X 3 #define GRID_MAX_POINTS_Y GRID_MAX_POINTS_X to: // Set the number of grid points per dimension. #define GRID_MAX_POINTS_X 5 #define GRID_MAX_POINTS_Y GRID_MAX_POINTS_X This shows that to go from a 3x3 grid to a 5x5 grid you only need to change one value. Do note that you can set GRID_MAX_POINTS_Y to any value other than GRID_MAX_POINTS_X; replacing GRID_MAX_POINTS_X in the line with GRID_MAX_POINTS_Y to 4 would yield a 5x4 probe grid: // Set the number of grid points per dimension. #define GRID_MAX_POINTS_X 5 #define GRID_MAX_POINTS_Y 4

3D printer extruding too thick Last night there was an error in printing that caused the printer to stop printing, but kept the hotend on. This morning I discovered that it had fused to what it was printing after renaming on all night - it took some time to remove. Prints afterwards showed signs of under extrusion. Now when I tell it to extrude a millimeter, it no longer extrudes a thin strand, but instead exactly a millimeter of filament comes out the same diameter as it went in. Cleaning the hotend has done nothing, cleaning the extruder has done nothing. I'm left with two conclusions, either: this is what is supposed to happen, it was broken the whole time, I had calibrated it for the broken setting and just need to recalibrate everything, or; something, most likely the nozzle, is broken.

When you have a disaster print like this you almost always get carbon in the hot end. I have micro hand drills (0.2 mm) that I carefully use on the tip of the nozzle. There are also atomic pulls where you add plastic, heat it up till it extrudes then let it cool. Once cooled to 70°C pull hard. Repeat until pulls show no black. Or, if your nozzles are cheap just replace them. Note next time this happens, turn the hot end on so you can remove it quickly. Sounds like you chipped away.

left-over photopolymer resins Not storing left-over photopolymer resin back with pristine resin in its original shipping can seems to be a common recommendation. What is the best practice here? Store in a separate bottle and pour this "once around the block" resin first for the next print?

Considerations for storing resin include using a light-tight bottle, preventing stray ultraviolet radiation from prematurely curing the resin. You'll also note that users will filter the resin through a fine mesh filter. I've seen some videos in which the user pours through coffee filters to remove as many particulates as possible. Left-over resin that has been carefully filtered is effectively the same as fresh-from-the-bottle material, from a purely technical view, but you can pick up contaminants that bypass the filter.

What technics are you using to seal between the throat tube and nozzle? Thinking this over, the best place to seal the hotend is between the throat tube and nozzle. What are the advantages/disadvantages of an integrated nozzle and throat to make this seal? Does a throat with a Teflon tube improve this seal? Is it reasonable to cut a gasket out of 3mm ID 5mm OD Teflon tubing to make the seal for M6 thread parts? I intend these questions to all address the main question to prevent a leaky hot end.

A seal between the heat break and nozzle should be achieved by tightening them while the hotend is hot. After assembling the (cold) hotend, heat it up to somewhat above the highest temperature you will print at and then tighten the nozzle some more. When it cools down again, you will have a very tight seal. If the nozzle still leaks after this tightening then it is defective. Using teflon is possible but will limit the maximum temperature you can use your hotend at safely and you won't be able to print some higher temperature materials.

Can't get Y-Axis to move with Marlin firmware Just as the title says. I feel like I have tried everything. I am compiling the firmware for Marlin on a Megatronics board from RepRap. That shouldn't be relevant, because I have validated that it is a firmware issue (and not a pin assignment/hardware issue). When I turn it on, the Y-axis is active and just constantly holding. The stepper driver on Y-axis gets pretty warm constantly holding (as does the stepper motor). When I swap the pin assignments for Y and X then the physical Y-axis moves fine when I manually change the X-axis so I know all the hardware and pin assignments are correct. All the endstops are correctly reporting open (Z is BLTouch but that is also working). Relevant software endstops are currently disabled, and default homing position is set to 50 to make sure it doesn't think it is at the bounds on boot. I have a test firmware that checks all the endstops, temperature, and servos, and all servos work fine. As a sanity check, pin assignments match what is in the pins file. Does anyone have any idea of what in the latest Marlin firmware would cause a software condition to just hold the y axis and not move? I should note that when I try to manually move it in Repetier-Host it shows that it is moving. When I try to give the home command, no movement on the Y but Repetier changes from red to black indicating it received confirmation of homing. I am completely out of ideas at this point.

There is a problem in the Megatronics default config file. I used an other default config file and it worked!

Removing Supports Inside Cone I'm new to 3D printing. I've made some projects before just fine, but this project is giving me problems. I 3D printed a trumpet mouthpiece, and the printer made supports inside the mouthpiece funnel. I can easily remove the exterior supports, but I don't know how to get to the supports inside. Does anyone know how I would do that? Here is the link to the model

That model didn’t need supports. Most of the time you can break the connections with the supports to the model by inserting a knife or flat object into the cavity. In this case you could use a probe to loosen the joins then wedge it out. If that doesn’t work you can use needle nose pliers to remove prices. Your best and cleanest option would be to reprint the mouthpiece without supports at all. Print it so that the wide section(the section touching your mouth) is on the buildplate.

Printing an iPhone Case I am trying to 3D print an iPhone case, however, I want it to print standing up. Is this possible to do? I have a picture of the case in the link below.

Yes this is possible. For an FDM/FFF printer, you'll need to print with supports. I might also recommend printing in PLA to minimize the chance of warping during the print (from experience). It might also help to slow down the feedrate to ensure smooth surface finish and avoiding delamination on such small layers. You'll probably see a decrease in the surface quality on the inside due to the printing of support scaffolding depending on the slicing engine you use. However You'll want to pay attention to the strength of the case. If you print the case upright then it will be more susceptible to breaking without post-processing. Conclusion Ultimately, if you can get away with it, it would be better to subtract the star instead of extruding it in the model. Then you can simply print the case back face down on the plate with much better results.

Issues with printing and removing filament residue When I print at the end when it is done the prints are lighter than they should, and they are thin enough that I can scrape the bottom away. My second problem is that my filament gets stuck on the support rods and stops the filament from coming through the extruder. And the final problem I have is when the bottom of my prints get stuck and won't come off and I need to learn how to clean it. (The bed can come off and my printer is an Ender Pro 3)

I think I know the answer to your first problem. Check your flow rates and wall thicknesses in the slicer settings. And if messing with some of those settings doesn't fix the problem, it might have to do with your steps per mm which I posted an answer here. The other two problems I'm not really sure about. Just wanted to at least get one question cleared.

Problem with 3D printer not accepting new print gcodes Ok so I am trying to print a new fusion 360 file that I converted into an STL and then into gcode using cura and I got the gcode loaded onto the SD card and mounted into my Monoprice 3D printer, Maker Select 3D Printer v2, and tried to do a print. Now here is the strange part. When I choose "print file" and then select a gcode to print it takes me back to the main screen and from there the 3D printers screen displays "Printing...0%" for a few seconds. After this it just goes back to displaying "Stepper Disabled." And if it is not stepper disabled it is just a blank screen. I tried to mount and print multiple gcodes just to make sure that it was not the softwares fault and low and behold I was running into the same issue. Now before using today all of the gcode was printing just fine, however for some reason today it decided to give me this issue.

As you found out, sometimes the SD cards need reformating. And if they came with the printer they could be fake (Fake capacity), when you try to upload more than its real capacity they will just corrupt. My Anet A8 came with an 8GB SD card and it turned out to be 128 mb. With RMPrepUSB you can do a capacity test and format it to the real capacity.

Heatbed control with Pronterface I'm having trouble getting my MendelMax 2's heatbed not to heat up when I want to print without it. I don't get how multiple sources of control relate to each other (same with extrusion temperatures, actually): Slic3r (1.2.9) has settings under Filament Settings / Filament / Bed, for First layer and Other layers (and groups of settings can be saved). The pronterface GUI (Printrun-Mac-10Mar2014) has an "Options" panel where you can set "Bed temperature" (actually, two settings, one for PLA and one for ABS -- though I doubt the software can test which filament is loaded!) The pronterface GUI also has a menu/fill-in labelled "Bed", which works fine to adjust the bed when nothing is printing. The menu there lets you pick from a manually-entered value, "0 (off)", and (apparently) the settings for PLA and ABS from the options panel. Marlin's Configuration.h has settings for bed minimum and maximum temps (the non-zero minimum seems to be to prevent running the bed when the thermistor isn't working, to avoid unlimited overheating). I recently tried to print some PLA with no bed heat (using blue tape on the glass build plate). I sliced the model with bed heat off in Slic3r; changed the PLA bed temps in the printerface options panel to 0; and picked the PLA setting in the GUI main screen (and also tried setting "0 (off)" manually. When I started to print the object, the bed turned on and stayed on, maintaining 60C. I thought of just unplugging the heatbed, but then I expect the print would never start, since it would try to heat up the bed and never succeed. So how does the decision about which temperature setting to use, really get made? I have the same question about extruder temps, speeds, accelerations, and other things, too -- whose settings are really in charge?

3D printer get the temperature settings from g-code file. The firmware settings for min and max temperature are just safeguards. You should verify instructions within the g-code file. If you are not familiar with g-code, take a look to wikipedia. List of g-code instructions for marlin firmware is here. Instruction responsible for setting bed temperature are M190 and M140. Open your g-code file and search for lines containing them. If you delete these lines then the bed temperature will be not set during print. Additionally it means that it is set by your slicer. In Slic3r you should check Printer settings → Custom G-code → Start G-code if it contains one of mentioned instructions and possibly remove it.

Uploading files using Octoprint REST API I'm trying to upload a file using Octoprint REST API - it seems to be possible as per the document described here, Upload file or create folder, but I can't figure it out how to do it with the Python request lib. Currently what I'm doing is import requests def def Upload_File(): fle={'location':"j:/max.gcode"} url='http://localhost:5000/api/files/{}'.format('local') payload={'select': 'true','print': 'false' } header={'content-type': 'multipart/form-data','X-Api-Key': 'FD550BD4DA2442BA906AD1850539D6DB' } response = requests.post(url, files=fle,data=payload,headers=header) print(response) if __name__=='__main__': Upload_File() The response returns status is 400 My working env is: Windows 10 and Octoprint running on virtual environment.

I installed octoprint locally to help debug this problem. Your code snippet says "def def Upload_File" which is a syntax error. If you go into Octoprint, under Settings -> Logging, and download octoprint.log, you'll notice it says "WARNING - 400 POST /api/files/local (::1): No multipart boundary supplied". A quick google search led me to this StackOverflow question, which states to remove the custom content-type header to fix this problem. You actually need to open() the file, and assign that value to the 'file' field in the fle object definition, not just tell it where it's currently at on your machine. Additionally, you need to provide a filename field in the fle object. I got your code snippet working as below, went ahead and swapped your API key back into it. You'll need to point the open() call to the actual location of your file on your hard drive, which I assume is j:/max.gcode, rather than mine which is just opening max.gcode from the running directory of the script. import requests def Upload_File(): fle={'file': open('max.gcode', 'rb'), 'filename': 'max.gcode'} url='http://localhost:5000/api/files/{}'.format('local') payload={'select': 'true','print': 'false' } header={'X-Api-Key': 'FD550BD4DA2442BA906AD1850539D6DB' } response = requests.post(url, files=fle,data=payload,headers=header) print(response) if __name__=='__main__': Upload_File() Finally, if you're going to be doing a whole lot of REST API shenanigans with your Octoprint server, may I offer a prebuilt library?

Adding additional extrusion to a raft (raft with a skirt?) I started using rafts more often, to get better results with complex or fragile parts, but my Ender 3 consistently under-extrudes the initial outside line of the raft (for the first inch or two, where extrusion starts). It is often very thin and does not adhere. This often leads to problems with the following pattern of raft layer 1 curling up (ABS) as it does not meet the edge line (due to the 1-2 inch gap in the perimeter). Skirts avoid this problem by getting the flow going, but rafts only print a single outer line. Is it possible to specify more than one outer line on a raft in Ultimaker Cura? Is it possible to add a skirt to a print that has a raft (or at least some initial printing to get the flow going)? Is it possible to add some initial G-code that will extrude a line, say from near the start position to the start of the print?

In Ultimaker Cura you can select only one of the the build plate adhesion options skirt, brim or raft. You cannot select multiple options. There is no option available in Ultimaker Cura to increase the outline count of the raft bed adhesion structure. Basically the raft exists of a line support structure as can be seen in the figure below. The line around the lines should be considered "the skirt", so if the nozzle is not properly primed (not sufficient molten filament available), you need to properly prime the nozzle prior to printing. To prime the nozzle, you need to add some extrusion of filament in your start G-code. Personally, I like the style of Ultimaker where prior to printing, a puddle of filament is deposited priming the nozzle adequately. Basically you need to move to a position where you like to deposit filament: G1 X10 Y10 Z2 Then you need to extrude material G1 F125 G1 E10 G1 Z3 E5 After that you can even wipe the nozzle. Another option (that requires some copy/pasting from your side and would not be a recommended practice) that is possible is slicing the model with a skirt (with a sufficient distance to stay away from the raft position) instead of a raft and look at the generated G-code and copy the skirt deposition codes into the raft G-code file. You do need to take care of the proper length of the extruder when the skirt followed by the raft, so you need to use G92 Exx.xx where xx.xx is the actual length of the filament start for the raft.

Why does the Ultimaker 3D Printer has a Heater + Heater transfer plate (aluminium) + Glass? Why does the Ultimaker 3D Printer has a Heater + Heater transfer plate (aluminium) + Glass? I wonder why a glass plate, and if is possible to remove the glass and print directly in the aluminium plate adjusting the heating. Link to the ultimaker. Pictures:

According to this page, heat transfers more evenly across an aluminum build plate than with just glass. But as Kevin pointed PLA adheres better to glass because it doesn't flex as much as aluminum under heat. The link above shows that aluminum has a much higher thermal conductivity at 205 (W/(mK)) vs glass at 105 (W/(mK)) at 25 °C (77 °F). Because of this conductivity difference, you may find that it takes longer to heat the glass plate, but it should heat more evenly.

Sandable primer suitable for PLA? What kind of primer should I be using for my PLA prints? I want to be able to sand the object after applying the primer for a smooth finish before painting. Would something like this work? https://www.bunnings.com.au/dulux-duramax-325g-plastic-primer-spray-paint_p1400720

There are generally 2 types of operation you might want to do before priming your object: smoothing to a point that you are comfy with and roughing pass with very fine grit to give the primer something to stick to Smoothing via Sanding & Filler To smooth your object you generally have two options: Only sand down (and possibly vapor-smooth) and account for the lost size in the design phase. Vapor-smoothing can flatten away surface details you might want to preserve, so it might not be an option at all. While vapor smoothing is possible with more than just Acetone on ABS, the price tag for those chemicals is usually more expensive by a factor of 20 or more due to the fact that Acetone is pretty much dirt cheap as far as chemicals go - and easily accessible via home depot. Fill up with body filler in areas you want and sand smooth afterward. This is very labor intensive, especially for complex shapes. Only after you filled up the structure to be somewhat smooth you apply paint primer. In itself, common spray on primers often are not filling enough to hide away the printing layers. For rough surfaces that need a starting fill, a paste body filler applied with a spatula works best, and for the last pass over a just lightly scratched surface, automotive body filler from a spray can works great. The benefit of spray-can body filler is, that it also acts as a first roughing step, so you don't need to roughen the surface for the primer. If you grab a filler-primer, even skip the primer. Sidenote from experience: Some filler-primer and lacquer spray cans seem to contain solvents that are able to soften PLA. Smoothing via Coating A random find on Thingiverse showed me another way to paint and flatten the surface faster and without sanding, at the cost of details getting smoothed away: Apply a thin paint coat. Apply a thin coat of a fast drying, transparent Polyurethane coating onto the wet paint. Let the combined layers dry with extra air flow to prevent noses. Repeat as needed. It works by picking up the wet paint and embedding it into the thicker Polyurethane layer, which dries much smoother than the paint itself, filling up the imperfections and the steps between layers. This process will however also fill up non-masked surface details you might want to preserve. Your product in mind The primer you took a look at works on PLA, but it would not smooth out all the dimples. It might work nicely for the PU-Buildup variant.

Ambient Temperature Range for Printer Storage/Usage I've just joined the 3D Printing world and am patiently waiting for my printer to come in next week. I've been thinking about keeping my printer in the garage so that it stays out of the way of every day life. Since I am in the Midwest, I was wondering if this is the best plan. Is it okay to store and use my printer when the ambient temperature can get as low as 10 °F (about -12 °C) and as high as 120 °F (about 50 °C)? Would the cold affect my prints substantially, mainly using PLA, PETG and some TPU? Would larger prints, spanning days, affect the filament on the spool? Note that I am solely talking about the printer. I plan on keeping the filaments inside the house so they won't be bothered by the temp extremes. My google searches came up with nothing and I didn't find anything on the supplier from which I purchased my printer. I doubt that it matters, but in case it does, my printer is the Creality CR-10S

Printers are electrical machines. They don't like water, so they also don't like condensation in them. If you can keep your garage dry and prevent a sheet of metal inside it from rusting, then your printer might survive the problems the shifting temperatures induce by condensing water vapor on the electronics. Another thing to consider is, that at negative degrees Celsius, your printer might trigger a mintemp error, as the minimum temperature allowable is usually defined as 0 °C or higher. On the other hand, low temperatures might allow to bridge further than other days, as the cold air absorbs the heat from the prints faster. It could cause other problems like clogging or under extrusion due to low temperature though. High summer temperatures might impact the print quality, causing quite some extra sagging. The Filament on the machine in a garage might be impacted because of the humidity changes, but might be mitigated with a drybox.

Setting custom x/y bed bounds for Anet A8/marlin I have an Anet A8 that I just flashed with the latest Marlin firmware (1.1.9). I'm sending prints to my printer with Ultimaker Cura via OctoPrint. I have affixed a PEI surface to my bed that's about 10 mm smaller in each direction than the full size of the bed (that is, I lose about 5 mm on each side of the bed). This hasn't been a huge problem as usually I account for this myself and just make sure there's lots of room on each side of a print, but having upgraded my firmware, I'd like to take advantage of Marlin's bi-linear bed-levelling. Unfortunately, several of the points it chooses are outside the bounds of my PEI surface and so it's impossible to get a decent setting for those points. What's the "correct" way to configure Marlin to know that my bed size is actually smaller than it thinks it is? Do I need to additionally adjust settings in Ultimaker Cura and/or OctoPrint?

As you just flashed your own Marlin, you probably have the marlin.ino and its associated files in the Arduino IDE set for your Processor and board and know how to work with them to some degree. This is just the short version where to find what you need to change the bed size, if the marlin.ino is based on the marlinfw-release. Changing "home" In Configuration.h there should be a set of lines that reads akin to this: // 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 Usually it is faster to use Ctrl+F and then typing in X_MIN_POS and adding the hook in front of Search all Sketch Tabs and then moving through all the finds till the right one pops up. This not only brings you right to the lines you want to alter, but also covers up the bases in case the distribution you work with did put the movement limits into a different location like Configruration_adv.h. Changing Bed Size Alter these minimum positions and make sure that the Maximum positions (usually just after them) to fit the maximum of the bed. If you reduced your bed size, you also might need to change X_BED_SIZE and Y_BED_SIZE, which (in the marlin.ino) is in the same Configuration.h - I found it to preceede the Travel limits: // The size of the print bed #define X_BED_SIZE 200 #define Y_BED_SIZE 200 Adjust these as needed to fit the new sizing. Hint: Getting the Values for Adjusting For finding the adjusted values, I have had good experiences using Repetier Host on Manual Control to move the nozzle (lifted 1mm to prevent any accidents) into the correct XY-position and taking this position as adjustments for the minimum positions. Finding your personal settings is a bit of a trial and error still, so take your time. Finishing up Now, recompile the marlin.ino (the checkmark in the top left) to check for errors and flash the new firmware it.

Delta Kossel 3d Printer Heatsink issues I feel stupid for asking, but could it cause issues if the Heat sink/Heater block/Extruder tip can spin freely in a Kossel Delta 3d printer? I went to remove the extruder tip the other day, and noticed that all of the assembly is free spinning. I am new to the 3d printing community. Clarification: It's the whole assembly rotating as a single piece. The heater block, heat break/sink and extruder tip are all rotating together, in the effector.

When assembling the hot end tip, make sure you screw in the extruder tip to the aluminum block first, then screw that assembly to the heat sink fins. On my Kossel, I did it the other way around, and had very poor results. If the whole assembly is spinning, then the clamp screws are either too long and can't tighten properly, or the holes might be stripped, or they're just not tight. And yes, any movement in the hot end can cause problems, since we're dealing with steps as small as .1 mm.

Printing a non-self-aligning caged deep-groove ball bearing I've recently designed a non-self-aligning caged deep-groove ball bearing. Now I'd love to get one 3D printed. However, assembling those can be tricky and I highly doubt it's even plausible to print them. All the components themselves can be printed without a problem, but I'm not sure whether I'll be able to put them all together in the end. What are my options? FDM printers are probably out, although it would be great if I can find a way to use those. Would an SLA or perhaps an SLS printer be able to pull it off? Of course the thing still has to work (move) in the end.

Two aspects of your question can immediately be addressed, one with much less certainty than the other. If you were to print the indicated parts using PLA on an FDM printer and assembled as much as possible up to say, the outer bearing ring, you might be able to use boiling water to soften the ring with boiling water enough to get it around the balls. It's also possible that the deformation will effectively destroy the usefulness of the part. On the other item, SLS is virtually perfect for this type of part. The un-sintered nylon powder provides positional support for all of the other parts being sintered. When the print is completed, the powder is blown out with high pressure air, freeing up the individual components as per the original design. Be advised that there is to be expected some shrinkage of the parts which will affect any segment of the component that has tight or close clearances. From Shapeways site regarding SLS printed parts (Shapeways) Executive summary: maintain a wall thickness of at least 1mm, accuracy is 0.1mm, always keep a clearance of 0.6mm and parts may have a deviation of 0.2mm. When designing something mechanical that has to be 3D printed or when adding a mechanical feature to your model there are several main considerations. Also listed in the above link are the considerations of enclosed parts. Each of the balls in the bearing design may or will be printed as a hollow sphere filled with nylon powder. The bearing rings will also be printed as shells, unless appropriate steps are taken to make them solid. By the same token, if a part need not be solid and can be designed with holes to "drain out" the un-sintered powder, the cost will be reduced accordingly.

How to calibrate Ender-4 I have just assembled the Creality3D Ender-4 kit a couple of days ago. I completed some rewiring and everything seems to be wired correctly, I'm able to auto-home successfully, but this is the problem I'm having: I tried printing a calibration cube. The first problem I noticed is that the printing is starting on one corner instead of the center as specified on the Printer Settings in CURA (check settings below). Second problem is that I'm getting significant distortion. The movement of the printer seems to be fine, no jerks of weird sounds. I tried all I know but I honestly don't know how to proceed with this. I have a couple of hours of experience in 3D Printing so I'm completely lost. This is the result I got (Model printed with Raft for adhesion): These are my CURA settings: Printer Extruder

The first problem is solved by removing the tick mark at Origin at center. Most printers have their origin at a corner (not Delta's, their origin is in the top center). The second problem is a little more difficult to solve. Please note that a kit should be loaded with preset values that should be fair enough to print, your picture does not appear to print the calibration cube correctly, so you should try to eliminate each possibility one at a time. As said, your picture is not very clear, but it does not appear to be a cube, it looks more rectangular (also note that a raft is only interesting when printing difficult, read prone to warping, filaments like ABS). What you could do is print simple squares (no raft, but use a brim or skirt), e.g. 50 x 50 mm (only 1 or 2 walls in width and a few layers high), and measure the printed size. If these squares do not stick to the heated bed, calibrate the Z height to nozzle distance and re-level the bed or increase the heated bed temperature; If the X and Y sizes are different, you should calibrate the steps per mm for the direction that differs (M92 is the G-code to set the steps per mm; M500 to store the value to memory; these codes can be given over USB using specific programs that interface through a command line interface e.g. Pronterface, Repetier-Host or OctoPrintor alternatively in a .gcode file and loaded through the printer user interface); If extrusion does look weird, measure the filament width at various sections of the filament with a vernier caliper and calibrate the extruder stepper and set the correct amount of steps per mm; Finally, print the 20 x 20 x 20 mm cube and measure the height and adjust the steps per mm for the Z direction.

Is it better use Nylon fillement for cold pull even if I have been using PLA? Using Prusa I3 MK3S I am using PLA fillement and I need to do cold pull from time to time. I noticed many people on Internet suggestusing Nylon fillement for clod pull. I wanted to reach out to this community and ask if it is better using Nylon fillement for cold pull even if I have been using PLA?

Nylon holds better when pulled, PLA may snap. Also it can grab particles around it, but it keeps low friction so the force you use to pull goes to detaching the dirt instead of rubbing against the walls. By getting solid and by maintaining strength at higher temperatures, you can pull when it's hotter (with PLA you should pull at what? 40 °C?) and by being hotter can grab particles and remains of other filaments which are potentially softer. It's pulled at around 140-150 °C so that ABS and PLA at that temperature are very sticky and soft. By holding easily higher temperatures (250-260 °C easily) you can also extrude it and it will melt any other filament in the nozzle. Try doing some cold pulls with a light colour PLA to be able to see what it grabs. After a couple of pulls it should be clean. Then do nylon and check how much more stuff it will remove. If it's nothing, no need of using nylon. If it's dirty, it's the proof it can clean everything better than PLA. A sample of nylon (50 g usually) will be sufficient for a long time so no need to get a full spool.

UBL Marlin settings to cover whole bed This question is related to: How to set Z-probe boundary limits in firmware when using automatic bed leveling? I am trying to figure out how to set UBL In Marlin to cover as much bed as possible. So My bed is size of 300x255 mm #define NOZZLE_TO_PROBE_OFFSET { -34, -1, -2 } My Probe can physically cover 255 mm (whole Y) and 272 mm (of X size) Let's give it a bit of margin of the 0Y -> 3 mm and from 0X -3 mm So idea is to cover X from 3 mm to 269 mm and Y from 3 mm -> 252 mm How should I set #define PROBING_MARGIN and #define MESH_INSET so it covers my bed and probes 100 points ? I tried different options, most of the time it stops at 57/100 and printer HALTs. Only setting I got it working with was: #define PROBING_MARGIN 30 #define MESH_INSET 50 But that does not cover whole bed. I am struggling to understand how it's calculated. Other settings I found was commented as below. #if PROBE_SELECTED && !IS_KINEMATIC // #define PROBING_MARGIN_LEFT PROBING_MARGIN // #define PROBING_MARGIN_RIGHT PROBING_MARGIN // #define PROBING_MARGIN_FRONT PROBING_MARGIN // #define PROBING_MARGIN_BACK PROBING_MARGIN #endif Any suggestions ?

PROBING_MARGIN and MESH_INSET make the effective probing area smaller, so if you want to have more area, you should reduce the value of these constants. As of Marlin 2.x, the probing area isn't defined directly by the firmware configuration settings, but calculated, based on the probe offset settings. The constants you mention are reducing the probing area to keep the carriage/nozzle on the build surface. If you have enough space on your printer to accommodate probing the whole bed, you could minimize the marging and define edges: #if PROBE_SELECTED && !IS_KINEMATIC #define PROBING_MARGIN_LEFT PROBING_MARGIN #define PROBING_MARGIN_RIGHT PROBING_MARGIN #define PROBING_MARGIN_FRONT PROBING_MARGIN #define PROBING_MARGIN_BACK PROBING_MARGIN #endif

How do I add auto bed levelling to my Marlin-based CNC? I just finished a CNC that uses Marlin Firmware. The dimensions of it are quite large (3200 x 2000 mm) and the table is not perfect. I'm thinking of adding a proximity sensor to store a mesh in the eeprom and thus compensate for any errors. I'm not sure how to do this. I would like to be able to execute an action from the display (full graphics) and have samples taken over the whole table, but I do not know how to tell the firmware where to take the samples, nor what the dimensions of it are.

Auto bed leveling requires some settings (constants) in the configuration of your Marlin firmware. It is recommended to read about the implementation of automatic bed leveling first. There are a few options to choose the kind of leveling, for 3D printers a commonly chosen option is AUTO_BED_LEVELING_BILINEAR which is the best option if you do not know if your bed is flat or not. If you are certain it is flat but tilted (e.g. when you have a milled bed or a glass plate in 3D printing) you could go for AUTO_BED_LEVELING_3POINT or AUTO_BED_LEVELING_LINEAR. What further is important is the sensor type you choose. Do you want a touch or a proximity sensor. The latter is your preference (as specified in your question), which is a little simpler as you do not need to configure for servos for deploying and stowing. You need to set: #define FIX_MOUNTED_PROBE for using a fixed proximity sensor. In the configuration file you also need to specify the position of the probe in relation to the nozzle (in your case tool center): #define X_PROBE_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER 10 // X offset: -left +right [of the nozzle] #define Y_PROBE_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER 10 // Y offset: -front +behind [the nozzle] and optionally: #define Z_PROBE_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER 0 // Z offset: -below +above [the nozzle] This latter is not necessary as you can always set the distance of the sensor trigger point to the nozzle/tool plane by G-code command M851 Z-x.xx You would also need to set the boundaries of the probe area to prevent the tool to hit unwanted positions (fill out values or leave the constants): // Set the boundaries for probing (where the probe can reach). #define LEFT_PROBE_BED_POSITION MIN_PROBE_EDGE #define RIGHT_PROBE_BED_POSITION (X_BED_SIZE - MIN_PROBE_EDGE) #define FRONT_PROBE_BED_POSITION MIN_PROBE_EDGE #define BACK_PROBE_BED_POSITION (Y_BED_SIZE - MIN_PROBE_EDGE) Once properly setup, command G29 runs the leveling of the bed, options are available for that command to store the bed mesh to EEPROM. Enabling LCD_BED_LEVELING constant in the configuration file will add a Bed Leveling sub-menu to the LCD. But you could also work with SD-card stored files that load these codes. This reference explains the automatic leveling in more detail, but there are many more detailed guides to follow from the internet. Be sure that you get a recent guide to that is easier to set in the latest firmware.

Z-axis endstop not functioning after Marlin Firmware installation I've had my Monoprice Maker Ultimate for a few months and have started doing upgrades to it. My most recent change is in upgrading the firmware to a newer version of Marlin so that I can better control the thermal settings and implement a probe in the future. For now, I intend to level the bed manually. Well the issue I'm having now is that after flashing the firmware (Marlin Firmware 1.1.9) and attempting to home, the z axis limit switch is unresponsive. X and Y work as they should. I send M119 codes to the printer in Pronterface when holding the Z switch with my finger and get that the z axis is open. I even flipped over the machine and shorted out the two pins on the board leading to the switch and I get that its still open.(It is open when not pressing the switch, the switch is not inverted. If I flash the firmware back to the original, it functions fine. I've been digging through the Marlin files learning how it works and am wondering if there are any extra steps I have to take to designate the switches in the config file. Or if a conflicting bed leveling/probe setting may be overriding with the switch's functionality. I've been searching around but haven't seen much about this issue. Wondering if someone could point me in the right direction. Here's a repository of my configuration.h and *_adv.h files: https://github.com/jeffc-git/3dimensify

After gaining more of an understanding of how Marlin works, I decided to look through the the pins file for the motherboard I am using "pins_ULTIMAIN_2.h". Sure enough, It had a the wrong pin number for the z stop specified. After changing that number, I gained full functionality. This is what they should be: #define X_STOP_PIN 22 #define Y_STOP_PIN 26 #define Z_STOP_PIN 29

Sanguinololu 1.3a fan connection Can anyone tell me where to connect a cooling fan on the Sanguinololu v1.3a board? A few of the information pages mention three PWM outputs: Extruder, bed heater and fan, but none of the wiring diagrams that I can find, actually show the connections for the fan.

It appears that there isn't an "out-of-the-box" solution to your request, but luck is with you. Someone with your board and objective has posted what appears to be a reasonable modification: http://www.instructables.com/id/Add-a-Cooling-Fan-to-your-Rep-Rap-Sanguinololu/

Can I mix ABS and PLA when recycling filament? I'm thinking of recycling some filament from a couple of recently failed prints. I can reuse them in the future for basic prototypes, so I'm not concerned with whatever weird mixture of colors come out (they are of a few different colors). The thing is, I have both PLA and ABS, in small quantities. I originally intended to simply use each one separately, but it occurred to me that they could be mixed. If I recycle PLA and ABS together into one strand of filament, will there be any negative side effects (e.g. reduced strength)?

This is not a good idea. Both filaments have different melting points, that of ABS being much higher than that of PLA. To melt the ABS you have to heat the plastic to the point where the PLA starts to degrade.

Square sheet in middle layers I'm using a Tronxy Ultrabot (looks very similar to Anycubic Photon) and I'm still on my first prints. Things that happened thus far: many failed prints that stuck to the resin tank, one which I had to carefully scoop off. What I'm finding odd is that this sheet (for lack of a better term) only seems to happen on one half of the whole thing. I'm suspecting the FEP film is the culprit here, due to earlier failures. What else could be causing this error? Other info that might be important, the model is using 6 layer, 60s cure time for base; 0.04mm layer size, 10s layer cure time, 1s delay between layers. The resin is Suen Ching Edit 2: Here's the manual

This is a guess but it may be a problem with the sliced file. Take a look though the layers of the sliced file to see if your software is adding a layer there. sometimes it looks fine in the 3d model but it can add a layer while slicing.

What can I do about a printjob in progress that starts to warp/curl on the edges? I currently have a print job that is about 50% done, been running for 2 hours with 2 hours remaining. One side is curling/warping pretty bad, and I'm afraid there's no possible way this is going to finish without serious problems if I don't intervene. So what I'm doing is either brilliant or idiotic, I'm not sure which: I've paused the print job, stuck some elmers glue below the curling part (with toothpicks, careful not to budge anything else), added a couple degrees to the heatbed (for pliability hopefully), put a small book on top of it to smash it on the glue and let it rest for a little bit (I'll report back if this was a horrible idea or not). So my main quesiton: Is there any other techniques that you folks can recommend for a scenario like this? McGuyver'y techniques to repair your in-progress print jobs? Has anyone tried this technique I'm attempting and if so how successful was it? In case it matters, I have an ANET A8 and generally send my print jobs to Octoprint (Raspi) from Cura with a Octoprint plugin (Windows). Printing with PLA filament. I've done quite a few successful prints recently, but this is the first one that goes from corner-to-corner on the heatbed (this specifically). Printing at 207c with 60c heatbed (bumped up to 64 while glue settles). It's in a cooler room of the house, and doesn't have an enclosure so I'm afraid the cool temp is affecting it. Thanks Edit, last maybe significant (or maybe not) details: printing on glass with glue stick applied to it - been doing it for weeks and works quite well for the most part. Also, printing on a raft. Edit, here are a few pics. Both are from the back of the printer looking forward. I have one cam almost exactly level with the glass so I can see the hot-end extrude filament and another one slightly above it. Sorry for the bad lighting. Also included screenshots of my slicer settings for this print. Btw, I've since resumed printing after glueing it down, so far so good - but as you can see in the first pic it may have some possible structural defects and still has a slight curl:

Putting a large brim on it can help, I've seen people rescue prints with larger brims by literally adding weights to the brim around the areas that are peeling up. I've done it by taping brim edges down carefully as the print goes.

Vertical vs Horizontal shapes printing first time here. I recently bought an Anycubic Mega S and I'm venturing in the 3D world. Lots to learn for sure. I have printed a few items so far and all went pretty well. My question is about something that caught my attention while browsing on Thingiverse. I was looking for an organizer for a board game that I have and every option I found there shows the piece in a vertical position rather than horizontal which seems like the natural position of the piece. I would like to know why most of this types of pieces are set to be printed in a vertical position rather than horizontal. Here is the original piece Betrayal at Baldur's Gate Organizer by Jason Patch. As you can see in the image below the piece is naturally horizontal but the actual files to print (blue ones) are all vertical. PS.: I didn't really know which tags to use so I just added 3D, feel free to suggest any other I will happily edit it. :)

Thingieverse does respect the orientation an item was designed in, just like most slicers will. Designers will often choose any one of the three planes (XY, YZ, ZX) as their first by preference, then work out the other parts in relation to the first. This does often not take into account the actual print orientation it should be printed in. In the case of this box, you'd have to turn all items around the Y-axis (the front-left to back-right one) by 90°, first to the front, then the back then to the front again, getting almost 0 overhangs.

Nintendo Cartridge Print? I am trying to make a device with an old NES cartridge. If I were to take an already existing cartridge, I would need to make some precision cuts into the plastic and not sure where to get advice on that. The flip side, is if I print my own 'NES' cartridge with the cuts built into the print. So my question is two part. One, if I were to print one on my own, what is the cheapest price point I could obtain a printer that could do enough detail to make it hard to tell the difference from the real thing. In case you are just curious, I'm needing to cut a perfectly sized rectangle into the case for an LCD panel to fit into. Or print my own.

If I were to print one on my own, what is the cheapest price point I could obtain a printer that could do enough detail to make it hard to tell the difference from the real thing. Around 15.000 US$. FDM printers (the most common consumer-grade ones, the ones with the roll of filament beside them) all print with distinctive layer marks. Next are resin printers, but resins tend to have a very peculiar feeling to it, that is difficult to mistake for ABS or other injection-molding plastics, when you hold them, plus they typically struggle with largish objects. So you would probably be looking at a sintering printer, melting nylon powder with a laser. That is expensive to buy and very expensive to operate. Now, while the above is all technically true, it is only half the story... In fact prints done on a cheap FDM printer can be post-processed to look almost indistinguishable from an injection molded model. That takes probably more work to accomplish than modelling the object in cad and printing it though, so it's a matter of setting your expectations correctly (don't think to your print as "the product" but as the "base material" for your finished product). I would say that you essentially have two options: if you are looking at picking up a new hobby, and do a lot of sanding and polishing in the process, then: "welcome to the club!". There are plenty of relatively cheap printers that can print acceptably well (more on this below). if your interest is not towards 3d printing in general but is really limited to getting project done, than you could consider having a printing service doing that for you instead (basically you send them the file with your design and choose what kind of printer and material you want them to use, and they send you back the end result). It will be cheaper and probably of a higher quality than what you could achieve yourself. Certainly it will require less time investment from your side. If you go with option one, an affordable printer that got very good reviews from trustworthy reviewers is the cetus. It is 299 US$, have quality components and is very very silent. The build volume is not huge but should be more than enough for your project. However don't take my suggestion as "this is the best you can buy for your money": there are plenty of models out there that will get the job done in the price range 300-500 US$, and if you are wishing to spend a bit more, you could get an Original Prusa MKIIs (the printer that topped the charts last year) for 600US$ as a kit or slightly more fully assembled. Should you go for using a printing service instead, there are a lot of them. Two among the most well known are 3dhubs and shapeways.

How to connect power and fan to RAMPS 1.6? My RAMPS 1.4 board has failed. I bought a RAMPS 1.6 to replace it but : The old board had 4 power wires that went to 5 A and 11 A respectively. The RAMPS 1.6 has only 1 pair of power inputs. Which pair from the PSU do I connect to the board? Or do I combine them and connect them to their polarity respectively? I have a cooling fan (12 V) for part cooling. In RAMPS 1.4, I had it connected to the pins between the power inputs and the X stepper driver on the board. The RAMPS 1.6 doesn't have such a pair of pins. Is it possible to connect it somewhere else on the 1.6 board?

You only need to connect one pair (one red, one black) of sufficient wire gauge to the single power connector's plus (red) and minus (black). There is no need to bundle multiple pairs from the PSU. Some pinout graphs are not clear in this respect! I've always connected the heated bed through an external MOSFET to keep large currents away from the board, but according to the design, it is capable of handling the current. E.g. this is the correct pinout: And this an incorrect pinout graph (look at the lower left where the power needs to be connected to the board, this hints to bundling the 11 A and 5 A wiring): The part cooling fan should preferably not be connected to a (non-schedulable) 12 V header. Instead you should use the D9 output connector to schedule the airflow of the fan for part cooling. Note there is no spare 12 V header available on the board. You could use the spare PSU pair to power the coldend (radiator) fan.

Is there any reason *not* to use a steel nozzle for printing all materials? I know that for printing some materials like the carbon-fiber filled PLA it's recommenced to use a steel nozzle since it'll wear-out a standard brass nozzle quickly. Is there any reason to prefer using a brass nozzle for 'simple' plastic-only filaments instead of just printing everything with steel?

Thermal conductivity of brass is approximately twice as better than steel (not stainless). Given that the size of nozzle is relatively small, it should be able to transfer enough heat for a medium-speed prints at least. I have printed PLA and ABS using "steel" nozzle (brand of steel unknown) at the speed around 80 mm/s without any visible differences compared to brass. However, an ideal nozzle (I see) is made of tempered bronze with polished inner channels. Bronze is known to have better friction coefficient and tempered one should be enough to resist carbon-type filaments more efficiently.

Getting 5V directly from the Anet A8 mainboard My anet A8 stepper drivers get very hot after some time printing, so I decided to install a 5V fan to cool them down. I had the idea to get a 12V to 5V regulator to connect a 5V fan, but then i found this image: (source: lokspace.eu) It looks like the Anet A8 has an ICSP and Serial header that can deliver 5 or 3.3 V directly from the board. Is this correct? If it is, how many amps can i get from this pin? Can I connect a 5V fan directly here? Thanks and sorry for my bad English.

The 5V is derived from the 12V supply by a linear regulator (L7805CD, DPAK package with 100 C/W thermal resistance). The maximum you can draw from it (without overheating the regulator) is around 200mA. Considering the electronics on the board are already using some power, the maximum would be around a 150mA fan but this would have the regulator running near its maximum limits.

Ender 3 BLTouch first layer problems I recently installed an original BLTouch V3 on my Ender 3 pro and ever since I can’t seem to get a decent print. My first layers are horrible. The install wasn’t so bad, I really thought it would be plug and play thereafter. I currently have: Version 1.1.4 board with non silent steppers Marlin 1.1.9 with bug fix as per the teaching tech video Printing on glass, bed @ 60 °C, extruder @ 200 °C I have checked Bed is level. X gantry is squared/straight. Belts seem tight. Tried my best at getting the Z offset right. Checked E steps are correct. BLTouch seems to be working - not 100 % sure as it’s my first time using an auto level sensor. More pictures here for those who can help. I have reset the offset and still having difficulty I’m hoping the following pics would help. They bed level squares that prints squares on all four corners and the centre of the bed plate. If I raise the offset any higher I have difficulty with prints sticking. See here.

I manage to get the printer working, it was an hotend issue. Was clogged, replaced nozzle and working as expected. Thank you all for the guidance!