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How to set multiple draft shields in Prusaslicer? Draft shields helped me a lot to get some usable prints out of ABS on a non-enclosed printer with a small printing bed, but I noticed that the shield cracks (it is affected by the issue that would otherwise affect the print itself), resulting in cold air leaking in and ruining the print to some degree. See image for an example of a ruined shield which results in a chimney effect and cold air getting near the print. How can I set multiple shields to enhance the protection? just a second one would be enough. If the print is rectangular it's easy, I just need to add an empty box around my print, but when the models are more complex I would like to have shields which follow the shape more closely. I'm using Prusaslicer but a preprocess step in other free software would be acceptable.

You could CAD a 1 layer thick cylinder, and add it to your print and place it around your object. You can create any number of cylindrical shells that way...

Bed won't switch off after Marlin firmware update After I updated the firmware on my Prusa i3, the Bed won't switch off anymore. It worked perfectly before the update, but now, the moment I power up my printer, the LED on the bed turns on and it starts heating up. The manual control in Repetier Host doesn't turn if off or on and I even tried g-codes M140 S0 as well as M0, but it does not switch it off. Edit: I have an Arduino Mega2560 with a RAMPS shield. The Marlin firmware came pre-configured from the store I bought the kit from.

It sounds like the pin configuration in the firmware you flashed doesn't match your hardware. Heaters should never be on by default and M140 S0 should always turn off current to the bed. What you describe sounds like the firmware is sending power to a pin that it believes is something other than what it is, either because the bed is on a fan pin (like D9) or because the firmware thinks D8 is something other than the heated bed. If it worked before, your original firmware was configured to match how your board was wired, specifically which pins were mapped to what hardware. If you're confident that the new firmware pin configuration is correct, you can ignore this theory. Otherwise you should nail down which D8/D9/D10 pin maps to what hardware and resolve the mismatch. On RAMPS, pins 8, 9 and 10 are typically used to control fans, hotends and heated beds and you define this behavior in configuration.h. If you flashed from source you should review configuration.h and ensure it matches your hardware. This likely means setting the MOTHERBOARD to the value that matches how pins 8/9/10 are wired. See this section (or something similar) in configuration.h to get started: // The following define selects which electronics board you have. // Please choose the name from boards.h that matches your setup #ifndef MOTHERBOARD #define MOTHERBOARD BOARD_RAMPS_14_EFB #endif

What does it mean for step and dir "to be on their own ports"? The wiki page for the RAMBo board mentions: Step and Direction pins are on their own ports for synchronous movement capability What does this mean, and how does it affect printing? Do I need special firmware to take advantage of this?

A "port" for the AVR microcontroller is a set of eight IO pins that are controlled together at a hardware level. The underlying machine code can write an entire byte to set the status of all 8 pins at once. So in principle, all the step pins on the RAMBO board can be triggered exactly simultaneously. The Arduino IDE hides this behavior from firmwares by abstracting the port's byte handling as a function call for each individual pin. That means programmers only have to know the Arduino PIN number, not which port and position on the processor is being used. And then the modern firmwares typically used by RAMBO do a further layer of abstraction to make it easy for the same firmware to be used by different boards, by changing pin assigned names in a config file (usually pins.h) and not assuming any specific port selection was made during board design. There's no guarantee for open-source firmware that a particular pin selection was made in hardware. Lots of 3D printer controller boards even have pretty dumb pin assignments, like using hardware-PWM-capable pins for stepper signals rather than PWM'd heaters. Marlin and Repetier have chosen flexibility over performance optimization in this regard. They pretty much let the board designer use any pin for anything. When they have to do stuff like run heater PWM control or fire a bunch of step pulses as fast as possible, they emulate that in software rather than taking advantage of specific hardware that isn't always available. In this specific case, there may not actually be all that much performance gain/loss. Writing to an output pin is pretty fast. The amount of time difference between firing a few step pulses in sync or firing them sequentially is on the order of a few microseconds. That won't make any difference to the motion fidelity of the printer's physical drivetrains. Somebody involved in the RAMBO design just thought it could be useful, and put a reference to it on the Wiki page (in the very first upload!) and it's never been clarified or removed from the Wiki page in the years since.

Can I order a 3D print of a 1 ml transparent container? I'm trying to make a water insulated 1 cm3 (1 ml) transparent container and I bought some plexiglass, I cut and glued some pieces together but it looks really crappy and barely holds the water in. I was wondering, is there a transparent material (similar to plexiglass) that can order to 3D print the container out of it? Also, if 3D printing is not the best option, where can I order around a 100 pieces of 1 cm3 transparent water insulating containers with caps?

Yes. You'll probably want to use SLA or Polyjet printers with transparent resin. For example, here's Shapeways' page on transparent SLA and their page on Polyjet (which says you need to phone them for transparent Polyjet parts as their online order system can't handle it). FDM printing with transparent materials doesn't usually result in parts that look like transparent injection-moulded parts, because the lines of material laid down by the printer are visible. There are some techniques to make this better, but a printing bureau is less likely to offer this kind of special handling. In any case, you should discuss your requirements in more detail with suppliers, and they'll be able to advise whether they offer any manufacturing processes that meet your needs. In particular, if you need your containers to be food-safe, you should mention that at the start, as it'll rule out a lot of possible suppliers, machines, and materials.

Unable to load new filament FlashForge Adventurer 3 I have a FlashForge Adventurer 3. I have just finished my sample filament today and tried to replace it with a new spool of filament. This new filament is by Hatchbox, instead of FlashForge. Besides that, the new filament is 1.75 mm PLA filament, like the sample spool. However, when I tried to insert the new filament, it doesn't feed in. I get a loud, thumping sound from the printer, but the filament doesn't get fed through. Does anyone know why this is happening or what I should do?

First thing I'd try is making sure the nozzle is hot enough and carefully try to feed the new filament where it will be pushed - sometimes there's melted filament that just isn't hot enough to flow out and the new filament is pushing on it, jamming and making your motor make that sound. Usually getting it hot to the point where the old filament is practically dripping out before attempting to insert the new filament will work. If that doesn't work I might let the thing cool, disassemble the nozzle, and remove the jam mechanically (and reassemble it).

Ideas to tune for 300 % speed I am using PLA and I am looking for ideas on using the Tune option to tune my Prusa i3 MK3 to increase the speed to 300 %. The 300 % speed works perfectly fine for some of the models. However, for some of the flat surfaces, the printer cannot handle the speed. The issues are pointed in the image below: It seems that printer is struggling to supply enough filament. Can I solve the issue by using the Tune menu by changing settings like temperature or flow? Answer: While @dandavis is informative, but this is how I did it: increasing z offset so nuzzle has enough space to dispense. Increase temperature +10 Please note that this degrades the print quality, but I am just printing a few organizer boxes. Quality is not essential and not something I expect from a 300% speed.

extruder clicking means you're getting backed up, grinding. Make the hotend hotter so you can melt filament 3X faster than expected; most materials have quite a range; aim high. Slow down the cooling fan; a lot of them can cool the hotend. You have a silicone boot on the nozzle? that will help some. Use a larger diameter nozzle to reduce backpressure and allow thicker layers. Try cranking the feed rate Lastly, consider that you simply might not get acceptable results pushing speed THAT much.

How to add menu options to the (Marlin firmware) LCD menu? Where is the correct Marlin firmware file and location to add code that I want to shop up in the LCD menu of my printer, and then execute the function I write when the button is pressed? For example I want to add a menu item that says "Preheat Custom" that is in the same menu as "preheat PLA" and "preheat ABS" and then runs code to heat to values I specify. I'm running Marlin Firmware version 1.1.9 on a Creality Ender 3.

The answer to your question is the file ultralcd.cpp. Nowadays, you can also enable extra option through the Configuration_adv.h file, just enable: #define CUSTOM_USER_MENUS and edit the options beneath it to your needs (otherwise it will use the preset values from the Configuration.h file). Add custom items using ultralcd.cpp This is how I used to do it if you want to add items to the menu in Marlin Firmware through the ultralcd.cpp. It is best to first look at the current implementation of the menu items. As you already mention Preheat PLA, that would be the first to search for. Searching in files is easy when you go to the github website with the Marlin firmware sources, functionality is available for searching in the files. Alternatively, download a copy of the firmware and use a free "grep" utility to search in files. Searching for Preheat PLA will show you a bunch of language translation files. These point to the use of a constant MSG_PREHEAT_1 which finds its presence in ultralcd.cpp. This hints to function lcd_preheat_m1_menu that is called by MENU_ITEM which adds menu items to LCD. You could start there to add your own option. Demonstration As a quick demonstration, I've added a CUSTOM PREHEAT item by copying the lcd_preheat_m2_menu function in ultralcd.cpp and renamed this lcd_preheat_m3_menu (a full functional item needs changes within the lcd_preheat_m3_menu as it now uses the constants from the ABS preheat option). You then add the item to the menu by changing this part of the code: // // Preheat for Material 1 and 2 // #if TEMP_SENSOR_1 != 0 || TEMP_SENSOR_2 != 0 || TEMP_SENSOR_3 != 0 || TEMP_SENSOR_4 != 0 || HAS_HEATED_BED MENU_ITEM(submenu, MSG_PREHEAT_1, lcd_preheat_m1_menu); MENU_ITEM(submenu, MSG_PREHEAT_2, lcd_preheat_m2_menu); // ADD THIS LINE: MENU_ITEM(submenu, "CUSTOM PREHEAT", lcd_preheat_m3_menu); #else MENU_ITEM(function, MSG_PREHEAT_1, lcd_preheat_m1_e0_only); MENU_ITEM(function, MSG_PREHEAT_2, lcd_preheat_m2_e0_only); #endif After compiling and uploading to the printer board, enter the Prepare menu and scroll down to see:

Which 3D printer should I use to make custom miniatures for a tabletop game? I would also be curious on how I could get the best results with these printers. I am in a situation where I have cheap access to a: Fortus 250mc, which prints in ABS and has a minimum resolution of 0.007mm (but that can be raised as high as 0.013mm to print faster), and has a "Soluble Support System" which enables printing overhangs. Form 2, which prints with Photosensitive Resin, has a resolution of .05mm, and can also print overhangs. Stratasys Dimension SST1200es, prints in "ABSplus" (whatever that is), has a resolution of .254 mm, and can indeed print overhangs. As far as I can tell the main advantage of this one over the Fortus is that the supports can be immediately removed after printing and don't need to be dissolved first. I am okay with processing or finishing the miniatures later so long as it's not too time consuming (such as by running an acetone vapor bath), but I'm curious when I would use each printer and how I could get the most out of both. P.S. Also the Stratasys is more expensive for me to print on than any of the others so please keep that in mind when answering :)

The Form 2 will definitely give the best results for your application. Both the Fortus and the Dimension use FDM, which builds the model up using a bead of molten plastic. Because this bead is typically 0.5mm in diameter, this strongly limits the details you can print. The Form 2 uses liquid resin, that is cured by scanning it with a laser. This process is called SLA. The laser produces a 0.14mm dot, and so you can produce much finer details. The Form 2 can also use much thinner layers (down to 0.025mm v.s. the 0.178mm of the Fortus) so the models will be much smoother. To make small miniatures SLA is much more suitable than FDM.

Heated bed - what are the benefits? Why use one? When using a heated bed with your printer, I have seen claims of running temperatures of 90c throughout the print. That seems like a fairly high power use to keep a large slab of, say, aluminium at 90c for long print times (ie multiple hours). Is there a common 'sweet spot' for operating temperature? Does it depend on material? Is a heated bed required?

Heatbeds have two purposes: Increase surface energy of the print bed to improve bonding strength of the first layer (particularly important when using surfaces like PEI or Kapton) Keep the bottom few millimeters of the print hot enough to provide a warp-free foundation for the rest of the print. The bit about surface energy is straightforward. Most materials are stickier when hot than cold. In comparison, pure mechanical-bonding bed surfaces like fibrous painter's tape and perfboard don't particularly benefit from bed heat. Warping is a bit more complicated. The basic cause of warping is when the previous layer is allowed to cool and thermally contract before the next layer is deposited. When you stick hot, expanded material on top of cold, contracted material, large shear stresses are generated when the fresh material cools and contracts. Those inter-layer shear stresses then accumulate over many layers into large-scale bending stresses that try to lift the edges of the print off the bed. So, to prevent warping, we should minimize the amount that the previous layer is allowed to cool before the next layer goes down. But we DO need it to cool solid so the print doesn't sag in a mushy mess. This is a balancing act: cooling the plastic solid without over-cooling it. The optimal temperature for the print is right around the glass point of the plastic: this is the temperature at which the plastic becomes fully solid and thermal contraction stresses start to accumulate. The extruder pumps more heat into the print as it deposits molten plastic and radiates a little bit of heat. So we want to set the heatbed temp a little bit below the glass point to ensure the print is able to cool solid. Now, this gets a bit difficult, because everyone's print bed temperature sensor is different. What matters is bed surface temp. Many people have to set their bed temp quite a bit higher than the actual surface temp. It's just something you have to calibrate via print results. The exact filament glass point (Tg) also depends on the blend. ABS: Tg is around 105C, optimal bed temp 95C in a warm, low-airflow environment PLA: Tg is around 55C, optimal bed temp is 55C in a cool, high-airflow environment because PLA holds heat and is slow to cool compared to other filaments PETG: Tg is around 70C, optimal bed temp is 60-70C with mild airflow Nylon doesn't really work with these rules because it's semi-crystalline, meaning it "freezes" far above its Tg and thus starts accumulating warping stress at fairly high temps... advice varies wildly, from printing cold to 120C bed PC: Tg is around 150C, optimal bed temp is 130C There are other schools of thought, for example printing the first layer onto a surface much hotter than Tg for good adhesion, and then dropping the bed temp to a value somewhat below Tg to allow the print to solidify. That works fine too. But, with all that said, it's important to understand that the heatbed only keeps the bottom of the print warm. A centimeter up from the build plate, the print is typically much closer to ambient temp than it is to the bed temp. Heated build chambers are thus much more effective for large prints. But heatbeds are still quite effective, because they allow building a strong, warp-free foundation that resists warping stresses induced by the cooler zones higher up in the print.

Can the glTF format be used for 3D printing? Can the glTF format be used for 3D printing? If not, is there any tool can convert it to another format such as STL, OBJ, STEP, and IGES?

No, gltf is not a format that slicers accept commonly, and indeed, it is not even intended to be reverseable in the 1.0 format version. This has changed a little for the 2.0 standard. Some programs that allow exporting into the sliceable stl and obj formats can also import gltf: blender has an importer plugin - more info here SketchUpp has an importer plugin You have to be careful though: formats like dae or stl are meant to transfer 3d objects usually without the loss of information or with just a minimal loss (stl, for example, does technically not contain a scale natively), while gltf is end users and does not contain all the information. This can lead to models getting distorted and destroyed on importing them into a rendering or modeling software.

Slicers and printers compatibility I am a complete beginner so I apologise ahead for probably an obvious question. From what I understand up to now, slicer software basically takes a 3D model and turns it into instructions that say move your print head to this and this position and extrude up to this position and so forth. If that is correct then each slicing software can result in different "filament paths" in printing of the same model ultimately having the effect on the quality of print (unless the "Slicing algorithm" is some open industry accepted one and everyone uses that). But then, it would be advantageous to use other slicer software than the one supplied with the printer. On the other hand, if a slicer gives the instructions to the printer and assuming the G-code is a universal instruction kit (standard each printer understands), it needs to know, at the least, the parameters of the printer. So the questions are: Can I use any slicing software with any 3D printer and are there any things that may cause a problem (e.g. "How do I set up the slicing software for a particular printer?") If not, am I stuck with the software provided by the printer manufacturer and thus, before buying a printer, one should also analyse the slicing software provided or is there some compatibility chart? Regarding 2. I looked at both PrusaSlicer, Slic3r, Cura. None of them provide any information on the compatibility. I have access to Creality CR-10S printer but when I saw e.g. PrusaSlicer compared to the Creality, it has more options it seems. But during the installation of the Creality slicer, it forced me to choose the printer that I will be using which suggests that printers are locked to the manufacturer slicer.

FDM Slicers are not proprietoryexceptions apply Most commonly uses Slicers are generally not locked to manufacturers or models. Creality's slicer is a variant of Cura, Prusa Slicer is a (further developed) variant of Slic3r. You can slice models for almost any G-code reading 3D Printer with any of the 4. The question at the first startup or installation is to automate setup: back when I bought my Ender 3, I had to manually make a profile that would fit my printer. Now, you can choose presets that set up the bed size, a safe start G-code and some settings from where you can work. exceptions However, some machines are not compatible with normal slicers, because they either don't run G-code but a proprietary file format or because their geometry is non-standard. An example of the former type is for example the DaVinci Color printers that use .XYZ files, which contain not only movement commands for the printhead and extruder, but also color print commands for the ink-head. An example of the latter type is "Belt Printers", which use standard G-code but are sliced not in the same way as for normal printers - you need the Cura Blackbelt variant to make the proper command file. Other slicers like Voxelizer are locked down to the printers of the software's manufacturer.

Is there such thing as a sealed dual extruder hot end? Does anyone know of a hot end that is sealed? What I meaning is that the hot end has a rubber seal where the filament enters to keep the top airtight (in order to eliminate oozing). I am looking to build a dual extruder printer but, I do not want any oozing from the hot end which is not in use. I could build a system to retract and 'close' the nozzle but it would be much more elegant if it would work to just seal the top of the hot end. Thus achieving the same effect as when you pull up water with a straw by covering the top with your finger.

It doesn't work that way, or perhaps in some sense it already does. The "straw effect" you're describing depends on the water not being under any pressure that exceeds the outside atmosphereic pressure. If you squeeze the straw or otherwise apply pressure, it will immediately spill out. If you're printing at more than a ridiculously slow print speed (slow enough that it would fail for other reasons, like the nozzle melting the already-printed part just by proximity to it), the filament is under very high pressure from the extruder gear. The primary function of retraction is not to move the filament back out of the nozzle orifice, but simply to relieve that pressure. (A little bit more is needed to prevent oozing, however.) When retraction happens, it's exactly like the "straw effect" you're describing. The material pulled back out of the hotend into the heatbreak hardens enough that it makes a nearly air-tight seal, preventing the molten material below from flowing out of the nozzle due to gravity. If your hotend does not have design problems and if you're using retraction correctly (that means using it everywhere that you're making a move that's not an extrusion one, not skipping it with "Limit Support Retractions" or "Combing"), you should not see oozing, ever. The system already works the way you want it to. But you can't magically get rid of the need for retraction. It's part of how the system you want works.

Long prints shifting with Ultimaker 2 I am currently using Ultimaker 2+ to print some big parts with PLA. As long as the printing lasts for less than 15 hours (that's what I observed by experience, approximately), there are no problems. If the duration of printing is greater than this time, the part would get shifted from its initial position. It looks like the part is not sticking to the bed anymore. I was first using classic glue sticks and this problem occurred. Next, I tried with different masking tapes but the problem remains the same. The glass bed is not heated. The first layer and the following are actually pretty clean. I use brim. I reduced the printing speed to 20 mm/s on purpose to see if it would reduce the probability of this phenomenon to occur. However, this is not the case. Do you have any experience concerning this problem, ideas, suggestions?

If the brim is firmly connected to the part and sufficiently large, you could "duck tape" the brim to the bed after a few hours; by then you should have enough space/clearance to work with. But maybe the best advice is to invest in a heated bed platform, or use the heated bed if you only did not enable it. Heating the filament to the point close to the glass transition temperature ensures that the printed filament stays ductile. Once filament cools down, it shrinks and cannot grip on the to build plate indefinitely. My Ultimaker 3 uses a heated build platform that can virtually make every filament stick to it as long as you prepare the bed correctly. On glass I prefer to use a specifically designed printing spray called 3DLAC; that, and a little heat (depending on the filament you print; i.e. the glass transition temperature) make that I never have had any problems with getting filament to stick to the build plate. I'm even able to get the slippery filament POM to stick to the heated bed.

Folgertech FT-5 : Does not seem to be reading G-Code correctly I recently purchased an FT-5 from Folgertech and finished assembly about a week ago. I have yet to accomplish a successful print. It seems like either the file is not being sliced correctly, or that it is possibly reading the G-code incorrectly. It will lay down the first perimeter layer of the part and then shift down the build plate a few mm in the y-direction, extrude another perimeter layer and then repeat. I have tried printing from an SD and through USB using Cura as the slicing software, with the same results. I have doubled checked the tightness on all of the belts and pulleys The Y-Driver was bad, initially so I swapped it with the spare on the board and it solved the issue. I have gone through the entire code on the Marlin V3 Firmware, and everything seems to look as it should. MKS Gen V 1.4 w/ Arduino Mega 2560 I have tried using Arduino 1.6.5/1.6.6/1.6.7 I calibrated the XYZ steps/mm All of the mechanical movements and offsets seem to be correct. The printer connects to Pronterface without issue. It also homes fine from the machine and USB and moves where it should during these processes. Again, it seems to be that the issue is when it tries to interpret the G-code. I have tried multiple G-code files from different sources as well, still with the same luck. If anyone has experience with similar issues or can offer any help, it would be greatly appreciated. I have no clue what could be going on! In red filament is my attempt to print the 5 mm calibration cube this morning, an example of how this calibration cube should look like is seen in the picture with the white calibration cubes.

The image shows that somehow steps in Y direction (under the assumption that you have taken the photograph from the front) are missed. Missing steps can be caused by too high settings for acceleration and jerk, too much friction on the undercarriage or the belt assembly, undercarriage catching something at a certain point, too less current through the stepper. You could increase the torque on the stepper by increasing the Vref of your stepper driver is you have separate stepper driver modules, or a adjustment screw on the printer controller board. Furthermore reduce the acceleration and jerk settings and check the undercarriage for stick-slip movement by disconnecting the belt, then reconnect the belt and check for friction of the pulleys.

Which hotend does not clog and is good to use with a Bowden 1.75 mm setup? I'm building my own 3D printer (custom design, made by me and cut using a water cutting machine) but I have always had problems with the hotend clogging. I have had four hotends: a J-Head; a full metal; a full metal made by me and; my current hotend which is just a block of aluminium with a plaster cold-end 100% homemade with no precision at all. Believe it or not, this hotend is the only one that has finished a whole print (about 40 minutes), all of the others, with or without fans, haven't managed to finish one! Well... this hotend has a 1.5mm hole so I guess that that's why it can print. The problem with all of the others was that the 1.75mm PLA that I'm using clogged the hotend after two minutes. Now I would like to buy a new, more precise, hotend. I'm using a Bowden extruder, can you suggest a good hotend? This is my printer:

To make the suggestion of Martin Carney a real answer and shift things away from comments: Yes, moisture and dust can be a problem. Find elaborations on the moisture here: Does filament have to be stored in an airtight environment. Also, dust getting into the hot end won't make extrusion easier. (link with suitable information needed). There are filament cleaning 'devices' for print on thingiverse, have a look at things with the tag: filament cleaner. There are some other things that are mostly discussed in relation to hot-end clogging, which are printing speed, retract setting and what I would call hot-end resistance. For all of those, read through this thread and refine your question according to what you tried and what the results were: Repeatedly Clogged Printrbot Simple Extruder.

Hot end jamming very quickly I have built a 3D printer out of parts from my tip, a ramps board, arduino mega, and a hot end. However, after doing a test extrusion some plastic was spewed out and then the print jammed un-expectantly and my homemade extruder no longer had the strength to push the filament. I took the filament out and what I found was that the filament going into the extruder had formed a cylinder at the end. Then after pushing the filament through by hand to eliminate the possibility of my weak extruder, I found that the filament was expanding coming out of the filament, and then cooling down unable to go through. I cut the filament, removing the bloated end, pushed it back into the extruder and then again after 30 seconds the same problem occurred. After researching, I came to the conclusion that maybe there is a gap allowing filament to go out of the heating area, expand and then cool down, or even my wooden direct to bowden adapter is stopping the filament cooling causing it to clog. However I am not sure. I am becoming frustrated as I am doing this for a school project, I only have two weeks left to finish and everything seems to be failing. Any help would be much appreciated. For reference this is my hotend: link to amazon I brought the cheapest one available on amazon, so it has no fan and no way to connect a bowden tube. I have created a basic adapter between the thread and a bowden tube holder, out of wood. It's not good but it does the job. Here is a picture of my hot end and what the filament looks like after I removed it. There appears to be a spiral shape on some of them.

You are suffering from what is called "heat creep". Molten filament is creeping up the heat break and into the bowden tube, where it is causing a jam. You need to install a proper radiator block that is cooled by a fan, not just a lump of wood as a "cold end". The cold end is not just a connector, its primary purpose is to act as a cooler. A hot end on its own is not enough. You also need a cold end. Here is my extruder disassembled (fan omitted). The radiator block is the red item.

Does having more curvier corners help warping more then smaller curves I was experimenting with building an enclosure using fusion 360. I was wondering if a part with rounded corners of a larger radius would warp less than smaller ones? Also, any recommendation on reading material would be appreciated!

In short, yes, it helps a little. Curves provide less surface area per unit volume (a sphere has the least possible surface area relative to the volume of the solid), and that reduces the rate at which the material in that corner will cool relative to elsewhere in the print, and also changes how the material can deform if and when it does cool unevenly. Uneven cooling of fine features, including sharp corners, is what causes warpage, as these areas typically cool faster than others. The curve also helps with bed adhesion, as the more rounded corner is more easily kept down on the bed by the various forces within the object and in the bed adhesion. Sharper corners depend more on the surface area under the corner itself to keep the piece properly stuck to the bed. However, it's not a panacea. It's not always possible, for one; it's usually an option when CADing a "green field" design for a household item or other standalone product, but if you're making a replacement part for an existing device, or printing a figurine or other detailed model, you usually have to take the curves (and edges) that design gives you. Also, if you radius an outer edge of a hollow shape, but don't radius the inner corner to keep the material thickness constant, you'll end up with similar cooling problems as the apex of that edge cools fastest. Strategies for avoiding warping are along a couple common lines, but exactly how you implement that strategy depends on the material and on the printer. One overarching strategy is to increase print surface adhesion; the stronger the part sticks to the bed everywhere on its first layer, the harder it will be for corners to lift. Exact techniques depend on the print material, but many of them, like blue painter's tape, Elmer's glue and hairspray, work well for several filament types. Adjusting the printed shape, to print a brim around the shape's base or even a raft under the entire object, are also common anti-warping strategies. The tradeoff is that the stronger the bed adhesion, the harder the part will be to remove from the build surface when complete, which depending on your print bed construction can cause more problems than the warping. Blue tape is nice because it's cheap to buy and easy to apply to the bed surface, both of which mean you don't have to worry too much about damaging the tape as you remove the part, just strip the tape and put down another layer. But, it doesn't work for all filament materials; the only thing I've found that really works well for ABS, for instance, is kapton tape, which is significantly more expensive and takes a lot of effort to lay down a wrinkle-free, bubble-free layer over the entire print bed for a large part (especially on my MakerBot, which doesn't have a removable build surface on it, so I'm laying this tape down in cramped quarters within the printer enclosure). A glass surface painted with ABS slurry is an option I've not yet had opportunity to try for ABS printing, but plenty of people swear by it. Cooling, especially uneven cooling rates, are another major contributor, but again, exactly how you deal with cooling depends on the material. Most plastics, especially PLA, tend to work best when you keep things as cool as possible; the coolest extruder temp that reliably feeds fil, the coolest bed temp that reliably sticks, part cooling fan turned up, and even a standing or box fan blowing through the entire work area to put as much air over the part as possible. What this does is to get the PLA down onto the print surface as a hot "putty", then immediately "freeze" that bead of plastic as a solid as the heat's removed, so the bead can't shrink as it cools more gradually. Now, with ABS, this cooling strategy doesn't work, and in fact it's the worst thing you can do to an ABS print. The material is much more elastic than PLA, which is quite brittle, and has no true melting temperature, with a very hot glass transition temp. So, as it's laid down, the extruded beads quickly put the part under elastic tension as it cools. Shrinkage is a fact of life with ABS; the only thing you can do is to control the shrinkage by controlling the part cooling, so the part cools and shrinks evenly. ABS calls for a hot print bed for good adhesion, which will keep the first few layers warmer longer, but higher layers of the print will be further from that heat source, so if there's air moving over or within the work volume, these higher layers will cool more rapidly, at which point it really doesn't matter how good your surface adhesion is (I've seen prints split halfway up the model to relieve the tension by warping). So for ABS, a heat enclosure is pretty much a must. My MakerBot is built that way (in fact it's designed for ABS printing and works better with ABS than with PLA, which is supposed to be the more user-friendly material of the two), but most of your open-gantry RepRap-type designs will need something built around it, usually with a separate heating element to heat the work volume more than the bed is capable of doing.

Closed-loop stepper motors I am thinking to use closed-loop stepper motors to prevent step loss and make the machine more accurate. What options (preferably low cost) are there for: stepper motor + driver + encoder + microcontoller Is building it from scratch worth it? E.g. Arduino Mega 2560 + RAMPS 1.4/1.5/1.6 + stepper motors (e.g. NEMA17) + drivers (e.g. A4988, DRV8825) + encoders (e.g. AS5047P, AS5047D, AS5048A, TLE5012B) + microcontrollers (e.g. STM32).

A number of options exist, but keep in mind that cost will be a limiting factor. (Small sidenote: cost depends on persective, financial cost does not equal mental cost. The tradeoff between buy or make depends also on your willingness to persist when things don't work right away.) Before you start: make sure that your printer has enough space to accomodate bigger motors. So, what options are there? Change your current configuration. If you are losing steps, it could very well be that it can be fixed in firmware. Pro: No budget and nothing to lose. Con: No shiny closed loop system. (Is that bad though?) Possibly need to configure and compile your own firmware. MacGyver / DIY solution based on low lever components Pro: Probably as cheap as you'll get depending on how you choose your components. Might be an interesting learning experience, not to mention the satisfaction afterwards. This could be the smallest build size you'll see in all the options. Con: You'll need a decent amount of engineering and debugging. Might be tricky to mount the encoders. Same as 1, but now consider using of the shelf stepper motors with integrated encoders. Pro: Most robust option on a budget in my opinion due to the single mechanical piece (motor + encoder). Con: Integrated encoders have a considerable cost and are large compared to their vanila versions. Go for off the shelf motor+encoder and drivers. Pro: No need to worry about driver configurations too much. Just plug in the numbers or set the dip switches. Very conveinient solution. Pretty much plug and play. Con: This will already be challenging on a budget. Making a wrong mix and match might lead to unpredictable results such as drives going in overcurrent. (Which, believe me, is very frustrating for your application!) If we are allowed to consider servo motors: ClearPath-SD series (Or any alternative for that matter!) I'm just including this for completeness. Pro: Performance wise a clear winner on pretty much any relevant level. Con: You'll need a big budget! Bottomline: You'll probably want to give the first option a go before spending money. Next stop, you might want to take the second option (you already did research on different specific low level components), and if you have time to spare I'd go with that as well. If you are also on a budget timewise, I'd definively suggest to take the third option with existing driver boards. The other options are more cost heavy and become real options in produciton environments, where downtime is also costsing money. As to the microcontroller, take whatever you have available. Just know that more computational power will allow you to output steps faster and will allow for smoother movements. Lot's to talk about there as well!

Cube edges squished? I printed a test cube with ABS on my Ender 3 and after some tuning, I still have a problem I cannot solve. Two of the vertical edges (I believe they are the ones on the X+ side) are slightly squished in. Could this be due to warping or something else? I printed it at 0.1 mm layer height, 235/110 °C hotend/bed temperatures. Here is a picture:

If you look closely to your print you will see that the edges are part of the problem, e.g. you also have a problem called "Elephant foot" where the base shows a fairing to the build plate. The elephant foot deficiency is caused by an imbalanced choice of bed and hotend temperature and print cooling. This imbalance also causes the edges to collapse (probably also caused by the infill, or lack of it). You should look into finding a better printing temperature combo and experiment with little cooling. This will also help you to better print the rest of the cube.

Is G-code read line by line? I am trying to add the line G4 P4000 G1 F4000 E-50 to pause and retract the print in order for the printed line to dry (printing in mid air vertically). Does the above code work or should i skip lines or does it not matter at all? G4 P4000 G1 F4000 E-50 Would the following line do the exact same thing? G4 P5000 E-50

Yes, G-code is read line by line. G-code is a numerical control programming language. It basically instructs the machine sequentially line by line to do a specific task. The printer than executes the lines one by one until it reaches the end. If you instruct the printer to wait (G4 dwell), it will do the wait/dwell first and than will execute the next command to retract the filament. As such, your examples will not work if you want to retract the filament during the pause, you reversed the process if you want to achieve that. To add a pause (simple) for e.g. filament changing, you should instruct the head to go to a certain position, extract the filament, and now insert the pause/dwell command. Give yourself enough time to insert and prime the nozzle and go back to the last location to continue printing. You could insert something like (e.g. in between layer change, before G1 Zx.xx): ... G1 X0 Y0 F2000 ; Relocate the print head G1 F4000 E-50 ; Retract filament G4 P40000 ; Wait for 40 seconds G92 E50 ; The new filament should continue at this value ... G1 Zx.xx Depending on what happens after G1 Zx.xx, you may need to set the head back to the location prior to where it was before G1 X0 Y0 F2000. Do note that there are pausing scripts/plugins available for e.g. Ultimaker Cura, and there is also a filament changing command M600 that can be enabled for certain firmware (if this is your ultimate goal). Using a post processing plugin of Ultimaker Cura, a pausing script looks like: ... G0 X137.692 Y105 ;TIME_ELAPSED:707.873599 ;TYPE:CUSTOM;added code by post processing ;script: PauseAtHeight.py ;current z: 5 ;current height: 5.0 M83 G1 F300 Z6 G1 F9000 X190 Y190 G1 F300 Z15 M104 S0; standby temperature M0;Do the actual pause M109 S200; resume temperature G1 F300 Z6 G1 F9000 X133.423 Y105 G1 F9000 M82 G92 E911.50045 ;LAYER:24 G0 X137.692 Y105 Z5 ... Note that G0 and G1 are "move to" location instructions (albeit through a different way, fast move and linear move respectively). If you look closely, you see that after the pause, the printer returns to the X-Y position where it left prior to the pause (X137.692 Y105). Side note: Some firmware flavors allow buffering, but each statement is executed sequentially.

Switched to a Bowden setup. Should I retract the filament out at the end of a print? I switched my Anet A8 over to a Bowden and it's printing great. Moving that weight off has enabled me to almost double the speed and resonance problems have vanished. My question is regarding after the print is done should I add a retraction code and back the filament out of the v6 or is it okay to leave it in there? My concern is that if I leave it in there, will it cause a clog or anything when I warm up the printer tomorrow to print something else? If that's not a something I should be concerned about let me know.

It's okay to leave the filament in the hot end, as long as you let it cool down with the hot end cooling fan running. From comment: That's not an issue, you can simply leave it in the hot end. The only "end of print" clogs usually occur when leaving the hot end hot for a while - allowing the filament to drip out - and then retract the filament without feeding it against the nozzle once more. That creates a plug that's larger than the filament diameter that might get stuck in the bowden tube

How to connect optocoupler module to ABL sensor and Ender 3 board I am trying to figure out how to wire up Auto Bed Leveling (ABL) on my Ender 3 using the optocoupler and inductive proximity sensor below. I cannot figure out how to wire it all together, all the tutorials I have found are for 2 and 3 wire per side of the optocoupler.

Connecting is pretty straightforward like the other modules, difference is an extra input lead. From e.g. here: Module interface description: DC+: Positive DC power supply. DC- : Negative DC power supply. PWM: Signal input (connect MCU port, PLC interface, DC power supply, etc.) GND: The negative terminal of the signal OUT+: Positive output terminal (connected to the device positive) OUT-: Negative output terminal (connected to device negative) So, 1 and 2 connect to your power supply that matches the voltage of the logic of your microprocessor (5 V) as this must be linked to 5 and 6 which are connected to the endstop signal and ground respectively. As for the sensor, blue is GND, black is signal (PWM) and brown is power as seen in e.g. this answer.

Anet A8 right Z drops 2 mm during print I've noticed that after my Anet A8 completes a print, the right hand Z mount ends up 1-2 mm lower than the left, even though I make sure both the left and right hand Z mounts of the X-axis are at the same height before switching on the printer. Does anyone know what the cause of this might be? I'm guessing something is causing the right hand Z to skip steps. I can't see or hear any obvious mechanical issues. I checked all guide and threaded rods were straight before assembly. Could it be a faulty stepper or control electronics?

My guess is your Z guides are not strictly parallel because there's no instruction how to install X guides correctly. When you install X guides, you can easily make horizontal distance between two Z-mounts either too small or too large, which puts extra stress on one of the Z motors. Move your extruder to home position, measure distance between bottom ends of Z threaded rods and between top ends, and try to adjust right Z-mount position on X guides so that these two distances become equal. Use hammer, but be accurate with plastic.

Arduino Mega 2560 + RAMPS voltage on GPIO pin I am using an Arduino Mega 2560 and RAMSP 1.4 shield with Marlin firmware to control my machine (not exactly a 3D printer). Marlin has G-code: M42 P20 S255 ==> Turn on pin 20 of the microprocessor M42 P20 S0     ==> Turn off pin 20 of the microprocessor I am using this command to turn ON a MOSFET switch connected to pin 20. When I have not put the RAMPS shield on top of AtMega, this works. Pin goes high only when I send code to turn it ON. But when I place the shield on top of the Mega 2560 (No 12 V power is given to RAMPS, only 5 V from USB), when I first connect USB to it, I find around 2 V on Pin 20 even without sending the ON command. when sending M42 P20 S0 this goes away (0 V) and get 5 V for M42 P20 S255. Without shield there's no voltage when connecting USB to Mega 2560; with shield there's 2 V on the pin and this causes the MOSFET switch to turn on. Where does this voltage comes from? First I thought this must be some noise, so added a 10K pull down resistor (since that is the common value I have seen in many circuits), but it didn't work. But placing a 100 Ohm works. Is this safe?

Connecting a 100 Ohm resistor is definitely not safe. This load is far too high for an AtMega2560 output pin. 100 Ohms at 5 V (when the pin is high) is 50 mA, whereas the recommended maximum for an AtMega2560 pin is 20 mA (and it would be better to stay well below this maximum). You should use a higher value pull-down resistor (at least 250 Ohms, more would be better) or find out where the stray voltage is coming from (it could be an internal pull up on the AtMega, since pin 20 is also the SDA pin which Marlin might enable).

How come firmware isn't uploaded? I am calibrating my Kossel XL with a new Marlin firmware changing the MANUAL_Z_HOME_POS since I have modified my print bed. I change the value in the Marlin code and upload it through Arduino (the editor on Windows 10). It has worked many times before with the exact same version of Arduino. When I then use Pronterface and issue G28 (home all) followed by G1 Z30 (just to be on the safe side) it shows that Marlin wasn't uploaded at all. It is a the same height as before. It's a 22.2 mm difference so it is easy to see. I have tried restarting the Arduino board before and after upload. I have tried unplugging the USB cable before and after upload. I also tried two different USB ports. The computer has been rebooted. I have examined the Arduino editor's settings, so it uploads to the correct destination (COM3 in my case). It is as it should be. It, of course, reports "upload complete". What can be the cause of this?

Are you sure that the firmware is not being uploaded? You can debug this changing the STRING_VERSION on Configurations.h. If the version is not being changed, I would suggest trying to use another computer to upload the firmware or even another board.

Extruder motor not running during print job but working after I preheat the extruder and test it I have a Prusa i3 (from FLSun). I have assembled the printer, calibrated it (fairly decently), and have successfully demonstrated extrusion manually. However, when I try to run a print job (the G-code clearly contains E commands), the extruder motor never rotates. Is this a common problem? Any suggestsions for how to resolve/troubleshoot? I can confirm that the extruder was pre-heated for PLA (up to a generous 220 C). I load an STL file into Repetier v.1.0.2, use the built-in slicer (Slic3r) to generate the G-code. I include a sample of that below: ; generated by Slic3r 1.2.9 on 2017-11-08 at 10:54:07 ; external perimeters extrusion width = 0.50mm ; perimeters extrusion width = 0.72mm ; infill extrusion width = 0.72mm ; solid infill extrusion width = 0.72mm ; top infill extrusion width = 0.72mm M107 M104 S200 ; set temperature G28 ; home all axes G1 Z5 F5000 ; lift nozzle M109 S200 ; wait for temperature to be reached G21 ; set units to millimeters G90 ; use absolute coordinates M82 ; use absolute distances for extrusion G92 E0 G1 Z0.350 F7800.000 G1 E-2.00000 F2400.00000 G92 E0 G1 X76.952 Y76.952 F7800.000 G1 E2.00000 F2400.00000 G1 X78.055 Y75.850 E2.04824 F1800.000 G1 X78.650 Y75.324 E2.07282 G1 X81.121 Y73.387 E2.16997 G1 X81.780 Y72.933 E2.19472 G1 X84.467 Y71.309 E2.29186 G1 X85.167 Y70.940 E2.31635 G1 X88.143 Y69.602 E2.41730 As an update, I can no longer reliably get the extruder motor to run (even when I pre-heat) from the LCD. Sometimes, it works fine, but other times it doesn't seem to. Will confirm whether switching the motor connector to the z-axis to test the motor works when I get home this evening. I can confirm 1) that there is no tension pulling on the cable connections during the run, 2) the mainboard and motor connector aren't burned, cracked, and the mosfets have heatsinks on them, and 3) the extruder gear is fixed and rotates freely on the motor axis (I tested this by switching it over to the z-axis connection temporarily and confirming rotation). Here's a photo of my motherboard:

According to all the information: No reassignment of the extruder in the Gcode You can extrude if you push the filament by hand Extruder motor works when switched to Z driver Z Motor works I come to the conclusion that some of your electronics or the motor have fried. What have fried? I tried to make a step by step check: Switch drivers between E and Z, but plug the motors as usual: 1) Does the extruder extrude? Yes: Your driver has fried No: 2) Were you able to move the Z motor? No: Motherboard And driver has fried Yes: 3) Plug in the E motor on the Z driver, can you make the E motor turn? Yes: Motherboard fried No: Motor fried HTH and keep us updated if it worked or not!

Cherry 3D printer Nema upgrade I'm currently attempting to build the reprap Cherry 3D printer. I'm doing the Nema 17 upgrade for the printer. I realized that the instructions online are optimized for the 28byj-48 stepper motors. Has anyone built this machine with the Nema 17 upgrades and know what size screws would be best to use?

Cherry 3D printer with Nema 17 = Small Prusa i3, so the screws are the same M3 with the length you need according your mounting upgrade.

Extruder motor does not stop after G1 E5 When I send G1 E5, the extruder motor rotates, but does not stop. It keeps rotating until I restart the system. I am using a Ramps 1.4 board and OctoPrint.

If the printer is in absolute positioning mode (which is used almost exclusively), then the extruder will either wind back or wind forward to the last 5mm point. Effectively, the firmware treats the extruder like any other axis, and you can set the origin whenever and wherever you like (it doesn't have to be the home position). Use G92 to reset the extruder position as follows: G92 E0 ; Set the extruder position to 0 (origin) G1 E5 ; Extrude 5mm of filament G92 E0 ; Set the extruder position to 0 again This is the usual way to purge filament in the slicer's start and end code. Note that you cannot rely on the current position being zero.

How to make walls thicker using meshmixer or meshlab I have been working at converting game files into 3d files that can be printed, but many of the models have very thin or walls. I was wondering if there was a way to increase the thickness of the walls using meshmixer or meshlab.

Only today, I learned of a solution for this sort of objective, but it uses Fusion 360 rather than Meshmixer or Meshlab. As your question does not include that program, I'll toss the Meshmixer method. This image is of the model prior to modification: When you load your STL file into MM, use Edit, Generate Face Groups. This will cause the surfaces to change color. Click Accept. With face groups created: If you can be assured of all one surface, use Select, then double click on the interior. This should turn the entire interior red. If you discover unselected surfaces, simply click on those surfaces until all is completed. If you select a surface in error, use Shift-Click to clear that one surface. Once selected, the select menu gives you a new edit menu. Use Edit, Offset for yet another menu. As you make changes in the menu settings, you'll see the results on the model. Ideally, you won't have an overly complex model with too many facets/triangles, as it can really bog a machine down. This particular model has a nearly uniform interior. Double clicking on the inside surface caused the full cylinder (not the bottom) to be selected (turning red). Low accuracy offset, with surfaces still selected: For smoothest results, keep the accuracy high. Any protruberance in the interior will give very strange results. High accuracy results, surfaces selected: Experiment with the settings, aim for the best result and click accept. As long as you don't export the model over your original, all experimentation is a learning experience and not a destructive one.

Slicer settings for easy support material removal What are the best settings for Ultimaker Cura to have support material that's easy to remove for my Anet A8. I have printed an object with two different spools of PLA (same manufacturer just different color). The black print was printed with 200 °C, the grey one with 210 °C both a flow of 100 %. Thee black print seems like it has a little over-extrusion while the grey print has some under-extrusion artifacts despite the higher printing temperature. The grey support was really hard to remove and looks super messy the black one not so much... What would be better settings? Could it be that the material is so much different despite same manufacturer? The black one seems to flow much better than the grey one. Both have suggested temperature of 210 °C BTW the thing is 33x25 mm in size. It's rather tiny that makes printing it somewhat awkward... I have finished another print with a brim and a different support setting (Cross with 50 %) and at 195 °C and an infill rate of 100 %. The support came off much better, the under-extrusion is minimal on the layers however for some reason the top layer does get messed up with open spots and the little nob at the corner was just a a mere stringy stumb that fell off instantly and the walls of the holes came out spongy while the layers of the ring and the long side are smooth and fine...

Cura has some settings for the support structure which may help. Somewhere in the full Preferences menu is a setting for "gap at top" or equivalent wording. If you increase that gap slightly, the support material will be less strongly bonded to the part. Be careful, since a huge gap could lead to bridging problems.

Which is the difference between MK6 and MK8 and even MK10? I made and assembled my own 3D printer two years ago and I notice that some extruders are MK6 and MK(*whatever). Some of them has the block fuser horizontal and others vertical, then uses a nozzle longer. The block heater that I made was an aluminum block 20x20x10 mm using the M6 short nozzle. Then adapted the radiator to upgrade to Jhead heater. So I wanted to know to which group belongs my printer, as base is a prusa clone with direct extrusion.

All credits for the following go to user "vermon" who posted in this thread. The following is a heavily amended version from his longer answer there. Makerbot did start its hotend series using MK as iteration designator (for Mark). The first commercially available version was the [Makerbot] MK4 on the Cupcake circa 2009. MK4 was hand built with nichrome wire heaters and prone to all kinds of failures. They only worked with ABS and 3 mm filament. Following here, Makerbot was skipped as a manufacturer and that it is the hotend we talk about. The correct nomenclature would be Makerbot Hotend MK# MK5 was a complete redesign and had huge nozzles and a thick PTFE liner. It used 2 large power resistors in parallel for heating and was also prone to failure. MK6 was the first hotend sold as a kit that I know of (however Repraps had also started using them probably before). Mk6+ was the first cartridge heater hotend sold in kit form. The MK5/MK6 heater block was stainless steel, where MK6+ upgrade kit was an aluminum block that was slightly smaller, a lot lighter, and had the now standard 1/4 inch heater cartridge. MK7 was the first hotend you folks would think looks familiar. It was the first move to 1.75 mm filament dedicated extruders. While a MK6+kit had parts to adapt to 1.75 mm filament, it never worked well at all and was really a failure. Again, this is all Thing-O-Matic and Cupcake era. Other than a few clones, there really was no third party market in the US at this time. You either had a MakerBot or some other Reprap based kit. Wanhao, FlashForge- they didn't even exist and if they did, weren't talked about like now. MK8 was the all new dual extruder hotend setup on the MakerBot Replicator. The cooling bar was thicker than the MK7 but the same all metal thermal barrier and supposedly, the MK8 has slightly different nozzle geometry internally and externally. MK9 was a MK8 hotend, cooling bar, thermal barrier, and nozzle, but the new feeder with spring lever we know on all current models. This is why it's confusing, MK9 was a feeder upgrade, not a hotend change. MK10 was a complete change of the hotend. MK10 uses smooth OD thermal barriers with a larger 4 mm OD 2 mm ID PTFE liner. MK10 also uses M7 threads, vs the M6 of all previous models. This is because a 4 mm PTFE liner is barely enough metal to make the outer tube with M6 threads. MK10 is completely incompatible with all previous hotend parts. Every part is different. MK10 still uses MK9 feeder parts. MK11 on the D6 is just an MK10 nozzle and thermal barrier, but a different heater block and the cooling bar is part of the D6 central cross. Again, the only real difference is MK11 is a different heater block, and that's to adapt a different and longer heater cartridge and slide in the thermocouple. MK11 still uses MK9 plastic feeder parts. I wanted to know to which group belongs my printer, as base is a Prusa clone with direct extrusion. This question seem difficult to answer concretely, as the number in the series seem to be assigned based on a combination of heating block technology and format, the feeder geometry and the nozzle shape and thread that was adopted on the MakerBot printers. Your actual combination of those three may not exist in the MakerBot universe. I suggest you read the full, unabridged version of the post linked above though, as more details relevant to your inquiry may be disclosed there.

ELEGOO Mars failed prints every time So I just recently bought the ELEGOO Mars SLA Printer... the first model I made turned out okay. It was a small helmet. Only 3 out of the 9 small helmets made it; so I thought it was my bed... I re-leveled my bed and went for it again. Stuck to the FEP film. I did research and sanded the bed for better adhesion, nothing, changed my FEP film something printed but it was considered failed as there were some cracks. I changed settings on my printer software, ChiTu Box Slicing Software, I even did the recommended settings and custom settings I found on YouTube, and still nothing. The only variables I have not changed are the FEP film again, as it could be too tight. And different resin. I'm currently using the Grey ELegoo resin... Or replacing my LCD Screen.. If y'all can help it would mean a ton!

let's go step by step - and rule out the unlikely sources. Since you get at least some results, UV source and screen seem unlikely. Then you might want to make sure that the resin is ok. Let's try to put a droplet onto a sheet of paper/foil, which you tape down outside in the sun or under a UV light source - if it cures, the resin is ok. The first real step is to check your bed leveling. Go exactly by the handbook - you might be a tad far from the bed, which leads to sticking to the film. Then make sure your film is intact. You might need to swap resin vats to do that. in case the film is damaged, you have to swap it.

How precise do models need to be for 3D printing? I'm not talking about making something that's outright disproportionate of course. I've been working in Blender and I've use Absolute grid Snap to snap my vertices to the grid. The problem is that it (didn't seem) to always work perfectly for centimeters, and seemed to work better for meters. (edit: I've learned what the problem was and it was simply the placement of the vertices in side view, being at slightly different elevations. I'm going to emphasize that the difference was very slight. It was just enough to show up in the measurements. When I switched from front view to side view I was able to adjust the elevation to the grid and that fixed the problem.)

It depends on what you're working on. If you're producing mechanical/functional parts (even if that just means having to connect to one another or to some non-printed part), 3 mm (0.3 cm) error is almost surely going to prevent them from working. Even 0.3 mm error might be a problem. If you're doing standalone prints that don't have to interface with anything else, e.g. art, non-articulated figurines, etc., then it becomes just a question of what's visually acceptable, and that's a matter both of scale and of the detail level you want. For typical tabletop-RPG scale, for example, most of the acutal visual features are going to be smaller than 3 mm, so that much error is not going to work out. It might work for large busts, though. In any case, I would recommend trying to solve the underlying problem. Either change your grid snap, or work at a larger scale and just scale down the final model.

Anet A8 not printing over heat bed My Anet A8 printer will not print over the heated bed. Once I have prepared a file on Cura and inserted the SD card into the printer, the nozzle (extruder) moves into the top left corner and stays there. I have unchecked "Origin at center" and been over the printer settings multiple times. Yet still nothing. Any suggestions? I have included a picture of the settings I am using:

do you set the {speed_print} value correct? Otherwise the command G1 Z15.0 F {speed_print} is not executable imho...

Extrusion is not continuous Issue: Printing is not continuous. Observation: While printing, the upper layer of the nozzle is leaking. And also the printing is not continuous, the layers are not formed properly. Practices: Alternate nozzle has been fastened, Bed leveling has been checked, Even used the other softwares to print. Reset-failsafe is also done. Conclusion: Feeding of filament from the extruder motor is continuous but the printing is not smooth. Attachment: The pictures and videos (working) are attached. Which should be a print of the following image of the model: Certainly I have made certain observations along with your suggested queries. I have listed them please comment. The brand which I'm using is the TEVO TORNADO. The material is PLA. The temperatures are 60-65C (BED) and 210-215C (EXT) The software I used is REPETIER. The extruder stepper motor works fine (No clicks) (The teeths are clean) This is the nozzle leak

and welcome to 3D Printing Stack Exchange. From the picture and the video, it appears that you have significant under extrusion. It is impossible to determine from this information what is causing this. It could be temperature, such as a nozzle that is too cold, slicing configuration being wrong, such as by slicing for 3mm filament but using 1.75mm filament, electronics, such as the extruder stepper not generating enough torque, or a jam where the filament simply can't be pressed into the hot zone. I listened to your video but didn't hear anything that might help straighten this out. But, what I didn't hear was a "clicking" extruder. The extruder "clicks" if it is trying really hard to push the filament but it is not able to come out of the nozzle. It might be worth checking the toothed roller that drives the filament to be sure the teeth are clean. If the teeth are full, the drive roller can't get a grip on the filament to push it forward. Also, I am concerned that plastic is may be coming out somewhere other than the top of the nozzle. That shouldn't happen. Could you attach a photo of plastic coming out of the wrong place? --- Added after comments, and this photo os the nozzle leak was attached. 3D printing needs a long chain of conditions to be right. Any problem in that chain can cause unacceptable results. When trying to get good results, it is always best to fix any problem you find, and the plastic leak is a big problem. Other problems may exist, but this must be fixed for a print to succeed. The plastic leak is a big problem for a few reasons: It allows plastic to leave the melt zone other than through the nozzle. Since 3D printing depends on controlling the plastic leaving the nozzle for the print, this extra escape path is plastic which should have been neatly deposited on your print. The control system has no way to know that the plastic it fed through the extruder is not on the print, so you get under extrusion. There is an extra chamber inside the hot end which must be melted. In the ideal case, the filament directly enters the nozzle, in which it melts. Pressure from the cold filament at one end pushes the molten filament toward and through the nozzle. The filament doesn't not need to change directions or flow particularly easily because it always moves linearly through the hot end. It necks-down to the output hole size, but that is assisted by an entry cone to the nozzle aperature. In a working hot end, there is not hot filament inside the hot end that is not extruded. There are no eddy currents. There are no places where filament can rest. PLA is prone to degradation when kept at printing temperatures. This isn't a problem in an ideal hot end because no filament sits idle. Where there is an opening, or any extra gap, even if filament weren't leaking past the threads, there would be a pool of filament that was not in the extrusion path which would be hot for tool long, and would degrade into a hard, burned mess. Disassembling the hot end can be tricky. The cold plastic is a great glue which has filled and sealed the threads. Do not use the internal heater to heat it. The wires will get in the way when you are taking it apart. There can (will) be broken connections, and possibly uncontrolled heating. Use a hot air gun or hair dryer to soften the plastic. If you can not remove the heater and thermistor before taking it apart, find where they are connected to the electronics and disconnect them there. Do not leave the wires connected. The heater and thermistor are fragile, and too much bending or force on the wires will destroy them. You might purchase spares because you are likely to damage one or both. PLA softens at a relatively low temperature. When you have a plastic encased mess, disconnected from the rest of the printer, you can soften the plastic either with hot air or hot water. A "relatively low tenperature" can still give you serious burns. Use gloves, pliers, toothpicks, and any other tools you need. When you reassemble the hot end, the nozzle should screw tightly against the upper tube that delivers the plastic. Inspect the top of the nozzle and the bottom of the tube, and be sure they are flat, smooth, and are cut at a 90 degree angle to their axis. They must fit together tightly, leaving no gap. One assembly order is recommended by E3D. I mention them because they deserve credit, although I am embellishing with details they are unaware of, have not suggested, and are not responsible for. Start with all parts removed from the heater block (the rectangle of aluminum). Screw the nozzle into the heater block, and then back it off 1/4 to 1/2 a turn. Screw the top tube into the heater block until it is tight against the nozzle. Assemble eerything else -- heater, thermister, wiring, attach to extruder, ... With no plastic, heat the hot end from the control panel to be hotter than the hottest you will need when printing, maybe 250C if you are only printing PLA and ABS, and assure that it is heating normally. WITH THE HOT END HOT, tighten the nozzle with a wrench so that it is tight against the upper tube. Of the three objects in the hot end, the aluminum heater block has the highest coefficient of thermal expansion. It is higher than both the steel upper tube and the brass nozzle. The tendency as the hot end heats is to open a gap between the nozzle and the tube. By making them tight at the highest temperature, they will also be tight at lower temperatures. When the leak is fixed, you may be done, or there may be other problems to solve. Welcome to 3D Printing!

Simplify3D and Davinci mini Simplify3D is listing the XYZprinting Davinci mini as a compatible printer for their software. I would never buy such expensive software in combination with this printer if I didn't already think of buying a better printer. Can anybody confirm compatibility with 'out of the box' configuration and up to date firmware?

XYZPrinting printers use a .3w file format vs GCode on all opensource printer designs. I have used Simplify3D since the first month I obtained my Da Vinci Pro 3 in 1 which also has WiFi enabled. Simplify3D does not connect very well to my Da Vinci WiFi so a 25ft ActiveUSB extension makes the connection for uploading and monitoring the progress of the print. All the XYZPrinting Da Vinci series are available on the printer configuration wizard if not then sending a request to Simplify3D will obtain a response with the printer configuration file.

How do people load filament, prime the printhead, flush out the old filament when changing colors when using a standalone 3D printer? I am wondering how people that use standalone 3D printers (printers that have the ability to print autonomously from SD Card) feed in filament, prime the printhead and/or change filaments without a laptop ? Do the printers have a menu to arrange all these tasks ? I often only see the options to preheat the head to a certain temperature, but not to load/unload filament, extrude a small amount etc. I understand this differs from printer to printer, but still am wondering about this.

My printer (IdeaWerk 150) is very basic and doesn't have any options for this from the screen. I wrote a really simple GCODE file that brings the nozzle up to temperature, then runs the extruder for a few seconds, then waits, then extrudes for a bit again. I think it does this 3 or 4 times then stops. I can put the file (when converted to .x3g!) onto an SD card and run it whenever I need it. I have a similar file that allows me to level the bed without a computer by just moving the nozzle around to a few key points on the bed and pausing for a few seconds. I used a GCODE file generated by my slicer in verbose mode to get started, along with a list of codes I don't have these files to hand at the moment, but this is my start.gcode: (**** beginning of start.txt ****) (This file is for a WeisTek IdeaWerk 150) (**** begin initilization commands ****) G21 (Metric FTW) G90 (Absolute Positioning) M18 (This disables the stepper motors.) G92 X0 Y0 Z0 A0 B0 (Declare the current position to be 0,0,0,0,0) (**** end initilization commands ****) (**** begin homing ****) G161 Y X F2500 G92 X0 Y0 Z0 A0 B0 G1 X5.0 Y5.0 Z-5.0 F450 G162 Z F450 G161 Y X F2500 (Home X axis maximum, go until reaching the end stop.) G92 Z142.4 ( ** Set Bed Height ** ) G92 X-75 Y-75 (set zero for X and Y) (**** end homing ****) M108 R8.0 (Extruder speed = max) M6 T0 (wait for toolhead parts, nozzle, HBP, etc., to reach temperature) G1 Z10 F500 (Bring bed up) M101 (Turn on Extruder) G04 P8000 (Wait for 8 seconds for flow) (**** end of start.txt ****) If I feed just this file into my printer, it will heat up the nozzle, bring the bed up to about 10cm below printing height and once the nozzle is at temperature, it turns on the extruder for 8 seconds. Your printer will likely be different to mine - there are a few different flavours of GCODE and you will likely have different XYZ positions, so take a look at some GCODE generated by your own slicer and identify the different parts. The principle is the same.

Marlin NOZZLE_TO_PROBE_OFFSET with glass In my custom printer I have probe and nozzle at same height and configured Marlin this way: #define NOZZLE_TO_PROBE_OFFSET { 43, -20, 0 } On the bed I've a 2 mm glass. How I need to change the configuration? Do I need to act adding a positive Z offset? like this? #define NOZZLE_TO_PROBE_OFFSET { 43, -20, 2 }

You can define the probe offset (or better the trigger point to bed level distance) in the array definition of NOZZLE_TO_PROBE_OFFSET, but it is not the usual and logical place to do that. Instead you position the probe higher than the nozzle and define the offset later when calibrating the bed level. A positive value is a positive offset, Z+. This answer is intended to be a more generic answer for Z-offset determination. The question is not clear on what kind of Z-probe is used. In case of a touch (or an inductive or a capacitive) probe, a probe trigger point defines how far the probe needs to be from the bed level (the sensor is always placed higher than the nozzle). This trigger point is a measure for the offset and used to determine the distance of the nozzle to the bed print surface (using the offset). Correct installation is trivial, as is the determination of the nozzle to trigger point definition. For a touch sensor, the probing element is either stowed, fully deployed, or pushed in during leveling up to the point that the trigger point is reached and the probe stowes the rest of the pin, see figure: The M851 Zxx.xx offset is determined by lowering the nozzle beyond the trigger point until the nozzle hits a sheet of paper. If the stowed position to nozzle distance is used, the distance is too large and the nozzle will dive into the bed on printing. A similar sketch for inductive/capacitive proximity probes can be drawn.

How bed leveling is achieved without table screws? I have seen printers with table screws and bed leveling sensor and printers that have only bed leveling sensor (such as Prusa). So my question is how does the bed levelling work when there is only a sensor, and no adjustment screws? What will happen if I totally remove the table from the printer and then re-assemble it? Will the print fail or what?

Prusa uses 9 marker points in the bed that are sensed with an induction sensor to determine the X, Y and Z position. Any deviation for skewness or bed level is compensated through the software. Please do note that the bed is pretty level to begin with (by design). This is precisely described here, please check the video. Note that Marlin Firmware (which is basically what drives the Prusa printers) has skewness compensation implemented. This is implemented in the configuration file, and found under header Bed Skew Compensation. You basically print a square and measure the diagonals and insert these measurements into the configuration file. Prusa printers do this automatically by using the measurements of the marker points.

CR10 V2 under extruding and heating up too quickly The heater cartridge on my CR10 V2 broke so I ordered a new one(12V). After replacing it the new one heats of very quickly past the target temperature and the slowly decreases to the target. Once it hits the target temp it goes up and down by 10 °C or so during prints. During the prints there is under extrusion. I read that if the filament gets hot too high up the hotted it could cause clogs. I replaced the nozzle as well and cleaned out everything. Some things that I think may have an effect: Could the new heater cartridge not be compatible? does a poor solder job with heater cartridge wires have an effect It's possible I messed up the thermistor when replacing heater cartridge, could that explain whats happening? Is there anything else in the hot end assembly such as fans that would cause this?

This sounds as if you have bought an incorrect heater element, e.g. one for 12 V instead of 24 V. The CR-10 uses 24 V. The 12 V cartridge has a lower resistance, so when powered by 24 V, the current is much higher and therefore also the heating power ($ {(\frac{24}{12})}^2 = 4 $ times higher). For details on the calculation, the this answer on question: "PID autotune fails 'Temp too high' with 12 V heater cartridge but works with 24 V?". This makes the hotend heat up very fast resulting in a large overshoot. You need to replace the cartridge for one for 24 V. Note that I recently experienced exactly the same problem by mixing up the cartridges see this answer.

What are the downsides of high stepper current OR power? Microstepping reduces the actual torque at partial steps, so I would like to increase the stepper torque as much as possible to ensure better behaviour when high acceleration is needed (I'm installing a heavier print bed). I know which drivers and which motors I have so I know the rated values and how to avoid exceeding them. Besides the additional heating, what are the downsides of using higher current OR current, provided (as said) that the ratings are not exceeded? For example: noise? vibrations? anything else?

There is a downside. If the current is too high, you lose the linearity of micro-stepping. If the highest current exceeds the maximum, then the highest current micro-stepping positions will collapse on each other. If you are within the specs of the motors, there are no motor-related problems caused by higher currents. But other problems can be caused by increasing the current. The current must be within the capacity of the motor drivers and their heat sink. If the drivers overheat, many will simply shut off, causing the motors to not move when they should, which will appear as misalignment on X, Y, or Y. Another problem could be higher vibration, which would show as stronger ringing when going around corners. The higher current will give higher torque and higher acceleration, which will cause more vibration. If you are increasing the current to support a bigger and heavier print bed, you will possibly have other troubles. Although the higher torque will be countered by the higher bed mass, the higher bed mass may be coupled with longer belts, which will be more stretchy. You may also be imposing forces over longer frame components, which may cause them to flex more.

Is 3D printing a good way to save money? If you already have a 3D printer, would you say that you have saved money on buying the printer, buying models and then printing the models, compared to buying something alike in retail? Would you say that saving money is an argument to buy a 3D printer?

I would say that the general answer to your specific question is no. If you want to justify buying a printer because of all the things you could print instead of buying that is not going to be easy. If however you are a DIYer and you have some CAD skills, or are willing to learn some, then consider the 3D printer as another tool you can use. There are plenty of stories about people who fixed some very expensive thing instead of having to buy a whole new one for hundreds of $/£; so if you have a specific use in mind then it may be justifiable to you. I have made and fixed stuff around the house, but it's often things you simply couldn't buy, or could have fixed some other way. There is an ever growing library of models available out there, and many are free. I recently fixed the leg on my keyboard with a printed one which I found on thingiverse, took minutes to print and the keyboard is part of a wireless set which would cost £30 to replace, so that was great but you won't normally find exactly what you want like that at this time. And lastly it's not plug 'n Play yet, so you need to be a tinkerer at heart to use most printers out there right now.

Changing FAN0 to FAN1 in TriGorilla printer board I plugged a new fan into the (TriGorilla v1.4) printer board Fan0 which I found out to be broken. I'm trying to upgrade the part cooling fan for a bigger one. Unfortunately after plugging in the old one, I realize that the fan is constantly "ON". On other forum someone told me that MOSFET might be shorted from plugging in the broken fan. This triggered my question: "Is there any possible way to change the firmware FAN0 to use FAN1 socket?" and: "Would that work for part cooling model fan?"

Yes you can use another fan port, this requires some editing of the configuration files of the firmware and reflash the firmware. If you look at the documentation of the board and an overview of the board layout, you will see that there are 3 PWM controlled FAN ports. The answer is therefore yes, you can use another port (e.g. FAN1 or FAN2) to be used for your broken FAN0 port. The most easy solution is to swap the port numbers in the pins configuration of your firmware, so swap pins 'D9' and 'D7'. How you edit the configuration is depending on the version of the TriGorilla board you have, there is a version 1.3 and a version 1.4. Basically you need to define the software FAN (0) to be reached at the hardware location Fan1 using pin 7: #define FAN_PIN 7 Subsequently, FAN1 in software needs to points to Fan0 in hardware #define FAN1_PIN 9 If you changed this, the software will think that the Fan1 port on the board is the software FAN. If you are using the v1.4 TriGorilla printer board, the v1,4 specific pin definition is found in pins_TRIGORILLA_14.h. If you look into this file you will see that this is basically a RAMPS board: #define IS_RAMPS_EFB ... #include "pins_RAMPS.h" So editing for you need to redirect the pins 7 and 9, but you only have a single active fan (as per #define IS_RAMPS_EFB)! Luckily we can forget about the second fan as you want to replace the first by the second. In pins_RAMPS.h you will find: #ifndef RAMPS_D9_PIN #define RAMPS_D9_PIN 9 #endif Note that it is wise not to edit this latter file, instead edit your copy of pins_TRIGORILLA_14.h to include assigning of the pin 7 to the Fan1 header as FAN in the firmware. If you look closely at the assigning of the RAMPS_D9_PIN pin, it says: #ifndef; so if it has been assigned previously, do not override the value. Now edit the pins_TRIGORILLA_14.h file to include: // Comment out this line: //#define FAN_PIN 9 // And enter this beneath that line #define RAMPS_D9_PIN 7 or #define FAN_PIN 7 // this bypasses setting of the RAMPS_D9_PIN constant From this point on, if the software addresses scheduling of the FAN port, the pin 7 schedules the MOSFET attached to the Fan1 header. Basically, the above procedure describes how one directs hardware ports by changing the addressing in the firmware configuration. If this does not work, there might be more things broken on your board.

Calculating gear ratio for leadscrew My calibration at my printer is okay. When I try to move 10 mm, it's exactly 10 mm. But I want to know what is my precision for Z-axis. (not posting the link of the product maybe it's not okay for the platform) Spec for leadscrew: Lead screw diameter: 8 mm Screw pitch: 2 mm Lead of thread: 8 mm My question; is my gear ratio 4:1 or 1:4? It's giving different results.

Your lead screw nut advances 8 mm every complete rotation of 200 full steps, so a single full step would change the height by 8/200 = 0.04 mm. This implies you need to set the layer height a multiple of 0.04 mm. The gear ratio of 4:1 (a reduction) is required to get to your desired 0.01 mm layer height, but that is a very uncommon and a too small layer height to use.

Why and how am I supposed to change the extrusion multiplier? The slicing software knows exactly (given accurate E-step, filament diameter, nozzle diameter values) how much cold plastic is pushed in the extruder and how much mass is extruded. Why should the extrusion multiplier be changed from 100%? Shouldn't the slicer extrude already enough to fill the gaps left by the neighbouring perimeter (see rectangular vs recto-oval extrusion profile). As result of the "why" question, implicitly comes up the question "how" should I (scientifically, not try and fail) define the extrusion multiplier? it would appear that said value should not be touched if the rest is done properly. The only idea I can have is to print at 100% infill and then saw the part, to check how big are the voids between 4 neighbouring extrusions. Measuring the wall thickness seems very prone to errors (but again, is such calibration really needed?)

In an ideal world, you will not need to change this parameter once it is properly calibrated. In a non-ideal world, some filament may be out-of-spec, and some filament may slip when it passes through the extruder. So for a flex (or more flexible) filament, you might increase the extrusion multiplier a little to compensate. If the compensation is material specific, it should be consistent (and might even be advised by the filament manufacturer). You might want to increase/reduce the multiplier whilst printing the first layer (in lieu of fixing your bed leveling properly). Maybe you want to fine-tune the top surface (which will be 100% fill) and you prefer to slightly under-fill this (because over-fill results in more noticeable surface defects). It is for quick hacks or fine tuning, there is probably no scientific approach to setting any value other than 100%. When it comes to material specific variations (due to melt viscosity, thermal expansion or drive efficiency), there are many factors which affect the tuning. Machine geometry, temperatures, colourants (and other additives in the filament), as well as the base material.

How to print spiral(spring) static? I have designed this model: My goal is to make it static, no vulnarable to shakes. The pitch is 40 mm with 4 revolutions. The dimensions of the 'wire' are 5x5 mm. Which settings for printing should I use to archieve hardness? I plan to make the wire 5x10 mm height, 4 walls, 0.28 layer height, 0.5 nozzle size. PLA. I don't know if this is overkill or it will be useless. I hope you can give me suggestions about printing settings and model dimensions. I know that's spring design, which is made to be springy but I need it for other use. Second design. Less springy, but not by much. My last hope is to print it horizontaly.

If you want an helicoidal object which acts relatively rigid, you should pick a plastic which is very rigid to begin with. In the case of 3D printing, probably PLA is the best choice. Make it as thick as you can in all the directions where you have no constraints. Still, it's an object which will be hardly printable without dissolving support material. You need a two material 3D printer if you want to get good results.

I am looking for the aluminum profile parts specs for this prusa i3 printer? I have seen some photos of aluminum based Prusa i3 printers, and I like to know the numbers and the specs of the profiles? Also I want to know Is the first pic strong enough for reliable printer or I must use the second(respect to profiles I mean).

They are 2020 (20mm x 20mm) T-slot extrusions. They should not be confused with V-slot extrusions, which are similar to T-slot, but have a 45-degree slot profile to accommodate V-slot wheels. If you are contemplating a new build, I would recommend using V-slot. Note that T-slot and V-slot come in a number of sizes (in multiples of 20mm). A 2040 profile is 20mm x 40mm, and will have two slots on the wider sides. Other sizes are available, such as 2060, 2080, 4040, and even C-shaped profiles. You may want to use 2040 profiles for greater rigidity, especially if you are contemplating a large build volume. Note that there are imperial as well as metric T-slot profiles. RepRap uses metric profiles. ReRap Wiki: T-slot OpenBuilds: V-slot

Possible causes of print defects? I'd like some advice regarding defects on my print : Here some details : Printer CR-10 S, nozzle 0.4 Material PLA Bed 60, Hotend 215, 50 mm/s speed SLiced with cura 4.1, 5 walls (i can provide more detail of the profile if needed) Layer height 0.1 modeled on fusion 360 The surface where the defect sits is actually tilted 45 degres Thanks !

There are many possible causes for printing defects, but the easiest one to eliminate is dirt. Always use a filament cleaner to prevent dirt from entering the extruder. There are plenty of designs available on Thingiverse. Always keep your nozzle clean. After pre-heating mine, I clean it (carefully) with a folded paper kitchen towel. It may also be worthwhile doing a "cold pull", if you suspect that you have dirt in your nozzle. Finally, you should check that filament is not leaking out between the nozzle and the heater block.

Wavy walls with Ultimaker Cura I've printed a 2x2x2 cm test cube with Slic3r (left) and Ultimaker Cura (right) and my Prusa i3 derivative machine with tight belts. The print settings should be quite equal (0.15 mm layer height, 40 mm/s outer wall speed, default accelerations/jerks). Though the top surface of the Ultimaker Cura-cube looks much better than the Slic3r-cube, the latter has much flatter vertical walls than the first. The front wall of the Ultimaker Cura-cube was printed from left to right which could explain the wavy result as some kind of vibration caused by the sharp y-stop at the left front corner. But what setting could have influenced this? Should I try to manual setting of lower accelerations in Ultimaker Cura?

Those wavy lines could be artefacts caused by closely-spaced infill, but they could also be resonance patterns caused by noisy stepper motors and over-tight belts. Since you have said that you have your belts nice and tight, I would suggest reducing the tension on them and see what happens. I know that some pundits say that it is not possible to have timing belts too tight, but I disagree with that. Belts should obviously be tight enough to eliminate free play in the system, and you may have a lot of latitude in the tensions that you can use, but if you make them drum-tight, they will transmit motor vibrations very effectively to the build plate (and onto your models). If your stepper motors are noisy, you may want to invest in some vibration dampers. They can reduce noise and vibration significantly. Another solution would be to use more sophisticated stepper motor drivers, such as the TMC2100. RepRapWiki: TMC2100

Compressed corner in my prints I'm getting issues with any print in the specific corner throughout different and unrelated prints. The specific corner comes out compressed. I have tried to take pictures to illustrate the issue: Any ideas on what to look at? Printer: Creality CR-10

This is a very well known issue that is caused by insufficient adhesion. The corners curl up during printing. You should increase the adhesion by: cleaning the bed (I use water and soap, others use isopropyl alcohol) better leveling, correct nozzle to build plate distance (dragging paper method), using a brim or so-called mouse ears in your design, increased the heated bed temperature, or use of an adhesive like hair spray or glue stick (not any type will work) or specific sprays that are created for this purpose (e.g. 3DLAC, Dimafix, etc.) Some people used tape on the build plate for adhesion, but I'm not a fan of tape. Not all tapes work. Tape needs to be applied correctly, prepared (sanded), etc. This is much more cumbersome than applying a little spray over the build plate. It can be successfully used on PEI, Buildtak (clones), glass and on the bare aluminium bed.

How is PLA different from ABS material? What are the main differences when using ABS over PLA and vice versa?

Paraphrasing this site. Feel free to add suggestions in the form of comments and I will try to incorporate them. Summary ABS: Stronger, machinable, more flexible, and more temperature resistant than PLA. Typically printed on a heated bed. Warping is a common problem when printing ABS. PLA: Wider range of filaments available, easier and in some cases faster to print. Not as strong as ABS and the fact that its biodegradable could be seen as both a benefit and a drawback. Material Properties: ABS: Strong plastic with mild flexibility. Naturally beige in color. Can be filled and sanded. Higher temperature. Easy to recycle. PLA: Not as strong as ABS but more rigid. Naturally transparent. More difficult to fill and sand. Can sag in hot temperatures. Sourced from organic matter so it can be broken down in commercial compost facilities. Part Accuracy: ABS: Part warping is a significant issue. Sharp corners will often be rounded. PLA: Less heat required contributes to less warping. Becomes more liquid at common extruder temperatures so finer details can be printed. Safety and Handling: ABS: Strong burning/melting plastic smell is present when printing ABS. Health concerns have been raised regarding airborne ultrafine particles generated while printing with ABS (ref). ABS will absorb moisture causing popping when the moisture enters the hot end. This leads to discontinuities in the print job. PLA: Doesn't smell as strongly when printing due to its organic nature. Moisture can also be absorbed into PLA and can irreversibly damage it.

How important is the dimensional accuracy of filament relative to the detail of a print? In this answer user Barafu says, Yet I manage to keep my tolerances +- 0.05 mm which is enough for everything but miniature printing. I have asked for clarification on that answer regarding what is meant by "miniature printing" but in the meantime, I want to ask the general question. What impact does dimensional accuracy of filament have on final print quality, and why? Does it vary between different filament types?

Dimensional accuracy is not as important as dimensional uniformity. I can print with undersized (or oversized) filament, adjusting the flow appropriately, provided the filament has a consistent diameter. When creating filament in-house, without expensive equipment, it is difficult to maintain the same diameter throughout the entire extrusion. It is likely this extrusion diameter (when creating filament, rather than the output of the actual print head) to which Barafu is referring when he mentions his tolerances: +/- 0.05 mm in diameter. Which is reasonable. The "miniature printing" comment likely refers to printing miniature models for tabletop gaming. If the source filament becomes wider than expected, the output will have overflow, or more material than desired will be deposited, and this will certainly affect the quality of the piece.

Infill failure when printing larger prints I'm new to 3D printing an I just got a Creality Ender 3 and I think I'm getting some good results with small prints. However, now that I'm trying some bigger prints and I'm running into infill material excess. In the picture below I just printed a solid cube with 20 % infill and that's the result. I have been playing with settings a lot but I'm really running out of ideas. These are the settings I have: my bed, fortunately, came in pretty flat. My first layer is always very good indeed bed level method: paper method Slicer: Ultimaker Cura material: PETG (Amazon basics) layer height: 0.2 mm nozzle temperature: 230 °C, but also tried 220 °C and 210 °C bed temperature: 90 °C flow: 98 %, but also tried all the way to 90 % cooling: 0 %; the issue got a lot better with some additional cooling but I see a lot of people printing with no cooling infill density: 20 % retraction: on, 5 mm retraction speed: 40 mm/s first layer print speed: 30 mm print speed: 50 mm/s wall speed: 50 mm/s infill speed: 50 mm/s Let me know if you want to know more settings, but I think these capture most of it. If you guys have any suggestion on things I can try that would be of great help. UPDATE After playing with some settings these are the changes I think I'm settling on: Flow: 105 % Coasting: On, 75 % Cooling: 60 % Retraction speed: 50 mm/s Here is a picture of when the infill issue starts: NEW ISSUE Now I'm getting a lot of stringing. Actually, I don't even know if it's stringing since I ran a test and came out basically perfect. Not a single stringing. I'm getting a lot of material that get dragged when the nozzle moves to one place to another and a lot of material accumulates on the nozzle and slowly drips everywhere during the print. Here is a video I made (not sure if it helps at all) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlIB1WW8z84&feature=youtu.be I think I'm getting close to have good prints but I really can't figure this out.

I have seen this a lot with people I have helped out in the past. sally infill or the lack of and weakness in the print is due to an extrusion issue. it looks like you are under extruding. this is why you do not see this in smaller prints. In the larger print you are giving the print head enough time to screw up. You need to look at the tension of the filament on the extruder to make sure it isn't skipping. You also need to do a estep calibration on the extruder. I usually extrude 100mm of filament and measure it to see if it is short. if it is short then it is under extruding and doing a larger print and printing a larger area will reveal short comings in extruder infill.

Changing the home position on a Prusa i3 MK2 As part of a project with my university, I have developed a new extruder to attach to a Prusa i3 MK2. My problem is that both the nozzle and PINDA probe have moved 17mm forward and 0.5mm to the right. As a result when I try and calibrate the printer it moves to the home position and the PINDA probe is too far out over the heatbed so it doesn't detect the printing surface. What is the simplest method of moving the home position so that the printer can be properly calibrated? UPDATE: I am planning on removing the heatbed and placing spacers that will move the printing surface 17mm forward. This should then prevent the printer losing any printing area and hopefully prevents me having to edit any code. Can anyone see any problems with this I'm overlooking? The simplest thing to do would be to move extruder 17mm closer to be the same as the original printer but my deadline is fast approaching and I haven't time for a redesign that large.

Consider the original installation with the orientation of the Pinda probe to the nozzle. Let's say for argument's sake that the Pinda probe is 3 mm to the right and directly in line with the nozzle on the y axis. If you examine your new nozzle, I would expect that the relationship of the nozzle to the Pinda probe no longer matches the original spacing. If possible, re-design the mount to place the Pinda probe in such a way as to match the original design. Thanks for pointing out my oversight, Mac. If the relative position of the nozzle and pinda probe are as the original, the solution is then in changing the appropriate parameters in the firmware. I found a reference for someone who had a bit smaller error in home position, but the concept is the same. The link above points to information reading thus: In Configuration_Prusa.h: Code: Select all // Home position define MANUAL_X_HOME_POS 0 define MANUAL_Y_HOME_POS -2.2 define MANUAL_Z_HOME_POS 0.15 // Travel limits after homing define X_MAX_POS 250 define X_MIN_POS 0 define Y_MAX_POS 210 define Y_MIN_POS -2.2 define Z_MAX_POS 210 define Z_MIN_POS 0.15 it will be necessary to connect the printer via USB to a computer running an Arduino IDE and to load the Prusa specific files for that printer. Edit the noted location, save/write the configuration and test. I would suggest small adjustments in only one or two parameters at a time, to avoid ambiguity in the cause/result sequence.

Which choices do we have on Daylight Resins? I'm planning to make an LCD Resin printer. I'm still learning and I found out that I need daylight resin (which hardens when white light comes from the LCD). If I search for "Daylight resin" on Google, the only "useful" result I find is for Photocentric. Photocentric sells Daylight resins and the prices seem to be good too; however, I'm trying to search for alternatives. I'm not interested in something cheaper, I'd like to choose a resin which has more colors. Photocentric's hard resin only comes in cream/green/gray colors. I would need at least white/black/transparent resin. Is it the only option we have? Are there any other manufacturer out there which produces Daylight resin/LCD-hardening resin with a variety of colors?

It looks like Ono may fit what you are looking for. They have several colors listed on their site. Red Blue Yellow Black Clear Creamy White They also have a flexible resin and a low temperature "casting" resin. It is unclear if the resin is available now or if it is preorder.

Extending TronXY print bed I have a TronXY printer (i3 Clone). It has a 220x220 mm heated aluminum bed and I print with a Borosilicate glass plate. I have a slightly longer print (245 mm) I would like to do and I think I could adjust to settings and end stop to stretch the y-dimension travel and I have found a 229x257 mm plate. This would extend over the edge of the aluminum bed. Will the thermal conduction and mass of the glass plate be sufficient to still keep the bed warm enough?

The aluminum plate is being heated by the heater element although I suspect the element does not encompass the entire area of the aluminum portion. There are going to be cooler spots on the aluminum but not enough to significantly affect the transfer to the glass. Once you extend the glass, without a corresponding extension to the aluminum and/or heater element, you are ensuring cooler spots. The glass will be surrounded by air, and begin to conduct some of the heat, certainly, but will also radiate a substantial amount. If you are printing with PLA, you may get away with doing this modification. Very little of the heat from the aluminum will reach the glass. A quick check shows the thermal conductivity of aluminum to be 205 W/m K compared to borosilicate glass at 1.2 W/m K in the range of temperature used for 3D printing. I did not research the rate of energy dissipation for the same range of temperatures, but if it's not too high (unlikely), it would still take forever for the unheated areas of glass to reach temperature. Consider your extension to be an unheated bed and print accordingly.

What could be causing my y axis to slip? Occasionally, while printing, my y axis will slip and the layer will, from that point forward, be shifted, ruining the print. What might be the causes of an axis slipping? I have tried cooling the motor which seemed to have been getting warm, and the belts are not too tight. This does not happen with every print, and seems to be an intermittent problem. My printer is a MendelMax RepRap, and the y axis is my moving bed.

(source: all3dp.com) Your printer is skipping steps in the y-direction. This can have several causes. Take a look into Shifted layer guide on RapRap.org which lists 29 possible problems that can cause this issue and how to fix them. First items of the list: Driver current is too low Driver current is too high Belt too Loose Belt too Tight Loose Set Screw/Grub Screw Belt or Bearing is binding Speeds are too high Acceleration is too high ... When I was dealing with this issue on my RepRap I had to increase current to the particular driver.

Laptop keycaps for Asus UX31A I broke 2 keys (i.e. left ctrl, enter) on my Asus UX31A laptop and it seems that this model is too old to find replacement keys. Is there any way I can find a 3D model of the needed keys to have them 3D printed? I do not have a printer nor I have any experience in this field. What I need is either someone that has models for these or that can point me where I can find such models.

This is more off-topic as an answer, but serves as a possible solution. Replacementlaptopkeys.com is a resource that appears to have keycaps for the model you've noted. https://www.replacementlaptopkeys.com/asus-zenbook-ux31a-db71-laptop-keys-replacement-dark-brown-black/ At seven dollars a key, it's going to be less expensive than 3D printing to accomplish your objective. If you owned a 3D printer, it would not be less expensive to purchase, but the work involved would increase your cost to have such keys commissioned. As a 3D printed object, the strength is going to be less than a keycap purchased from the linked site.

MakerBot JSON-RPC Command List I'm currently trying to implement a data collector on my Replicator+ by utilizing JSON-RPC. Is there an official reference for this? MakerBot used to host a wiki site, but that seems to be gone for their "troubleshooting" pages.

It took some digging, but I was able to start scripting a wrapper in C# for the RPC commands. C# Wrapper (MTConnect Implementation) Unofficial JSON-RPC Reference I still don't understand what every method does to the machine or necessarily what the results are, so a number of the methods are marked as obsolete until I can test them.

How to avoid collisions with already printed objects? When printing several objects, I recently encountered a problem that arises when the structure in itself is relatively thin or the support towers have a small surface: the printhead would in motion tend to knock one or more over as it traveled or catch at them and create layer shift. How can I avoid collisions with the already printed parts of a layer?

The problem was twofold: Lack of bed adhesion due to the small contact surface motion into the already printed objects. The quick and dirty way was to change two settings: Print with a small (3 mm) brim to stick the supports to the print and provide more surface. Other materials than PLA may need considerably more brim! Activate Z-Hop to force the nozzle to lift over the print when traveling These tricks don't solve issues with very thin structures or in all cases. In those cases, it can be mandatory to increase the structure's (support) thickness or change the alignment.

FlashForge Creator Pro Tool Failure! Temp limit reached After printing successfully for a while I received an error saying: Tool 0 Failure! Temp limit reached Shutdown or restart. The front panel is not responsive and doesn't allow the printer to print at all. If I quickly go to monitor mode it shows tool 0 temperature in the ~700°C range; which made me think it was the thermocouple.On the motherboard I unplugged the thermocouple and the same error occurred, I then swapped the other thermocouple and put it in its place and got the same error except the tool 1 temperature showed "NC". I had recently taken apart the extruders to change out the nozzles and thought I had possibly smashed the wires when putting it together but now I don't think that's the case. I'm on the phone with FlashForge's tech support but wanted to see if someone else has had the same experience for cross reference. What's the underlying issue? Is there a quick solution to this that can get me printing right away (I'm under a deadline)? What's the end solution?

It sounds like a failed TC amp chip. But we need to rule out some other stuff. Some important facts about the Creator Pro temp sensor: If you smash and short the two thermocouple wires together, the printer will simply read room temp. If you cut or disconnect the thermocouple wires, the printer will report NC for "not connected." The thermocouple lookup table in the firmware only goes up to 300C. Seeing a number over 300C means either a bad thermocouple amp chip, or excess voltage on the TC wires due to a short to something else in the hot block. (However, such a short will usually fry the entire controller board to smithereens.) To rule out stray voltage entering the TC wires, completely detach both thermocouples from the hot blocks and lay them out not touching anything metal. Do you still get an unusually high reading on tool 0? To rule out an issue with the specific thermocouple, swap thermocouples between tool 0 and tool 1 and see if the problem moves with the TCs. If the TC is not touching anything, and the problem stays with the tool when you swap wires, and you STILL get >300C reads, the thermocouple amp chip has failed. It is possible to replace the chip if you have (or your friend has) a hot air rework station and some experience soldering. Or you can get a new mainboard from FlashForge. The next question is why this problem happened. You don't want to fix the symptoms with new parts but have an underlying issue cause the same failure to re-occur after you swap out parts. With the printer on but the heaters off, use a multimeter to check for voltage between the hot block and the printer's ground. Certain types of heater cartridge failure can short the hot block to +24v. This is highly dangerous and needs to be fixed before you continue using the printer. So make sure you check it before trying to repair anything else.

Can closed loop steppers be used for extruders? I am relatively new to 3D printing, but have some background in industrial equipment and test machines. An important part of printer setup is getting the extruder mm/step rate configured correctly. I was wondering if anybody has done any research into closed loop drive of the filament where the feedback to close the loop comes from a knurled idler on the filament. This would mean factors such as drive slippage and different material stiffness could be automatically compensated for. Going one step further the feedback wheel could be placed at the hotend of Bowden extruder systems negating the need to tune in retract settings for different materials as the closed loop system can just pull back however much material is required to get 1-2 mm as measured at the hot end. I have seen there are readily available steppers with drive boards built in for closed loop control, I would imagine it would be a relatively simple task to remove the hall effect sensor from one of these boards and mount it remotely to read off a measuring wheel instead of the drive shaft. I had a bit of a search but couldn't find anything on this topic online, is this something that has already been looked into and if it hasn't are there any significant reasons why this shouldn't work to improve performance and/or reduce manual tweaking and calibration required.

Closed loop steppers like S42B are becoming popular for the spatial axes because compensating for skipped steps is the correct way to recover for those axes. For example, if the nozzle knocks into a warped corner of a print and skips, the right thing to do is compensate, commanding additional steps necessary to get to the commanded location. This is less valuable for extruder, since displacement is not necessarily the target we want to recover, but nozzle pressure. Extruder skip usually occurs when nozzle pressure exceeds the motors ability to drive the filament. Correcting for the skipped steps may result in overcompensating, attempting to drive nozzle pressure up over a longer period of time, since the problem won't clear itself as quickly as it does for the spatial axes. Compensating for skipped steps doesn't recover E errors like they do for X,Y, or Z, since skipped E steps tend to be driven by persistent problems, like low nozzle temp or hotend restrictions, where spatial errors tend to be transient, e.g. hitting a 'speed bump' on the print. An alternative is filament flow sensors like this BTT Smart Filament Sensor. It uses a similar feedback mechanism like you suggest. It uses a driven wheel and encoder to send pulses to mainboard. When mainboard stopped getting pulses during commanded moves, it pauses print. Instead of trying to correct in a closed loop fashion, its a human-in-the-loop solution

Show generated support structures in Cura In Cura, when you enable "Print support structure", is there a way to see what it will look like?

Select the View Modes Button in the upper right hand corner, and select Layers.

3D Print D&D Miniatures delicate supports Any hints or suggestions (filament type? suggested settings? model sources?) for 3D printing minis to use in Dungeons & Dragons? I've done a couple where the support structures were difficult to break off without breaking off a hand or something. I have a Lulzbot Mini (1), single-extruder if that makes any difference.

Buckle up, this is going to be rough: FDM printers are not the best choice for printing figurines in the 25 to 40 mm scale that is typical for wargaming and D&D games. Resolution-wise, that's the area of resin printers. But there are ways to get some partially decent prints made: you might want a small nozzle. 0.2 is about the smallest you can do without specialty extruders, so there is our lower limit. You need to make sure to have a minimum layer time set, especially as the crosssections of figures are often rather slim. Overhangs can be a pain You might be better-served printing "meeples" than actual figurines.

Are SLA prints also susceptible to say microbes like FFF prints are with the microscopic flaws? Say if one were to use foodsafe and or medical grade materials, would (m)SLA print be any less hazardous than one created with FFF printer, being eventually suscectible to bacteria buildup?

The best information I could find was this article from Formlabs about food safe 3d printing. It has a fairly detailed discussion of the different food safe requirements and the conclusion basically is that SLA prints are not food safe by default and can create conditions for mold and bacteria growth. SLA resins are toxic when uncured. The article goes on to list a few options that can increase the food safety of printed objects. Dipping in a food safe coating such as a food grade epoxy or polyurethane. But it does note that this may not make the object food safe as the coating may be compromised. Making a mold from the 3d printed part and using the mold for food contact. Electroplating the printed object with metal. Printing with ceramic filled resins, burning out the resin in a kiln, and glazing the part with food safe glaze.

Laser 3D scanner is used in the movie to scan a key: technically possible? The Vault (2021) movie has a scene at around 42' in which a laser scanner with a rotating table is used to scan a key in a short time, maybe some minutes: No calibration is done whatsoever. The scan quality must be high enough for the replicated key to be useful. Is it technically possible? Is it exagerated? Is it fiction?

There have been instances where people have replicated a key from a photograph of a key. A multi-minute scan of a key seems like overkill, but that appears to be a very large key so maybe so. Is it possible? Yes. Is it exaggerated? Probably much simpler than is portrayed. Is it fiction? As portrayed, yes. Practically, no.

Is this model feasible to print? I have a 3D model that I'd like to print. This is my first project, so I'm trying to decide if I'm getting in over my head. Here's the model rendered with Blender: If I throw it at a commercial printing shoppe, is it going to be fairly straight forward? Or is it unlikely to be able to get the colours fitting together like this to work well?

Here is a set of options you can get: print the object on multi color printer Unfortunately we got some limitations here (on the market). Printers have limited set of heads which are in fact printing in one color at a time. So we usually have 2 colors, there are also 4 color heads. If there are more then they are rare, expensive or rare and expensive. here are examples of such color printouts: project project print object splitted In this case you can have single color printer. You print parts in one color then you change filament and print other color and so on. The issue here is to have well formed object which is designed for such print method (it's connectable in some way) or you can stick printed parts with the glue. here are examples of such puzzled printouts: project project print and paint here are examples of such painted printouts: project project NOTE: All above assumes that you are gonna print your object in FDM technology. You can also take a look on other technologies such as: Stereolithography(SLA) Digital Light Processing(DLP) Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) Selective laser melting (SLM) Electronic Beam Melting (EBM) Laminated object manufacturing (LOM)

Entwined fiber-filled filament stops extruding after a few layers I recently took my first shot at printing with specialty filament -- Entwined by 3-D Fuel -- on a Lulzbot TAZ having an 0.5mm nozzle. (Note that this is the original Entwined, not the mid-2018 "v2" with smaller fibers; Just purchased from MicroCenter this weekend, and saw a 2017 production date when reading the label). While the filament in question can be reliably and consistently extruded at full speed (as with the "Continuous Load" button), I've repeatedly had it stop extruding partway through my prints. This is much worse with lower layer heights. Even when this has happened and several MM have been "printed" with no content, pausing the print, going to the load/unload menu, and telling it to extrude filament at full speed indicates that it's not by any means fully clogged, but only failing to extrude at the configured speed. Where should I start in tuning to try to get a reliable print with this specialty material? I'm using Cura LE 3.6.9 for slicing. The center item of the three below was printed at 210C, with the most successful at 0.25mm layer height (Cura's default of 0.1mm had far worse results -- not included in the below photo -- with the base layer almost not being there at all; 0.175 did somewhat better). I'm using the bed heated to 45C, in line with the manufacturer's guidance (that a heated bed is optional, but should be set to 45-60C).

I've managed to get a successful print! The key was to keep the material moving quickly. The settings I've customized are as follows: Print Speed: 70 mm/s Layer Height: 0.4 mm Default Printing Temperature: 215C ...and perhaps not as necessarily: Shell Wall Thickness: 0.8 mm Wall Line Count: 3 Alternate Extra Wall: True Also, I've found it important to print a skirt (perhaps a double-walled one), and watch the first-layer closely and be willing to push more material through and restart: The material in the hotend can easily form a partial clog while the printer runs through its auto-leveling / head-cleaning routine, thus needing to have more material pushed through before the job starts in earnest. By the way, the model is https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1993747, by Holodrio on Thingiverse.

Filament sticks to nozzle Normally, I'm all fine with my printer and filament. But today I changed the filament for another brand and no matter what, it sticks to the nozzle so nothing comes to the bed and soon my nozzle is full of PLA... I use a sheet of paper for printer to level the bed at 0.1 mm. While leveling, I get the nozzle close enough to feel a bit of resistance from the paper while moving that sheet. Please help me...

I believe the problem is not so much that the filament is sticking to the nozzle; it's that the filament is not sticking to the bed. You've confirmed that you have correct clearance for the nozzle to bed distance. The next considerations are bed temperature and nozzle temperature. New brands often require new parameters. Consider to raise the bed temperature 5 °C. If you're not using any adhesive medium, perhaps a bit of glue stick will help to have the filament stick better/properly. It's unlikely that the nozzle temperature is incorrect, as too low would result in a nozzle clog, while too high would "drizzle out" and be everywhere, but don't reject too-high entirely. If you can get the bed adhesion correct, your nozzle should remain clear.

My anet a2 auto-homes incorrectly I just made my anet a2, and when I hit auto-home it goes off the board makes a loud clacking sound going down a bit (under the heat bed but off to the side). Any suggestions?

Your limit switches are not working properly - they should always hit. Do the following steps: Move axis in all possible directions, both positive and negative; Check limit switch wiring; Limit switch output.

What is the "Detailed format classification" of the ISO 6983 (G-Code spec) For developing a CNC system, I am reading the "ISO 6983-1:2009". In it, there are several references to what they call "Detailed format classification" which I struggle to understand: A classification of the data in a block shall be used to specify the programming detail for a system and machine configuration. This is called the detailed format classification and is described in Annex C. ... Zero omission shall be specified in the detailed format classification (see Annex C). ... The number of digits shall be designated by the detailed format classification ( see Annex C). ... It seem this "Detailed format classification" is sort of a definition of the machine on which the program will run. But in this case, I do not understand why this is something part of the program and not some values of the control system. My question is: What exactly is this "Detailed format classification"? Is it part of the program? What is it purpose?

This is simply the formalised definition of the syntax, so that a parser can be written to interpret any legal G-code. Without this, there is ambiguity - not in the general operation, but in the bounds of what is 'legal' and what should be rejected. Taking the example X+053, this is not a position of 53 units, it is: Address X Sign is required (in this implementation) Leading zeros can be ommitted Up to 5 orders of magnitude before the decimal Up to 3 digits of precision after the decimal This means that X can range from +99999.999 to -99999.999 - an interpretation which matches the verbiage at the bottom of the page. As hinted at in the text, it is possible to use various fixed precision number systems (think using integer milimetres rather than decimal metres), and also to anchor at the most significant bit, so 001 could represent 00100.000. It may help to remember that these specifications were designed in the days of dedicated hardware rather than general purpose computers, when the standard portable storage medium held ~600 kB, and relate to actual machines that had been developed long before that.

How to wire for AC mains voltage relay, when printer board is connected to AC-charging laptop computer? I know this will be a really obvious question to some people, but I have bricked about 3 boards doing this so I want to be certain before I brick a fourth. I don't have a lot of experience working with AC voltage, especially crimping / hacking it like what's going on here. Trust me it was my last resort to ask this. Basically, as a chamber heater I'm using some 120V heat lamps (here in the U.S.). The problem seems to be that when I connect my laptop to the board (if the laptop is plugged in, which it has to be for long-term serial control), sometimes I: Hear an electric shock sound -- the board is fried Don't hear an electric shock sound -- the board is fried, though What I interpret from this is that I'm stupidly wiring the 120V heat lamps incorrectly relative to my 3D printer board, such that when I connect it to my charging laptop via USB, the AC voltages are out of phase, causing my board to be fried. Alternatively, it's the 12V/24V power supply that's wired wrong relative to everything else, which also needs to be wired to the same polarity. I was on the understanding that when crimping a three-wire male electrical cord: White = Neutral Black = Hot (or Load) Green = Ground ... reinforced on the left side of the below image as well: So, I know that much already. The question is, when I connect this AC outlet to a relay like this, I got NO, COM, NC on one side and IN, DC+, DC- on the other. Which wire goes to COM, and which goes to D-? The board uses COM to denote the voltage that is switched 'on' by the relay, and D- to denote whatever the shared ground is among, the 3D printer, heat lamp, printer board, etc... (For more info, see link to relay) This 5V relay says it supports AC loads being managed by an arduino / 3D printer, so I was under the impression that I could connect the white wire to its D- pin (which also should receive the "GND" for my 3D printer board) and the black wire to its COM pin. However, what do I do about the green wire? Nothing? Also, was it wrong for me to assume it would support this function when the Arduino is connected to a charging laptop via USB? Basically, I just need to be sure that my laptop (3-prong), power supply (3-prong), heat lamps (2 or 3 prong) and relay (only 2-prong) all have matching polarities and don't cause an electric shock or fry my board. But I am getting really conflicting results and frying a lot of boards, probably by overthinking this.

In effect, the ground (from mains) does not need to be connected to the relay, the relay interrupts the "hot" or "neutral" (preferably the "hot", but that is not possible for all plugs, e.g. some European plugs can be inserted 180° turned into the sockets). You connect one of the interrupted wires to the COM, the other interrupted wire (that goes to the lamps) to the NO (or the NC, depending on safety, the logic and/or preference). The ground wire from the mains power socket is not necessary at all (some lamp amratures require this to be connected though). See a schematic below, it uses an Arduino Uno, but you can think of it being the printer board. Note to never connect the ground from mains to the printer board directly! Image based on source: osoyoo.com The logic (low voltage side of the relay) needs to be wired as follows: DC+ is the voltage power supply of the relay module, this is frequently +5 V, but some modules use +3.3 V (sometimes there is a jumper cap to select the voltage) DC- is the ground from the printer board IN is the trigger that needs to be connected to the port on the printer board that electronically switches the relay

How to convert png to stl? Is it possible to convert an image image to STL file format? E.g. I don't need the coloring, I need the lines.

I suggest your objective can best be accomplished by converting the image to a single color vector file. You can do this with Inkscape (free, Linux, Windows, Mac) by combining the built-in bitmap tracing feature with some manual editing. I attempted to do so, but the coarseness of the image would result in excessive manual edit time. It may even be faster to reduce the opacity of the image and create a manual tracing on a second layer. Once you have a vector file, you can use any number of 3D modeling programs to convert the file to a 3D STL. Fusion 360, Tinkercad and OpenSCAD allow import of SVG files to be extruded to user-specified thickness.

I want to print an image of a network in 3D — what's the best way to convert it? Suppose I have an image like this below that I want to print in 3D. What would be the best format to convert it in?

Unfortunately, with only a .PNG or other file format that is traditionally two dimensional, you are missing some critical information. Unless your objective is to print something "flat with thickness," you can't create a 3D model. If your objective is to print something flat with thickness, even a program such as Inkscape with the Path to OpenSCAD extension will accomplish your goal. I believe that Tinkercad will import images and allow you to extrude them to create the thickness aspect. Another program which supports such activity is Fusion360 (free for hobbyists) which would convert your drawing to a sketch. You'd have to add some width to the lines in order to extrude them in any program you select. It will also be necessary to trace the drawing to convert it to a vector file type. Inkscape excels in this task. Lastly, you can arbitrarily add a third dimension to the diagram by importing it with SolveSpace. It is another free program which allows one to import a DXF file. Note that DXF is a vector file not raster, excluding your existing PNG format. It might be easier to use Inkscape to create the vector file, add width to the lines, then save it in DXF form and load it to SolveSpace. At that point, it becomes extremely challenging due to the complexity of the drawing. Perhaps a hint or two (image, sketch, drawing) of your final objective?

What can cause the center of the bed to be higher than the sides? I find it impossible to level the printer recently. I read a couple of articles on bed warping but that refers to having the center of bed lower than the sides (collapsing on its own weight warm up after warm?) but what I experience is the opposite: the center is higher than the sides. Did anyone face this situation and how did you solved it? I use an Anycubic Chiron so the bed is pretty big.

As the Anycubic Chiron has an automated bed leveling, you can just calibrate that differences in height in the printer's firmware. Here is the official tutorial made by Anycubic :)

Printer halted! Psu dead? My Anet A8 Plus worked normally, but after the weekend and changing for new bearings on the rods, it is not working anymore at all. I experience random reboots, the nozzle can only heat to about 10 °C away from the target and then starts to drop, the printer gives the halted error. Example: Target is 240 °C, the nozzle temperature goes to like 232 °C and then starts to drop pretty fast. The Bed heats good otherwise. troubleshooting so far The PSU gives 24 V and the supply voltage switch is 220 V like it should. No matter if I try print it through OctoPrint or Cura, the same thing happens. How it can break this bad just from replacing a few bearings is not clear to me. Do these reboots mean the PSU is dead and not giving constant voltage? Reboots come even idle or just bed heating etc.

Reboots happen in 2 cases on a printer: If the board power has been below a the operational threshold (~3 V) and the capacitors on the board are empty, the power dip can result in a reboot. If a device connects to the serial-USB port, it reboots. If you power up the printer not connected to any other device, it should run continuously. If it flickers and reboots, the power-lines to the board or the PSU are bad. Check those in reverse. If it only reboots again and again when connected to a serial port (PC, Octoprint etc), your problem is the cable - it might be jiggling or be defective, or otherwise de- and re-connect again and again.

Flashforge Adventurer 3 Filament feeder loud thumping noise, not enough filament extruded My Flashforge Adventurer 3 is not printing properly. Filament feeder makes repetitive loud thumping noise and not enough filament is extruded. Resulting print (if completed) is not solid. Results vary with filament. Flashforge brand (red) PLA works best. Any other filament fails completely unless I print at High quality, with head temperature at 235 degrees. Nozzle has been un-clogged repeatedly, but right from the start, when feeding filament in, it does not flow through properly. I had used the included tool to clear blockages in the extruder several times before now, but after posting this question I tried again. Ordinary use of the tool made no difference. So I applied more force, and, pushed filament through by hand directly into the extruder and used a pin to try to clear the extruder. It now appears to be working adequately Not perfectly. I am able to print with default settings. It still thumps -or ticks- a bit. I am alarmed at the amount of force I had to use to clear the extruder blockage.

Advice from another source suggested thoroughly cleaning the feed gear on the bowden extruder. When I looked closely there were plastic flakes all over the mechanism. I used compressed air and a brush to clean it. I also discovered expert mode in the FlashPrint software, which enabled me to slow down the speed at which fill is laid down. Now I have good printing results with any filament. EDIT AND UPDATE:: I have continued to have problems with PLA. For most of the last year I printed using ABS with no similar problems. I guess that PLA is simply rougher, scratchier than ABS and catches in the tube. I found a comment that putting olive oil on the filament fixes it. I used Vaseline. Things were fine for a while, but a retailer said this would lead to other problems. So far, no permanent answer to this question.

Ender 3 print bed damage Just got an Ender 3 a week ago. This is my first 3D printer. On the 5th print the object ended up tearing away the surface of the print bed such that it's no longer usable. Trying to work out if this is something that I did wrong or if this is faulty material or a combination of the two? To set the print head I watched a few tutorials and carefully followed the instructions checking the height with a piece of paper at each corner and in the center and repeated this until it was set. I watched a couple more tutorials on how to remove the pieces from the bed. I have been removing the top sheet from the print bed by detaching the paper clips. Using the supplied putty knife I've worked around the edges tapping gently with a rubber mallet to get the putty knife under the piece and loosen it before it pops off. Afterwards I've used the putty knife to scrape off any other residue to make sure that the surface is smooth. The first 2 prints were with PLA and then the next 3 with PETG. The damage happened when removing a piece printed with PETG. My specific questions: Is my approach to removing a print incorrect? If so, what would the correct approach be? Did this cause the damage?

your print surface is destroyed So, you managed to rip off your print surface in the center. Happened to me too. the corners of my scraper were too sharp, cutting the surface. Another time I did pierce the surface with my nozzle. Damage happens. Replacement surfaces for the Ender3 start at about 5 bucks a piece. So get yourself some spares. Clean your bed before applying the new one. Removal process To properly remove a print from the bed, grab your srcaper blade and do the following: sharpen the edge only on ONE side. soften the corners, they should be slightly rouned. Make sure the scraper is kept sharp. When removing prints, be slow! Push the scraper against the bed with the bevel upwards. Apply careful pressure till the tip moves just a little. Move to a different spot till the blade slips under a little, then work the scraper left and right. You'll hear a sucking sound, that's the print coming free. It gets much easier if you let the bed cool down. For very tall prints with a relatively small area, you might not need the scraper at all. PETG has a tendency to stick too much with glass and fuse with PEI. We don't know if the Build-Tak clone Creality uses contains PEI. I suggest to grab gluestick to add a safety layer for printing PETG.

What kind of filaments can I use? This is probably the most basic of questions. When I was shopping for a printer I saw models that would list a slew of certain plastics that the printer can print while other printers (different suppliers) would only list PLA/ABS. At the same time, the instruction manual that came with my printer only listed PLA and ABS. What is actually used to determine the possible material (other than diameter)? I assume that if the nozzle can reach the required temperature to melt the plastic and the bed can reach the necessary temperature to maintain bed adhesion, then my printer can print that plastic. Am I correct? For example, my nozzle can reach 250 °C, but the bed can barely reach 80 °C so I can print with ABS but not with ASA (since it needs at least 90 °C on the bed. However, if I switch out the heating element for something beefier then that opens up anything that needs a hotter bed. Right? Let's assume that I have the means to change nozzles and extruder type to fit the need of the filament. The goal of this question is to limit to one or two limiting factors of the printer without major modification.

There are other factors besides temperature. Certain "soft" filaments won't go well through all extruders, and some other filaments with wood/metal particle additives don't go well through every extruder type and can cause clogging. Even people who do tend to print a lot of these materials will often use a specific nozzle just for those filaments. That said, you still might be able to print even with something like ASA that seems unsupported. You can do this by taking additional measures for bed adhesion, or upgrading or swapping your nozzle or hot end. If you can print PLA and ABS, you can probably also print so-called PLA+ and PETG, at a minimum.

How is heat creep characterized? I have a Delta printer with Bowden extruder and all-metal hotend. When I start printing, the hotend gets often jammed. It seems to be independent of the print I am currently doing. Retraction does not affect it either (it happened even with 0 mm retraction). However, despite occurring mostly at the start of the print, it also occasionally happens mid-print. I can resolve the issue by pulling the filament out and after few seconds putting it back in only for it to happen a couple lines afterwards. At this point it seems to me that heat creep is most likely, in spite of having a 40x40 mm fan blowing across the fins of the heatsink. Is this heat creep? If not, what could be the cause?

Constant jamming sounds like heat creep. It could be that: The fan might not be powerful enough. Get a better fan You're printing too slowly. Try increasing the print speed. The temp might be too hot on the hot end. Lower printing temp. The heater might be too close to the radiator. Adjust the hot end so that there is a max amount of space between them. The firmware could be letting the hot end get too hot. With the cooling fan on, do a PID tune. The filament might be getting stuck in the throat. Try lube, especially if you are using an all metal hot end. Heat from the bed might be affecting the cooling fan's ability to cool the hot end. Try lowing the heated bed's temp.

How do you call the Z-axis mechanism in a Cartesian 3D Printer? How do you call the mechanism that allows linear motion along the Z-axis in a Cartesian 3D Printer? I know what the individual parts are; it is a lead screw, a smooth rod ... but how do you call the mechanism that allows this linear motion? Mechanism is defined as: an assembly of moving parts performing a complete functional motion, often being part of a large machine So I guess, it has to have a name, doesn't? .. but I am unable to find it

Linear actuator would be the proper name for the mechanism driving the movement along a single axis. There are 2 linear actuators driving the X-axis platform (for a Prusa i3 Cartesian printer, or the build platform for a raising bed Cartesian printer like a CoreXY, H-bot, etc.), the collection of parts could be named the Z-axis assembly.

Conversion of 3 mm ABS filament to 1.75 mm I have a few kg of 3 mm filament when I only have use for 1.75 mm. How can I make 1.75 mm from 3 mm filament?

In theory, making filament is easy. You take a 3 mm hotend with a 1.75 mm hole, and extrude the 3 mm (sometimes actually 2.85 mm) filament, let it cool, and then reel it up. In reality there are a lot of pitfalls to making filament - if the pressure isn't even, the hole not perfect, the temperature uneven, you can end up with oval filament, filament with bubbles, or worse. If you are over temperature you may damage the filament and it could look good, but not melt correctly when used. If you reel it too fast you may thin it out more than the intended diameter, or too slow and you may thicken it. A lot of hotends use steppers, which may result in ripples in the filament, so you may end up building a nearly custom filament machine. Resolving all these problems is probably not worth simply selling or giving away the filament to someone that can use it, and buying the right size for your machine. If you are still interested, though, you might as well go all the way and build a full filament extruder that accepts raw plastic feedstock (usually pellets) as well as your filament, and convert it that way, then continue using it to create your own filament.

Prusa i3 improvement - cooling fan I wanted to add a cooling fan to my Prusa i3. The board used by this printer is an MKS GEN L v1.0, such as this one: The cooling fan plug seems to be the white one on the top left corner, just below the step motor drivers. I plug a working 5 V DC fan, but it is not rotating. What could be the cause? The cooling fan has been enabled permanently using Slic3r to generate the G-code I am printing. The board is powered by a 12 V power supply. Are there some modifications to do on the embedded software side?

The MKS GEN L v1.0 is a board that according to the information found on the web operates to run on a voltage between 12 - 24 V, this means that all peripherals on the board should match this voltage. A 5 V fan should therefore not be connected. First, you need to establish that you are using the correct fan port on the board. Which port to use? If you take a closer look at the board layout you will find that the top fan connector cannot be controlled, it is a fixed voltage power supply of 12 - 24 V (so basically depending on the power that is supplied to the board). This can be seen from the board layout: Or zoomed in on the top left corner: Note that no pin number is given, this means that it is a constant power supply fan header. A 5 V fan attaching to this port does not seem to be a good solution, it can easily burn out the fan electronics. This fan should match the voltage of the power supply you use, so when powered by a 12 V power supply, attach a 12 V fan or a 24 V fan when the board is powered by 24 V. As said, this fan port is not controlled by PWM and can therefore not be scheduled from within your slicer, however, it makes an excellent fan for cooling the cold end of the nozzle assembly. To schedule a fan for print part cooling through the slicer you need to attach the fan to the other fan header below the X stepper driver on the left, if you look closely to the schematics, you see that that is a fan that can be scheduled using the digital pin D9. Note that this fan also operates at the voltage specified by your power supply; a 5 V fan should not be connected to this port either! The solution to your problem is to buy a fan of the correct voltage and connect it to the correct fan header. As you have tried connecting a fan to the lower fan port, and conclude that the fan has never rotated but still rotates when supplied with a correct voltage, you need to ask yourself if this port is: configured correctly in the firmware, or not broken. Now that you know where to connect the fan for print part cooling, connect a fan that matches the power supply voltage. Why is the fan not working? The microprocessor of the board schedules and reads various ports or pins based on the firmware it runs. This implies that the setup of the firmware is very important in the use of certain ports. It is therefore important to research if this port: was meant to be used by the printer manufacturer (so enabled in the firmware) or board is controlled by which firmware Once you establish that it is enabled (e.g. the manufacturer describes that the printer has a print part cooling fan), you should try printing a part where you enable the print fan in the slicer software. If not, you need to change the firmware configuration to enable the fan. If this does not work, you should address your attention to why it is not working. A multimeter can be used to read the voltage of the fan MOSFET output or the D9 output. If either one of those doesn't record a voltage, your board or MOSFET are probably broken. To fix this, you could solder an unused pin to the fan MOSFET or a new MOSFET and change the firmware. Another option is to buy a new board and flash a new configuration of a printer firmware onto it.

Infill keeps "shoveling", but perimeters are fine While printing PET-G (@ 220 °C nozzle and over 58 °C bed temperature), the outlines always print fine but the infill keeps shoveling. Could I be printing too hot or too cold? I am using a 0.8 mm nozzle. Shoveling is when the plastic is over extruding to the point at which it starts piling up in the path of the nozzle, usually resulting in an uneven surface. Visually, it manifests like a snow plow shoveling snow. I tried adding an image, but, the filament is black so that turned out to be a difficult task. This reason why this is a problem is because the nozzle hits those peaks while printing, which seems to be causing the print to detach from the bed. I've also noticed the print curling up at the edges, but I think that's a separate problem. I am printing at 3000 mm/min. The outline, and the infill is 80 % of that. The layer height is 0.6 mm

Normally, what you're calling shoveling is caused by having the bed too high - when you deposit enough material for a space that should be the nominal layer height high, but significantly less volume is available, it has nowhere to go but up around the edges of the nozzle. However, in your case your temperatures are also seriously wrong for PETG. The normal recommended range of nozzle temperature for PETG is 230-250 °C, and in my experience, you need the full 250 °C to have any hope of printing fast. At 220 °C I'm really surprised you're not having problems with underextrusion instead. The bed temperature is likely even more important. Minimum bed temperature for PETG is 80 °C. If the material is hitting a 58 °C bed as it comes out, it's likely to cool way too fast. This may lead to what you call shoveling (especially if you see both pits and ridges rather than just ridges), but even if not, it's going to prevent the material from bonding to previously laid down lines, so that your print will end up more brittle than PLA. One additional detail I initially missed involves your 0.8 mm nozzle. It might be hard for the hotend to keep up with properly melting that much PETG at normal print speeds. As noted in the comments, a 50 mm/s linear extrusion rate with an 0.8 mm nozzle is equivalent, in volumetric extrusion rate, to a 200 mm/s linear extrusion rate with a typical 0.4 mm nozzle, which would be extremely fast for PETG. It's unlikely that any hotend except a "volcano" or similar (with extended melt zone length) could keep up with raising that much material to 250 °C that quickly.

Extruder skipping/clicking (brand new printer) I just got a GeeeTech Rostock 301 mixer head delta printer and am having trouble honing in on why the extruder is struggling with my first spool of ABS. Being the main parts of the printer came assembled I am unsure of where to start taking things apart. I have a read a multitude of possible causes and am hoping for some direction on which is most likely so I can start there. Symptoms: Extruder clicking. The extruder makes a low grinding noise every time it tries to extrude more than 1mm of filament using the manual controls. Again I am working with ABS so I have the hotend heated to 250 degrees C. The extruder had no trouble when I was first putting the filament in and using the extruder to push it thorough the Bowden tube. But when I tried using the manual controls to extrude a small amount of filament it seems to be fine, just a small time delay between the extruder moving and the plastic coming out of the hotend. Things I have read to try Again this a kit printer and the involved components came assembled (see below) so I am not sure what I should look at first. I assume that if it came pre-assembled then it is most likely done correctly. Clean out the hotend, do a cold pull Take apart the extruder and realign the driving cog, check for shaft slippage Replace your Bowden Tubes Tweak slicer settings For the first 3 I think its new so it should be clean, in working order. And for number 4 I put what was in the manual except for the temperatures (because the settings shown in the manual were for PLA but it is a PLA or ABS printer) Assembly: The printer being a kit came with the print head completely assembled as shown in the picture. Not shown in the picture it also had the Bowden tubes in place. It also came with the extruder assembled as shown in the picture. So aside from wiring and mounting these pieces the only thing I did was cut a clean edge on the Bowden tube and connect that to the extruder.

First you have to see if nothing jams the filament (blocked nozzle or anything in its path, PTFE tube not good, etc). Second, the temp for ABS is about 225°C to 230°C. At least that worked for me. If none of the above, then go for the motor. The problem could be from bad settings, low power or a motor malfunction. Maybe the motor is no good to begin with. Good luck !!!

Will my Duplicator i3 be able to print this hole in the vertical wall without infill? Will my Duplicator i3 be able to print this hole in the vertical wall without infill? The wall is 7mm the diameter of the hole is 24mm, the shell thickness is 0.8mm.

The answer is yes. However I notice that some knowledge is missing due your comments. The walls of the part is formed by 1 or several lines, this lines are called shell. The Infill is the part that fills all within the walls or shell; you can set the infill by 5% to 100% depending in how strong you need the printed part or set 0 to get an empty shell. The printer can be able to print any part, but some areas will need supports, this suports is a kind of outerfill to support areas that could overhang basically walls with 45 degrees or less, this support can be easily removed from the final part

Are there any ways to make a 3D print transparent? I am aware of several "clear" filaments for a ABS or PLA printer. They, however, have a cloudy or frosted glass appearance. I do not believe this is possible to eliminate but I believe it can be reduced. Are there effective ways to make a print have a more transparent appearance?

It depends on a lot of factors, type of plastic, whether the parts need to be strong, can you use a vase print, etc. Here's a few thoughts. PLA - The brand of PLA makes a big difference, some can be printed very clear, some can't. Most of the transparent PLAs I've used print much more clear at around 240°C. ABS - I've seen some pretty impressive clear parts printed as a single layer shell in ABS and then vapor smoothed. I tend to find ABS more translucent and less transparent though. PETG - Again the specific PETG you use matters, but I haven't seen nearly as much variation as with PLA. I'm not sure how much temperature matters, but if it's too hot you get bubbles which will decrease clarity. Thin Wall Prints - I don't have much experience here, but the Smooth On XTC-3D or vapor smoothing seem to be effective. Solid Prints If I want transparency, I usually print it at 100% infill (should be a real 100%, too much overextrusion or underextrusion will decrease transparency). Printing slower and with less cooling sometimes helps. It's easier to get the infill solid with a direct drive extruder, I couldn't get decent results with a long bowden tube (a short bowden tube works fine). Here's a page where I tested 10 transparent filaments, the printed samples are 2mm thick, 100% infill - http://thrinter.com/10-transparent-filaments. Those samples are all overextruded a bit, you can get better results if you dial in the extrusion precisely, but that's hard to get right, and the optimal settings may change slightly depending on the part geometry. Larger nozzles and thicker layers may help to, but I haven't experimented much with that as there are significant downsides to that approach.

What makes Pronterface wait for user? I'm using Cura with the Pronterface UI to slice/print and sometimes printing just stops - always in the first layer - when it happens the printing screen shows "Waiting for user", when I press the button on the printer printing resumes. I don't know when this happens, it just happens about once every 5-10 prints, when this happens if I close the printing window and immediately click "print to usb" to reopen it the problem doesn't repeat. This only happens with the Pronterface UI, it doesn't happen with Cura basic UI or when printing using an SD card. Not using Pronterface isn't a good option because when I'm fine-tuning a model it much more convenient to send a test print from the computer and not copy the gcode to an SD card and print from the printer. My printer is Robo3D R1+

That's the temperature problem that you've encountered. The temperature of bed and hotend is reported every few seconds. Per default, first that sets is the bed temperature, then you need to wait for the bed to reach it, then warm up the hotend, and then start printing.

Wanhao duplicator i3 print bed support warped As you can see in the picture, my heated bed support is too low on the right side, even touching the Y-axis chassis end plate. This is only the case on the front of the printer. The back is perfectly straight. Do you know how this can happen and what can be done?

okay, after ferociously dismantling the whole bed I found out that the bed and the bed support are perfectly straight! So there is something warping the bed and support. De Y-axis bars are perfectly flat too. I found out that my table is not flat! This made the complete printer warped and even bent the print bed. put some cardboard under the frontleft foot and presto! As flat as it should be!

What would cause a SLA printer to print a solid block of resin? I’ve just brought my printer back out after a month and it’s first print created a solid block of resin about 1.5 cm deep and the full width and length of the print bed. What could cause this? My only thought so far is that the FEP film / vat bed is looking a little cloudy even after cleaning. I wondered if this could have caused the light to diffuse across the whole bed?

Is the laser (or whatever light source it uses) visible? The cloudy film sounds like a good candidate for light diffusion and thus solidifying the entire resin, but if there are visible components to the light source it may help narrow it down. If it uses a projector ("LCD") solutions, it may also be that the display that filters the light to certain regions of the resin to selectively solidify the print may be at fault, but that's rather unlikely. The first thing that, in my opinion, you should do is to check that the object you are printing does not have a corrupt model file. Assuming that you have spare, fresh resin (if your resin is old, that's actually the most likely issue...) and it wasn't too hard to pry out that block, you could try printing something else that worked in the past. While it's doing that, you may be able to see where/how it is printing. If the beam diffuses or lights up the whole area, you can tell if it's a printer issue (the film sounds like a good first thing to try replacing in that case). On the other hand, if the resin is old, it's probably just getting oversensitive and your printer is fine. The resin is very touchy with these things, and has a shelf life of a few weeks to a few months, and less if it's ever opened.

Upgrading printer controller I purchased a (very) low tier printer a while back, and now I am looking to start upgrading. First on my list is to upgrade the controller1). My initial plan was to upgrade to an Arduino Mega with a RAMPS 1.4 running Marlin, but as I started to try to find a RAMPS 1.4 board I started questioning my plan. Almost every source I could find for the board was either out of stock or very sketchy. Then I discovered that RAMPS 1.6 exists, but I can find even fewer places with it in stock. Is the Mega + RAMPS combo still what people are using? I made a printer 4 years ago and that was what I used, but due to the scarcity of RAMPS boards for sale I am now unsure if it is still being used by the community. If RAMPS still is the recommendation, what brands are reputable? (I'm trying to figure out if using RAMPS 1.4 with a Mega is an outdated solution and if there are better solutions these days.) 1) Upgrading is necessary for: Temperature/humidity sensors for monitoring/feedback; enclosure heaters (plan on having enclosed build space, work in a relative cold space); larger display with plenty of tactile switches; light sensor so the LEDs illuminating the enclosure can be modulated to provide more constant light levels for a webcam; possibly some joy sticks to manually maneuver the extruder and bed; etc. Basically I want something that can feasibly handle any unnecessary sensor/input I may eventually want to add. I'm familiar with Arduino and know it has those capabilities, but have no clue about other controllers.

If you own a Raspberry Pi , you may first want to try Klipper firmware. This firmware does the heavy lifting on the RPi itself and sends commands to the printer board via USB. My Ender 3 pro works much better with this firmware.

What is the functional difference between an e3D-Style nozzle, Makerbot MK8 and M6 Chinesium Nozzles? There is pretty much an ecosystem of two Nozzle designs out there that share the M6 thread on the coupler to the Heating block: the e3D "snub nose" or "shouldered" design. the "Chinesium" nozzle that is often claimed to be some "MK8" or "MK10" without naming what item of which manufacturer is actually iterated there. They seem to be derived from the Makerbot MK8 Hotend which uses M6 threading and not the MK10, as that uses M7 threading. What differentiates the two and can one swap one for the other?

Differentiation The main differences between the e3D-Nozzle family and the "simple" Nozzle are the wrench size, body length and thread length of the nozzle. In fact, I have come across 2 different "Chinese" styles of nozzle, a "big" and a "small" one. Comparison For comparison, take a look at this photo, where I aligned the lower ends of the bodies to line up under the wrench needed to handle them. In words, left to right: Chinese Big M6 Nozzle size 8 metric wrench, 4 mm thread length, 1 mm clearance, extends a minimum of 8 mm from the heater block Chinese Small M6 Nozzle size 7 metric wrench, 4 mm thread length, 1 mm clearance, extends a minimum of 8 mm from the heater block e3D v6 normal (aka NOT volcano etc) size 7 metric wrench, 6 mm thread length, 2 mm clearance, extends a minimum of 5 mm from the heater block Replaceability Chinese big to Chinese small nozzles in either hotend Due to the dimensions, one can easily swap the big and small Chinese nozzles for one another. They are virtually interchangeable but differ in the wear patterns. Chinese nozzles in e3D Hotend The 3 mm shorter snout and deeper butting with the heatbreak of the e3D nozzle in its designed hotend make it hard to swap a Chinese nozzle into an e3D setup: neither does the thread allow to screw the nozzle in the right length sometimes, it also extends much further. To accommodate, the whole heater block has to be screwed about 3 mm more onto the heatbreak, then the nozzle gets screwed in. The result is equal in overall length. e3D Nozzle in Chinese Hotend However, the long thread of the e3D Nozzle allows it to be mounted in a hotend designed to hold a Chinese nozzle without trouble - the 3 mm of difference in the body are used for a longer thread and clearance between thread and body, resulting in the same overall length without changing the mounting position of the heater block on the heatbreak. Internals Stefan of CNC-Kitchen recently tortured a couple of nozzles for science and investigating wear and tear (video). He found out a couple of differences on the internals: The Chinese nozzle had a non-straight pattern on the inside The angle in the feeding cone is 60° in an e3D and 90° in the Chinese sample Conclusion The Chinese Style nozzles can be interchanged for one another. an e3D style nozzle with standard length (aka not-volcano) can be swapped in for any Chinese Style nozzle. A Chinese Style nozzle needs to have the heater block shifted if mounted into an e3D hotend.

Would a really short melt-zone be beneficial IANAE (I am not an engineer), but I've been wondering: wouldn't it make more sense to limit the length of the melt-zone and hot-end as much as possible? I've been having a lot of problems with nylon causing jams inside the heat-block, this being the region where the filament is no longer rigid, but becomes squishy then liquid as it is heated. In my extruder (E3d v6) there is a cold section, then a heat-break then about 20mm of hot-end. If the heating of the filament took place at the last possible moment, say the last couple of mm before the orifice, wouldn't this not only alleviate jamming problems caused by soft filament deforming, but also allow for much more precision with extrusion - less hysteresis due to the reduced volume of semi-liquid material. I'd imagine that this would work by having a heated nozzle tip, say a nichrome ring around the nozzle orifice, and as the filament hits the inside of the bottom of the nozzle it melts and is forced out the hole.

There is a trade-off between the length of the melt zone and the speed at which you can print. The filament itself is somewhat of an insulator, so as the outside of the filament is heated up by being in contact with the melt zone, the inside stays cold. Therefore, the filament needs a certain amount of time inside the melt zone for the inside to fully melt. If you have a shorter melt zone, you need to print more slowly to give the filament enough time to melt. This is precisely the reason why the E3D volcano exists. It has a longer melt zone, so you can print more quickly. You can partially compensate for a shorter melt zone by heating the nozzle up more, but there is an upper limit to how hot you can go (you don't want the outside of the filament to burn before the inside is melted).

What's smoother? Acetone treated PLA or ABS From my understanding, both PLA and ABS can be treated with acetone to make them smoother. So when they are treated with acetone, which is smother PLA or ABS or are they about the same? When I search online, all I find is how to treat the objects.

ABS filaments will smooth well with using acetone, it's been used for a while now. For PLA filaments it's a different story, pure PLA will not smooth out in acetone and it will likely only cause structural failure of the product. However most PLA filaments aren't pure PLA, they contain additives including ABS that react differently when exposed to acetone and the reaction will really depend on the manufacturer of the filament, only a few PLA filaments are known to smooth like ABS when in an acetone vapor bath, it is the case for ColorFabb PLA filaments and it is absolutely not the case for bq PLA filaments that only soften and break when exposed to acetone. You'll have to make small tests with different brands of filament to see which smooth well and which don't but if you want to go fast either go with ABS or use other smoothing techniques such as sanding + 3D print Smooth On epoxy.

Why are there so many print speed parameters in slicers? The expert mode of Slic3r PE has almost a dozen speed values: I understand that ultimately print speed at a particular temperature correlates with bond strength, so things like bridges and the first layer having different speeds are reasonable. What about the rest? Why does infill have 3 variations? How are the different categories listed impacted distinctly from any other form of layer/path bonding?

There are multiple parameters because of the trade-off at print speeds. Slow printing will have less ghosting and a better overall quality, but it takes way more time. Fast printing will be fast (oh thank you, Captain Obvious), but you will get stronger ghostings and poorer line quality overall. Maybe some strange artifacts. But you don't need a good print quality in areas that are not visible at all, but you do need it for the outer shell. Also, is the travel mostly just something that you want done as fast as possible but maybe not so fast that that the whole printer starts shaking? So, you want to set different parameters for different parts. Next reason: most slicers are used for a large variation of printers, and every printer is a litte bit different—even the same printer type with different addons (like a vanilla Anet A8 vs. a beefed up Anet A8). For the slicer to be able to be used by all these printers, it is necessary to be able to set multiple parameters. To get deeper into your question about the different infill speeds: if you print a solid infill you will also need to give the printed material more time to cool down, because it is packed tightly and there is not much surface area for heat to get away. If you print these areas too fast you will end up with a part that is too warm and warps and deforms all the time while the next layers were printed on already, inserting even more heat into the part and isolating the warm parts from the outside. You can observe similar behavior when printing overhanging areas with thick walls: there the part will stay in a semi-solid state, and deforms all the time. But how fast you have to go depends on the cooling system you have on your printer.

Out of order operations on AnyCubic Prusa-I3 clone Another thing I'm seeing with my new build. Late in a small print, the unit appears to perform operations "out of order" occasionally. Here's a picture where it's running a layer across the model. These "skips" can start in the middle of a line. It always comes back and fills them in before starting the next layer - more or less accurately. But from my very limited understanding of gcode, it doesn't seem like this should happen. When watching the print closely, I'll occasionally see small glitches, where the head jogs very slightly as it runs a line across. This was sliced with Cura - I'm going to try a different slicer and see if I get anything similar. Thanks!

This is just your slicer doing this. If you inspect the G-code file, you will see that the printer is faithfully doing what the slicer told it to. Most slicers use a fairly simple heuristic for determining the order in which lines are processed, which sometimes comes up with sub-optimal solutions like these.

Makerbot Replicator 2X - restarts after heating Really need some help. Let me run you through as much as possible. I have a Replicator 2x. I've owned this for around 2 weeks now (used). after some teething issues I've been printing really well all week. I left a print for the first time to run on its own and when I returned it had stopped after approx 10 % was still on and on the main menu screen. I removed the partial print and, since then, when I go to print or preheat it will reset near the maximum temperatures (230 °C extruder and 110 °C platform). Individually setting these, all achieve desired temperatures, and filament change still works. I swapped the left-hand-side (LHS) extruder parts for the right-hand-side (RHS) and tried a reprint, same result. I swapped the wiring at the board to use the LHS extruder wiring for the RHS. same. Disconnected the stepper motors and same issue. Reinstalled firmware; same result... It was running the MM2X (dual extrusion) upgrade, and I was supplied with the original extruder and thermocouples, spent afternoon swapping and this has the same issue. By reset, the whole unit goes dark (LCD and LED), beeps and back to main menu. It works with the bed unplugged, or the extruder heater unplugged, but not with both plugged in. Heard this being called brown out. I'm guessing its the Mightyboard or the power pack. All lights are green on the board during running. I have a multimeter and can test the board if known values or a guide location is available. Any help would be great, pulling my hair out.

"Im guessing its the mightyboard or the power pack." Right track there. Usually this symptom suggests your heaters are overtaxing your power supplies. Since you swapped extruders already, the heating elements and sensors in those are not likely to be an issue. That leaves the bed heating element and power supply. A resistance measurement can help rule out the bed heater but since it works without the extruder, its probably not a severe issue there. If I had to guess, I'd say power supply. If you can, rig up a meter to measure its output and cause the issue. If the voltage drops drastically in tune with your screen going dark, try to replace with a beefier (higher amperage) one.

Show the time index in Cura Layer View playback Cura has a layer view feature that lets you watch a simulation of the extruder head as it lays down material at each layer. Is it possible to get Cura to show a time stamp as it does this? That would let me set reminders to check a print just at certain critical times.

These estimates tend to be very approximate, even if Cura has the accurate acceleration values for your firmware. An error of 100% is not unusual. What you probably want is an alarm at a specific layer (a few before the critical ones). You might be able to add this to Octoprint fairly easily - it does support plugins which can provide (for example) pushbullet notifications. I'm not sure that 'critical' points are much more likely to fail than other less predictable things (like bed adheesion failure, extruder jams, filament breaks) - unless you're testing features (and then hopefully you can print only a slice of the part).

Question about retraction distance and stringing/print quality with PETG I've tried printing the Basic Stringing Test on my CR-10S using PETG (250 °C nozzle, 80 °C bed) with different retraction distances leaving all the rest unchanged. In the image below you can see 0 mm, 5 mm and 10 mm retractions (in order left-to-right). The result stunned me because I would have imagined that raising retraction distance would have diminished the stringing. Why is that?

You cannot endlessly increase the retraction distance, doing so leads to different problems as you encountered. As a rule of thumb, the retraction distance should not exceed the length of your nozzle. Depending on the type of extruder, many printers use a value between 2 and 7 mm (e.g. the Ultimaker Cura retraction length is 6.5 mm at 25 mm/s, this is for a Bowden style extruder). In fighting stringing (in which PETG is very subjected to happening) retraction length is only one of the parameters that you need to adjust to optimize the printing process. Other important parameters (besides retraction length) for stringing are: retraction speed travel speed minimum travel distance Furthermore, the type of extruder (direct or Bowden) is also important and other parameters that may reduce the stringing are: coasting (stop extruding before the end of the print line is reached using the residual pressure in the nozzle to extrude the last filament) pre-loading/priming filament after a move Usually it suffices to tune the first 4 parameters. As you see in your results, the retraction of 5 mm is close to the result you would expect, increasing it, may lead to clogs and in your case leads to a sort of stringing. This latter result is probably due to the fact that the filament does not reach the print in time (you definitely see under-extruded cylinder columns), while leftover pressure after printing the column layer oozes some of the filament creating strings. Just play with the retraction length in steps of 0.25 mm (around the 5 mm) and you may try to change the speed with 5 mm/s increments if necessary.

What’s the best way of leveling the bed? Recently I’ve been having trouble leveling my bed on my Creality Ender 3 Pro. It’s not that it’s hard to level or anything, it’s that it won’t stay level for more than a day or two. I’ve been leveling it the same way as always with a piece of paper and I’ve been sure to disable steppers. So if anyone knows what I can do about this, please let me know.

Generally, there is no best way, there are only the ways that work for you. I use a feeler gauge, mounted on a detachable holder. I home to 0, lift the Z by 1 mm, and then level the bed to the same number on the screws and corners. Then I home back to Z=0 and perform an extrusion test, and if that is not satisfactory, use a different number for the leveling. The number on the plunger does not generally read 1 mm, as there is an offset between the 0 of the gauge and the printer. When I don't level from 0 or am in a hurry, I usually only alter leveling by doing about 2-5° turns on all the screws to adjust the 0-height via the nuts, using the visual of the printed line as my aide. This only works because I have the experience how a good first layer should look like. Another typical method that I stopped using once I had the feeler gauge is the paper, but I found it inconsistent. Do not do these: Leveling the bed with a level does not lead to good prints - your print bed needs to be parallel to the movement of the printhead, not to the earth!