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Under extrusion towards the end of the print I have really strange problem. Thing is that my print (first layer) started ok, not good nor perfect but ok and everything was going well but then all of a sudden, near the end of a print, quality drops drastically. I'm not really sure but I think this happened because of under extrusion. I'm not so good with English so here are pictures of finished print and some more details. I'm using custom build Delta printer with RepRap and Repetier firmware, CURA for slicing and Repetier-host for printing. Slicing parameters in CURA are: - ABS 250 °C hotend and 70 °C heatbed - Layer height 0.2 mm (initial layer 0.18) - Printing speed 50 mm/s (30 mm/s outer walls) - Infill 40 % - Extrusion multiplayer 0.96 (96 %) Do anyone have any ideas? What this can be? How can I fix this?

Do anyone have any ideas? What this can be? How can I fix this? At least judging from the pictures, that does seem like under-extrusion. Some ideas for further investigating the issue. The problem may be due to the gcode being wrong. In this case, your printer is merely executing correctly... the wrong commands. To check if this is the case: The easiest, but inconclusive way, would be to re-slice a model that fails consistently, with a different slicer. If the second print came out good, than you would know that the problem is with the slicer. This method is inconclusive because you wouldn't not if the gcode is bad or if it simply happens that your printer cannot print well that specific sequence of commands (which may still be emitted by the other slicer under different conditions). The more conclusive analysis would be to look at the gcode of a failed print where the fail happens between two geometrical identical layers. This seem to be the case for the print in the picture, btw. You should then compare the gcode of the layer that printed good with that of the layer that printed poorly. If the gcode differs... then you positively know the slicer doesn't work as it should. The problem may be due to a mechanical fault with the printer. Here the only idea I have to offer is overheating of the steppers and/or their controllers. This may in turn make the extruder servo skip some steps and therefore extrude less filament. If you perform the conclusive test above, you will know if this is the case. The problem may be due to a firmware bug. This is difficult to investigate, my only suggestion would be: upgrade to the latest and greatest, if you haven't done it already. The problem may be filament-related. This could be a number of things, but since the problem seems to happen at towards the end of the print, and your are printing at relatively high temp, an idea could be that too much heat reaches the cold end of the extruder, interfering with its extrusion. The easiest test here would simply be to re-print a failed print with a different filament. In your case I would suggest some PLA, just to decrease the temperature and change the chemical composition too. These are more or less all shots in the dark, but - together with asking here - it would be what I would do to debug, had I the same problem. Keep up posted! :)

Issues with direct g-code transmission via serial port Model of the printer is unknown, got it as present, probably something generic cartesian on arduino mega and ramps boards stitched together and with marlin firmware. I've used accepted answer from here to try moving this thing from terminal. How to directly send G-code to printer from a Linux terminal? My first attempt to get access to low-level printer interface looked like that: ./baud.py <> /dev/ttyACM0 250000 tail -f /dev/ttyACM0 & cat > /dev/ttyACM0 First it was fine: i've entered g-code, printer executed it and returned an ok message into my terminal. Then i've turned the printer off and on again and repeated the whole process, but now tail -f didn't output anything and printer LCD displayed garbage in the status line after I ran the command. I've also noticed that printer controller reboots every time the serial port is accessed, not sure if it happened in the first time when everything worked well. The output of cat /dev/ttyACM0 after baud setting is a bit weird too - and there's garbage in the status line instead of standard "%printername% ready" as well: start echo:Marlin1.0.0 echo: Last Updated: May 20 2017 18:12:04 | Author: (none, default config) Compiled: May 20 2017 echo: Free Memory: 3763 PlannerBufferBytes: 1232 echo:Hardcoded Default Settings Loaded echo:Steps per unit: echo: M92 X80.00 Y80.00 Z3200.00 E97.94 echo:Maximum feedrates (mm/s): echo: M203 X50.00 Y50.00 Z2.50 E25.00 echo:Maximum Acceleration (mm/s2): echo: M201 X750 Y750 Z100 E10000 echo:Acceleration: S=acceleration, T=retract acceleration echo: M204 S500.00 T500.00 echo:Advanced variables: S=Min feedrate (mm/s), T=Min travel feedrate (mm/s), B=minimum segment time (ms), X=maximum XY jerk (mm/s), Z=maximum Z jerk (mm/s), E=maximum E jerk (mm/s) echo: M205 S0.00 T0.00 B20000 X20.00 Z1.00 E5.00 echo:Home offset (mm): echo: M206 X0.00 Y0.00 Z0.00 echo:PID settings: echo: M301 P22.20 I1.08 D114.00 echo:SD init fail echo:Unknown command: "starto" ok echo:Unknown command: "SD init failstartuthor" ok echo:Unknown command: " (none, default config)50.00 Z2.50 E2rBy00.00 Y0.00 Z0.00echo" ok echo:Unknown command: "Unknown command" ok echo:Unknown command: " "starto"own comm" ok echo:Unknown command: "aximum XY jerk (mm/s), Z=maximum Z jerk (mm/s), E=maximum E jerk (mm/s)echo" ok echo:Unknown command: "PID settings" ok echo:Unknown command: "okechecho" ok The "SD init fail" line and everything after it appears when sensor data appears on the LCD, there's a delay before that during which the LCD is empty. If you send commands to printer using something like echo "G0 X10" > /dev/ttyACM0, it executes them only on next serial port accessing (and therefore reboot) - or doesn't execute at all. The interesting part is that Cura "Monitor" tab can actually manipulate the caret and the Cura itself can print things in general - but i want to be able to do it manually.

Mine is a wild guess, but judging from: echo:Unknown command: "starto" ok echo:Unknown command: "SD init failstartuthor" ok echo:Unknown command: " (none, default config)50.00 Z2.50 E2rBy00.00 Y0.00 Z0.00echo" ok echo:Unknown command: "Unknown command" ok echo:Unknown command: " "starto"own comm" ok echo:Unknown command: "aximum XY jerk (mm/s), Z=maximum Z jerk (mm/s), E=maximum E jerk (mm/s)echo" ok echo:Unknown command: "PID settings" ok It looks like you may be looping back the output of your printer as an input to itself. I am very suspicious of your line: tail -f /dev/ttyACM0 & as that seems to indicate your are trying to perform other actions in the same terminal window after you started to monitor the serial connection. If this is the case, you should definitively open the monitor in a separate terminal (tail -f /dev/ttyACM0) and feed the input in a different one (note that yo must not use the final &). Finally, you probably want to use cat >> /dev/ttyACM0 instead of cat > /dev/ttyACM0 as you want to append your commands without truncating the existing stream.

Slic3r - Can I add new infill patterns? Slic3r comes with a handful of infill patterns/algorithms, including Rectilinear, Hexagon, 3D Hexagon, Concentric, and Hilbert Curve. Are there any patterns/algorithms already made and available that I can add to Slic3r? If so, how can I add them in?

Although the core of Slic3r is written in C++ a lot of other components such as infill generation are written in Perl. Since Slic3r is open source there is nothing stopping you from writing your own infill module in Perl and recompiling your own version of Slic3r. If your considering doing this you can find the existing infill code in the Github repository at https://github.com/alexrj/Slic3r/tree/master/lib/Slic3r/Fill Instructions on how to run from source can be found at http://slic3r.org/download Here is a commit where a new infill pattern is added. This should show you all the parts of the codebase that must be modified to add a new infill model (some trivial C++ modifications appear to be necessary in addition to the Perl code) https://github.com/alexrj/Slic3r/commit/2811af349ae17230a525ddcf819b1ddffaa250c9

How does the home position work on a Prusa i3 RepRap Printer? By what process does the Prusa i3 determine it's home position? I have a feeling that it works like this, but I'm not entirely sure about it: If none of the end stops are activated; assume you are somewhere between Max-X, Max-Y, Max-Z and the point 0,0,0. do For axis in Axies If axis endstop not signaling subtract 100 steps from axis. while endstops are not signaling, or if point 0,0,0 not reached;

It works like you describe, but it does not move all axes at the same time. It first moves the X-axis, subtracting steps while the X endstop is not pressed. When the X-axis is is homed (the X-endstop is gets pressed) it repeats the procedure for the Y-axis and finally the Z-axis.

Print speed and settings for printing below 0.1mm resolution on PLA I recently purchased an Anycubic Kossel Linear Plus delta printer, and I'm interested in trying to print slightly below the 0.1 mm stated lower limit of layer height. I'm not interested in trying to push much below 0.06 mm, more just 0.08 mm to give some better surface roughness on critical parts. I've found several articles that suggest that going below 0.1 mm requires lowering the printing speed, but the top answer on this question suggests that there are flow rates to consider in order to prevent jamming. I'm referring to PLA in particular as I have read that the filament viscosity is also a factor, with ABS differing from PLA. I'm interested in some benchmark settings, preferably for 0.08 mm printing. What is the ballpark range my print speed should be in to successfully print at that height?

To answer this question for anyone who will find this of use, I printed this calibration cube at 25mm to a side (125% scale in Cura) with my Kossel Plus using the following settings: 0.08 mm layer height 45 mm/s print speed 200°C extruder temperature with PLA Based on articles I read, I wanted to play it safe with the speed, staying well below the printer's rated speed of 60 mm/s, but still keeping the speed reasonably high to avoid any nozzle flow issues as describe in the linked question. The results were pretty good for a first test; the deviations, as measured with calipers: X: -0.09 mm Y: +0.38 mm Z: +0.11 mm This makes the average deviation across all axes about 0.13 mm, which is better than what I was hoping for, as that is about 5/3 of a layer's thickness. Whether or not running slower (or faster) or modifying temperature will result in better accuracy, I cannot be sure - but in this case, running the speed conservatively yielded positive results.

Ender 3 Pro + SKR mini E3 1.2 + BLtouch doesn't work with downloaded bin file I have a Ender 3 Pro V1. I installed the Bigtreetech SKR mini E3 V1.2 + TFT35 touchscreen + Antclabs BLTouch + a pre compiled bin from here . the board works the screen works the BLTouch is erratic A) it tries to exceed the X limits and makes the loud clicking sound while performing the bed leveling. it even tries to move past the X end stop switch. B) when printing, it moves to the far right rear corner and extrudes off of the bed. C) OctoPrint can no longer connect with the printer. I think this is just a problem with how the bed size is setup and it identifying the limits of the print. I just can't figure out how to configure and compile a working bin file.

A) it tries to exceed the X limits and makes the loud clicking sound while performing the bed leveling. it even tries to move past the X end stop switch. This tells me that the firmware you use is faulty - it has a faulty bed-size or home. B)when printing, it moves to the far right rear corner and extrudes off of the bed. This can be intended in the G-code, or bad homing, again, firmware home position. C) octoprint can no longer connect with the printer. This, again is a thing that happens if the firmware is not configured properly or flashed correctly. You might have accidentally chosen the wrong firmware distribution - your config points to the Ender 3 - SKR Mini E3 v1.2 - BLTouch, not the Ender 3 v1.5 or v2 (slightly different hardware), and possibly adjust the proper homing position.

How to change temperature every 25 layers (or 5 mm) in Ultimaker Cura or G-code? I want to print this heat tower calibration test. The instructions say to change the temperature every 25 layers. It also tells me to use G-Code command M104 Sxxx First, is there a way to specify this command using Ultimaker Cura? If not, how do I do so in the G-code file? I see that the G-code file is just a plain text file with a command per line presumably. Do I just insert M104 S225 at one point and then M104 S220...? If so, how do I know where the 25th layer is?

Every time you see a Z movement that matches the layer height (eg. 0.20 mm) you can assume that is the end/start of one "layer". It should have a line like: ;Layer count: 17 ;LAYER:0. ; mine has this as the first layer M107 G0 F2400 X67.175 Y61.730 Z0.250. ; moves to Z0.250 mm for the first layer, with layer thickness 0.25 mm Then later: ;LAYER:1 M106 S255 G0 F2400 X78.078 Y69.627 Z0.550 ; 2nd layer. So search for "Z" or "Layer" and once you've seen 25 of these "small" movements (comparing to previous Z movement?), insert your line of code at the end of the layer commands. Don't confuse it with large Z-movements, that may correspond to move up/retract filaments. Depending on your goals for the print, maybe you also want to insert a wait time - say a minute or two for the new temp to stabilize? Here is the line for that: G4 P200 ; Sit still doing nothing for 200 milliseconds.

Sketchup designed "Block with hole" printed solid in Cura When I export my SketchUp STL model to Cura it looks good in solid mode but in the layers mode some holes are filled up. To find the reason why, I broke down the original model by deleting the parts that come out ok, and ended up with a block 50x100 mm with a hole 30x20 mm in it. This simple stucture looks manifold, no double lines etc, and does not have red parts in Cura xray. Cura shows the model as expected, but in layers mode the hole is filled up. I spent many hours to find out, but so far my only solution is to start over again drawing a complete new model and even then this happens again. I'm using SketchUp 2019, Cura 4, Meshlab 2020 What goes wrong here? How can I repair this with Meshlab? STL file available on request.

Problem Statement SketchUp does not always create STLs in ways that are closed, watertight manifolds - a block with a bore is, if created as a block first and then bored out, actually 2 surfaces if made with SketchUp: a cylinder with its normals facing inside and no top and bottom a block that has 2 holes in opposite surfaces The two surfaces are not connected. As a result, Cura sees two non-manifolds and tries to fix each of them - the cylinder with the normals facing inside is considered an artifact that can't be fixed, the holes in the block are stitched and thus turned into a solid block. Fixing To repair the issue, you could load the item into for example MeshMixer, which allows to separate and show the different surfaces (shells) and run a rather good auto-fix. Another program that, with a little handiwork could help is blender. In blender you can first import the STL, then merge the vertices at the edge of the bore and cut cube and thus turn the two shells into one neatly, then re-export it as an STL. I strongly suggest to just add it to your Steam library if you want to keep it up to date.

Can I resolder a power connections with a partially burnt board Recently my RAMPS power connector caught fire while heating the heated bed. I suspect this was a defect caused by the connector, and de-soldered/removed it as best I could. I'm not an electrical engineer, so I'm looking for advice on whether It is possible to re-solder the power connectors directly onto the board, or I'm just risking another fire. Here are pictures of the top and bottom.

Possible? Yes. Advisable? Perhaps not. Since it is the power connection, I would be tempted to solder the cables directly to the board. If the board is found to work, I would then install an external MOSFET for the heated bed, to reduce the amount of current that the controller has to handle.

Pololu - connect motor supply ground and logic supply ground Is it okay to directly connect together the grounds of the logic supply and the motor supply when using a Pololu style stepper driver? If yes/no, why so?

That depends on how much noise you have on your motor power supply ground. You definitely want the 100 µF capacitor to have a good high frequency response. Motors turning on and off can be noisy, and that noise can cause false clock signals in your logic circuitry if you tie the grounds together.

How Do Tool Path Algorithms Decide Which Direction to Print a Closed-Loop Polygon I understand how slicer programs create sets of closed-loop polygons to print on a layer-by-layer basis. For a given closed loop polygon which needs to be printed, the tool path generator will know the coordinates and how those coordinates are connected to each other, such that traversing a set of segments in that order will bring the extruder head back to the first coordinate to complete the closed loop. My question is: By what mechanism does the tool path generator decide which direction to traverse the closed loop? As it is a loop, that loop could be printed "clockwise" or "counter-clockwise", as it were. Any details, and links to further explanations of how some of the big-name slicer programs determine this is much appreciated.

While this answer makes a valid attempt at answering the question, it is based on personal experience. I went to the literature and directly to the source code in Cura to find the answer. In the academic article "Identifying the Directions of a Set of 2D Contours for Additive Manufacturing Process Planning", Volpato et al. describe several methods for identifying the arbitrary directions of each contour in each layer, and additionally identifying which contours were "internal" and which were "external". I quote from the paper: The information regarding contour direction, which is either clockwise (CW — internal) or counterclockwise (CCW — external), is needed for path planning for material processing. They go on to explain the importance of identifying which contours are external, and which are internal, such that the path planning algorithm can later determine where infill should be placed. Infill is placed internal to any external contours, and external to any internal contours. When the normal vectors in STL models are assumed to be correct, a simple way to identify whether a 2D contour is CW or CCW is to analyze the vector (cross) product between a normal vector and a vector obtained from two vertices of the facet. This assumes the slicer has already determined intersection points between slicing planes and the STL file, and has sorted those intersection points into closed-contours. This initial intersection point gathering and contour construction leads to an arbitrary directionality: As any line segment of a contour can be the first in the sequence when the segments are connected, its orientation will dictate the direction of the contour. Hence, the 2D contours formed are classified randomly, and an external contour, for example, might be assigned a CW or CCW direction. Therefore, this step is unable to correctly identify the directions of the contours generated. The ray-tracing method, which is actually based on the point-in-polygon test, determines which contours are contained by others, and the orientation of each contour is then alternated between CCW and CW, the outermost contours being oriented CCW. So, the default directionality of a closed contour generated by a slicing program for FDM additive manufacturing turns out to be CCW based on cross products described above (and based on additional methods outlined in the paper). Of course the standard directionality of a PRINTED contour does not HAVE to be this way, it appears to be a standard adopted by the AM community. However, when a model produces contours inside of contours, the arbitrary directionality of those contours is determined, and then alternated from outside to inside, starting with CCW. As confirmation, according to a simple comment in the CURA source code: /*! * Outer polygons should be counter-clockwise, * inner hole polygons should be clockwise. * (When negative X is to the left and negative Y is downward.) */

Zortrax m200 skipping through menu options on it own and live print bed Out of the blue I’ve noticed my m200 has been skipping through menu options as if someone is pushing and scrolling the control knob randomly. Then getting a print off today I got several small electric shocks off the print bed through the spatula. Does anyone have experience of this or to I have a £1500 paperweight?

This sounds really concerning. Instantly remove the machine from the power and check EVERY wire if it might be broken! Check if your power supply is properly grounded! Check if the connectors of the bed are undamaged!

How to increase the printing quality when using abs (slicer config)? I have checked several different sites giving different configurations for the slicer. Let's say that the average extruder temperature is 230°C. I know that the complexity of the object matters a lot for the printing quality. What I am concerning is the deposition rate (mm/min), and, the infill type (e.g. honeycomb, rectangular). Which impact the inner infill has in the printing quality? Due to time reasons maximal allowed infill is 50%. I have a Geetech Prusa REpRap I3. Thanks for you help guys!!

maybe this will help you out... Iam using a Ultimaker 2+, only with ABS filament, and the software Cura. Cura is a good software but you cannot edit every option like in other slicers, Iam just using the default ABS profile. Most of the times Iam printing in 0.2mm quality, speed varies, smaller objects get printed slower. My max speed when printing is 40mm/s. The Buildplate heats up to 90°, I tend to increase the heat to 98° - 100°. The more I increase that the lesser warping I will get. But Iam using bluetape also, so warping is no big issue anyway. The noozle should be heated to 260°, thats the cura default. On very small or thin parts I activate the fan immediatly, on big parts Iam not using the fan. I also print the small parts really slow. I had no problems regarding the outer-walls and the infill (no cave building or stuff like that), but this is maybe dependent on the outer-wall-thickness. I mostly use a wall-thickness of over 1mm. Iam always using rectangular pattern, and mostly an infill under 30%. I get good quality prints, and nearly no warping because of the bluetape. Otherwise I didnt change any options in Cura, the flow rate is default. Sorry for the late edit, here are my default cura settings:

Can 1.75 mm filament be used in a printer that takes 3 mm filament? As an extension from this question, is there any reason that you would not be able to use 1.75 mm filament in a printer that takes 3mm filament? I know you would have to change the filament size in the slicing of prints but would there be any other problems? Also, would using 1.75 mm filament be possible if the nozzle diameter was greater than 1.75 mm but less than 3 mm?

Typically an extruder and hot end are designed for one or the other, and cannot support the other without mechanical changes. The extruder may not be able to grip a smaller diameter filament with enough force to assure even feeding and retraction. The hot end, however, is much more complex. The filament has to be pushed with force into the melting zone, which means the filament has to slide along an area inside the hot end where the filament is plastic but still put pressure on the filament ahead of it. When you put filament into a hot end, the filament softens before the melt zone, but since the walls of the hot end are just barely larger than the filament it has no choice but to continue pressing down on the liquid filament below. With a narrower diameter filament, though, the filament can heat, soften, then travel backwards along the sides of the hot end and cool in place, jamming the hot end, or at least preventing an even continuous flow of plastic. Some hot ends will accept a small Teflon tube that takes this space up and allows you to do this with fewer issues, and if you like to tinker you can experiment with this, but be prepared to learn a lot and fail a lot as you find out the hard lessons of hot end design. Generally you should upgrade your entire extruder and hot end setup to the size you want to use.

How do slicers convert an STL file to G-Code? I was wondering how slicers work, how their code runs to generate a G-Code file. How is an STL file interpreted through a slicer. How does the math work for generating supports, build plate adhesion? I couldn't find any information, so can anyone help with this technical question Ryan

Slicing in General An STL is a set of triangle surfaces. A Watertight STL - for slicing purposes - has surfaces that always create closed outlines if cut parallel to the XY plane. A Slicer does exactly that: it creates plane-cuts at the indicated Z-heights, takes the plane-cut's outline(s), and decides a direction and order in which to follow the generated path. Then it uses this outline to generate the infill pattern, for example, as explained here. The more paths there are and the smaller the triangles that are cut up, the more complex the solution process becomes and the longer it takes. Support calculation A slicer usually identifies areas that need support by calculating at which angle an STL Surface cuts a given plane cut. Under standard settings, this would be about less than 60° to the XY-plane with the normal of the surface having a negative Z-component - which means that a needle poking out of that surface points towards the bed. The most simple form of support generation simply generates a grid pattern between such areas and the bed or next surface below. Tree support on the other tries to generate a support structure that bends around the object without intersecting and only relying on the support of itself. Build Plate adhesion A skirt and brim are just taking the outline of the build-plate intersection and surround that with outlines. A Raft is generated like the simple support case, but taking the whole base of the object, adding a little edge around it and then generating the support grid there.

How to attach bowden tubing to other side of extruder? I built a drybox to house the filament roll but now I have to figure out how to attach the PTFE bowden tubing to the other side of the extruder. Currently the filament just feeds in through the countersunk hole on the MK8 CR-10 style extruder tension lever, but is too close to the Z leadscrew to tap the hole and put a PC4-M6 push fitting. What is the preferred way to attach this? THanks!

There are several ways to mount a PTFE tubing to the extruder's feeding side. Connector solution You'll need a pair of PTFE tubing couplers, a length of PTFE tubing and tapping tools for the mounting, and the lever should be metal: Disassemble the extruder Take the intake side lever open up the intake hole to your PTFE tube connector's inner diameter (that is the diameter, where you cut the thread from!) tap the hole screw in PTFE coupler connect to intake tube Repeat 3 to 6 for the drybox side, possibly add a nut from the inside Feed filament through the tube If you have a plastic side, it reads like this, and you will need an insert that fits your adapter's screw: Disassemble the extruder Take the intake side lever open up the intake hole to a bit under your insert's outer diameter use a soldering iron to melt the insert into the lever screw in PTFE coupler connect to intake tube Repeat 3 to 6 for the drybox side Feed filament through the tube free "inner" side Instead of using 2 connectors on either end of the tube, the one on the extruder can just be "slid" into the block and then fastened. disassemble the extruder take the intake side lever drill open till the PTFE tube can slide in snugly into its rest position against an inner ledge. For REALLY hygroscopic material, drill through drill a side-hole and use a small screw to fasten the tube in place alternatively, use hot glue on the outside and secure the tube.

How to slice thin curved wall I'm trying to print a part with thin walls. I've designed it with wall 1.2 mm thick, so that I should get three 0.4 mm lines. This works just fine for the straight lines, but for the radiused corners, Cura 4.3 insists on trying to print infill. This infill is only added where they are going at a tangent to the curve, so it alternates corners on alternate layers. Worse, it prints the segments entirely out of order, which adds lots of travel and hence print time. I've tried setting the infill to 100 %, setting the wall thickness directly to 3 rather than the default 2. I've tried reducing the wall thickness by 0.2-0.3 mm. I've tried a few other things too - all to no avail. Some layers it gets right: So why can't it get them all right?? I presume that this is probably caused by the fact that the curves are actually a series of straight segments, and so the centre gap between outer 0.4 mm walls will not be exactly 0.4 mm all the way round, but is there any way to just force Cura to print three lines all the way round? Now, I know that this will print OK, but the corners will obviously look messier than they need to, and this is not the first time I've come across this problem. I'd like to get this fixed. I have found a similar question, but it's for an older version of Cura, and the recommended solution of 100 % infill doesn't help.

Even though each path, in theory, is concentric around the center point of the arc, the pathing does not always work out that way - especially around corners and radii. While your 1.2mm walls should always allow for three 0.4mm paths, if the slicer rounds down the overall thickness to 1.19mm, it will not detect enough room for three 0.4mm paths - but three 0.39mm paths should still fit, even if the slicer determines the thinnest part to be 1.17 mm.

Proper settings for printing rubber and rubber-like materials? I am struggling finding how to print complex shapes made of rubber, tpu, tpe... Are there any clear guidelines on how to print those materials without deforming and uncontrolled retraction? The printer is not a problem, I can print on: Delta WASP (the one I am specifically looking advice for) Makerbot 5th MB Z18 Sharebot NG Ultimaker 2 Thank you!

First off, you need the right extruder design. Specifically, the filament path between the drive gear or hob and hot end must be extremely well-constrained. 1.75mm TPE filaments (thermoplastic elastomers) will buckle in an instant if given the chance. That means they will try to squeeze out of any little opening in the filament drive path rather than being forced through the nozzle. Is there a gap >1mm anywhere between your extruder drive gear and hot end? Including the groove in the drive gear itself. If so, either change extruders or print something to fill the gap. Many popular extruders already have Ninjaflex conversion parts uploaded on Thingiverse or Youmagine. Are you using a 1.75mm bowden drive? You probably shouldn't bother with the softer TPEs like Ninaflex. Harder TPEs like Semiflex may be ok, but it's still difficult. 3mm bowden drives may perform ok. Direct drive extruders are highly recommend. TPUs (thermoplastic urethanes) in particular can be sticky in the filament feed path between the spool and extruder. Try to minimize corners and turns (even inside PTFE tubes) between the extruder and spool. As a general rule of thumb, don't exceed 180 degrees of cumulative tube curvature in the entire path from the spool to the nozzle. Once your filament feed path is fully enclosed, the filament will be constrained and unable to squeeze out the side or wrap around your drive gear. That's the most important step. The next problem is simply loading the filament. Purging out PLA or ABS with a soft TPE can be challenging because of the force required to purge the old material. Many default loading routines are actually too fast for TPEs and will cause the TPE filament to bunch up rather than purging the previous material. It tends to extrude better when there is nothing else in the way. Some tips: Do some cold-pulls to clear out the hot end as much as possible before loading the TPE. (Nylon is ideal for this. Preheat to nylon temps, run through some nylon, let the extruder cool to ~180C, and then forcefully pull out the nylon. If you can't pull it out, pull hotter. If it leaves nylon behind, pull colder.) If you have a high-melting plastic like PET or nylon in the hot end, purge with a lower-melting solid filament like PLA first. This will reduce the viscosity of the old material when inserting the TPE. If your printer has a fixed loading speed, consider making a gcode file with nothing but a preheat and very slow extruder move as a custom loading script. If you fail to load and jam up the TPE, try again! Sometimes it takes a few load/unload cycles to get the old material purged and a clean feed going. The final issue is print settings. You ever hear the saying, "you can't push a rope"? That's kind of what you're fighting with TPEs. With a properly constrained feed path, you can push rubber, but not very hard. So minimizing extrusion force is the name of the game. Print SLOW to start. Like 10mm/s. You can dial it up once you're getting good results. This will minimize nozzle back-pressure and reduce the amount of "pushing a rope" that the extruder drive must do. Retract as little as possible. Turn off "optional" retractions in your slicer, such as during layer changes. Some people even print with no retraction at all, and use high travel speeds and coast/wipe features to minimize stringing. That's overkill, but it can help with marginal extruders. I personally add about 50% to my normal ABS/PLA retraction distance. Print on the hotter side of the recommended range to start, then dial down the temp as needed to reduce stringing and oozing. Printing hot will reduce nozzle back-pressure. With all that, it should be possible to print the softest TPEs with reasonable success. But if you really can't get it working right, plenty of higher-durometer TPEs are available now that are significantly easier to extrude.

Trouble with sizing in Fusion 360 I had imported a .stl file into Fusion 360- from Blender, but I couldn't size it to my required dimensions. Then I tried to make an object in Fusion. It works but when I want to size it (by hitting the D key) it says: [Error: Sketch geometry is over constrained]... I realise if I add a sketch, that is flat I can size with D key but if I extrude it I couldn't size it any more. Same thing if I add a 3D object for example a box. Anyway I add a point on a face of that body (in the middle), then I could size it from that point to a edge but that all. What did I do wrong and why I couldn't I size that body? How do I suppose to size it? With the .stl file imported from Blender or with the body made by me in Fusion 360? Please help me understand how this site works with size...

Welcome to SE.3DP! First off, F360 isn't the best with STL files. If you're having trouble with constraints and dimensions, I would suggest watching this Maker's Muse video first: How to use Constraints! CAD for Newbies with Fusion 360. Second, Fusion360 is very tricky with importing STL's. My steps below should help. In the lower right-hand corner, at the rightmost end of the timeline, you'll see a little gear. When you click on the gear, click the very top option: "Do not capture design history". This puts you into Direct Modelling mode. In the top left-hand corner, where it says "Model", and select "Mesh" from the menu. Along the toolbar, in the "Create" section, click "Insert mesh". When that's done, go back to the top left where it now says "Mesh" and use the menu to go back to "Model". Now that you're back in "Model", go to the "Modify" menu. In there, find the "Mesh" section, and in that box, click "Mesh to BRep". That will convert your STL into a Fusion360 file that you can edit. Now, if you want to use constraints, I would suggest sketching out your object entirely in Fusion, making constraints and dimensions along the way. I know it's annoying, but it'll be easier to modify it in Fusion. Hope that helps!

Smooth transition between a PTFE tube and the back of a push-fit coupler I'm creating a reverse Bowden setup to guide my filament from spool to extruder, through a path which contains two couplers in the middle as follows: [spool] --- |#= --- =#| --- [extruder] So I have to connect a tube to the back of a coupler (---=#|) and not just to the front (---|#=). That's the end that contains the screw thread, and it's not designed to take a tube. I can't manage to make it a smooth transition. When I try to push my 1.75 mm filament through, it will often get stuck there. After it's through, the extruder seems to have no problem with it anymore. Is there a trick to making this a smooth transition?

The solution might be to countersink the opening at the threaded portion within the tube. There are various angles available for countersinks, although the more common angles are 82 degrees and 90 degrees. Drive the countersink to the point where the wall thickness is zero, unlike the drawing below showing some material outside the beveled area. For your purposes, you'd want the steepest angle possible, the 60 degree tool. If you decided to purchase a countersink, pick a diameter slightly larger than the outside diameter of the wall thickness of the coupler. You could use a countersink of the same diameter as the outside diameter of the threads. Center drills are available with 60 degree angles as well: Amazon specific item The second smallest center drill listed here has a 1.5 mm center point with a 4 mm drill point. If your coupling is larger than 4 mm, the next size up will not work as well, as the center point is 2.5 mm. You'd have to resort to a countersink only. If you are near a machine shop or have a friend with a mill or even a decent drill press, those resources may be able to perform the countersink for a minimal (or possibly zero) fee. I have a mini-mill and a collection of countersinks as well as center drills. I found my bag of unused couplers. They are for 5 mm tubing and were flat on the threaded end. This is the result after a quick trip to the mill. It appears in the close up that I could have driven the center drill deeper into the fitting, and also cleaned off the swarf a bit as well.

What are some good FOSS or free tools for editing STL files for 3D Printing? I'd like to customize and modify some parts on Thingiverse, beyond just simple scaling for 3D printing. I've been looking for some tools that convert the STL files into something that is easily edited, but so far all that I've found are really buggy and crash frequently as soon as one loads a reasonably complex model. Are there any free open source software tools that people can recommend that handle STL importing and editing? If not FOSS, what about just "free or nearly free for hobbyists, ed, non-commercial?

You can use OpenSCAD. It's a script based powerful CAD open source software under GPL. On Thingiverse, a lot of things are made with this CAD software (the Customizer flagged ones) and you can just download their source code (.scad) and directly edit them ! You can also import existing STL and edit them like they were a primitive shape like a cube. You can then interact with them by doing binary operations, adding parts, etc. It is hard to start with if you have never coded, but that's worth it : OpenSCAD is a software for creating solid 3D CAD models. It is free software and available for Linux/UNIX, Windows and Mac OS X. Unlike most free software for creating 3D models (such as Blender) it does not focus on the artistic aspects of 3D modelling but instead on the CAD aspects. Thus it might be the application you are looking for when you are planning to create 3D models of machine parts but pretty sure is not what you are looking for when you are more interested in creating computer-animated movies.

Is it safe to use photon-resin-calibration for Epax printer? This repository contains a calibration test for DLP printers. As its file Instructions.txt says, it is an ANYCUBIC RESIN EXPOSURE FINDER by X3msnake. Are all the files, both .photon and .gcode, compatible with the Epax X1 printer?

Yes, it seems to be. I tried the test and it worked well.

How do you remove rough edges from completed prints? All of my completed prints come out with rough edges. What are some methods for removing rough edges from 3D prints? Also, are there any ways to reduce rough edges on prints? For reference, I use a FlashForge Adventurer 3 and PLA filament.

To remove unwanted residual material: You can scrape with a knife Use sand paper use files Very fine sandpaper or files can smooth out the rough surfaces left from filing or sanding. Dremel tools tend to be aggressive. They tend to melt the surface if too fast. Buffing wheels are probably the most useful on a Dremel. Dremel tools are good for cutting. A deburring tool can remove sharp edges such as parts of the brim that don't want to come loose. However, it's not unusually to need to scrape off flat surfaces as well. If you want to smooth out the surfaces left from layers, you can: Carefully use a heat gun or heat from other soldering tools; not spending too long in one spot. The difficulty with using heat is most prints have fill rather than being solid; so, with only two or three outside layers, it's easy to get the surface to deform into the fill. Also the print material will tend to stick to solid surfaces hot enough to melt the material. Use acetone on ABS. Don't breath the fumes or dissolve your print. Paint the surface as the comment from user77232

Is there a way to save a multi part print if one fails? I'm printing 6 separate parts in one go, after 4 hours of printing one part failed, but the other 5 are printing nicely. Is there a way to prevent the print from printing the failed part and continue printing the other 5 parts. I'm using Cura and an Ender 3 printer.

If you use the OctoPrint print manager, you can exclude regions to be printed using the Exclude Region plugin. The description states that it can be used to rescue partially-failed prints: The intent of this plugin is to provide a means to salvage multi-part prints where one (or more) of the parts has broken loose from the build plate or has otherwise become a worthless piece of failure. Instead of cancelling an entire job when only a portion is messed up, use this plugin to instruct OctoPrint to ignore any gcode commands executed within the area around the failure. Other print managers may provide similar facilities. I'm not sure if it will enable you to rescue your current print job.

How can I convert .STL file to .OFF to use in CGAL? I want to skeletize the surface mesh. For that I need to export .STL from Solidworks and then convert that into .OFF file to be able to use it in CGAL library for skeletonzation. How can I do this?

If you can handle a single intermediate step, you may find that OpenSCAD will perform as required. As a test, I created a cube 10 x 20 x 5 within OpenSCAD. I kept the model simple, hoping the code generated would be short. The results: OFF 8 12 0 0 0 5 10 0 5 10 20 5 0 20 0 0 0 0 10 0 0 10 20 0 0 20 5 3 4 5 1 3 0 4 1 3 0 7 4 3 4 7 3 3 0 1 2 3 7 0 2 3 3 6 4 3 4 6 5 3 5 6 2 3 1 5 2 3 7 2 3 3 3 2 6 In your example, it would be necessary to use the import_stl feature of OpenSCAD, then render the model. Once rendered, use File, Export, Export as OFF to create the file you need. I cannot provide certainty of the exported code, however, as I am not familiar with the format you seek. Openscad

Remove broken heatbreak I'm trying to replace my hotend with the E3D Hemera direct kit. I got to the final step of hot-tightening the hot side and managed to snap my heatbreak. The part that screws into the heat-sink is stuck, though I was able to remove it from the heater block section. Below is a picture of the heatbreak. The red square shows what it in the heat-sink. It's mostly thread (with thermal compound) but a bit of the unthreaded metal is sticking out (above the disk shown). I've tried removing it with a jeweler's drill (which is how I removed the heater block portion, but I cannot get a good grip on the long threaded piece. I've also tried pliers and rounded needle-nose pliers. Neither worked. I couldn't find my regular needle-nose and will go to the store to try that. Are there other options to break this free or am I stuck with buying a replacement heat-sink? I already ordered a replacement, but it'd be nice to have a backup in case something else goes awry (as has been the case with this modification; this is snafu number 4).

Broken screws or screws with damaged screw heads are typically removed with screw extractors. Since there is already a hole you could "drill" (unscrew) it out with a screw extractor, as it is counter clockwise, it is about creating enough friction to unscrew it from the threads. Beware that it is not drilling and spalling material, turn slowly. Alternatively, a grip vice pliers may work if there is enough "meat" to clamp on.

Rectangular pattern constraint is lost when applying a fillet to the sketch object I'm working on a model in Fusion 360 that has part of the 2d sketch duplicated with the "Rectangular Pattern" tool. If I try resizing the original object, the duplicates update as expected. If, however, I try applying a fillet to the object, the pattern constraint is immediately lost and the duplicates don't update. I'm not seeing any error/warning, but I'm assuming it's running into a similar issue as if you were to delete a line that was part of the duplicated pattern (doing that shows a warning "Deleted geometry is part of a pattern, suppressed the instance or dissolved the pattern.") Is there a way to alter the object (specifically apply a fillet) and have the duplicates automatically update? I've done a bit of searching around and I found some suggestions saying that patterns should generally be done on the 3d model instead of the 2d sketch, but in my case I'd like to keep this in the 2d world since there are other sketch pieces that are based on the duplicated portion. Here is a simplified version of the problem I'm running into: Start with a simple rectangle Using the "Rectangular Pattern" tool in the sketch menu, select the rectangle and create a pattern Using the "Fillet" tool in the sketch menu, click on a corner of the original rectangle. Notice that the "Rectangular Pattern Constraint" icon is no long below the original rectangle. Finish applying the fillet. Notice that none of the duplicate rectangles have been updated.

In some CAD packages, this is exactly what I would expect. Models are constructed by applying operations in a specific order. The fillet is a separate operation, and is not part of the base rectangle. The base rectangle is defined. You pattern the base rectangle. You define a fillet using the base rectangle as the reference. The fillet affects only that one rectangle. OTOH, when you modify the base rectangle all are changed because the base rectangle is defined before the patterning operation. If you can apply the fillet before the patterning, it may work as you wish.

How does the Filament production process work? What are the steps in the production process that factories that produce filament have to take to get from pellets to a full spool of filament. Which of these steps are critical for quality (thickness, roundness, long shelf life,..) ?

Some general comments about the process used (plastic extrusion): The plastic extrusion process is not simple- many textbooks dense with equations have been written about it. The lowest cost industrial extrusion processes do not use pellets at all- because pellets have already gone through an extrusion process so they are more expensive than powder resin. There is typically a 'compounding' stage where colors etc. are added before extrusion. Significant heat is generated by the screw (which often has a complex geometry) via shear action that is itself temperature and pressure sensitive, and the heat is added to by external heaters in various zones (or subtracted by water cooling and chillers in larger extruders). In some cases we were able to operate an extruder adiabatically- the heat created by the screw motor matched the heat loss as the product left the die and no heating or cooling was needed once the process was stabilized. The end result is that you want to plasticize (melt) the plastic and achieve a certain pressure at the die. The plastic is deteriorating the higher the temperature and the longer the time so you want to limit the residence time at high temperature. There is some trial-and-error and a lot of previous experience in the setup person's task. Once the parameters are determined they are recorded and are used the next time that material is run. The size of an extrusion is typically determined exactly by downstream equipment rather than controlling the conditions at the die. It is essentially stretched as it comes out of the die and the heat is removed in a cooling trough. Here you can see a factory environment with a very typical extrusion setup, used in this case for 3D printing filament (but the setup would look almost the same if they were making slats for Venetian blinds). Notice that there are cooling fans as well as band heaters on the extruder barrel. They control the diameter by adjusting the take-off capstan RPM once the extruder is running well. This extruder looks like it has 4 heat/cool barrel zones and two (heat-only) nozzle zones (6 temperatures total). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40HOAsUnSQ8 Extruders are categorized by the barrel bore diameter in inches or mm. A very small extruder might be 25mm. An extruder used for pipe production might be 6" (150mm) or more. Some machines use multiple screws.

How to improve printing over 100 mm/s with 0.8 mm nozzle? It has been a long journey failing and printing over and over to be able to print at faster speeds. All I did mostly was trial and error. I am currently trying to wrap my head around a problem that has been asked by user:1998 (mhelvens): Can we manage to make a uniform formula for printing very fast with high temperatures? (Increasing hotend temperature to compensate for increased filament throughput) Using Ender 3, Hero Me Gen5 with E3D V6 volcano, mdd kit 1.2, Klipper firmware When I start printing at 215 °C (recommended temperature for my filament) everything is alright, because of initial layer speed... When I come to 100 mm/s the print clearly fails, the plastic doesn't stick, it even swirls up and is just too solid and then it damages the nozzle when it bumps in to it... If I start at high temperature, the print is failing at the start and then doing ok, which is equally as bad When I have high temperature and high speed the print wont stick at the beginning... The solution in my opinion is to gradually increase speed with temperature, adding that as a function of the firmware. Also probably involving filament flow % and pressure_advance... Is there a formula for what I'm asking? Can we implement it in the software or does this have to be done through trial and error all the goddamn time?

There are no ready solutions. Check on Klipper Github to see if someone requested that, but I doubt it has been implemented. 100 mm/s with 0.8 line width and something like 0.3 mm layer height results in 24 mm^3/s. It's quite high already, since the Volcano is rated at about 20 mm^3/s. What you could try to do is to take the GCODE you have, calculate the layer time and the total path length for each layer to get the average extrusion rate, and introduce at the beginning of each layer a M104 command with a temperature dependent on said rate. For example, you could add 1 °C for each mm^3/s of extrusion rate starting at 15 mm^3/s. If you want, you could also calculate the average extrusion rate not every layer but every 50 mm of extrusion. In this case, better anticipate the temperature command by one stretch, since it takes time to adapt. Otherwise you need a Supervolcano, or a slight overvoltage of the hotend (remember that power goes with the square of voltage, so do not go above 10% overvoltage).

The filament is almost impossible to remove Most people complain about the filament not sticking on build plate but mine is vice versa. At first it used to be very good. When I removed the magnetic bed the project would come off easily but for a few days it is like I glue it to the bed with epoxy. It is impossible to remove and when I remove the black projects from the bed I see white color at the bottom of the object printed. Maybe because of too much force but I don't know why this happens.

This usually happens when your nozzle is too close to bed during the first layer. Quick fix is redo bed levelling. Clean your build surface. Watch you first layer

Cooling fan noise when head is moving in the X axis I have this fan model, it is a SUNON model number MF50151VX-B00U-A99 and it is a blower type. When the head is moving in the X-axis it makes noise. I think this type of fans is not suitable for rapid movement and rapid changes in directions. I think the noise is coming from the axial of the fan because I think there is a clearance in the axial for moving up and down. When I put my finger on the fan body(the rotating part) the noise stop! My question, What type of fans suitable for rapid movement and rapid direction change? and if this is not the problem what is the problem in my situation? I have tried searching but I can really find a direct answer!

As discussed in the comments... The problem with the fan seems to be its flimsy attachment to the printer head. The fact the fan chassis is not firmly kept in place allows for it to act as a soundboard, amplyfing whatever vibration nomally occurs in the motor. You could probably get a fan that is more silent in the first place (noctua is a known brand for silent fans, and it is used on the Original Prusa MK3 for example), but since there's nothing inherently wrong with your current fan, I would simply design a custom, more beefy mount for it. For added dampening effect you could also use small o-rings as washers for the screws.

Issue with 3D printer making super thin layers Recently I've been having trouble printing properly on my Creality Ender-3 printer. I ran a pretty long print (approx. 15 hours) that turned out really well. I then started printing an attachment for the original print and saw that it was printing layers that were extremely thin. I first scraped off the excess filament left on the extruder nozzle. Then, I heated up the bed and rubbed off the layer with alcohol. I tried printing it again but it still didn't print right. Thin layer Weird thing From the images above, you can tell it's noticeably hard to see the layer, which shows just how thin it is. I sliced the model in Ultimaker Cura. I set the layer height to 0.15 mm. I've printed models before with this height but the layer wasn't transparent. What should I do to fix this issue?

You need to level you bed. Thin prints happen when the extruder is too low and is printing too close to the bed. Download the following test codes from this address: https://www.chepclub.com/bed-level.html 1) The first code is the most important you will want to run moves the extruder to five points on your board - Front Left and Right, Back Left and Right, and Center. Using a folded piece of paper - I use a business card - drag the paper under extruder of each of the four corners. You want to make sure you get a bit of drag when pulling out the paper/card. If you feel have enough of a gap that you can run put the paper/card under the extruder and that you feel a bit of tug when pulling it out. It runs the middle last - if you are having issue with the drag, adjust all four corners slowly until it is right. 2) The second runs the extruder in a square pattern on your board. You simply want to run your finger of the print - if it sticks to the bed, you are good - if it doesn't, adjust your corners up and keep testing.

Will lowering print temperature help warping? I realize this issue (warping) has been repeatedly addressed on this site. I've just graduated to high-temp filaments (PC in particular). I don't know much of the physics of this. I'm wondering whether the degree to which the filament contracts is proportional to the amount that it cools. If the answer is yes, then wouldn't it suggest that a lower printing temperature might reduce warping-as the temperature interval over which the filament cools is smaller? Or perhaps the difference is negligible? Also, I see a lot of emphasis placed on good first layer adhesion. Is this still an issue if you are printing on a raft?

I can't address polycarbonate specifically, but can provide a general overview of the higher temperature filament considerations. Printing on a raft means that the adhesion temperature of the filament is accomplished. This temperature is the factor to be considered if you are thinking of dropping the printing temperature. If you drop below recommended minimums, you risk losing adhesion to the build plate and also inter-layer bonding. That alone means one should use caution when dropping printing temperatures. Printing with a raft usually means the model's individual parts have such a small footprint that they would not remain bonded to the build plate. Rafts are also used on printers with an uncertain planar surface or irregularities in the surface. That's not applicable to this question, generally speaking. Your question about contraction being proportional to the amount of cooling is perhaps misdirected. One could consider that the printing temperature is a manufacturer specified value and the cooled temperature would be generally considered room temperature. Room temperature would be addressed as a range, rather than a single value, but even as a range, there isn't going to be a big percentage of variation in the calculation involving the print temp/room temp. My experience with the higher temperatures is more related to the volume of material per cross section (in all three dimensions). A printed model of substantial height with a relatively small horizontal cross section (think cylinder) is likely to have much less distortion in the x/y plane and greater distortion along the z-axis. The mass of filament cooling in the z-direction generates greater force than the smaller mass on the x/y axes. Another factor in such thought processes is that layers are on the x/y axes and the strength of the extruded plastic is more homogeneous through the nozzle, while the z-direction creates inter-layer discontinuities, making warping and delamination easier. I've found that I can reduce (but not eliminate) warping and delamination if I am able to maintain chamber temperature for longer periods and reduce temperature slowly. Unfortunately, I have a semi-enclosed printer and the heat loss is dependent partly on the ambient air temperature. A fully enclosed heated printer with auxiliary heating under some form of control may give you the best results.

Options for removing failed prints So basically I've been having a problem with my Micro+. It will not level / calibrate itself and I can't fix it. The reason I'm here is that I've been using Cura, and somehow it destroyed my bed. (See image) I would like to know how to get it off, as I tried freezing, scraping and sandpaper To clarify some things: The material is PLA, bed is made of plastic. My build plate surface got destroyed after trying to use Cura, which sliced wrong and engraved the print into my bed.

If you have tried every trick to remove the print, you probably need to replace the build surface. If the PLA is "engraved" into the build surface, your surface is damaged anyways, just replace the surface, or remove the top surface and buy a sheet of glass, preferably borosilicate.

Inductive kickback protection? Is there an integrated kickback protection in stepper motor drivers or should I make my own? I am afraid the steppers might fry the driver or the arduino when i turn off the power for them. I do that by turning off the power supply. I haven't had an issue yet but it still bothers me.

Kinda, sort of, but not really. I'll look at the A4988 (datasheet). The motor pins are connected by diodes to ground and Vbb (the motor suppply voltage). Essentially, they act as a bridge rectifier making any back EMF or inductive spikes appear (rectified) on Vbb. If you were to suddenly power down the driver this could cause a rather large spike on Vbb. According to the datasheet, there is a 40 V Zener on Vbb which will clamp the voltage to that level. (Another popular stepper driver, the DRV8825, does not appear to have this Zener - always check your datasheet!) So, yes, there is inductive kickback protection. However, it only clamps the voltage to 40 V. Depending on the rest of your circuit, this could be quite damaging. The datasheet recommends that a 100 μF capacitor be placed on Vbb. If you are driving a typical stepper motor with 2 A and 4 mH coil inductance, the energy stored in the coil is 8 mJ. This energy is only enough to take the capacitor up from 12 V to ~17.5 V, so if you have a large enough capacitor on your stepper driver (as you should!) then you're protected against inductive kickback. Note that if you move the motors by hand then you can still build up a higher voltage on Vbb. I've heard anecdotes of people who damaged their printers like that.

Cura 2.4 missing "split object into parts" I have an stl with multiple parts that I want to split up. Cura 15 had an option to "split object into parts" but I can't find that in cura 2.4. Did it get removed?

I don't think this feature was implemented at all with Cura v2.x. As the developers say on the v2.1 release, "Cura has been completely reengineered". Finding proper changelog documentation appears to be pretty hard because they have not posted any actual changelogs except the "user friendly viewable" changelogs which only list additions of new features but don't display what everything they changed between each version of their application. Here is the most complete changelog I could find. I do not see any mention of this feature. https://ultimaker.com/en/products/cura-software/release-notes Going through the Cura 2 manual or the Cura 2.1 FAQ, also does not mention this feature. https://ultimaker.com/en/resources/20406-installation-cura-2-1 Furthermore, searching around for version 2 "split objects" lead to forum posts of people suggesting to use some other software to achieve this specific task. If you decide to go this route, I recommend Meshmixer from Autodesk to manipulate your models and then export to STL and import them to Cura either as a whole new position set up or separate model files where you can change them there as you need to (meshmixer allows for object repositioning around a defined build plate so you can just import the whole assembly into cura and then print). It might also be worth to put in a feature request on the UM forums.

Weird temperature graph and thermal runaway protection triggered I woke up this morning with my 20 hour long print failed around 15 hour in. I checked the octoprint console, and saw a very weird temperature graph. Later found out thermal runaway protection kicked in, and I thanked the gods for having decided to install a custom firmware to enable that protection. I have an anycubic i3 mega, recently upgraded with an E3D v6. To make that upgrade, I had to splice new connectors on both the thermistor and the cartridge, as the ones they came with weren't going to work. Ever since upgrading I started experiencing some weird Z-wobble, but I am coming to the conclusion that it may actually be a slight consistent underextrusion. The final layers of the parts I had been printing, are all severely underextruded, going as far as delaminating. I have attached both a picture of the temperature reading, and one of the failed parts. You should also see the underextrusion I was talking about in the first layers, and the major underextrusion in the final layers. Now, I don't have a lot of experience with this kind of issue but I think the temperature was jumping around too quickly to actually be a good reading. Sadly I was only able to take the final part of the graph before the printer shut down. I have taken some steps to try to avoid this from happening again I have reseated the thermistor and the cartridge I have reseated the connectors for the thermistor and the cartridge I have re-zip tied and changed the orientation of the wires and hotend to something that seemed better. Before this all went down, I had ordered a titan extruder to try to mitigate the underextrusion, as I read online (I think it was from E3D official sources) that the internal pressure of the v6 may be higher than the standard hotend and therefore I may have needed a geared extruder. Do you have any advice for me? And if you could also help me figure out if the first layers actually show underextrusion or Z-wobble, thanks for making it this far. I should mention that this had happened to me already but without triggering the protection, the part did heavily underextrude but it was just a test part while trying to find out what was going on with the "Z-wobble." It doesn't seem to consistently happen every time I start a print, but I figure that long prints would certainly make it more likely to happen.

Periodic temperature irregularities, such as cycling between a higher temperature and lower temperature slowly enough that it spends at least a layer or two at a different temperature than other layers has a tendency to be mistaken for z wobble. You can actually intentionally modulate print temperature (at least of PLA) every few layers to great a sort of banding or 'wood grain' effect. Higher temperature, for whatever reason, results in thicker perimeters and cooler temperatures thinner ones. This is when always staying above the normal PLA print temperature though. The temperatures in the graph would certainly cause serious under extrusion during the times it was under temperature. Understand though, it is likely that temperature has been behind the underextrusion, rather than it being a problem in of itself. It isn't possible for the temperature to jump around too quickly to get a good reading. The temperature changes relatively slowly, simply due to the thermal mass of the heat block. It takes a little bit for the extruder to come up to temperature, right? When warming up from room temperature, watch how fast the temperature changes. That's the fastest the temperature can change, because that is when the heater cartridge is on at full blast. And even then, it isn't particularly quick. It also does not appear to be a problem with the thermistor. If there was a poor or failing connection (like a wire that was almost broken), this would cause added resistance to the thermistor reading, and thermistors usually lose resistance as they heat up. So extra resistance throwing off the reading would make the printer believe that the hotend was cooler than it actually was, and you would wind up printing at a too high of a temperature. This would cause a number of problems, but your interlayer adhesion would be excellent. Delimitation would not be one of the issues, nor would underextrusion. Thermal runaway protection is kind of a misnomer, because it is really 'something about the temperature of something isn't behaving like it should' protection. Basically all it is is a hard coded temperature and time window. If it has turned on the heater, there is a hard coded number of degrees that the thermistor must increase by within a certain time window, usually 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. If it doesn't, something is wrong. Or, if it drops out of the intended temperature by another hard coded number of degrees for a certain amount of time, then again the thermal runaway protection will be triggered. In cases where the connection to the thermistor is failing, this will prevent the hotend from being heated without any limit (poor thermistor connection means the temperature the printer reads is always much much lower than what it really is, so the printer keeps trying to heat the hotend up hotter). But thermal runaway protection will also get triggered for much more benign problems, like a failing connection to the heater cartridge. If the thermistor is working fine, but the cartridge is not working correctly and either only heats intermittently, or has a poor connection and can't get enough current through it, this will also result in the temperature not going up as expected, thus triggering the thermal runaway protection. Based on your symptoms, the thermistor reading looks to be quite accurate. What you describe is exactly what I'd expect would happen for a print where the temperature of the hotend really did vary exactly as shown in your graph. What can often happen is one of the leads (especially close to the cartridge but really, it could happen anywhere along the length of the two leads) will have broken from repeated wire strain (if you have disassembled your hot end at all or otherwise disturbed the heater wires in anyway, this is more than enough to cause a lot of metal fatigue), but the insulation around the broken wire will hold it together such that wire will still be making contact with itself. But it will be a more resistive connection, and will cycle between an acceptable and poor connection as the print head position moves. Long story short, you get a temperature graph that looks just like that, because the heater cartridge is periodically either developing a poor connection, or losing its connection entirely, only to regain it again as things move just the right way again. I would double check all your connections to the cartridge, checking the actual resistance and not just using a continuity tester. If those seem ok, then you will probably just need to buy a replacement cartridge. I like to keep a few of them on hand since they have a tendency for their wires to break just from a little bit of normal manhandling.

Ender 3 nozzle gets closer and closer to the previous layer as the print progresses I'm trying to print a lithophane with my Ender 3, but the nozzle gets closer and closer to the previous layer, layer after layer. I thought that what was causing the problem was perhaps a gear lock due to the fact that the Z rod wasn't parallel to the vertical axis, but after fixing it the problem remains. The bed is super planar and perfectly levelled and, in fact, the first layer comes out perfectly. Extrusion is also okay. The printer seems fine in all aspects. It seems like the seriousness of the problem is proportional to the number of layers, just like the printer is losing a fixed height by each layer. I've ruled out the possibility of wrong calibration of Z steps because after measuring a cube of 12 cm of height and telling the printer to raise 12 cm the cube fits perfectly under the nozzle with the levelling gap (so perfect calibration). What do you think may be the problem?

Finally I've found the damn problem: Adjustable rollers of all axes were flat on one point making layers to shift in all directions. The effect was less visible on the X and Y axes but it was more notable in the Z axis as the flat part was right from the start of the print. I think that flat part was making difficult for the Z axis to move upward, and making my prints fail when printing at higher resolutions (I guess the finer the displacement the weaker the torque). It seemed to me that the nozzle was getting closer to the previous layer but instead it was resting (or barely moving) on the flat part of the Z right adjustable roller first and then on the other adjustable roller of the same axis. To diagnose the problem disable the steppers and moved the axes manually and feel if there are notches, so to speak, in various spots on every axis. The solution is to replace the rollers with new ones and to not close them too tight otherwise they'll deform over time.

Problems with feeding the filament into the bowden tube I just finished building my Anet A6 and I was working on inserting some filament into the extruder. It was very difficult to get the filament to go in the hole (past the gears to go down to the hot-end). What can I do that will make it easier to get the filament into the hole (I tried cutting the tip at a angle)?

What you are after is a small common mod called... filament guide (as your question title!). The first one to pop up in my google search was this one: https://www.thingiverse.com/make:346736 which in turn is a make of this model: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2242903 Also, a couple of tricks that help on my printers (YMMV): manually straighten the first few cm filament before inserting it into the extruder (e.g.: remove the natural bend that is there because the filament came off a round spool by bending it in the opposite direction) when the filament is past the gears/cogs, while still keeping the cogs "open" (i.e.: not yet clamping the filament), twist/roll the filament between your finger. sharpen the tip of your filament with a pencil sharpener. This make so that the tip of it is at the very centre of the hole, rather than at its edge.

Low Accuracy while perfect travel movement I own an older Anet A6. Flashed the Marlin Firmware on it (and think I configured it properly). Also updated to the latest 2.0.5.3 some days ago). The nozzle is a 0.4 mm one, direct drive extruder. When printing calibration cubes I used #define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT { 99.7, 96.4, 400, 91.6 } settings to correct for what I measured earlier. So the printed cube 20x20x20 mm came out almost "perfect". Yet I faced another problem: scaling. So printing stuff 100 mm wide resulted in 97.2 mm prints. As if an error multiplied with the distance. So I created a test object consisting of multiple "rectangles" (overlayed) in X and Y direction. Some of the dimensions were less than required and others bigger.. So the holes ("drills") were 0.4 mm too small (so half a nozzle diameter). In "Cura" I could fix that with the newly added inner hole correction or negative horizontal expansion values. Yet this would also "cut" the thin parts (top and right rectangle on the image - with a width of 1.2 mm - so 3 lanes of print material on my 0.4 mm nozzle). Without and with adjustment the inner width of the rectangles is also off by more than 0.2 mm. I printed with my normal speeds (80 mm/s for fill and even slower for other stuff) which creates fine output except the accuracy. I also printed at 20 % of this speed (so <10 mm/s for the first layer!) without any change. So it should not be the "acceleration/jerk" creating the issues. I then restarted calibrating everything: calibrated extruder (10 cm filament ... and measuring how much was really moved), was not off by more than 1 mm calibrated axis by moving nozzle to a specific point and measuring X/Y/Z movement ... I needed to go back to 99.9 for X, 99.9 for Y and 101 for Z). So almost back to vendor settings. I moved the hotend over and over - replicated the exact movement in all directions 20 times each. It did not "slide", so stuff started and ended exactly at the same spot each time. Now I printed my test cross (and other stuff) and while the X-Axis was only a bit off "outside" (inside still a bit more off), the Y-Axis was only 97 % and height as it should. I printed via: RepetierHost 2.1.6 Cura 4.6.1 RepetierHost 2.1.6 + Cura exported gcode file and adjusted "speed" (25 % of Cura-settings) Sum up: calibrated extruder (10 cm filament measurement), calibrated axis (measured movement distance) printed at very slow speed to avoid "acceleration/jerk"-inaccuracy (did it do that?) prints are inaccurate yet precise (multiple prints result in same incorrect output) calibrating "steps per unit" via calibration cube results in perfect calibration cubes but still "too small inner holes" and inaccurate prints of bigger dimensions So: how to properly fix that issue? How to calibrate the dimension accuracy properly - is there something more than "steps per unit" to adjust? Tried to find an answer here and elsewhere on the internet but seems I lack the right term to search for to find an answer. Hope you could help me.

You shouldn't calibrate the steps/mm for the X, Y, and Z axes. Just use the default settings which are based on the theoretical values for the given belts/leadscrews/threaded rods. The mistake is in assuming that the error in the dimensions of the 20x20x20 calibration cube are purely due to the steps/mm setting. Due to a variety of reasons (inconsistent extrusion, measurement error, slop in the printer, backlash) no printed part will have its dimensions be perfectly accurate (no FDM 3D printer is capable of better than a few tenths of a millimeter accuracy in part dimensions). When you calibrate the steps/mm so that a 20x20x20 cube comes out "perfect", you are hiding all of these non-linear inaccuracies in a linear compensation of the steps/mm. When you then print a larger part, these inaccuracies (which are incorrectly compensated for in the steps/mm) get blown up. Suppose your calipers had a constant error of +0.1 mm, i.e. every measurement reads 0.1 mm higher than it should. If you calibrate your steps/mm so that a 20x20x20 calibration cube comes out "perfect"; the actual size of the calibration cube would be 19.9 mm (which your calipers would read as 20 mm). If you then were to print a 100 mm part, it would come out as 99.5 mm which your calipers would read as 99.6 mm. If you insist on calibrating the steps/mm you should do so by printing a part as large as possible. This ensures that the constant error is divided over a large part size, giving a better estimation of the actual steps/mm. However, usually the theoretical value is more accurate than what you can measure yourself, even with a part taking up the entire print bed. 10 cm filament ... and measuring how much was really moved 10 cm is a very short length; you would get a much more accurate calibration with a 100 cm length. However, calibrating the e-steps very precisely is kind of pointless. It is hard to do so precisely because extruding into free air (and at possibly a different speed than when actually printing) will result in a different amount of resistance and thus a different length of extrusion than during an actual print. You will need to calibrate for the diameter and flow characteristics of the actual filament anyways, during which calibration you can much more effectively compensate for small inaccuracies of the extruder steps/mm. Perhaps it would be a good idea to look into the rigidity of the entire printer and how securely the parts are mounted. If there is a lot of play in the bed or hotend this could also explain why parts are turning out oversized.

Designing/Printing objects with sized holes When trying to print parts that should contain certain sized holes, e.g. for screws, how to achieve that they are sized correctly? Is it possible to calibrate the printer perfectly, so it prints holes correctly sizes in all common sizes (e.g. starting at 2mm diameter)? Or is it better to design the holes larger or print prototypes and increase the sizes according to the real prints?

The reason holes come out undersized is generally the slicer, so calibrating the printer itself cannot solve the issue (without making other things worse). The output of the printer is exactly what it should be, given the G-code provided to it. It's just that the G-code does not represent the hole diameter correctly. It would be best to simply account for the deviation in your design, or simply drill out undersized holes to the correct diameter.

Replacing bearings with Drylin bushings When I purchased my China made Anet A8 printer, it came with the ball bearing style linear bearings for the 8mm guide rods. While pulling parts out of the box and putting them together, I noticed several of the small ball bearings fell out of their respective holders. At the time, I really didn't know what to think of it (ie: were these just extra ball bearings falling out; were they actually needed). I put the printer together anyway and it seems to work okay. I have noticed while I've been printing, there's a lot of noise during travel of the pieces. I'm not exactly sure where the noise is coming from, but realize it has to be coming from one or more of the bearings. To hopefully fix the issue, I've purchased some Igus Drylin polymer bushings to replace the linear bearings: My questions are: When installing these bushings, should they be completely dry? Should I at least clean the rods? Are they completely maintenance free? Anything else I'm not thinking of to worry about?

According to igus commercial documentation, these bushings: do not need any kind of lubrication, are not susceptible to humidity (but your steel rods might) work seamlessly in presence of dust (it gets expelled from the bushing with movements) I've replaced all of my bearings with these, and in my experience, the above claims have been true so far. I must say that I am really pleased with them. Movement is smoother, and the noise is considerably lower. I did clean the rods to remove any trace of lubrication prior to installing them. I did not dry them. I believe that igus is also selling rods in a material designed to even further improve the qualities of these bushings, but it starts to become quite an investment.

Monoprice maker select v2 doesn't extrude but is not clogged So I have been printing lately, and got a new spool of filament. It will extrude when I pre-heat the nozzle and manually extrude it, however when I start to print, it doesn't extrude any filament. Sometimes it works with different filament, but not always. How can I fix this?

Try advancing the extruder manually using the control interface. Extrude about 10 cm of filament to verify that everything is OK with the machine. Is the filament curling on the way out of the nozzle? If so then there may really be a clog and you should clean it. Invest in some cleaning filament as well. The idler bearing may not be pushing down on the filament tightly enough. Check that the spring which holds it in place has not become soft or broken. The drive gear could be dirty. Plastic particle build up on the gear will cause it to slip. Clean the drive gear to remove all plastic build up. Outside of this you could have a mechanical problem with extruder. Advance the motor using the control system (without filament installed) to verify that it is working properly.

cura shows different Z heights Cura v2.5.0 I've been working in Blender for some time, so I have experience with exporting stl from it with exact size and I had no scale issues with slicing. But today cura showed a strange thing. These are 3dBenchy and a stretched cube which are supposed to have 45mm height, also "boundary boxes" are turned on to show that there is no flying geometry. As you can see below cura shows same size visually but different in numbers. And if I scale the ship inside the cura it will look like this (low reputation) http://dl3.joxi.net/drive/2017/08/01/0001/2747/88763/63/969fe8bc67.jpg Does anyone know if I screwed up the model somehow or can it be considered as a bug?

Converted comment on OP to answer: The comment links to a question on SE.Blender; the answer that led to the solution is quoted below. The STL exporter doesn't take Scene Scale into account. Import your STL back into Blender (it will have the same size) and drag Scene Scale up back to 1.0, and you'll see how the cube grows relative to the grid. 1 Blender unit equals 1m, but STL seems to assume 1 unit as 1cm. If you want 1 unit to be 1mm, set Scale on STL export to 0.1 and Scene Scale to 0.001 to make it match the output scale in viewport. Note that the STL will be 10x smaller if you re-import it into Blender!

Generating mold from stl file of the 3D drawing of the object I want to know how to make a mold of a 3D design in .stl format. Suppose I have a 3D partin .stl format (for e.g. a cylinder) and I want to make/design a mold for this object (i.e. the structure through which I could make the cylinder). Is there any way to do so? Are there any tools to do so? My requirement is as follows: I have an .stl file of a design and need to develop the CAD files for its mold. I will then need to 3D print these molds. I would require to add a hole to pour in liquid (resin based) raw material which hardens with time.

You can also bring the model and a big box into slic3r, align and orient them (enclose the model in the box), and do a subtract modifier, leaving a hollow where the two intersected. You probably want to do this twice, for a top mould and a botom mould. I've done this, but I don't see any instructions online for it. :( EDIT: Unfortunately, this would be very tedious. It's much easier to use meshmixer or another publicly available program to subtract one stl from another. In Slic3r, using another stl as a modifier has no effect unless you are also printing that second stl (normally from another head). So you would have to manually remove all the gcode for the second head. Sorry for the bad advice.

When did mass produced FDM printers become available? I know very little about the history of 3D printing, except that SLA came first (in the 1980's?), and FDM development was probably held back by patents. By 2016, very low price kit machines were available to hobbyists, in the <€300 price range, as price-reduced clones of designs which had already seen several iterations. Was this the start of the break-out of cheap FDM machines (as opposed to the >€2000 semi-professional lab budget prototyping class), or were the earlier iterations of these kit machines also suitable/adopted by hobbyists? I realise that early popularity would grow exponentially, but I'm thinking particularly at what point people could build a printer without needing to compile their own firmware, solder any boards, etc.

By 2016, very low price kit machines were available to hobbyists [..] Was this the start of the break-out of cheap FDM machines No, not by any means. The RepRap project started in 2005, and by 2008-2010 there were several open-source printer designs out there that were somewhat workable for hobbyists. These designs were still quite expensive, you needed to source all the components yourself and do a very significant amount of troubleshooting. However, as early as mid-2009 you could buy a Makerbot Cupcake CNC for \$750 as a kit (which might have involved some soldering) or \$2500 fully assembled (presumably without soldering, but it's conceivable it was plug-and-play). Makerbot went on to become quite a successful company, piggybacking off the RepRap project and could be viewed as the "break-out" you ask about. I purchased my first printer kit (no soldering or firmware involved) for \$500 (plus around \$150 in shipping and taxes) in February 2014; cheap hobbyist machines were commonplace well before that.

Anet A8 Installing second extruder without changing board I am wondering if it is possible and safe to add a second extruder to my Anet A8 without changing the main board. I was thinking splitting my Z motor wires to free up the Z2 axis motor connector on the main board, using this connector for the second extruder motor. Is this possible? If so, how would i configure Marlin to use those extruder pins Can I overload the board by using two motor on the same connector?

That is not possible without changing to a different printer main board. The Anet A8 board has 4 integrated (A4988) stepper drivers, one for X, one for Y, one for Z and one for E (extruder 0). Both Z steppers are controlled by a single stepper driver (they are wired in parallel to the single Z stepper driver), there is nothing to free up nor is there to configure in Marlin without replacing the main board.

How to switch from PETG to either PLA/ABS mid print? I have an Ender 3 Pro and I'm about to print a relatively large model on it. I've been printing in PETG and I'd like to use up the last of the roll during this print. When the roll runs out however, I don't currently have any PETG lying around but I do have two brand new rolls of PLA and ABS. I'd love to swap to one of them (lets say ABS) when the PETG is running low, and I'm just wondering if there is anything I should be wary of besides the print temp. I am aware of general issues with ABS (warping without heated enclosure and stuff) but if I: Have heated enclosure Tune temperature to be higher when I swap to ABS Have "draft shield" printing along with the model Are there any other considerations that I need to put in the gcode or anything? How much it pushes the filament or retracts or something? I'm just using "Generic PETG" settings on Cura.

You should do a complete calibration for ABS (temperature tower, E steps, flowrate %) before starting the print, then when you change filament remember to apply all the parameters I mentioned. While I'm not in favour of using the flow rate % to correct the E steps calibration, since you are doing it mid print this may be the easiest way, instead of changing E steps AND flow rate %. As you said, you need to change temperature too, but both PETG and ABS print well at 235 °C so it may not be needed. PLA works too, but PLA bridges at 235 °C are difficult to get properly. For sure you won't be able to change other parameters, such as fan speed, printing speed and flowrate for bridges, which are all specific to each filament, but hopefully it will work out anyway, since PETG is trickier than ABS or PLA. Of course you may have issues with adherence: PETG may not bond well to ABS or PLA (in fact, PETG can be used for support for PLA and viceversa because the bonding is not too strong). You may have a weak print with PLA, so go for ABS. PETG as support for PLA: Can PETG be used as support material for PLA? Bridge calibration:

3D printing references for beginners I have just received a 3D printer for Christmas (Robo R2). I am confused by the sheer amount of settings that I can tweak and I'm hesitant to do so until I know more about them. I was wondering if anybody has any recommendations for literature on: 3D printing in general (geared towards beginners); Designing parts specifically. Books are preferred but websites are acceptable as well.

Welcome to the fantastic, sometimes frustrating but most often glorious world of 3D printing David! :) Your question is really very very broad, but here's my contribution to make your first steps a success. First of all: I don't have experience with the Robo R2, but judging from the specs available online, I would say that you got a machine that take care of most of the troubles beginners encounter when starting out (e.g.: levelling the bed) and has a few features that allow you to print more reliably/with better quality (heated bed, enclosure, possibility for a second extruder). Give a hug to whoever made the gift to you! ;) I like to think to 3D printing as a process that involves 4 phases (well, normally several iteration of them as prototyping is a thing): Designing (creating the mesh, i.e. the shape of the object you want to print) Slicing (creating GCODE, i.e. the file with the step-by-step instructions for moving your printer nozzle in space, extruding the plastic, controlling temperatures and cooling, etc...) Printing (the actual process of having your printer running that GCODE) Post-processing (finishing the piece, by for example removing support material, sanding, vapor-smoothing the surface, painting, etc...) Technology in the 3D printing world is moving so fast that printed information tends to get outdated quickly, and the Internet is often the best source of information. So in the following bits I will mention the the source of information that I use[d] for myself, of which many are online rather than in print. DESIGN Broadly speaking, there are two kind of designs one can do: decorative or functional. Decorative designs are those in which the final object will essentially sit still on a shelf or be handled very gently (e.g.: a model of the Tour Eiffel, a miniature for RPG gaming), functional designs are those in which the final part will have to bear a load or perform some sort of mechanical work (e.g.: a drone, a shelf bracket, a pipe adapter...). Both designs need to take into consideration the physical limitations of FDM printers such as the fact that the nozzle is round and with a fixed diameter, or the fact that molten plastic needs to rest onto something, thus the need for support. Additionally, functional design requires an understanding of the physical properties of 3D MFD printed parts (hint: they are anisotropic, so their properties differs along their axis). If you are interested in functional designing a book that I can highly recommend is Functional Design for 3D Printing by Cliff Smyth. It is concise, accessible and full of information you'll be using from your very first design. In terms of tools, for decorative, organic forms, you will probably want to use a program like Blender, that manipulate meshes directly, while for functional designs will probably turn to CAD software, like for examaple FreeCAD that operate on a "model" and let you export the finished part as a mesh at the very end. Both Blender and FreeCAD are free software (like in: "free speech") but commercial versions do exist as well (most notably from Autodesk). Blender is professional grade software with a very steep learning curve and I would suggest to take an structured online course like this one about it, rather than trying to learn it the DIY way. FreeCAD belongs to a category of CAD programmes that operate on a well defined, well understood, set of principles (so it works similarly to OnShape and Fusion360 for example) and it is much easier to learn. In my experience CAD modelling is best learnt by understanding the very basic, and then just researching further information as you go, according to the needs of your project as CAD design is full of small specific operations that is useful to know only if you actually need them (e.g.: how to draw a screw thread, or to perform a loft). I started out with this series of video tutorials by the late Roland Frank (a celebrated contributor to the FreeCAD community), but there are tons of other tutorial should you choose to go with a commercial product. SLICING Slicing is as much an art as it is science. While the actual work of generating the GCODE is automated and requires just the click of a button, there are a myriad of settings that are mutually interdependent in their effect. For example: filament temperature, movement speed, cooling fan, retraction and coasting all affect oozing, but each of them also affect other things (bridging, layer adhesion, curling, nominal overextrusion, etc...). Also: settings differs for each filament material, each brand, and sometimes even different spools from the same material/brand. Moreover, you may wish to tune them depending to what you are printing (maybe you are printing a finely detailed miniature and want to go slower to reduce vibration, or maybe you are printing a torsion bar and want to increase the temperature for increasing layer adhesion, for example...). IMO the best way to understand how settings affect your print is playing around with calibration towers (example) and torture tests (example). Calibration towers work by printing the same thing on top of each other but changing at each repetition a specific setting (like filament temperature, or extrusion multiplier). You will then visually inspect the final piece and evaluate how the print quality changed relative to that parameter. Torture tests work by putting in the same piece a number of features that are hard for the printer to print correctly (thin walls, bridges, overhangs, to name a few). A specific model that is sort of gold standard as a basic test is the 3D benchy. The good thing about it is that it comes with a full website that also tell you how you can evaluate the print. However, the benchy - differently than torture tests - is not designed to let you discover the limits of your printer, it is more of a quality-control test. If you can print a 3D benchy, you should be good to go for printing "regular" objects. Also, at least in the two most common free-as-in-freedom slicers (Cura and slic3r Prusa Edition) each setting comes with some explanatory text while hovering on it, that helps a lot understanding what that setting does). PRINTING How much you can affect the actual printing process depends from how "open source" is your printer, and if it uses standard components or not. Consumer-grade printers get often upgraded/modded to improve print quality or tweak them for a specific job/material. Typical upgrades are extruder upgrades, stepper motor upgrades, vibration dampeners, different sensors, etc... Each printer is unique, but normally you can find abundant information wherever the community of owners of a specific model gathers. I would also advise to subscribe to some good youtube channel about 3D printing like Tom's or Makers Muse or Joel's, and to visit sites like All3dp regularly. As I mentioned, 3D printing tech changes constantly, and it is good to keep tabs on new materials, new software, new components, etc... POST-PROCESSING This is entirely dependent from the material you used for the print, its size, and its intended use, but I wanted to mention this nonetheless as there are amazing things you can do with acetone on ABS, lot of elbow grease on PLA or the use of an airbrush... so you know 3D printing does not end with the print! ;) Hope this helps you at least a bit. Again: welcome to the the 3D printing world! :)

No extrusion, but manual extrusion works I just bought and build my first 3d printer (HE3D K280 with Marlin) and I'm encountering some problems with Cura 4 and Repetier. When I load and slice a part, the printer does not extrude anything during printing. However, when I manually extrude like 100mm (G1 F100 E100) it does work. Now I'm suspecting the problem lies with the gcode file which is generated with Cura since it contains very small values for E: ;Layer height: 0.2 ;Generated with Cura_SteamEngine 4.0.0 M140 S60 M105 M190 S60 M104 S200 M105 M109 S200 M82 ;absolute extrusion mode G28 ;Home G1 Z15.0 F6000 ;Move the platform down 15mm ;Prime the extruder G92 E0 G1 F200 E3 G92 E0 G92 E0 G1 F1500 E-6.5 ;LAYER_COUNT:250 ;LAYER:0 M107 G0 F3600 X-7.753 Y4.378 Z0.3 ;TYPE:SKIRT G1 F1500 E0 G1 F1800 X-8.127 Y3.918 E0.01115 G1 X-8.35 Y3.57 E0.01893 G1 X-9.088 Y2.287 E0.04677 G1 X-9.348 Y1.754 E0.05792 G1 X-9.483 Y1.376 E0.06547 G1 X-11.413 Y-4.956 E0.18999 G1 X-11.547 Y-5.534 E0.20115 G1 X-11.602 Y-6.124 E0.2123 Etc... Does anyone know how to fix this?

I think that you have the incorrect diameter specified (e.g. 2.85 mm instead of 1.75 mm) in your slicer; this also appears from a calculation, see below. Note that you can calculate from extruded volume entering the hotend, or deposited volume. For the first you could calculate the line width of the deposited line and verify that with the settings; from the second you can verify if the volume for the extruded filament equals filament volume based on extruded filament going into the hotend for an assumed line width. Do note that (certainly for first layers!) modifiers may be in place. This is merely to get a ballpark feeling for the chosen filament diameter. If you look at the first move from: G0 F3600 X-7.753 Y4.378 Z0.3 to: G1 F1800 X-8.127 Y3.918 E0.01115 You can calculate the travelled distance $ s = \sqrt{{\Delta X}^2+{\Delta Y}^2} = 0.59\ mm$. Also, from these moves you can see that $0.01115\ mm$ of filament enters the extruder $(E)$. The deposited volume ($V_{extruded_filament}$) of the printed line equals the cross sectional area $\times$ length of the deposited filament path. Area could be defined as taken from e.g. the Slic3r reference manual to be: Basically (as we apply conservation of mass) the filament volume $(V_{filament})$ entering the hotend need to be the same as the extruded filament volume $(V_{extruded_filament})$ leaving the nozzle; so $ A_{filament}\times E = A_{extruded\ filament}\times s $. This latter equation can be solved for $w$ by filling out the known parameters. From this calculation follows that for $1.75\ mm$ filament you get a calculated line width of about $0.22\ mm$, and respectively for $2.85\ mm$ filament you get $0.46\ mm$ line widths. As the nozzle diameter has not been specified in the question, but most commonly used nozzle diameter often is $0.4\ mm$, and modifiers for the first layer are at play to print thicker lines; you most probably have the have the wrong filament diameter set if you have a $1.75\ mm$ extruder setup. Basically it under-extrudes.

Find OpenSCAD code from image I have an OpenSCAD model which I am looking at in the application, code to the left and the rendering to the right. Am trying to modify a certain piece, and have commented out all the commands that I believed were related to that piece, but there is still one subtracted cube left, i.e. somewhere in the code there is a difference block with this cube command somewhere in the 2nd part (I believe, as I cannot see any other possibility). It would be very nice if I could just click on the image and get the software to display the corresponding commands in the code. Is anything like that available in any tool?

To my knowledge, OpenSCAD does not have any such feature. However, a related feature might help you: the debugging aid modifier characters. By inserting %, #, !, or * before an object (including aggregate objects), you can control how it renders in relation to the whole file; this makes it possible to do "binary search" type operations to figure out where the object you're seeing is.

What motherboard ID is appropriate for MKS BASE V1.5 in Marlin Firmware? I'm struggling with my new printer, and I just want to make sure that I have the basic configured correctly. What motherboard ID in configuration.h is appropriate for MKS BASE V1.5 in Marlin Firmware?

Marlin appears to support older versions of the board (and possibly this one) according to this line #define BOARD_MKS_13 47 // MKS v1.3 or 1.4 (maybe higher) in boards.h which can be found here. The company also has a guide and looks to provide pre-configured (but not fully configured?) downloads of Marlin. They have different links for different displays but then ask you to change lines manually but don't mention changing the board so I have no idea what they are doing or what is different between the downloads. It appears either way you go (Marlin from Github or from Osoyoo) you will need to change some lines to get each axis to behave correctly.

Initial auto-leveling configuration I'm near the end of a full electronics swap of a dead 3d printer. I'm using an MKS Gen 1.4 board with Repetier firmware. This is my first try at attempting to set up auto-leveling from scratch. I've got the inductive probe mounted, positioned and calibrated so that running a G30 (single probe) works perfectly and returns valid results. However, when I try a G28 (home), then G29 to do a full auto-leveling sequence, just prior to each probing, the Y axis lurches forward (roughly)70 mm, and stays cumulatively out of position by the amount it lurched forward. Since 70mm x 3 is bigger than the depth of my bed (200x200) the Y-axis bangs and grinds against it's physical limit. Additionally, that puts the Z-probe beyond the edge of the bed, which causes the firmware to go into error mode, because the actual z-low limit switch is hit without ever tripping the Z-probe. Which, annoying sends the Z-Axis moving up, until it ultimately crashes into its physical limit and grinds until I kill the power. Why is my config causing this lurching behavior? How do I fix it? Can the error behavior be configured/changed to NOT attempt infinite movement in the Z+ direction? (It might not matter once #1 is fixed, but I don't like the idea of my printer going into a mode where the Z-stepper could burn itself out if the power isn't flipped.) Here is the Z-probe section of my config.h: (Note: I have tried changing Z_PROBE_Y_OFFSET to -75, to see if I was entering the offset incorrectly. It didn't seem to change the behavior noticeably.) // #################### Z-Probing ##################### #define Z_PROBE_Z_OFFSET 0.2 #define Z_PROBE_Z_OFFSET_MODE 0 #define UI_BED_COATING 1 #define FEATURE_Z_PROBE 1 #define Z_PROBE_BED_DISTANCE 8.0 // Higher than max bed level distance error in mm #define Z_PROBE_PIN ORIG_Y_MAX_PIN #define Z_PROBE_PULLUP 0 #define Z_PROBE_ON_HIGH 1 #define Z_PROBE_X_OFFSET 10 #define Z_PROBE_Y_OFFSET 75 #define Z_PROBE_WAIT_BEFORE_TEST 0 #define Z_PROBE_SPEED 5 #define Z_PROBE_XY_SPEED 150 #define Z_PROBE_SWITCHING_DISTANCE 1.5 #define Z_PROBE_REPETITIONS 5 // Repetitions for probing at one point. #define Z_PROBE_HEIGHT 22.68 #define Z_PROBE_START_SCRIPT "m117 Autoleveling..." #define Z_PROBE_FINISHED_SCRIPT "m117 Autoleveling Complete" #define Z_PROBE_REQUIRES_HEATING 0 #define Z_PROBE_MIN_TEMPERATURE 150 #define FEATURE_AUTOLEVEL 1 #define Z_PROBE_X1 20 #define Z_PROBE_Y1 00 #define Z_PROBE_X2 160 #define Z_PROBE_Y2 00 #define Z_PROBE_X3 100 #define Z_PROBE_Y3 120 #define BED_LEVELING_METHOD 1 #define BED_CORRECTION_METHOD 0 #define BED_LEVELING_GRID_SIZE 5 #define BED_LEVELING_REPETITIONS 5 #define BED_MOTOR_1_X 0 #define BED_MOTOR_1_Y 0 #define BED_MOTOR_2_X 200 #define BED_MOTOR_2_Y 0 #define BED_MOTOR_3_X 100 #define BED_MOTOR_3_Y 200 #define BENDING_CORRECTION_A 0 #define BENDING_CORRECTION_B 0 #define BENDING_CORRECTION_C 0 #define FEATURE_AXISCOMP 0 #define AXISCOMP_TANXY 0 #define AXISCOMP_TANYZ 0

Well, I´m using marlin for my printers and normally the offset is negative, this difference is from the 0.0 Z value sensor and nozzle. For example, I have an aluminum plate, so this material is less inductive and I'm getting a height of nozzle 1.2 mm; normally this value should be above 5mm, but my printers reads 1.2mm So my offset is 1.2mm (this values is dangerous for me) because I can bend the plate if sensor stop working. the safety z height on G28 is 4mm and also for auto probing G29, the speed testing for Z is lower than travel X and Y. #ifdef AUTO_BED_LEVELING_GRID // set the rectangle in which to probe #define LEFT_PROBE_BED_POSITION 8 #define RIGHT_PROBE_BED_POSITION 156 #define BACK_PROBE_BED_POSITION 156 #define FRONT_PROBE_BED_POSITION 8 // set the number of grid points per dimension // I wouldn't see a reason to go above 3 (=9 probing points on the bed) #define AUTO_BED_LEVELING_GRID_POINTS 2 #else // not AUTO_BED_LEVELING_GRID // with no grid, just probe 3 arbitrary points. A simple cross-product // is used to esimate the plane of the print bed #define ABL_PROBE_PT_1_X 15 #define ABL_PROBE_PT_1_Y 156 #define ABL_PROBE_PT_2_X 15 #define ABL_PROBE_PT_2_Y 20 #define ABL_PROBE_PT_3_X 156 #define ABL_PROBE_PT_3_Y 20 #endif // AUTO_BED_LEVELING_GRID // these are the offsets to the probe relative to the extruder tip (Hotend - Probe) // X and Y offsets must be integers #define X_PROBE_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER 0 //25 #define Y_PROBE_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER 0 //29 #define Z_PROBE_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER -1.2 //-12.35 #define Z_RAISE_BEFORE_HOMING 4 // (in mm) Raise Z before homing (G28) for Probe Clearance. // Be sure you have this distance over your Z_MAX_POS in case #define XY_TRAVEL_SPEED 7000 // X and Y axis travel speed between probes, in mm/min #define Z_RAISE_BEFORE_PROBING 4 //How much the extruder will be raised before traveling to the first probing point. #define Z_RAISE_BETWEEN_PROBINGS 4 //How much the extruder will be raised when traveling from between next probing points I hope this help to understand your settings. I have set the values to Zero instead 25 and 29 because I pre defined the testing points manually to 8 and 156; of course the center of the nozzle is moved 25 and 29 mm from the plate center, this avoids collision to X0 and Y0. And I just the level using 4 points once, if your bed is warped so is needed more internal points #define X_PROBE_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER 0 //25 #define Y_PROBE_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER 0 //29

Ender 3 - Tiny strings in print Suddenly my prints start having small strings and I'm not sure what to do to eliminate them. I have already tried to clean the filament tube, cleaned up the nozzle, and played with various retraction settings. Nothing seems to work and I still see these small strings. Any idea how I can eliminate it?

What you're seeing does not look like stringing, which I would characterize as material that exited the nozzle after extrusion was supposed to have stopped, usually due to missing or insufficient retraction, but like the extrusions along the concave contours failed to bond to the previous layer and got drawn across to a point on the other side of the contour where some degree of adhesion resumed. This happens when the lateral acceleration force of going around the curve overcomes the bonding of the new material to the existing material it's being laid down against, and in my experience it's always the result of moisture-contaminated filament. This matches your description of the problem has something that "suddenly" started happening. To fix it, dry your filament. If your bed is big enough, the easiest way to do this is to lay the whole spool on the heated bed covered by a cardboard filament box with one side cut out to make a heat chamber, and running the bed heater at around 60-70°C (for PLA) for several hours, flipping the spool a few times during it. You can also use an oven but I would not trust the temperature control not to shoot up high enough to ruin the filament. If you want a less hackish solution, all sorts of specialized filament drying systems are available but I don't have experience with any to recommend. I just use my bed for PLA and oven for materials that can withstand higher temperatures.

What material can I use to make my own cake molds? I would like to make custom cake molds. I've asked about this in a few stores that specialize in cooking equipment, they said this wasn't possible. I wonder if 3D printing makes it possible. It would require a material that is food-safe, as per Which are the food-safe materials and how do I recognize them? However, there are two extra conditions: The material must be able to withstand the heat of an oven or microwave, and not mix with the dough. It should not be too difficult to remove the cake from the mold after it is ready. The first condition is where this question is a little different from Can you use PLA material with food and drinks? - that question is about cutlery and glasses, not about things that go into the oven or microwave. Is there a material that can be used for this purpose?

I would say that FDM printing in general is out of the question for this task, ABS and PLA would both melt in the oven, and the grooves in the print from the FDM process would make it a nightmare to clean. My initial thought was an SLA printer ( $1000+ ) which uses a Photopolymer Resin hardened by a UV light, and based on its medical uses, I would think that it is food safe - I do not know what its melting point is however. Another idea, one that would not too easily be done in house, is porcelain. Shapeways offers a service that you could use for this - they say just $9 per part, 125 x 125 x 200mm maximum dimms, both food and oven safe.

Printing a building from its laser scanned exterior point cloud I have a very dense point cloud (billions of points) of the exterior of a building obtained by laser scanning it with a Leica head. I successfully subsampled it down to around 500,000 and I'm trying to print the building by first creating a mesh. I tried using CloudCompare, Meshlab and PDAL, using Poisson surface reconstruction. However, the resulting mesh is full of holes, mainly in the roofs which have the lowest point density, and I cannot print it. Is there any algorithm which could use the fact that the point cloud is precisely the exterior part of a geometric thing?

Yes there are similar algorithms, but (afaik) not as ready to use programms. I wrote a bachelor thesis by my own, where i converted poind cloud datas of scanned surfaces into contour octrees. This based on the work of Laine (https://users.aalto.fi/~laines9/publications/laine2010i3d_paper.pdf) and the approach of using sparse voxel contour octrees, but instead of using polygons it used point clouds. This way was intended to get fast, good approximated results for visualizing. But there may be also other slower and more accurate algorithms. Btw. this question is not good placed in the 3D printing forum, because it is a question about data conversion.

Platform support up to a certain Z height in Ultimaker Cura/G-code Ultimaker Cura offers a platform support type of “touching buildplate” which enables the printer to only make a raft for parts of the object that should be touching the build plate. It also offers “everywhere” for any object that might be hanging over the build plate. I have a need to only offer support for overhangs up to a certain z height, such any overhang located at a z-point of 4 mm or below. Is there a software that will enable this, either as a setting/addition to Ultimaker Cura or just a G-code export for Pronterface?

Is there a software that will enable this? Yes, as of Ultimaker Cura 3.3 Beta, Ultimaker Cura allows you to specify an area which will not be considered for adding supports. In your case you could define everything above 4 mm to be excluded from building support structures. You can look here for this very new feature, it might be what you're looking for.

Bronze Filament Problem I made a torus that was 1 on the x and y axes, and 3 on the z axis in Blender. It is supposed to be a bead for a beaded necklace. It was exported to Cura as an .stl, then printed on a Lulzbot Mini. It worked fine in plastic, but when we tried it with bronze filament the nozzle clogged and it didn't start printing. Is there something I need to add to the model that will provide instructions for the printer? The person who operates the printer says that most, but not all, of the models he prints in bronze have a border around them when they print, and this one didn't. I don't know if that makes a difference.

Since we do not know more about the printer and its settings it is most likely that the issues lies within the printer and the temperature/print speed settings. Fill materials do print differently than just colored plastic of the same type. Find valid print parameters for the type of filament that you can modify as needed for the printer that is being used (a good first gauge are the offsets the printer has for other type of filaments (thermistors might be offset for example) added to the 'literature values' of the new filament). It might also be, that the nozzle was not clean when changing filaments and hence the clogging occured. Have you/your printing guy tried a 'cold pull'? How should I clean my extruder when changing materials? Usually nozzle clogging comes down to knowledge about your printer and experience with the filament.

What is wrong with my first layers? I just assembled a Prusa i3 MK3 and went through the calibration process, but when I print the first layer doesn't look good and my prints come unstuck from the bed. I think it might be Z height but this was as high as I could put the probe without the paper moving on the calibration test. The layers after the first few look good but then the print either warps or comes unstuck and moves.

Judging by the images you posted in your question, the first layer distance is too far away from the bed for the current filament flow. This could either be related to: having an offset on the first layer like a height correction in the slicer, an incorrectly levelled (read height adjusted) bed, (you did the paper test correctly, so this is probably not your problem, it is mentioned for completeness) under-extrusion slicer setting not correct, e.g. filament diameter or flow modifier not 100 % incorrectly calibrated extruder Your most likely problem is under-extrusion. It would be advised to calibrate the extruder: How do I calibrate the extruder of my printer? and check the slicer settings.

What is stepper motor binding? (When belts are too tight) Recently I have been getting some layer shifting starting at layer one. I have had layer shifting at higher layers due to various reasons but mainly for the belts being too loose. But now I am reading that layer shifting can also be caused by belts being too tight. The RepRap wiki page for layer shifting simply gives the mechanical reason for this as "binding". Can anyone explain what binding means? I thought it meant that the rails were crashing into something but apparently it doesn't. Then I thought it meant that the X and Y axes weren't perfectly perpendicular. Does it mean that the "teeth" of the belts stay "stuck" to the gear for too long when moving in one direction? Why would this happen in one direction and not the other? Because the pulleys/gears are at different heights? Or just because of the belts being tighter? Or one of these reasons? Just trying to understand what its happening so I can debug it for my particular 3D printer.

I think the RepRap wiki is using the word "binding", which translates to "stick together or cause to stick together in a single mass" (from Google dictionary), to indicate that some sort of friction is experienced (as you experience when things are sticking together). When there is too much tension in the belt, pulleys and bearings experience a larger radial force stressing the balls of the bearings and pulley shafts. This causes extra friction for the stepper motor to overcome (as the friction force, tangential, is related to the radial force); this means that the stepper has to work harder and can skip steps (for more insight please read below). While ball bearings are used to reduce friction (opposed to a bush bearing), each ball has a little friction from a couple of sources according to this reference: The sources of this friction are: slight deformation of the rolling elements and raceways under load, sliding friction of the rolling elements against the cage and guiding surfaces. These effects are generally captured in a single friction coefficient called "μ". The relation between friction force (tangential) and bearing loading (radial) is written by $$P_{friction}=P_{load} \times \mu$$ so the higher the belt tension ($P_{load}$), the higher the frictional force ($P_{friction}$), the harder the stepper has to work.

Y-axis layer shifting on my Ender 3 My 3D prints shift along the Y-axis on my Ender 3 3D printer. I don't know what to do. My Y-axis belt is tight, So I don't think that is the problem...

Check for wobble in the X gantry and Y gantry also your Y-axis belt should vibrate like a snare when you pull it and let go. Same goes for your X-axis belt. If that doesn't work see if going back to Cura 4.6 helps (it did for me) and lower your acceleration in Cura (advanced settings movement).

Can I use different sized steppers for different axes? So basically, I have 3 different types of steppers. A NEMA 23 stepper for the Z-axis, a good quality NEMA 17 for Y-axis and another lower quality NEMA 17 for X-axis. This setup should work right?. I'm using TMC2209's stepper drivers and all are well within the drivers rated phase current limit.

Each axis is fine using a different stepper size and/or quality. You will still need to tune their operating current and steps/mm for each of course. Make sure your motor mounts fit too. Where it might become challenging is if you wanted two different steppers on the SAME axis. As in, a NEMA17 + NEMA23 for a dual Z axis. I don't think this is what you intend though.

Anet A8 Hotbed Not Heating Correctly For my Anet A8 I replaced the stock power supply 12V/20A with a eTopxizu 12V/30A, plus I added a fused 250V/10A power switch and mosfet. The issue that I am having involves the hotbed, it has no issue heating up, but it doesn't heat up past 94 degrees Celsius when I try to print using ABS (not issues so far when printing with PLA). When I originally installed the new power supply, I had the mosfet and the motherboard powered separately, but I tried powering them both with the same wire and the problem persisted. I measured the voltage coming out of the power supply and it reads 12.44V, the voltage going into the mosfet reads 12.28V, coming out of the mosfet 10.58V, and the voltage reading on the hotbed is 10.25V. If you need pictures of my wiring or anything let me know and I will update the post.

That is actually not uncommon to happen for the Anet heated beds, many users report this. Mine was able to reach about 100 ℃ out of the box (took a while to get there), but not beyond. For the bed to reach higher temperatures you would need to make some adjustments. You should at least insulate the bottom of the heated bed with cotton or cork to reduce the heat dissipation by half. Note to speed up heating to e.g. 110 ℃, I often insulate the top of the plate with a removable piece of cotton or cork to remove it just before leveling and printing starts. Furthermore, replace the heated bed connector and solder the bed power wires directly to the pins at the back of the connector. That connector is NOT rated for the amount of current requested by the heat bed! E.g. due to the moving bed the connector jitters which leads to sparks; you see many pictures of burned or brown connectors on the internet. While you do that please consider replacing the wires to the heat bed also to some proper gauge silicone wire, AWG 14 should be good enough. WARNING! Last thing to mention of prime importance is that the stock firmware of the Anet printers has NO thermal runaway protection! I.e. if your hot end thermistor would fall out of the nozzle block, the firmware would detect the temperature drop and will keep sending current even if it does not measure a temperature rise. This leads to an overheated nozzle and is definitely considered to be a fire hazard! Edit: The answers to question How to increase bed temperature over 103 degrees are of great value to this question.

Build plate (PEI on glass) isn't flat after several months of use? I got a Wanhao Duplicator 6 printer branded as a Monoprice Ultimate about a year an and a half ago, 6 months after I got it I decided I hated the buildplate (I had to use a gluestick on every print to get it to stay down) so I removed the original fake buildtak, and got a piece of borosilicate glass and a sheet of PEI that I attached to it. After about 8 months I started noticing issues with my bed being weird and never really being level no matter how much time I spent leveling it. (I level my buildplate by printing giant concentric circles, comparing the thickness based on the color in different portions, and turning knobs based on that.) Today after an hour of trying to level my bed I decided to just print the model I was going to print anyways (a pyramid model) and discovered why it never seemed level. It seems that different portions of my buildplate are at significantly different heights. Is there something I did wrong to cause this to happen, does it just happen over time, and is there anything I can do to fix it? My current plan is just to buy another sheet of the PEI and stick it directly to the aluminum buildplate installed on the printer. It would result in MUCH better thermal transfer between the heater and the PEI anyways, which is important because the whole point of PEI is that it sticks to PLA extremely well at high temperatures, and not very well at low temps. If nobody knows what might cause this I'm just going to go ahead and get an new sheet of PEI and omit the glass (it was a bad idea anyways). Thanks for reading.

Looking at the picture, the first thing that came to mind was, "are you sure it's the bed?". The height variance looks very regular, and while I'm unfamiliar with this printer's specific mechanics, my thought process trended to the Ender 3 and other v-wheel extruder mounts. If the extruder and gantry carriages are mounted to the gantry spars on V-wheels instead of sleeve bushings or other linear guides, and you've spent a lot of time printing small objects where those wheels are going back and forth over a relatively small travel distance for the entire print, you have been unevenly wearing the wheels so they've become eccentric around their rotational center, and this will cause the extruder to vary its height over the glass in a very regular pattern tied to the circumference of these carriage wheels. This happens especially quickly if you over-tighten the bearings against the gantry spars in an attempt to make the printer more precise. If the printer uses sleeve bushings, the worn sleeve won't rotate, and any wear on the spar will be very localized to the areas in which you print, but if the printer has spent most of its life printing a grid of small objects (tokens, sets of small figurines), you can still get this regular wear pattern as the printer will spend more time over those areas of the bed. The fix is to replace the wheels or linear bearings if the printer uses them. If it uses sleeve bushings and the gantry spars themselves are worn in this pattern, you might be able to rotate the spars to put an unworn (or less worn) band of metal on the top of the spar, depending on how the spars are mounted into the endcaps of the frame and y-axis carriages.

How do I determine the acceleration value for my printer? When the print head changes direction, the printer must accelerate and decelerate the print head. When calibrated correctly, the printer is able to do this quickly and without causing the printer to shake too much, without drastically slowing down the print process. If I set it too high, my printer shakes violently, especially during infill. If I set it too low, print times are doubled or tripled. What process can I follow to determine (or how can I calculate) the fastest acceleration value my printer can use without causing problems in my print? I'd prefer a process I can follow over a formula I can plug values into, especially if the formula includes magic numbers.

As Tom pointed out, binary search is the best way. In case that term isn't familiar to all readers, here's a little more detail: Establish an acceleration value that you're sure is too low (call it $L$), and one that you're sure is too high ($H$). It sounds like you know such values already from experience. Figure out the speed in the middle: $(L+H)/2$. Call that $M$. Try printing at speed $M$. Something like a stepped calibration cube might be a good choice of object (plenty available on Thingiverse). If $M$ is still too fast, take $M$ as your new high-speed limit (that is, reset $H$ to the value of $M$), and repeat from step #2. If it's slow enough to work, take $M$ as your new low-speed limit ($L$), and repeat from step #2. Each repetition will cut the range in half. Keep repeating until $L$ and $H$ get as close as you want; say, within 5 % of each other or so. I wouldn't bother trying to get super-close, because the workable value will vary somewhat over time (friction from dust getting on various parts; slight voltage differences; different mass and pulling tension for the filament roll, temperature of motors, complexity of the object you're printing, behavior of the slicing program you use, you name it).

Customized Ultimaker 1: Extruder motor does not move I recently upgraded my Ultimaker 1. The upgrade includes a different stepper motor for the Extruder, the same a Ultimaker 2+ would use. I plugged the new motor and nothing happened. To eliminate the problem I ordered a new PCB and stepper motor drivers, reassembled all electronics. For some reason the extruder does not move, and actually any other motor I plug into the extruder port doesn't either. I switched the driver, twice, but without a different result. Can anybody tell me what component could be faulty or how I can find the problem? Could it be the Arduino board, even when I use the Ulticontroller? Maybe remove one of the jumpers next to the driver?

Did you heat the hotend before attempting to move the extruder? Most firmwares block cold extrusion. If you send the printer M302 it will allow the extruder motor to move without the hotend being above the temperature set in the firmware. Jumpers next to drivers are used to set microstepping, no need to adjust these unless you changed to a different type of driver or want to use different microstepping. Changing them usually requires changing the steps in firmware as well. Also, swapping drivers or motors while the driver is powered can destroy it.

What is the simplest way to render an image of an obj exported from Tinkercad? I like Tinkercad so far for it's very simple UI. (I'm new to 3D modeling and very confused by Blender and the like.) However, I'm not using it to do 3D printing just yet. For I'd like to be able to be to slap textures on the models I make and get images of that. What is the easiest beginner way to do that (for Linux OS)? Alternately, displaying the .obj directly in the browser with a texture would be great, too.

For your purposes, consider that Meshmixer (free) can open .OBJ files and display them in any position you desire. I use Meshmixer quite a bit for model editing, but have not used it for .OBJ files with textures. I searched my drive and found quite a few .OBJ files, but was not able to present or add textures, due to my own ignorance, I'm sure. I found a useful link to a support page on the 'net which indicates that there has to be a texture file as well as a definition file (.MTL) in order to display the textures in Meshmixer. Using that reference, I was able to add a randomly selected .PNG file and apply the texture to a test model. If your creations do not include those support files, this may not be a good answer. There's little to lose, however, as the program is free and you may find use for it in the future, or you may find that it works as you require.

Would 3D printing multiple copies at once saves time? I am wondering - of course if the 3D printer's bed big enough - printing multiple copies of the same print could save me significant amount of time in a small production line, excluding minor wastage such as setup time, post-processing time, etc. e.g. if my foo print takes 10 hours, printing 2x copies at the same time would take 2x times more, increasing linearly or it would be significantly less?

Actually no. It will take slightly more for each addition. You also then have the point of failure, where one gets knocked off and ruins all the prints. The fastest way to print multiple objects is one at a time. In fact slic3r lets you do just that with their sequential printing feature. The reason is, the time it takes to lift 0.5mm, travel the few MM over to the next object, lower the 0.5mm back down.. Repeat for inner shells, outer shells, infill.. all add time. Doesn't seem like much till you do it 14,000 times. In the case of your example, it would be negligible. In more complicated or well spaced prints its another story. For extra extra fast, look into loss PLA casting...

Monoprice Maker Ultimate Extrudes Too Much Filament At Start Today I received my Monoprice Maker Ultimate 3D Printer. It is a rebranded Wanhao Duplicator 6 for reference. I am using the default settings for a Wanhao Duplicator 6 in Simplify3D. Here is the Start G-Code that Simplify3D has setup for me via the Configuration Assistant: G28 ; home all axes G92 E0 ; zero the extruded length G1 Z10 ; lower G1 E20 F200 ; purge nozzle quickly G1 E10 F60 ; purge nozzle slowly G92 E0 ; zero the extruded length again G1 E-1.5 F400 ; retract G1 X170 Z0 F9000 ; pull away filament G1 X180 F9000 ; wipe G1 Y20 F9000 ; wipe G1 E0 ; feed filament back The problem is that right before a print, the extruder squeezes out a bunch of filament making a nice little spiral tower. It is a waste of filament. I suspect it is all the purging in the Start Code that is doing it, but I don't know what I should change because I don't know what is necessary, so I am coming here to ask the question before I start experimenting. Has anyone had this problem? Does anyone know the solution? Update: I tried printing one of the models that came on the SD card with the printer (I think it was created with Cura) and the Start G-code is different. G21 ;metric values G90 ;absolute positioning M82 ;set extruder to absolute mode M107 ;start with the fan off G28 X0 Y0 ;move X/Y to min endstops G28 Z0 ;move Z to min endstops G1 Z15.0 F4800 ;move the platform down 15mm G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length G1 F200 E3 ;extrude 3mm of feed stock G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length again G1 F4800 ;Put printing message on LCD screen M117 Printing... It also uses absolute positioning. It got going without purging a bunch of unnecessary filament on that print. Now I am not sure how to combine these two to get the good working starting G-code. Any ideas?

Changing the Simplify3D start script to this will change the nozzle purge to the same length as what was on your SD card. G28 ; home all axes G92 E0 ; zero the extruded length G1 Z10 ; lower G1 E20 F200 ; purge nozzle quickly<---------Change E20 to E3, E is the extrusion length G1 E10 F60 ; purge nozzle slowly <----------Remove this line G92 E0 ; zero the extruded length again G1 E-1.5 F400 ; retract G1 X170 Z0 F9000 ; pull away filament G1 X180 F9000 ; wipe G1 Y20 F9000 ; wipe G1 E0 ; feed filament back The rest of it is just moves to try to clean the nozzle.

"print" menu not loading on Monoprice MP Select Mini V2 I have an MP Select Mini V2 and when I turn on the printer and select the "print" menu it hangs while saying "please wait" instead of listing the .gcode files stored on the SD card. I have been using that printer with that SD card for hundreds of prints without error. It started when I took it out and added a new .gcode file (sliced in Cura with the same settings as I always use) and placed it back into the printer to print it. When I connect the SD card into my computer (Windows 10) everything seems normal with the card. What could be causing this issue?

Too many files on SD card I removed some files and now it works, it seems like the menu would not load if the SD card contained more files than the printer could display on the print menu (they didn't take up a lot of space in memory, though).

Nema Stepper used in Flashforge 3D printer I am using Flashforge Creator Pro and a Flashforge Finder I want to know which NEMA stepper model is used in each of these two printers, or is it NEMA 17 for both? Their model numbers are: 42HB40F08AB-04 [W-42MM, L-40MM], and; 42HD4027-01[W-42MM, L-40MM]

Nema 17 is about the physical size of the motor, ie screw hole placement. It doesn't specify anything about the power of the motor. If you are looking to replace the motor, you need quite a bit more info than that it is Nema 17, such as the steps/rotation and the holding torque.

How to line up (x,y) print area between hardware and software? I'm trying to line up the physical print bed of my printer (Printrbot Simple Metal) to the virtual print area of the slicer (Cura). So far, they've never been properly aligned. It was never that big a problem because, worst case scenario, my print would simply not be dead-center on the bed. But I've decided to try and fix it. Here are pictures of a test model in Cura, and the resulting physical print: What's the proper way to align the two? It seems I just got lucky with the x-axis here (though note that the BuildTak surface is a bit off center). But obviously the y-axis needs fixing. The print needs to start a little lower, because print-head couldn't reach the highest point, and the y-axis motor slipped to compensate. Ideally, the fixed parameters of the print bed size and offset would be set by the Marlin firmware (EEPROM?). But I also need to be able to do a little offset tweaking on the software side for when I need to replace the BuildTak mat. Edit: I tried M206 (home offset) commands, but the result is definitely not what we want. I cancelled these early. The upper print has M206 Y-15, the lower print has M206 Y15. What seems to happen is that the coordinate system is not physically shifted. Instead, the area is 'cropped'. All filament that should go outside the boundaries is actually extruded 'on the edge', resulting in an ugly blob.

The problem you are experiencing is because the position where the y endstop is triggered does not correspond to y = 0, but perhaps corresponds to y = 15 (replace 15 by the offset you're seeing). You can perhaps solve this by adjusting the endstop to trigger at the correct point, but you can also adjust this behavior in software: In your start G-code, after the homing (G28) command, insert a G92 Y15 to tell the printer that the current position (reached after homing) is actually y = 15. Another option is to use the M206 command to permanently store the offset in EEPROM (rather than needing to provide it in the start code each time). If your printer moves towards max rather than min, the same applies, but consider that the offset may be caused by the bed size defined in your firmware not corresponding to the bed size set in your slicer.

Choose infill percentage Since I'm running a 3D printing facility of an engineering school, students are always wondering how much infill percentage affects the stiffness of the part. I know that it is impossible to get a numerical solution for this question, but maybe there is an option to simulate in software an already sliced model. I haven't seen in any slicer an option to export as .stl or .step or any other format which can be accepted by simulation software. Has anyone seen or thought about something similar?

I don't believe that slicing engines create any sort of solid model that would be useful for CAD simulation. When a slicing engine slices a 3D model, it's goal is to spit out the preferred machine paths in G-Code (of some kind). However, I've read a few articles, done some tests, and heard through the grape vine that anywhere between 10%-35% is good enough for most applications. I once watched a webinar for understanding the new MakerWare interface that explained how they chose such settings. Although I can't find the clip directly, here is the page for all of MakerBot's webinars. I think this webinar was the one I watched explaining a little bit about preferred infill percentages. From experience, anything over 35% doesn't yield much more strength from infill side of things. Beyond 35% and you're going to want to reconsider how you're orienting the print when you print it and what you're printing to utilize the grain structure for proper strength. However, infill percentage/patterns are not the only variable for creating strong parts. Infill is really just a way to save time and material. Here are some other ways to potentially increase strength: Increase your shell. Shell is the number of profile patterns per layer. Typically (in FDM/FFF), each shell is about the diameter of your extruder nozzle. Increase your floor/roof. Similar to shell, floor/roof refers to the number of layers that make up the "bottom" and "top" of the part with regard to the build plate. Print orientation. Pay attention to which areas of the part are susceptible to strain along the "grain" of the layers. Try to rotate your part on the build plate in a way that minimizes potential failure both in print and post-print use. Post process. Don't be afraid to do some post-processing to increase the strength. There are some 3D printers on the market that go as far as including Kevlar strands in the printing process to beef up their prints. However, it may be as simple as just coating the part in an epoxy with some basic finishing techniques. It's a bit more work, but it turns weak 3D printed parts into full production quality prints. Update: Based on some of the comments, it sounds like your best bet might be to find a custom application that can either convert the g-code file into a solid model (try CAM software?), or create a plugin for your CAD software (I know Unigraphics NX and Solidworks allow for this) and essentially recreate your own slicing engine that takes your solid model and generates the same infill pattern dynamically inside. Perhaps look into the works of Simlab or similar which has a lot of 3D software plugins. I'm not promoting them and I don't work for them, this is just a reference of what to look for.

Marlin firmware question for dual extruder I've recently added a second hotend and extruder assembly to my 3D printer and I've made all the necessary changes in the firmware. I've defined the temp sensor for hotend 2, all the pins for heat and temp as well as defined extruders as 2 instead of 1. The problem is that the printer display in the motion menu is showing Extruder Extruder E1 Extruder E2 "Extruder" and "Extruder E1" both control the primary extruder and "Extruder 2" controls the second extruder. Any tips, ideas, suggestions?

There is nothing to worry about, this is a feature not a bug. Extruder refers to the active extruder, the loaded/active tool. Based on the active extruder the Extruder controls either your Extruder E1 (this is known in the firmware as Extruder E0!) or your Extruder E2 (the Extruder E1 from the firmware).

MKS base 1.5 (E0 & E1) not working I have bought two MKS base 1.5 boards. Both extruder ports are not working. I made sure the stepper motor still works and that there is nothing wrong with the Marlin firmware that I know of. Any ideas?

The OP has solved the problem as read from a comment on a deleted answer. So far the OP has been reluctant to post the answer; therefore his comment is converted into a community answer. It appears that the OP had incorrectly configured his firmware considering the comment: "I figured out what was wrong. Turns out the no extrude command was uncommented and worked fine when changed the min temp on it."

What calibration options should I look into given these defects I printed a temperature calibration cuboid for Hatchbox 1.75 mm PLA, in 1 °C increments from 180 °C to 190 °C. I have two questions related to this image: I'm not seeing any difference in quality across the temperature range. Am I just way off base and need to be substantially higher? How do I get rid of the small layer shifts you can see across the board? Printed on a RepRapGuru Prusa MK2 clone.

Your print does not suffer from layer shifts as you call them. This uneven layer deposition is typically caused by the (positioning) accuracy of your printer. All-in-all, this print does not look so bad. You would get better quality prints on a different style of a printer; most high-end printers have a lowering platform instead of a forth and back moving platform. Although 180 °C is at the low side of printing PLA (usually it starts at about 185 °C), the print does look okay. However, looks can deceive, it does not say anything about structural integrity (layer bonding). Note, to calibrate the temperature using a temperature tower, you need a different calibration test print, preferably one that tests overhang. This latter is usually far more important as there is normally not much to see at the walls, you need a slanting part in the print or an overhang to determine the optimal temperature.

Ender 3 pro extruder skipping steps, tried multiple things I've already asked this question somewhere else but unfortunately I had little luck. So... my Ender 3 Pro extruder just started skipping steps, as in the gears (and the gear pinion) will rotate but the filament won't flow. It all started when I changed PLA filament to a new roll; I thought it might have been the roll faulty so I've tried a spool that had been working fine until 2 hours before it all started. Nope, skipping with that one as well. Here's what I've tried doing so far: Replaced the stock PTFE tubing with Capricorn tubing. Checked that the tubing is tight and does not have play. Replaced the whole extruder system (except for the extruder motor) with a metal Creality system. Performed various cold pulls. Replaced the nozzle. Upped the extruding temperature from 195 °C to 205 °C. Checked that there's the correct distance between the bed and the nozzle. Yelled at the printer. Asked for advice to my cats. None of the above worked, and my cats looked funny at me. Print settings as below: Filament diameter in the slicer 1.75mm (yes I've checked). Temperature: 195 °C, upped to 205 °C. Print speed: from 20 mm/s for the first layers to 50 mm/s for the infill. I've also reverted back to the old PTFE tubing as I noticed that the Capricorn was giving too much resistance to the filament. Nope, still skipping. I've noticed that the extruder gear grips quite firmly onto the filament, so much so that when it starts slipping it actually eats away the filament until it breaks. It's almost like there's a clog somewhere but the tubing is clear, the hot end is clear (I've cleared it and checked multiple times), and the nozzle is brand new. What else can I try? Have I missed something? Apart from the changes listed above (carried out after the extruder started skipping), the printer is absolutely stock, firmware and everything. UPDATE: I've changed the factory hot end bloc with a brand new one, changed PTFE tubing one again, making sure it's as close as possible to the nozzle (unscrew nozzle 1/2 turn, fit PTFE, screw nozzle in) but it didn't change anything at all. The extruder still skips steps as it can't push the filament out of the nozzle. Pushing it manually feels nice and smooth until it hits the nozzle, where I can feel too much resistance. UPDATE 2: I've modifed the following parameters on the EEPROM to limit the filament flow: M203 Z5.00 E25.00 M201 E1000 I've also crancked the temperature up to 220°C but it made no difference whatsoever. What I've noticed is that, after cleaning hot end and tubing, it starts skipping after 1 hour of printing, every single time without fail. UPDATE 3: I've checked the input voltage from the PSU and it's 24V; the Vref for the extruder is 0.744V, so everything looks as expected. UPDATE 4: The extruder idler pulley has a compression washer to hold it in place without impeding idle spinning; it is usually mounted in the order idler pulley, compression washer and bolt. I've noticed that the pulley wasn't spinning freely this way, so I inverted the order to compression washer, idler pulley and bolt. The bolt head is small enough not to stop the pulley from spinning. I've also increased the pressure the spring arm excise on the idler pulley, so that the toothed pulley grips more firmly on the filament. This way I've managed to improve things although not solve them. It's been printing for the last 3 and a half hour without skipping but it's not a solution, as the toothed gear is chewing too aggressively on the filament. In just one hour a good deposit of PLA shavings has formed on the extruder, and I had to blow it away, and this never happened before this all started.

Since you've said you can feel a problem at the nozzle pushing it through manually, and since you say it goes away for a while after cleaning, you probably have somewhere that molten filament is getting into that it's not supposed to, then solidifying and jamming. Check that the cooling fan for the heatsink on the coldend is working, and that the PTFE tube is properly installed all the way through the heat break and butted up against the nozzle with no gaps or irregularities, and that the pressure fitting is holding it firmly and not allowing it to back out. If you can't find anything wrong, it's possible that something is just defective/damaged inside the hotend assembly.

Gluing silicon heater to aluminium I am making a bed for my 3D printer. I have bought a silicon heater (31x31 cm) and I want to glue it to my custom aluminum bed. The tape that it had from factory was bad, so I removed it. I want to glue it to the aluminum and I don't know what type of adhesive to use, I was thinking gasket glue with silicon, but I think that it will have bad thermal conductivity. I found this product, a silicon based, heat transferring paste, but I think that it will not stick good. What is a good adhesive for this purpose?

I suggest not gluing it. Starting from the top, make a sandwich this way: Aluminium with holes for bolts - Silicone heater - Thin cork (the one from IKEA, 2 mm thick for office desks is fine) - Thin plywood with holes for bolts (or other stiff material holding at least 60°C) This way you use the aluminium and the plywood to keep the silicone heater well in contact with the aluminium, and the cork insulates so that less heat is lost on the bottom side. Also, cork is fire-retardant. If the heater fails replacing it is simple. Also, you can and should cut away from the cork some space for a thermal non resettable fuse at 180°C to cut power if the heater overheats. In my case I should have used one more bolt, as you can see in the photo.

How to wire P.I.N.D.A. v2 to an SKR V1.3 board? I bought a BigTreeTech SKR v1.3 main board and a P.I.N.D.A v2 for my P3Steel MGN. Does anyone know to wire them together and which part in Marlin 2 do I need to change?

TL;DR To answer your question how (by assuming you have a 4 pins PINDA v2 sensor) to connect the sensor to your board, you have 2 options: Do not connect the white wire and treat the sensor as you would use a normal endstop switch (blue is ground, brown is +5 V, black is signal), Connect the 4 wires (use a splitter cable to split out into a 3 and 1 pin connector, see image below), use the additional pin to read the thermistor value through a free analogue pin, this requires you to do a lot of code changes if you are using a different firmware than the original Prusa firmware. The PINDA v2 auto bed leveling sensor has an additional wire, usually these bed leveling sensors only have 3 wires (power, ground and signal). The PINDA v2 probe has an additional wire that is connected to a thermistor. This thermistor reading is used by Prusa to compensate the trigger distance with temperature variation. Wiring the fourth pin would require to reverse engineer the logic behind the temperature compensation if you aren't using the firmware of Prusa (e.g. when you are using Marlin firmware; this is not very simple!). Do note this is something engineered by Prusa printing engineers and implemented in their custom fork of Marlin firmware. E.g. the compensation is calculated in Marlin_main.cpp by function temp_compensation_pinda_thermistor_offset. This function is called to return the offset based on the read temperature (actual calculation is done in temp_comp_interpolation(temperature_pinda)): #ifdef PINDA_THERMISTOR offset_z = temp_compensation_pinda_thermistor_offset(current_temperature_pinda); #endif //PINDA_THERMISTOR It is perfectly fine to not connect the white wire, this is the signal needed to read out the thermistor value used for the temperature compensation. This will disable the compensation feature and will revert the sensor to a normal inductive sensor.

A4988 driver cooling specifications When exchanging the mainboard of my Ultimaker Original, I found the new (unoriginal) mainboard to have a condensator that is quite a little higher than on the original, which means the fan duct doesn't fit any more. I read somewhere that those A4988 stepper motor drivers don't have to be actively cooled, but a heatsink will be sufficient: After testing the theory I found the heatsinks to be really hot, but not too hot to touch. Sadly I do not have any means of temperature measurement other than my fingers... How hot do they normally get, when should I abort printing and look for a different solution? Are there any good solutions other than the original cooler & cooling duct?

A4988 become hot when a lot of current draw from them . If it is more than 1.5 Amp. Also you will notice missing steps, missing layers, abnormal print and Stepper motor become hot .It automatically shutdown at max temp.

How do I keep the .stl files from being resized while exporting? I made a few models in Autodesk Inventor. When I tried to get them printed, the printer created a model smaller than the model I made in Inventor (270mm x 200mm). Is there a way to keep them from getting resized? Here is the model in Inventor: And here is the model being visualized by the printer driver:

.stl Basics The .stl format has no inherent sense of which units you use. items are to scale to an ambiguous 1, which could be 1 meter, one millimeter, one lightyear or one inch. To a .stl, only the relative sizing matters. All these faces you see are compared to a line with the length of 1-unit that is Slicer-Modeling Software interaction The most common graphic design programs export in millimeters, but some US ones just assume inches, which is a factor of 1"=25.4mm. Cura, Netfabb, and Slic3r expect that the 1-unit line is one millimeter long - but if it is an inch instead, then the model is shrunk by 1/25.4 or to about 4% of the right size. Scaling up by 2540% one would return to the millimeter scale. But then there are other programs that use other choices of scales. Blender for example assumes a scene is in meters by default. Inventor Inventor can export .stl in a variety of scales, which all just serve as how the length of the inherent but invisible 1-unit line is drawn. The default choice is centimeters, so a scaling factor of 1cm=10mm, which would explain the models being only 1/10th of the expected size in Slic3r. to change the scaling, follow the manual: upon exporting a .stl, click Options under Units, choose mm

Multi-color printing with desktop 3D printer? My MakerBot printer supports only two filaments at the same time. What are techniques to print objects with more than two colors for one object?

The most obvious solution is to pause the print and swap filament for another color. Another option is to splice pieces of filament together, though this does not allow very precise control of when the switch happens. There is also a device that can automatically slice filament this way. Finally, another option that uses very little external equipment is to use (permanent) markers to colorize light-colored filament. Other options include upgrading to a printer with more hotends, or installing a hotend with multiple filament inputs and one outputs, but these options would involve significantly changing your printer setup.

Advance extrusion, extruder code help? I not sure what this code does..... I recently bought a titan extruded that needs to be calibrated with my printer (417 microsteps http://wiki.e3d-online.com/wiki/Titan_Assembly#Firmware_Calibration). I am having a hard time understanding why they have D_Filament at 2.85 (my printer was made using 1.85mm filament) and why they used it twice in there equation. Also, what are the arc interpretations for? #ifdef ADVANCE #define EXTRUDER_ADVANCE_K .0 #define D_FILAMENT 2.85 #define STEPS_MM_E 836 #define EXTRUTION_AREA (0.25 * D_FILAMENT * D_FILAMENT * 3.14159) #define STEPS_PER_CUBIC_MM_E (axis_steps_per_unit[E_AXIS]/ EXTRUTION_AREA) #endif // ADVANCE // Arc interpretation settings: #define MM_PER_ARC_SEGMENT 1 #define N_ARC_CORRECTION 25

The extruder advance feature is probably not enabled on your printer, so this code effectively does nothing (and you don't need to mess with it). Extruder advance is a feature that tries to compensate for the delay between feeding (or retracting) the filament and the point at which it actually starts to extrude, but it's generally not used. The fact that the manufacturer left D_FILAMENT at the default of 2.85 probably means they didn't enable this. You can check whether it is enabled by seeing if there is an (uncommented) #define ADVANCE. The reason D_FILAMENT appears twice is because they're computing the cross-sectional area of your filament, which proportional to the square of its diameter. The arc interpolation settings have nothing to do with extruder calibration at all, but define the resolution at which G2/G3 approximate arcs. G2/G3 are currently not supported/used by most slicers, so you can safely ignore these settings since they don't do anything that would influence regular printing. The only thing that you should change is the following line in the Configuration.h file: #define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT {80,80,4000,500} Leave the first three values as-is (they may be different for your printer) and change the last one to 417. You could also avoid changing the firmware at all, and use M92 E417 to set the steps per mm for your extruder, or (if you have an LCD) use the LCD to adjust the steps per mm.

Retraction Causing Skipping I am trying to get rid of stringing on my prints, to do that I have tried turning on a retraction in Ultimaker Cura, and reducing flow. When I turn on retraction it causes the extruder to skip on the filament. the extruder pulls the material out as it should, but when it pushes back in as it prints the next parts it goes part of the way then it skips making the bumping sound, it seems to do this almost every time that it retracts. To stop this from happening I have tried changing the retraction distance from 10mm to 5mm, the retraction speed from 60 mm/s to 40 mm/s, the flow from 100% to 90% and the temperature from 200 °C to 220 °C. I am using the Ender 3 running Marlin 1.1.9 with an aluminium Bowden extruder upgrade and BLTouch. How do prevent this skipping due to retraction? Update: After changing the setting to what has been suggested in this answer the result of the retraction print resulted in: It has almost completely solved the stringing problem as well.

Fighting stringing will not work by increasing the temperature of the hotend. There could be 2 possible causes for your problem, the first is that you still have a too high retraction speed, too high for your stepper to follow (do note that the default value in Ultimaker Cura is 25 mm/s), the second is that you retract too far and the cooled "hot" filament tip is deformed and causes extra tension/friction in the extruded liner.

How to re-program Prusa firmware to accept a taller Z axis? Machine specs: Prusa MK3, firmware version 3.1.2. Facts: I have designed a new Z-axis frame for my printer, so I can print models up to 360mm high in stead of the standard 210mm. The plan has worked and the printer is functioning normally with a new, taller z frame. However... To calibrate, the Z lead screws carry the X carriage all the way up and bump it against the top frame mounts, to make sure the X carriage is level. On the taller frame, the X carriage stops its ascent at 220mm and descends back toward the bed. Because the X carriage goes up farther than it was 'supposed to' and didn't bump into anything, the calibration fails. When the X carriage bumps into something at 210mm (like my fingers) and descends from the 'normal' frame height, the printer calibrates the bed levelling normally. The Prusa MK3 is so 'smart', it still thinks the frame will only ever be 210mm high. How do I tell it that when calibrating, the X axis must rise to 360mm instead of 210mm? The calibration is an integral part of the firmware... is there any way I can edit it? I've looked at the .hex firmware file, this is the first line of a huge text file -> :100000000C947D320C94AE320C94AE320C94AE3221 It means nothing to me, but I'm guessing there's a way. After all, a cap height of 210mm had to be written in there somewhere to begin with... Any suggestions would be appreciated, fairfarren.

A .hex file is of no use to you, because it consists of compiled firmware which is very difficult to edit. You need to go to Prusa's GitHub and download the source code. Then, find the header file for your model of printer, and change Z_max_pos to the correct value. Finally, you need to compile and upload the firmware to your printer following the build instructions (see README.md). You will need to have the Arduino IDE installed to do this.

How to upload firmware to reprap printer? When trying to upload firmware I get the following errors: timeout - cannot sync, or port is in use What can be the possible sources of these errors?

There are mainly three reasons for that: Arduino studio settings should be: Board: Mega 2560 and Programmer: AVR ISP and valid COM port, please see below: Please close all slicer's instances (Cura, Slic3r, Repetiter) and host servers and other software that communicate with the printer as they lock the COM port; Please check that the appropriate usb2serial drivers are installed and working - the best way is to start the serial monitor from the Arduino Studio Tools menu and see if there are any.

How drastic is reversing the polarity of the power supply to a RAMPS board? If I accidentally reverse the polarity of my power supply to the RAMPS board, what exactly will be damaged? Will it harm my: RAMPS; Arduino Mega; Stepper motor and/or drivers, or; Any other electronic part(s)? Will all or some of them be permanently damaged?

Polyfuses on the RAMPS Fire appears to be the immediate issue, in the poly fuses. From Reddit: reversed polarity, RAMPS on fire Sooo I made the dumb mistake of reversing the polarity from my psu into the RAMPS 1.4. As warned the ramps did not like this and smoke began to rise from the board. I am pretty sure I saw smoke only coming from the two ptc fuses (big flat yellow ones). Replacing poly fuses Note: Older RAMPS 1.4 have easily replaceable large poly fuses, whereas the RAMPS 1.5/1.6 use SMD poly fuses, see 0scar's answer to RAMPS 1.4, 1.5 or 1.6? Arduino According to this user, the MOSFETs and the Arduino Mega's regulator can be fried as well: it most likely fried the mosfets next to the fuses and probably the voltage regulator on your arduino. However, the fried regulator would only affect the Arduino's operation if powered through the power socket, or VIN (which the RAMPS board uses to power the Arduino Mega). However, via the USB it should still work. See this post, on the same thread: The voltage regulator is only needed if you supply power to the arduino via the Vin pin or with a separate power adapter. The RAMPS board does supply the Vin pin with 12V. So, you would probably have to rely on powering the Arduino via the USB and not the RAMPS Regarding the Arduino, on Arduino.SE there are a number of users who have fried their Arduino in this manner, and many of them suffer slightly different failures, although most are centered around the regulator. One case I remember was that of a capacitor burnout, see Is my Arduino dead? - although the use case was different. There are many other cases on the Arduino.SE. Protection Diode According to this post on RepRap - Reverse Polarity, there should be a reverse polarity protection diode (although it appears not to have work in the above example): If it was a ramps, those have a reverse protection diode across the input that normally needs replaced after such an incident Stepper drivers/motors The stepper motors themselves should survive, as should the stepper drivers. However, each case can be different and it would depend upon the quality of the board (is it a cheap clone or branded?), and the quality/tolerance of the components used - these factors would determine where in the chain of modules the failure occurs. Obviously, the earlier the failure's location in the chain the better. MKS Base v1.2 As an aside, this user fried their regulator (the fuses were fine) on a MKS Base v1.2 (not RAMPS), by reversing the polarity, which caused the stepper drivers to fail. However, replacing the regulator fixed it, see this post: Replacing the regulator chip did fix the board. Rather helpfully the self same user has posted an Instructables of the repair: MKS Base reverse polarity repair. RAMPSXB There is no protection diode on the RAMPXB. From RAMPSXB: Do NOT reverse polarity on the input pins, as there is NO PROTECTION DIODE. Reversing polarity will not only fry your steppers and FETs, but may even damage your Arduino and possibly even your computer. Triple check to make sure the polarity on your power input is 100% correct! See also Arduino Forum: Checking the RAMPS 1.4 for some handy troubleshooting tips for the Arduino and the Stepper. This user on post #5 of Arduino Forum: Checking the RAMPS 1.4 did manage to fry their stepper drivers, but not due to reverse polarity, by from a loose wire: I didnt connect the power backwards, but either I had a defective Mega2560 clone, or some stray bit of wire somehow shorted something out, and the Mega2560 literally went up in smoke (almost caught on fire !) Every stepper driver was destroyed, but the power FET's and other components survived

Saving BL Touch settings I have an Ender 3 Pro with a BL Touch. In my G-code should I add an M500 after the G29, to save the results to the EEPROM? I know storage size is an issue, so does storing these results cause an issue? I believe the saved results can be activated before the next print using: M420 S1 If I do, does that mean I just auto home (G28) but don’t need to run a G29 until I think the bed has lost its level? I was trying to clarify this after reading: BL Touch Probing Fails Intermittently

From this source you can read: After a G29 the leveling data is only stored in RAM. You have to use M500 to save the bed leveling data to EEPROM, otherwise the data will be lost when you restart (or reconnect) the printer. Use M502 to reset the bed leveling data (and other settings to defaults). Use M501 to reload your last-saved bed leveling from EEPROM. This is done automatically on reboot. The source also answers the use of M420 S1: After a G29 bed leveling is automatically enabled, but in all other situations you must use M420 S1 to enable bed leveling. It is essential to include the command M420 S1 in the “Start G-code” in your slicer settings. If you have no bed leveling, or if there is no leveling data, then this command is simply ignored. So, if you're not using a G29 in your start code you must use the G-code M420 S1 to enable the stored mesh from memory.

Would a steel, instead of an aluminium, plate be reasonable? I have a Flashforge Creator Dual. One corner of my print bed is warped down. I am thinking about having a steel print bed made so it would tend to stay flat. Has anyone tried this?

I would consider getting another aluminum build plate for the following reasons: Lightweight. Aluminum is a very lightweight metal, making it suitable for most machines that have injection molded platform arms. This reduces potential sagging of the arms and overall load on the -Z- axis stepper motor. Conductivity. Referring to this simple Google search for heat conductivity, aluminum is significantly more conductive than steel (205 vs 43 respectively) with copper at about double that of aluminum. Availability. Aluminum is already a widely used material for 3D printing, so finding one will be relatively easy and probably cheaper than having a steel build plate custom made. In conclusion, I personally would not recommend using steel for your build plate as aluminum seems to have the most benefits. Yes, steel will be more rigid and durable, but I don't think that these should be variables that are significantly more beneficial over aluminum.

Cantilever snap-fits print axis I'm new to 3d printing and need to design and print a case on an Ultimaker S5 using PLA. The case is box like and consist of a top and a bottom part. I was thinking about cantilever snap-fits to join the two parts. I read that these snap-fits need to be printed in the X-Y-plane for better stability. However with the bottom/top side down the walls will be in the Z-axis and thus the snap-fits would be printed in the X-Z- plane. If I would print the part lying in it's side I would need a lot of support in the inside. How am I supposed to do this correctly? Also what tolerances should I use to make the parts fit well while still being separable?

Let's look at the general design.... it is a case... so a box of to halves. And we need some kind of connector... How about splitting the connector into a separate C-shaped piece? That way the connector clip can be printed with the C to the plane, getting maximum durability out of either pice. You just need to print some short overhangs, the clip going around the central box, possibly in dedicated notches. Also, this is easily removable from the outside with a screwdriver. And easily replaceable. Also, both sides could be identical, if designed in the right way. Or we use a slot in the lower body, and a Y shaped slot in the top, and make the connectors have a flat hook that matches into the lower body (push in from below) then the split top pushes through the top and latches in... This isn't removable from outside easily. Third alternative: bolts. If the item inside the box - a PCB? - is going to be bolted to the lower case anyway, why not add extra long screws and have the top case be bolted to the lower case with the same screw that holds the PCB in place? Or, just use a pair of additional bolts and nuts on the corners. Edit: Recently, Angus aka MakersMuse uploaded a video discussing snap-fit connections and how to make them 3D printable with the example of a backpack buckle.

Ender 3 BLTouch fails in assorted ways My recently installed BLTouch probe regularly fails to perform ABL properly. There seem to be 3-4 failure modes: Probe manages some points but fails partway through, with a "probing failed" message on the LCD screen, rendering it necessary to power-cycle the printer Probe deploys on some point, then stows itself immediately, and treats that point as being a centimeter or two about where it actually is. Probe completes all 9 points, then heats the nozzle in the back corner and never moves. The progress bar on the LCD counts up and eventually it claims to have finished the print, but the steppers (including the extruder) never move. Probe flashes red throughout the cycle, which I believe means it failed a self-test probably because the mainboard started trying to speak to it before it was initialized, but occasionally when this occurs, it still works as expected. For avoidance of doubt - sometimes it actually does work, and I get beautiful prints that adhere well during printing but are easily removed afterwards. And I have never had any issues with the Z homing using the probe, only the auto mesh levelling. My setup: Creality Ender 3 v1.1.4 mainboard with non-silent steppers genuine BLTouch v3, with official Creality pin27 kit Marlin 1.1.9 bugfix firmware, downloaded as hex file single iteration of probing 9 point levelling mesh Ultimaker Cura slicer 4.2.0 Start G-code heats bed, homes G28, performs ABL G29, then heats nozzle (I don't have the actual G-code on my now as I'm away from my slicing computer) [Related question: BL Touch Probing Fails Intermittently but answers do not apply as I am already using bugfix firmware and have checked all the cabling and connections]

You had a faulty BLTouch. Mine experienced the EXACT same behavior and replacing it with a new BLTouch fixed the issue entirely (everything else I kept exactly the same, firmware etc), I simply swapped over the probe + cable with the new one. When connecting the new BLTouch, make sure you wire the servos connector correctly. In my case with an SKR Mini E3 v1.2 I needed to switch the red wire with the blue wire. If you start the printer with the wires the wrong way around, it may cause damage. I suspect that is what happened to my original one.

Are black filaments more brittle? I've been 3D printing for a while and I've noticed that, when printing small parts, my colored plastics (PLA, PLA+ and ABS) have better layer adhesion than black ones. Did you notice this? What could be the cause?

Not inherently. There are two things at work that might cause one color to test weaker than others even as its properties otherwise are functionally identical: A bad print among good ones. A bad roll among good ones. Let's take a look at both, then do a little excursus into plastics and color. A bad print There are probably thousands of reasons a print might fail, but bad layer bonding and squish-ability under torsion strongly hint to under extrusion. Now, under extrusion itself can be caused by a plethora of reasons: a clogged nozzle is equally as possible as too thinner diameter as is just a bad temperature. The last one is, in my opinion, the most likely culprit: filaments may look the same and feel the same and bond the same, but in different colors, they sometimes demand different print settings. As an example, I print most of my Kaisertech PLAs at 200°C, as that offers a quite good result for all of them. Yet when I started I had a white China PLA and a crystal clear PLA from the same manufacturer, both came from the same warehouse in the same shipment. The clear one is quite more brittle on the roll, but their starting-to-print temperature differs by 5°C - the white started to extrude at 180°C decently and printed ok at 195°C-200°C, while the clear needed only 175°C to start to be extrudeable and was really printable at 190°C. Yet recently I tried the same roll again to achieve fully clear prints, and with 210°C and lots of overextrusion, I managed to go almost solid-clear. Because of such experience, I suggest tweaking the settings. A Bad Filament There are several reasons why one roll might resulting in bad prints, but the most prominent are that the roll has gone bad over bad storage. It might be stored too hot or too humid, making it brittle or bubble in the hotend. Aging under UV plays a role (it degrades PLA). And dimensional accuracy plays a role because it affects the whole roll of filament. This is why tests should always be performed with equally treated and measured samples to achieve comparability. Excursus: Plastics and color What gives a plastic its color? Pigments added to it. Now, pigments can be of varied kinds. Usually, they are embedded in the plastic (=not bonded to the carrier plastic), and the plastic polymer is often either inherently transparent(ish) or white. Let's take some examples to look at... Yellow. Yellow can be made from a lot of stuff but many yellow pigments react to UV light by decay more than other colors, leading to yellow to fade quickly in comparison to other colors. It has varied chemical compositions, often they can become quite complex. Black. Black pigment is typically the most simplistic coloration to achieve: pure powdered carbon is one of our most potent black pigments, and also one of the cheapest, making black plastic one of the most common plastics. In contrast to other colors, carbon can't fade. But the plastic around it decomposes and turns white, fading the color this way. Now, most colorings are - in physical terms - sizeable. Some few to a couple dozen atoms, making them range in the Angström (~Atom diameter) to few nanometer area overall. However, even something as complex as $C_{22}H_{20}O_{13}$ (Carmine) is relatively small compared to the $(C_3H_4O_2)_n$ of PolyLacticAcid, aka PLA. Poly tells us that n is at least 100, because shorter chains are oligomers, not polymers. In comparison, our red carmine pigment is more dense, much more compact in fact. As a result, a 100-chain of PLA is not just in the Angstöm area but in the dozen nanometer to micrometer range - a magnitude of at least 2 larger. Unless we have a huge excess of pigment or a pigment that reacts with the plastic under heat, then the impact of it on the strength should be neglectible to the other fillers often used.

Can I use Creality bed on Prusa MK3S? I need a Prusa MK3S smooth bed and I am not able to get it unless I wait for a few month. But I can have a Heated Bed Cover for Ender 3/Ender 3 pro/Ender 5 3D Printer 235X235MM shipped to my door tomorrow moring. Can I use the above Creality bed on MK3S untill I get an original MK3S in a few month?

Heaters won't match. The ender3 is a 24 V machine. The Prusa 3 is a 12 V machine. Heater cartridges and Heatbeds are therefore not interchangeable. Build surfaces can be adapted. The Ender3 has a build surface that is a little bigger than the Prusa3, and thus you can, in a pinch, use an ender3 sized build surface and install it, possibly cut down, to fit onto the Prusa.

How do you calibrate a delta robot 3D printer? I have a delta robot 3D printer, but I have no clue how to calibrate it. Any advice?

This answer below is (partially) taken from my answer to Delta printer nozzle not moving square with a perfectly level bed (as if the bed is bent... but it isn't). Whilst the answer below is for a Kossel, assuming that you are using Marlin, then the process should be more or less the same. Calibration on any printer is difficult, but especially so on deltas, as there construction is more complex than a cartesian printer. Have you manually calibrated the printer (at both the center and the edges), such that you can just about get a sheet of paper between the print bed and the hotend nozzle, at z = 0? This last check ensures that the first printed layer of extruded filament is actually touching and "presses on" to the print bed. I seriously recommend that you watch this video #18:Calibration for a great explanation on the use of the paper. This video is for a Delta printer, a Kossel XL (although the Kossel Mini is also covered) and it clearly demonstrates the height that the zeroed print head should be at, and how to check using a sheet paper. It is an hour long tutorial video, by Tom of BuildA3DPrinter.eu, and it shows you step-by-step how to calibrate the printer, and also how to deal with deformed beds (concave/convex). It uses: Arduino IDE, and; Pronterface and performs the calibration by adjusting, in the firmware: MANUAL_HOME_Z_POS, and; DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET Here is a run down of the video's contents: 0:00 Intro: The perfect first layer can be obtained, either with/without a probe (the printer is, arguably, better without probe) This tutorial is without the probe. 0:55 Arduino software loaded with Marlin firmware source, looking at the file configuration.h and in particular, the line #define MANUAL_HOME_Z_POS 2:30 - Ensure that the Pronterface USB port is disconnected as otherwise this will inhibit the Arduino IDE from connecting to the printer. 3:20 - Initial test - Gap at the center of the bed Connect with Pronterface and use the following G-code commands G28 Home the printer head G1 Z10 Bring the head down... G1 Z5 a bit more... G1 Z4 a bit more... G1 Z3 a bit more... G1 Z2 a bit more... G1 Z1 and if the head hits bed then this is too close G1 Z2 raise the head again Paper thickness is 100 microns, place under the head G1 Z1.5 lower the head again, but no by so much as before Slide the paper between head and bed. The paper should move freely, but with some friction felt (you should be able to hear the head lightly rubbing against the paper) 7:11 - Deduction of actual distance from print bed is 1.5 mm 7:30 Return to firmware, and finely tune MANUAL_HOME_Z_POS in the Arduino IDE, disconnecting Pronterface again and upload. 8:10 - Return to printer Connect with Pronterface, again, and use the following G-code commands G28 Home G1 Z5 F5000 Move head down rapidly G1 Z2 G1 Z1 G1 Z0 and the head comes to a rest at the correct distance from the bed Retest with the paper 9:30 Final test G28 Home G1 Z0 Go from home straight down to the bottom 10:02 - Further calibration G1 Z0.2 Raise head ever so slightly to give us some room In Pronterface - Move the head horizontally G1 X50 - Moves head 50 mm to the right In this case, if there is a larger gap between the head and the bed. This means that the bed is curved, and convex. If the gap was smaller, or the head hits the bed, then the bed is concave 11:40 - Diagram of convex and concave print beds 12:10 - Endstops G1 X-40 Moves the head to the left (of center) and the head is now further away from the bed than in the middle. 13:20 - This means that the endstops are not correctly positioned. So, before tackling the concave/convex issue, it is first necessary to adjust the endstops, for each tower. 13:37 - Tackling the tower positions individually G1 Z10 For safety reasons, leave a margin of 1 cm. 14:08 - Calibrating the X tower (left tower). Note: The commands will depend on whether you have the Kossel or the Mini. Printer moves in three axes: X: parallel (to the front); Y: perpendicular (to the front); Z: height (not of interest at this point). X tower is not in either of these axes exactly G1 X-100 Moves the head to the side but 6 cm away from the X tower G1 X-100 Y-60 Positions the head next to the tower correctly G1 Z5 - Lower the head bit by bit G1 Z2 G1 Z1 G1 Z0 and the head is still 1 mm too high 16:50 Endstop needs to be adjusted by 1 mm lower. There are two ways of doing this: Lower the endstop itself - good for large changes Adjust the screw - good for smaller adjustments. Turn it anti-clockwise, and raise the screw by 1 mm. -G28 Home G1 Z10 Bring head down 1 cm above bed Move to the tower: XL: G1 X-100 Y-60 Mini G1 X-60 Y-35 G1 Z2 G1 Z1 G1 Z0 Head hits the bed G1 Z0.2 So the end stop needs to be raised by 0.2 mm, by re-adjusting the screw (turning it clockwise). Now home it the head, G28 And bring it down G1 X-100 Y-60 Z0 and it should not hit the glass and the paper should slide underneath 21:00 Minor re-adjustment and fine tuning so that the paper slides without the need a too much force. 21:50 Repeat for each tower 22:15 Y Tower (right tower) -G28 Home G1 Z10 Bring head down 1 cm above bed Move to the tower: XL: G1 X100 Y-60 Mini G1 X60 Y-35 Repeat the above process - remember to test with G28 and G1 X100 Y-60 Z1 for safety, and then adjust the Z command This is an iterative process 28:04 - Z Tower (rear tower) -G28 Home G1 Z10 Bring head down 1 cm above bed Move to the tower: XL: G1 X0 Y120 Mini G1 X0 Y70 Repeat above process 30:14 Re-check! each position (center, X, Y and Z towers) G28 Home G1 X0 Y120 Z0 Check Z tower & drop head (head should not touch the bed) G1 Z10 Raise head (see below) G1 X-100 Y-60 Move to X tower G1 Z0 Drop head (head should not touch the bed) G1 Z10 Raise head (see below) G1 X100 Y-60 Move to Y tower G1 Z0 Drop head (head should not touch the bed) Calibration of the endstops is now complete 31:30 Why the Z10? G1 Z10 G1 X0 Y0 The first calibration was the center point, but now the endstops have changed and as the bed is either convex or concave, we therefore raised the head by 1 cm, using the Z10, to avoid hitting the bed in the center. Now test it G1 Z2 Lower head slightly G1 Z1 G1 Z0 If the bed is concave then the head is still too high! Conversely, if the bed is convex the the head will hit the bed. 32:40 Adjusting the DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET in configuration.h - alter the physical parameter of the printer: Convex: Increasing DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET lowers the hotend in the center Concave: Decreasing DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET raises the hotend in the center Adjust the setting in the Arduino IDE and recompile and upload (ensure that Pronterface is disconnected) 35:07 Testing the new DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET setting - again in Pronterface: G28 - As the firmware has changed, we must re-home. G1 X0 Y0 Z0 You will notice the the center point has not changed! It is the same. However if you go to the tower positions you will see that the (previously) perfect gap has changed. This is because by changing the DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET the center stays in the same place but the edges change instead. So, for the convex bed, we have virtually bent the surface, without moving the center point down, and moved the rim up (or, for a concave bed, down - depending upon the direction of the adjustment), thereby flattening the bed. 37:10 Demonstration of adjustment 37:51 Adjusting the height Return to the firmware and change, again, the #define MANUAL_HOME_Z_POS line that we changed at the beginning, adjusting it by the amount that the head is from the center point. Disconnect Pronterface and upload the new adjusted firmware. Then reconnect Pronterface, and Home (G28) and drop to zero (G1 Z0). The head may still a little too high. Then move to the tower, and the head may be too close to the bed, without any gap. This means that the bed is still convex and further adjustment is required of the DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET and then, obviously, the MANUAL_HOME_Z_POS. Again, this is a bit of an iterative process. Don't forget to home after any firmware updates. Finally once the bed is flat (i.e. it has been virtually flattened in the software) and the gap between the head and the bed is the same at the center and the towers, then adjust MANUAL_HOME_Z_POS (an adjustment of 0.05 or less may be required) to get the paper test just perfect. 44:35 Check each tower (screw adjustment, of the endstops, may be required). As the bed has been flattened, mechanical sub 0.1 mm adjustments may be required. Note that the firmware does not need to be re-uploaded, when making mechanical changes - although the head will always need to be re-homed (G28) after each change. The head should now be at the correct height. 47:14 - Extruder Calibration

Visible lines along Y-axis on Ender 3 Pro I have a model that's placed on the bed exactly like on this picture: I have constant quality degradation as the bed moves down to print in the upper left corner (1). Everything is fine on the X (2)-(3) side. It does not have any visible artifacts. All hell goes along the (1)-(3) curve: Top left corner (1): On the way from (1) to (2) lines seem to disappear almost completely. I used Cura slicer and these printing settings: stock ender firmware 0.2 mm layer height supports 2 bottom & top layers PETG 235 °C nozzle 80 °C bed walls x2 10 % infill gyroid ironing seam smart hiding 50 mm/s print speed 500 / 50 mm/s^2 acceleration / jerks It looks like a mechanical issue, so I tried tightening/untightening bed bolts. It didn't help. They are a little bit tight, but not too much. The bed does not seem to be wobbling. Also, I tried the bed for wobbling in its top/bottom position. It looks fine along all the way. What should I try next? Extruder steps/mm are tweaked for this filament. Extruder produces exactly 97 mm of 100 mm of filament. UPD I decided to change my software/hardware settings step by step. This time I changed only my software settings to these: Speed: 30 mm/s Acceleration: 3000 mm/s^2 Retract: 4 mm Combing: Not in Skin (previous print had the same value) Overhanging wall speed 100% (same as the previous print) Corners have become much sharper and there is a lot less of bulging on the arc. However, by X-axis (2) - (3) I see more artifacts: Y-axis has become better: Currently, I don't have any visible or sensible bed / X play. I tuned rollers to have enough tension not to slip if rotate them separately. So, if I rotate the roller, it moves the whole bed or X carriage. I'll try increasing the tension a little bit and then I'll share the result. UPD2 I've made belts a little bit tighter and decided to print a new model. The layer height is 0.3 mm. Also, I tried increasing temperature up to 240 °C and changed the stock vent with a circular vent. The wall count is 50 to make the model solid. Coasting is off. Now all artifacts are along the X-axis. There are many fewer of them at (1) than at (2). The model is a doorstep. On the build plate it's placed like this: Now I think the problem has nothing to do with X/Y play and these two factors can be eliminated. I'll revert belt tensions back to their previous values and decrease the printing temperature down to 225-230 °C. PS. USBASP is still in customs, so I'm doing all this on the stock firmware. UPD3 I have finally figured out what was wrong. It was insufficient Z-belt tension on both sides. A close look at a DSLR camera shot gave me a clue: there was almost always a straight segment followed by a visible additional step down between layers. There are still some artifacts but everything looks relatively tolerable now. Thanks to all of you guys!

I see some possible issues at work here: Retraction issues on the arc. You might need to decrease your retraction length a little. Your bed might have a little play. tighten the eccentric nuts a tiny bit. As you are at it, check your X-belt, because accuracy on the Y move is affected by the accuracy of the X-head's position.

SerialException: 'WriteFile failed ([Error 22]...' Printrbot Simple Metal using Cura 15.04.6 Disclaimer: I have read about this elsewhere but haven't found a solution. Printer: Printrbot Simple Metal with heated bed Slicer: Cura 15.04.6 (also tried Cura 3.1) Printing software: Whatever Cura 15.04.6 comes with when printing from USB The print goes well for the first couple layers then just stops. It stays heated, fan keeps blowing, but print has failed. Here is the error: ... Send: N19517G1 X47.047 Y59.035 E1574.00486*126 Recv: ok Send: N19518G1 X68.604 Y74.097 E1574.44219*122 Serial timeout while writing to serial port, trying again. Unexpected error while writing serial port: SerialException: 'WriteFile failed ([Error 22] The device does not recognize the command.)' @ machineCom.py:_sendCommand:565 Changing monitoring state from 'Printing' to 'Error: SerialException: 'WriteFile failed ...' Connection closed, closing down monitor I have gotten this using Cura 3.1 to slice as well as Cura 15.04.6 (though the error above was using the Cura 15.04.6). I've tried using a different interface for printing, but nothing helps. Any ideas on solving this? I feel like I am missing a small but simple detail here to making it work. [Edit] Added printing info at top to make it a little more clear what I was using.

From the look of it, and given that you already two different slicers, it look like this may be a hardware issue. I have had very similar error messages with my cheap Chinese printer and this is ultimately why I ended up always printing via the SD card and stop worrying. That said, the error is about the serial connection over your USB cable. I was about to write a list of suggestions, but I found out that your manufacturer already has a troubleshooting guide for your printer here. Adding my own suggestions to those of Printrbot, this is the final troubleshooting guide (the linked page has detailed instructions for each step but 6 and 7): Cycle power Update your Operating System. [Windows users only] run a VCP (Virtual Com Port) driver wizard Check physical connections and swap power and usb cables. Use a standard 2.0 USB input rather than USB 3.0, if applicable Make sure that your printer is away from any potential source of EMI (Electro-Magnetic Interference). Microwaves ovens, many types of energy-saving lamps and power bricks/adapters are known offenders. If possible, reduce the serial speed of your connection (revert if this does not solve the issue, as it may effect print speed and quality). Flash your Printrboard To clarify what these tips are all about: Step 1 is about making sure you don't have your computer and printer in "dirty states" (as in: with their serial buffer corrupted or stuck). Step 2-3 are about making sure you have as many known software bugs and problems patched as you can, as well as all the latest features. This is especially important if you are asking for help, as nobody is going to downgrade their own machines just to replicate a user' unique state. Step 4-7 are about diminishing the possibility that the signal in your cables gets disrupted and mangled along the way between the computer and the printer. Step 8 is like 2-3 but for your printer firmware, rather than your computer software.

What are the downsides and aftereffects of using a smaller nozzle? A lot of consumer desktop F.D.M. printers comes with a 0.4mm nozzle. I'm looking to print fine details objects and I was considering trying to use a smaller size nozzle. But before I do so I would like to establish a list of downsides and unwanted consequences.

Here are some things to look out for when switching to a smaller nozzle size: Curling (out of the nozzle): Make sure the nozzle is clear of any debris to avoid the extruded filament from catching and therefore curling around the nozzle. Warping: You might experience more warping on the build plate and delamination between layers as a result of the smaller surface area of the layers. Reduce speeds: You should reduce your print speeds anyways when printing fine-detail objects. However, the smaller nozzle size will need a bit more time to adhere to other objects (see above). Standoff distance: The distance between the nozzle and build plate, a.k.a standoff, should be a bit smaller with the nozzle size. Typically people use the paper reference (using a piece of paper to "calibrate" the standoff), which is about 0.004". Make sure your slicing engine knows the change! Most slicing software will allow you to adjust the nozzle size. This can also be used to fine-tune your machine. Beware of clogging: Clogging is usually a result of poor cooling between your heater block and your drive gear, poor filament quality, and/or incorrect extrusion rates. You might want to perform a benchmark print with the new nozzle to "rediscover" which temperatures work best with the new "basin" volume in the nozzle. I'm sure there are many others, but this should help get you started.

3D printer and design software for creating propellers for a toy airplane/drone I would like to begin designing and 3D printing propellers for both a toy airplane and drone that I own. I want to do this for experimental purposes. I have never used a 3D printer nor have I used any 3D printing design software. So as a beginner to both of these things, I would like to know what would be the best type of 3D printer to use to create propellers for toy aircraft and I would like to know what is currently regarded as the easiest-to-use 3D design software for creating objects such as airfoils. Also, at this time, the most I want to pay for a 3D printer is $500.

First, welcome to 3D Printing SE. This is a great place to ask questions and get answers from people who have walked the same path. I see from your profile that you are not a stranger to StackExchange and the available sites. This question may be too broad for this SE Group, as it is asking for opinions rather than facts. We try not to ask questions about "what is the best printer", or "what software is the best". We avoid it both because it will change frequently, and because the answer needs to be gauged in your context, not the answerer's. We have some tools and community guidelines that suggest how to formulate the best questions. Never-the-less, it is very hard when starting to even know how to make the first step, so with the indulgence of the group and your patience, I will make a suggestion or two. These come from my experience and your's is surely different. To try out 3D printers you may have resources the don't require buying one yourself. It doesn't seem that 3D printing is the end goal for you. You want to use 3D printing as a way to manufacture several experiments. To access a 3D printer, it could be productive to check for local makerspaces, public libraries, or high schools with 3D printing capability. You may find a friend you 3D prints who would be happy to run some objects for you. You might even find it cost-effective to send designs to a service bureau such as 3D Hubs. Note: I have no relationship with the company, although I did use their services once. With the printing side temporarily in abeyance, you can focus attention on the design side. If you are familiar with programming, you might be able to use either OpenSCAD or SolidPython as a design tool. If you want something graphical, it might be worth trying OnShape. NOTE: I know at least one of the founders of OnShape, but have no investment nor role in the company. There are many design tools available. For designing technical parts, I think you want tools more focused on technical than aesthetic content. I would avoid purchasing a printer unless you want 3D printing and 3D printers to be part of your project. People have mixed stories with many brands of printer, and lower-cost printers often become projects in themselves. They can be satisfying, rewarding, and learning-driven projects, but can distract you from your prime intention for a long time. In my case, I wanted to print boxes for projects, and prototypes for larger wood carvings. I designed a printer, acquired materials, built it, and spent 3 years playing with it. Along the way, I made some useful prints. Eventually I was tired of not having a reliable 3D printer, and I wanted to reliably make things. I needed a printing appliance. So I bought a mid-range printer (which works very well for me), and I don't mess with it (much). So, a broad answer in response to a broad question. Welcome to 3D printing, the hobby and the StackExchange site.

How does a layman get a 3D printed replacement part? A plastic gear of an older DVD player broke. I always read about being 3D printing a "repair revolution". So I looked for a template to give to some printing service, but I found none (and nothing close to it). Could you please explain me, what steps a layman should take to get the gear piece replaced using 3D printing?

If you have the remaining pieces of the gear and enough remains to determine certain measurements, one can either engineer the gear using a number of gear modeling designs, or one can take measurements directly from the parts and engineer a raw design. If the gear you have is not particularly peculiar, it is possible to use a gear generator plug-in, template, or library to make the "foundation" of your gear. The modeling software would then be used to add the appropriate bosses and key ways required to complete the design. If you are considering to create the part yourself, you have a wide selection of programs from which to choose. I'm fond of OpenSCAD, and it does have a number of gear libraries. Simple bosses and key ways are easily accomplished using OpenSCAD. Another package available on the internet which includes the option of using a gear generator is Tinkercad which has a reputation of being easy to use. You'll find many tutorials for this program as well. Tinkercad requires an "outside" program to generate the gear design which is then imported to the model workspace. Even a program as simple as Inkscape can create gear profiles to be imported into many design packages. Fusion360 is available free for hobby or non-commercial use, but may not be the easiest to learn in a short time. So many others as well. Use your favorite search engine for "gear generator modeling software" or similar wording and be overloaded with links.

How to make it so that multiple motors respond to I want to make it so that the E1 and E0 do exactly the same as the Y motor and I was wondering if anyone here knew how to do that? I basically just want to make it so that when the Y motor is triggered, so is the E1 and E0. I'd really appreciate any help, thanks!

One way to have two E-steppers to do the same work should be to enable MIXING_EXTRUDER in Configuration.h. I have no experience in this myself, but it is a good starting point. A second way is to actually connect the two identical steppers in parallel. That trick is sometimes used for Z-steppers. I don't expect the current consumption to be an issue. This will require soldering, unless your mainboard has two Z-stepper outputs and you only use one of them. Then move connectors and reconfigure pins.h (or similar file) to use the correct steppers for Z and E. A third way is possible if your mainboard has removable stepper driver modules. Remove the E1 stepper driver from the socket and cut off the EN, DIR and STEP pins. Solder thin but insulated wires between the solder-pads on this one to the E0 stepper. These are all inputs, so now the second stepper will follow the first perfectly. Soldering shall be done while the stepper driver modules are removed, otherwise the heat might ruin the sockets. (There are more precautions)