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Building new Repetier firmware for a delta printer (D-force) So my printer's calibration got screwed after a sudden reboot and since the current firmware (0.92.6) is licensed, I cannot edit it. So I'm building a new one. These are the controller boards of my printer: 1. Main controller board: The black board is a MKS Base v1.3 The other green board beside it has a DC to DC SMPS (HRD12008) on it, along with Z-min, X-min, T0, Fan-, D11 and a flat ribbon wire connector (can be seen in the picture). The other box with an acrylic top is a solid state relay. 2. Cooling fan and Z-probe PCB: The brand on all these boards is "D-force". I've traced the printer down to a Taiwanese manufacturer: D-FORCE.TW - 3D Printer. There are a few parts available: Fan & Z-probe PCB; Main controller board, and; Servo motor for calibration (Z-probe). I haven't been able to find the other green board (with the HRD12008 SMPS on it), yet. I've downloaded a new firmware from Repetier website. It can be found here, Repetier-Firmware-2017-06-09. Now, while compiling the firmware, I need to specify the Z-probe pin. I'm unable to do so because it's not plugged into the main board. Here is a close-up of the Z-probe & the servo motor that pins it down. Any help would be appreciated here. On the web these printers are known as "D-force printers". Edit1: I found this on the manufacturer's Facebook group: Please note that this is v1.1 and my printer has v1.3 although I haven't found any difference between the two, yet. I'll update on that if I find any. Hope this helps. Edit2: The Y-min pin on the main controller board is empty. The X-min and Z-min are connected to the X-min and Z-min on the additional green board respectively. Also, there is a T0 on the additional board which is connected to A13 of the main controller.

You, obviously, do actually have a Z-probe, but in case another user does not, or you decide not to use yours, I will cover both cases (with and without a Z-probe). Z-probe not present If not, then in configuration.h set the FEATURE_Z_PROBE to false, like this: #define FEATURE_Z_PROBE false or #define FEATURE_Z_PROBE 0. Then you also need to set #define DISTORTION_CORRECTION 0 as this requires the FEATURE_Z_PROBE if otherwise set to 1 or true. However, thereafter, upon recompilation, I then get a lot of other errors... but these seem to be more to do with selecting the correct board, #define MOTHERBOARD, in pins.h, than the disabling of the Z-probe. This error: fastio.h:29: error: 'DIOORIG_FAN2_PIN_WPORT' was not declared in this scope is due to, from Can't compile firmware: You are using ORIG_FAN2_PIN in your configuration but apparently your boards pin definition does not define that pin. In that case check board description and use the digital pin number instead for that function. Actually that is not entirely true1. NOTE: It might be easier to just define Z_PROBE_PIN to something other than -1, which is what it is defaulting to, as set in configuration.h: #define Z_PROBE_PIN -1 Z-probe present If you do have a Z-probe, then trace the wires to see where they go on the controller board, determine that pin number on the board and then enter that pin number into configuration.h. For example, if it is connected to pin 63, then: #define Z_PROBE_PIN 63 and leave DISTORTION_CORRECTION untouched. Where to plug the Z-probe in If your Z-probe has become unplugged, then you need to choose a pin to connect it to. This is easy... you simply connect it to any free pin. Now, you probably only have three end stops, at the top of the delta frame. These are the MAX end stops. So, you can simply connect the Z-probe to any of the three MIN end stop pins, on the board. Obviously, you will leave the three #defines for the MIN end stop, in Configuration.h, un-configured, and then specify the pin, that you did use, in #define Z_PROBE_PIN <your pin> See Is there a complete step by step manual for building Z probe - comment 1950 Put the zprobe on any free pin you have but do NOT set it in endstops. It is not a endstop it is a zprobe. Then set it in zprobe section with pullup enabled so it is drawn to high internally until you connect the pin with gnd. Then G31 should also be consistent. I guess you missed the pullup part making it a random result. and Is there a complete step by step manual for building Z probe - Comment_1952 Not sure why this is a problem. You have 6 endstop pins and need 3 for endstops + 1 for zprobe = 4 pins. Still 2 endstop pins free. When I said not in endstops I meant not in the endstop configuration. There you only put switches that work as endstop. Highlighting the connections The green PCB, for the fan and Z-probe, does not appear to have any logic on it (I can't see any), so it is just a collection of tracks (i.e. wires). As there are no logic chips on it, you can trace the circuit from the Z-probe to the controller (either visually, or using a multimeter set on continuity check). I assume that the PCB is connected to the controller board somewhere/somehow... Via the 10 wire grey ribbon cable that goes to the second green PCB next to the main board, next to LED3, as shown in the first photo? This ribbon cable transfers signals to/from the Z-probe/fan PCB to the secondary PCB, which appears to be a power related PCB (i.e. heaters). Somehow the secondary, power, PCB then connects to the main controller board. One of the three unused MINIMUM end stop pins should be used for the Z-probe. This is assuming that: you only have three physical end stops (at the top of the three axes) and; they are connected to the MAXIMUM end stop pins. If you have six end stops, (one at the top and one at the bottom), then that changes things drastically. Assuming that you only have three, then the three unused MINIMUM pins will be used for some other purposes (Z-probe, servo arm, something else?). You need to confirm that you only have end stops at the top of the printer and not the bottom, i.e. only MAX_ENDSTOP (or X+, Y+ and Z+) pins. If so, then you should have three (sets of) (MIN_ENDSTOP) pins with nothing connected to them (in theory). So, one of those three MIN_ENDSTOP pins will have the Z-probe connected to it. If you are having trouble locating the MIN_ENDSTOP pins, trace where the 3 physical (MAX) end stops are connected to, those will be the MAX_ENDSTOP pins. Then from that, the MIN_ENDSTOP pins should be relatively easy to identify. Hopefully that makes sense. Looking at the schema then it becomes obvious. You see X+, X-, Y+, Y-, Z+ and Z-. The physical endstops should be connected to the three + connectors. The three - connectors: two of them are hopefully not connected. The one that is should be the Z-probe. Looking at the photo, unfortunately, it seems as if all six (or just five?) are populated. Personally, to save time, I would get a multimeter, unplug the X, Y, Z +/- connectors (actually only the - connectors) in turn and test each one, to see which is connected to the Z-probe. To check the correct pin is used, you really only have two (sensible) options: either visually, or; multimeter. Multimeter would be best, and the most certain. However, there are two other options open to you (one risky, and one laborious): As we have whittled it down to two connectors (X-min and Z-min, there are only two pins (for the Z-probe and servo) to worry about, you only have a 50-50 chance of getting it wrong, so you could guess, code it up and see if it works - if it doesn't, then change the pin defined, and recompile... IMPORTANT: After a rethink, it is best not to just take the 50-50 chance, as the servo pin is probably configured as an output and the Z-probe pin will be an input. You could end up damaging the control board. Finally, you could, in theory, test it programmatically, but that would require writing some test code for the controller, which (as we are having enough trouble as it is with the configuration.h file) would be a nightmare, to put it bluntly. Schema Photo of control board It is probably a good idea to read this, lengthly, article: Repetier - Z-probing. Footnotes 1 I have finally managed to get Repetier.ino to compile. The problem lay with the Configuration.h file that came with the googledrive download, that you provided. Trying to either manually configure Configuration.h, or pre-loading it into Repetier's configuration tool, always resulted in the same compilation error, see DIOORIG_FAN2_PIN_WPORT error. The simplest solution is to create a Configuration.h file from new, using the Configuration tool. When you do that, it will compile ok. Or, if you really want to do it manually, either: Set NUM_EXTRUDER to 1 and not 2 as the FAN2 compile error comes from the second extruder's set of #defines, or; More precisely, if you do have two extruders, then change the line #define EXT1_EXTRUDER_COOLER_PIN ORIG_FAN2_PIN and specify a pin, i.e. 65, en lieu of using ORIG_FAN2_PIN.

How to change the extrusion value (E parameter) in G-code? Before I ask you my question I want to summarize my problem. I am trying to build my personal 3D Printer and I can send the controller of my Extruder (Motor) only integer values. Slicer (Cura) produces fractions. I try to interprete these values as RPM. That means for example that I can't send 282.040 RPM (as calculated value), but I can send only 282 RPM. My problem is that I got the E parameter as integer and decimal form like below: G1 X534.729 Y195.96 E144.96538 G1 X664.869 Y195.95 E161.48942 G1 X666.538 Y196.042 E161.70166 Is there any way to get the E-parameter only in integer form? Is there any program or is there any opportunity to set the slicer in order to have that goal?

Yes, it is possible to influence values of the E-parameter, even to make them integers. I see three possibilities: force firmware to support units smaller than mm - suggested approach force slicer to produce integer-like values - most of below explanation change meaning of E - custom approach, including RPM interpretation Each of above needs post-processing of the G-Code output. There are some tools available, but required logic would need to be added (programmed). Some are simple scripts and this won't be difficult task. The rest of solution is much more difficult. By the book, the E value is new coordinate on the E (extruder) on axis, in current units. Unfortunately, the only position units reflected in standard G-Code are millimeters (see G21) or inches (see G20). Therefore using integer values would mean very limited resolution, at least 1 mm of filament pushed at a time. Introducing smaller unit into firmware seems to be most reasonable approach. Tools to post-process G-Code files The G-Code generated by slicer would contain Ennn values as fractions in millimeters (or millimeters). Generated file may be post processed line by line to alter these values. There are many examples of scripts or tools doing similar job. One example is simple python script metric-gcode-truncator stripping numbers to 4 decimal places. Simple changes to this scirpt could be sufficient in simplest cases. I found this script listed between other G-Code Utilities. Also, I found source code of grecode, which seem to be much more comprehensive G-Code transformation tool, but with no similar functionality out of the box. Next improvement would be to use the script as slicer plugin, to streamline the everyday process. Maybe some existing Cura plugin could be a basis or example. Support for smaller units in firmware First task is to select smaller unit (like micrometre, nanometre, or even non-metric abstraction). Source code of existing firmware must be the supplemented to properly intereprete such values. In Marlin focus should be on parser.h and parser.cpp, following keywords INCH_MODE_SUPPORT, LINEARUNIT_MM and LINEARUNIT_INCH. Respective changes must be also added to configuration files. Key inspiration in parser seems to be following part: static inline void set_input_linear_units(const LinearUnit units) { switch (units) { default: case LINEARUNIT_MM: linear_unit_factor = 1.0f; break; case LINEARUNIT_INCH: linear_unit_factor = 25.4f; break; } volumetric_unit_factor = POW(linear_unit_factor, 3); } The main difficuly would be to refine parser and the rest of code to ensure that new units are only used for E movements, not for other axes or G-Code commands related to speed or other settings. Then, each G-Code file must be post-processed with prepared tool, which will recalculate and alter Ennn values (or others), only for selected G-Code commands (this must relfect). For metric units it could be simple multiplication by 10n (visually it is shifting a decimal point). Summarizing, possibly the simplest would be to just introduce new unit for all, and re-process G-Code files accodingly changing each value X, Y, Z, E. I cannot advice how such changes would affect F (feedrate), speed and acceleration settings. Slicer producing integer values of E parameter Long story short: decrease steps/mm (firmware/printer), decrease filament diameter (slicer), then Ennn values in G-Code will shoot up and could be rounded to integers without drastical loose of quality. Units for extrusion become then fake (scaled). Software may not be ready to support adequately low values (configuration, rounding) or high values (calculations). So in practice the values configuration could not by as minimal as wished, which would more or less impact the quality. There are is speed setting trouble, beacuse extrusion speed is correlated with movement speed. Detailed theoretical explanation and example calculations are below. Steps/mm However this is still useful, because each printing firmware has configurable steps/mm setting (or some analogous constant value). Steps/mm is basic and known characteristic of extruder, representing number of (micro)steps of extruder's stepper motor to push this 1 millimeter of filament (traverse E axis). If this steps/mm constant will be set to 1, then extruder will make only 1 (micro)step for G1 E1. This change could be done in firmware configuraton, temporarily with G-Code M92 E1, or stored to EEPROM. Volume Filament is a long cylinder, and extrusion length is height of short cylinder (segment of whole): $l= \frac {4 V} {\pi d^2} R$, where: V - volume necessary to pring path, internally calculated by slicer software d - diameter of filament configured in slicer R - customized extrusion multiplier setting (R) a.k.a. flow rate. (It was introduced for fine tuning, in runtime or when chaniging filaments, to avoid workarounds like manipulating steps/mm or diameter to untrue values. This parameter is not really important for this discusion, included only for completness.) Printer configuration 1 mm of filament translates to actual volume of material (mm3). The correct steps/mm is very important, so the rotation of motor (travel along E axis) will really extrude the expected amount. If value of steps/mm configured in printer is reduced, then interpreted G-Code commands will be translated to too short distances (less steps). To ensure the needed volume, either more millimeters would have to be ordered (G1 Ennn) or filament would have to be thicker. Filament is what it is, so only the first choice is possible. For example, using 1,75 mm filament and having extruder which needs to make 760 steps to push 1 mm (a fact, determined hardware characteristics), then to extrude 1 mm3: if printer is set for 760 steps/mm (correctly), then G-Code must contain correct E0.415752 mm for adequately long cylinder being pushed throught the nozzle if printer is "misconfigured" for 1 step/mm, then G-Code must contain edaquately scaled value E315.9713 for the same cyllinder to be pushed (760x bigger number). The value is actually an exact number of (micro)steps. And it is big. Decimal part is negligible. It can be safely rounded to integer. For practical use, the printer's speed settings and limits would need to be also multiplied for extrusion and retraction. Otherwise extruder moves would be slower by scaling factor, with negative side effects of hot filament behaving on its own. Right place of scaling So how to obtain this scaling? Simplest way is to increase flow rate in the printer (e.g. to 760%). This will scale Ennn values form G-Code in runtime. An original G-Code is needed for this, with tiny numbers. So this is not a solution for integers. Then how to force slicer to produce G-Code with scaled numbers? Slicer configuration Slicer calculates volume required to print some fragment and coverts it to millimeters of filament, basing on configured diameter. So this diameter is also very important. Everything must match. If very small diameter is set in slicer, this will drastically increase length of filament pushed. For example: For 1.75 mm filament, to extrude 1 mm3 volume, slicer will order to push E0.415752 mm. After changing configured filament diameter to 0.01 mm, slicer would order to push E12732.4 mm. This is big number. But not even similar to the above needed length E315.9713. Slicer usually adds speed (feedrate) information to G-Code. So any speed settings and limits for extrusion and retraction would need to be multiplied also in slicer. There are also other settings to modify, like retraction distance. Matching equation Change of diameter must reflect the change of steps/mm. The proportion could be derived from cylinder volume formula. Diameter to configure in slicer is $d= D \sqrt { \frac L l}$, where: D - real diameter of filament L - standard extrusion distance: height of cylinder having some referenced volume and D diameter, if steps/mm reflect actual hardware l - scaled extrusion distance: height of cylinder having the same referenced volume, if steps/mm reflect actual printer configuration Values for calculation need to be determined for some example volume. This was already done. Following previous examples, diameter required in slicer is: $d= 1.75 \sqrt { \frac {0.415752} {315.9713}} = 0.063479$. Then still providing 1.75 mm filament to the same extruder, slicer will produce big values like E315.9713, but printer will perform olny one (micro)step for one milimeter in G-Code. Remove fractional part The generated G-Code would still include fractional part in Ennn values. The file should be post processed line by line to remove it. Simple script will do the job. It could be simple metric-gcode-truncator, after changing pattern to ([E][0-9]*)([.][0-9]+) (not tested). An improvement for quality would be to use rouding instead of truncating decimal part. Cumulative discrepancies There is serious disadvantage of such simple post-processing approach. The total of extruded material will vary, depending a bit on rounding approach. The fractional part is lost, so there may be impact on accuracy with over- or under-extrusion here or there. Post-processing could instead collect these rounded fractions and try to equally compensate for it in following moves, to minimize the total aberration. I believe that the same could happen inside printer's firmware program, when it traverse floating-number distances, but this is only an assumption. Wihout fractional part, firmware will no have data to compensate anything. Even more accurate? Because firmware can accepts fractions below 1 for steps/mm (Marlin would accept 0.01), then theoretically the scale could be even bigger - and so Ennn values. Slicer must support adequately low diameter. (In extreme cases this could trigger unexpected overflows or errors or be blocked by software.) Printer will then multiply E values by fraction (steps/mm). Extruding resolution is still limited to 1 (miro)step. But if firmware acumulate rounded fractional parts in runtime and compensate, then total amount extruded per layer would be more precise. Real-live attempt to slice It was possible to set 0,01 filament diameter in Cura, after tweaking the extruder profile for such very thin filament. Nozzle diameter must be set to real size, becuase it affects many parameters of slicing. The total use of filament in my sample G-Code was >52km. File contains entries like: G1 X72.976 Y63.428 E2623.66351 G1 X74.498 Y61.523 E2607.85791 G1 F1500 E-608 G0 F1800 X107.344 Y85.452 G1 F1500 E608 G1 F1200 X107.583 Y85.642 E326.54744 G1 X107.988 Y85.938 E536.51282 Estimated print time is >5 days. The F parameter is presumably used also by extruder, then the whole print will still slow down. To make the print really happen, possibly all speed settings in slicer would need to be tweaked (i.e. print speed for walls, top/bottom skin, infill, etc.). Then only hard speed limits in firmware would block rapid movements. Outcome quality will be most likely compromised. Custom approaches (own G-Code flavor) Slicer will always calculate length (travel distance), otherwise it would be against the G-Code standard. At least I did not hear of any slicing software, which would output something else then length for extrusion. In some own custom firmware value of E parameter could be defined in any own way. For example, the E value could be defined exaclty as number of (micro)steps for extruder's stepper motor, angle of rotation refleced as integer, etc. Distance calculated by slicer would need to be re-calculated in G-Code post processing, to match requirements of this firmware. Own piece software would be then needed to perform re-calculations (simple or not) and overwrite the original E values. The code could be possibly inspired by some of listed above, but the calculation logic need to match specification from firmware. Possibly this could become own plugin to Cura or other slicer. RPM approach (critique of the idea) An attempt to interprete E value as RPM (rounds per minute) is of no use, until it is synchronized with real speed of printing head movement, i.e. other motors performing movement along owne vectors to print the effective path. It is probably possible to calculate, but sounds like creating own G-Code flavor, which would ignore many other important parameters. One of them is F parameter defined in several G-Code commands (including G1). It determines movement speed for traversing the path. It may change from move to move, making use of acceleration settings. What is worse then, it is expected to be remembered between commands and used for consecutive printer moves. Therefore focusing on single line of G-Code won't tell the whole plan of slicer, and the sophisticated plan reflected in G-Code file would be only partially executed. RPM approach could seem interesting, if it could ensure constant speed of extruder. This would be ideal for the pressure control. But it would also come at cost of printing speed, with no accelleration control.

Tetrahedral honeycomb? I have an idea for a 3D printed project, but I'm a total noob in this area and need someone to reality check it for me. Basically what I want to do is a tricopter frame made of a tetrahedral honeycomb. The whole model would be within 30 * 30 * 10 cm, the honeycomb edges would be approximately 1mm thick and about 15mm long and it would be printed out of nylon with SLS. I have found Shapeways' design guidelines and my idea seems to fit it, but still it feels slightly more extreme use than what they had in mind. Is this doable? Does anyone else use a similar method? Is there some software that I can use to generate honeycombs like this, or do I have to write it myself? Edit: This is how two layers of the honeycomb look like: In the actual model there would be several layer of this on top of each other and the shape would be kind of carved out of the honeycomb (+ some finishing to avoid spiky surface)

For designing your part, especially considering the repetitive mathematics involved, I would consider to learn to use OpenSCAD. I've learned the program and it fits your modeling requirement quite well. I feel it's easy to learn and is somewhat easier for folks who have a programming background. I don't have one, but it's still a logical progression to learn this program. Regarding the SLS aspect, that also jumped out at me as a suitable answer. Solid shapes require to have "drain holes" to reduce the amount of powder consumed by the process. I am assembling a Sintratec SLS printer and your model is the sort of thing I would enjoy to create with the printer. I've not yet listed my Sintratec printer on 3dhubs to solicit business, simply because it's not yet a fully assembled printer! I did a quick Google search for "openscad tetrahedral honeycomb" and found this link: http://forum.openscad.org/Beginner-Honeycomb-advice-needed-td4556.html The result is more a polygonal honeycomb, not a true 3d tetrahedron, but it's a start. The file that created it is fewer than a few dozen lines of code. The post is old enough that the internal links no longer work but the OP posted his module code and that does work: I'm not sure how personal contact works in stackexchange, but I'd be willing to work with you regarding creating your code and if the printer ever gets assembled, printing out your part. Adding a picture again, to show the latest revision, based on the updated information:

How to set the fully dynamic plotting area? I am trying to combine CNC plotter with image processing. The goal is to detect the object and print on that object. My question is can we set the fully dynamic plotting area. For example: I want to print something on hand or finger. How do I tell the machine that this is hand and you have to print only on this hand. I plan to detect hand using camera and set the hand as printing area in CNC firmware and the place gcode image on finger. How to tell the cnc firmware that this is your printing area? I hope you understand my question. I am using GRBL firmware with Arduino and use pronterface as software. Please help and thanks.

If the problem of "dynamic area", or even "how to avoid missing the surface and boundaries" could be translated to "where to start well-defined job" - then it sounds to me like common task, with regards to philosophy of CNC machines. (Ok, until the surface is not moving around.) Pronterface and GRBL work in Cartesain system. GRBL does not support mesh probing. So you must think about relatively flat, plane surfaces. In my opinion, you need to fulfill following tasks to achieve the goal: Define boundaries. Hard and soft boundaries of device are supported by GRBL. You should setup them for overall safety. Plan the job. Recognize ranges of planned plot or print. Secure the surface. It must be appropriately stabilized. If you want to draw, the pen mount with spring will equalize variations of the surface (hand, finger, egg). 3D printing is sensitive to roughness and obliquity, we add raft/supports to overcome these - could be of use, until it doesn't mean missing your goal? (Don't print with hot filaments on fingers.) Establish point of reference. You need to home your plotting or printing head somewhere in space in relation to the driving hardware. This is needed for any further actions. I envsion homing Z to the top of the frame, rather then against the target. Detect surface. Camera will help with horizontal borders (X,Y). You also need to measure the Z distance. The Z probe could be mechanical (then needs vertical movement) or some distance detector (like VL53L0X ?). Validate fitting. Ensure that the surface will accommodate ranges of planned job. This is actually the key point in my opinion. You need to know scope at the first place. Program. I see following options to pick and mix the final solution from them: G-code is generated prior to the whole procedure. You need to synchronize the starting point between the generated file and the real job range. Homing is done "manually" prior to executing the file. After surface is detected, the real starting point could be calculated and applied. G-code is generated after surface is detected. Job starts with homing, and first moves go from device's zero (home position) to selected starting point on the surface. All consecutive moves are planned within boundaries over the surface. So there is no risk to work outside the safe range. G-code is generated with relative positioning (incremental distance mode), having G91 in preamble. Then you just travel to the starting point and then run the commands from file. G-code is generated with absolute positioning (absolute distance mode). To run the job, you need to change coordinate system using commands like G10, G54-G59. For printing, if there is a needed to match some flat shape to rought surface, then you may need to dynamically generate some supports/raft below the bottom of the printed part.

How do I calculate the cost of a 3D print once it's done? How do I determine how much an individual print costs? I'd like an answer including support material, failed prints, and (ideally) wear and tear / printer maintenance costs. To clarify, I'm not asking how to predict the cost before printing, but rather how to calculate the actual cost after printing. Though predicting the cost beforehand is useful as well.

For FDM printing: Both Cura and Makerbot Desktop (and perhaps others I'm not as familiar with) will give you a preview of both the length and weight of your print, including supports/rafts. Once the print is done you can weigh it on a kitchen scale. PLA Filament currently runs about \$23/kg on Amazon, which works out to \$0.023/g. Multiplication can then give you a good estimate of materials costs for a print. Only experience with your specific printer will give you an idea of how often you're going to hit a failed print, and how often you're going to need to replace parts. For wear and tear you could try using a depreciation model of 2-3 years, but that's only an estimate.

Prusa HE3D Xi3 missing step on x and y axis I am using Prusa HE3D Xi3. While printing after 5 or 6 layers it misses the step on x and y axis. Can anybody explain what is the reason?

There's a possibility that your power supply lags after a while, the quality of power supplies on cheaper 3D printers are sometimes an issue. There's also a possible that the stepper motor drivers aren't putting out enough power. This can be adjusted by turning the trimmer on the driver, check the printer documentation for instructions on how to do that.

Ideal print bed: Glass or Aluminium? Glass is always level, easy to clean, easy to work with. Aluminium allows for the addition of automatic bed leveling with an inductive sensor and distributes heat a little more evenly. When printing mostly ABS and PLA, which one is better?

I believe printing directly on aluminium is unwise, simply because it will expand when heated, typically giving the bed a concave or convex shape. Glass, on the other hand, does not (at least not significantly). As pointed out in the comments below, the heat expansion of aluminium could potentially be mitigated by increasing the thickness of the bed, as well as heating it evenly. Also, a common solution is to place a glass plate on top of an aluminium bed, at the cost of a slightly longer heat-up time. In my experience, printing directly on heated glass can be very practical and give a nice surface finish for some PLA variants and other materials that support it. I don't know if printing directly on aluminium can give similar benefits.

Why Cura flattens first layer of round objects? When i am creating g file with Cura, it always flattens the first layer of round edges touching the plate. Is problem Cura or is there any setting that i can solve this? Thanks, Veysel :)

All models must be sliced horizontally into layers in order to be printed, and each layer is flat. That is simply the bottom layer. Since you are printing a cylinder, you could always rotate it by 90 degrees, and stand it on its end (before you slice it, naturally). You should always consider the best orientation for printing any model. Also, if you print a cylinder on its side, the slicer will need to generate a lot of support structures to support the lower curved surfaces. By printing a cylinder on its end, no support should be required.

MKS board losing power after endstop installation I just bought an MKS gen v1.3, and everything on it works fine except for when I plug in the endstops. My X endstop works perfectly in every endstop outlet, but when I plug in my Z and Y endstops, the entire board loses power. Immediately after I unplug the endstop, the board turns back on. I've had these endstops for a while, so could it just be that the endstops are shot, or could there be something wrong with my board? I'm using repetier firmware 0.92, as well as the latest release of repetier host software.

Have you tried plugging in the plugging the Z and/or Y end stops into the X position? This could tell you if it's actually the end stops or the board. EDIT: Also, if the Z and/or Y end stops seem to work just fine in the X position, ensure you have the X position filled and try the other end stops in the Z & Y positions. It may be a case where having multiple positions on the board filled might be causing you an issue. This would point back at the board and not the end stops.

Print quality of Kossel clone for Print in Place models My first printer is Delta style Kossel clone and I have bad luck with Print In Place (PIP) models, especially with hinges. I suspect that my printer just can't achieve low enough tolerances to make the hinges work. Are there any tricks I can employ to get better prints for PIP models?

Delta printers are considered to be able to be accurate printers cause of the limited weight in the head (using Bowden extruder setup). The positioning can be very accurate (limited weight, limited overshooting) and because of the limited amount of weight, the print speed can be increased. An interesting paper has been written on a comparative study between a Cartesian and a Delta machine. The paper concludes that the Delta style printer produces "a better surface finish". However, I'm a bit skeptical as the images of the Cartesian printed part they have printed are of far less quality I can produce with 2 of my printers. Fact is that Delta machines have no Z-wobble (also called banding) that is a common problem with Prusa i3 style printers for instance.

Ender 5 Pro bent/curved print on base Ender 5 Pro prints are very uneven on base of the model. In this example I printed an SD card dummy but it is not even flat. Having a glass bed it is super strange to see this kind of behaviour. Here are parameters in Cura. M92 X80.00 Y80.00 Z800.00 E94.5 ;Setup step mm M201 X500.00 Y500.00 Z100.00 E5000.00 ;Setup machine max acceleration M203 X500.00 Y500.00 Z10.00 E50.00 ;Setup machine max feedrate M204 P500.00 R1000.00 T500.00 ;Setup Print/Retract/Travel acceleration M205 X8.00 Y8.00 Z0.40 E5.00 ;Setup Jerk Thanks in advance, I tried quite a few calibrations but nothing helped so far.

This is a classic example of not enough adhesion. Tune bed temperature (usually hotter), use a brim or add an adhesive layer like glue stick or hair spray or a dedicated print adhesion spray. The question "Warping of bottom of print" has an accepted answer that explains in detail how and why this occurs.

TAIG CNC - Z axis getting bound First of all I apologize if this stack exchange site isn't the proper spot for CNC questions but I do not see any other ones that are close. If the community feels this is too far off topic then just let me know and I will remove this question. Even though this is for a CNC machine, the same issue could exist for a 3D printer. I do know this is very specific to the TAIG CNC. Currently I have the TAIG CNC machine. Recently it has been getting bound when going up in the positive Z direction. It will go down no problem but when going up, at certain points the motor will make a high pitch noise like it normally does when it hits a Z extreme. At these points if I manually try to crank (with the controller off) it is very hard to move up. This indicates that it is a mechanical problem. I took apart the Z axis and understand that there is a jib inside. I do understand how the jib works, tightening and loosening the top and bottom screws to move the wedge. I have tried with the wedge all the way up (biggest gap) and all the way down, along with in between in small increments. It will go up when the jib is all the way up but if I press down with my hand barely then it gets bound so I am thinking it is something other than the jib? I am not sure which other parts I can adjust or would get stuck. I did follow the directions on youtube of setting the brass insert that is attached to the threaded rod, where I tightened it to the point of where the motor couldn't move and then backed off a little bit. Has anyone had binding troubles like this? I am a pretty new member on this forum so I apologize if I missed anything but feel free to ask any questions too.

So inside the Z axis is a brass component that is connected to the threaded rod (lead screw). This brass component has 3 screws and depending how tight / loose, determines how much it will bind up. You of course don't want it too loose otherwise the enclosure will "jump" off of the track at times. In my case, the two screws were too tight. The way I determined how tight to go was taking the entire Z track off of the back, tightening both screws just to the point of binding and then backing off 1/2 turn on both.

How to solve burnt blobs on Prusa MK3S (PETG)? As stated above, I am trying to solve a problem I've had for a long time. Unfortunately, this has recently intensified to the point where it causes layer splitting/detaching from each other. I have tried various ways to fix this and, while decreasing the temperature and extrusion multiplier improved the situation, the problem is still present. My settings: Nozzle 235 °C Bed 100 °C Cooling 25 % Extrusion multiplier 0.89 Speed 150 mm/s for everything, 50 mm/s for small perimiters Acceleration 1000 mm/s2, (default) Layer height 0.15-0.3mm Line width - 0.6mm for everything, but 0.45 for first layer and 0.42 for top solid infill Is there a different solution than lowering print speed or buying an E3D silicon sock? I have lost my spare ones and the current one wore down. Obviously, I can simply pause the print when I see plastic bulding up on the nozzle, but I am sure that there is a more efficient solution. UPDATE: I found that the hotend was very dirty and full of burnt/molten plastic. I am almost sure that the hotend is leaking somewhere between the heat block and the heat break. This didn't happen before I replaced the nozzle. How can I fix this? Do I have to replace the heat break or some other part?

I saw PETG printed at 100 mm/s, but 150! That's a lot. One solution to avoid blobs may be to limit the maximum speed to a value you can actually achieve with reliable results. Simple test to find your machine limits (each combination filament brand + nozzle + temperature has a different value): extrude filament in the air at increasing speeds, see how the flow changes, and when you see more than 5% decrease, that's it. M83 mark the filament as if you were calibrating the E steps calculate filament speed: speed = volum/s / filament surface * 60 = mm^3/s * 25 (this factor is valid for 1.75 mm filament) set extrusion speed for 2 mm^3/s: G1 F50 extrude 50 mm: G1 E50 measure actual length extruded repeat 2.-6. but increase the speed by 2 mm^3/s each time: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, ... at a certain speed you will see that the actual filament length starts to decrease. When you see that the underextrusion reaches 5-10% (depending how much underextrusion you accept), write down that volumetric speed (mm^3/s) somewhere, it's your limit for THAT filament + THAT nozzle + THAT temperature Either a) calculate the max print speed = volumetric speed / layer height / line width or b) set the maximum volumetric flow rate in the slicing software so that the speed will be automatically capped taking into account layer height and line width. Prusaslicer allows to set that in the "Print" or in "Filament" settings, I recommend it for "Filament" settings, since it's a filament-dependent parameter. Example data from CNC Kitchen: You can increase the max print speed, at the price of a little loss of quality around edges, if you calibrate the E steps at a speed corresponding to 2-3% underextrusion (alternative: to the speed of outer perimeters). This way you know that when you print slower than that (uncommon... typically only sharp corners and small perimeters) you'll get up to 2-3% overextrusion, and you extend by 2-3% the maximum print speed, since your max speed is the one where you get 5-10% underextrusion compared to your E steps calibration speed.

What is wrong with this angle? I'm trying to print a model that looks like this: at a size of approximately 10"x7"x7". I've tried 3 times now, with various different infill and shell settings, and had it fail all 3 times in the same way at the same point: right at the point where the central column begins to angle back (which is a bit higher than where the two side columns angle back--those angles print just fine) the whole thing ends up detached somehow and I end up with messes like this: How can I figure out what's going wrong with this print? I've already wasted a non-trivial amount of time and filament on this, and it's starting to drive me up the wall. Somehow, I've got the wrong settings to make this geometry print, but I can't seem to find any settings that actually work. Using the Raise3D N2 Plus dual-extruder printer. EDIT: WRT questions raised in the comments: The extruder isn't clogging. It's continuing to print; it's just that at the point where the central column angles back, the whole thing separates and I end up with a distinct layer that prints straight up and down rather than angling inward. I'm using PLA at 215°C and 3 wall layers. This problem seems to be specific to this model; I've been able to print other large things before without problems. Never heard of MeshMixer, but the reviews on the download page make it appear to be a very buggy and wouldn't work at all, at least in the current version, and it requires a registration to download even though it's nominally free, so I think I'll pass on this one.

Hex infill patterns are normally chosen for strength, as the honeycomb resists force in many directions. However, hex infill patterns are slow to print and the older, simpler fill patterns print faster and provide sufficient support for solid architectural models. Models with shallow roof angles of less than 45 degrees are challenging to print and often result in "air prints" where unsupported filament cascades into a sorry tangle of sadness. Shallow roofs are challenging because each horizontal filament overlaps very little with the preceding adjacent filament. This is where infill proves critical, since the infill supports these filament bridges as they cross each infill line segment. Slicing software has only recently introduced the hex fill pattern because the code to print a hex infill is VERY complicated. You can see this in the picture as all those fine lines of retracted filament scattered throughout the hex infill. Earlier, simpler fills such as diagonal lines provide simpler longer paths for the slicer to implement. Bridging works best at speed over many supporting points. Excessive retraction causes the extruder to "stutter", and makes bridging difficult. It may therefore help to choose a simpler fill pattern for printing this model and reserve hex infill for simpler models requiring utmost strength.

Upgrade hot-end to achieve higher temps (e.g. for PETG) I'm struggling to get my printer to the temps required for modified PETG (the filament I have is Fillamentum CPE and recommends 255-275 °C), I currently can only reach 245/250 °C even if my target temperature is above that. The hot-end is fully ceramic wrapped and metal (no PTFE liner to worry about) and the printer is in a DIY heat shielded enclosure (non-heated). The printer is an old (but gold) Wanhao Duplicator 4 (Rep 1 clone) with a MK8/9 extruder running a custom build of Sailfish. I know there is a firmware cap at 280 °C but that's fine, I don't intend to go above that. Bar totally swapping out the extruder assembly what can I do to up the hot-end temperature, upgrade the power supply, heater cartridge?

Most PETG reacts vey badly to temperatures above 255. The typical optimal PETG temperature ranges from 225 to 245. Above that it gets sticky... If PETG is your goal, you might want to find a filament that is more friendly to your printer. They are pretty cheap, and now you have transitioned to an all-metal hot end, you should be good to go!

Solidoodle 4 voltage requirements I have a solidoodle 4 and have blown the power supply . Long and the short of it is I am trying to modify a Xbox 1 power supply to fulfill the need. I am measuring he voltage at the output and its 14.04 volt. Question is this, is the operational voltage range on a solidoodle able to operate on 14 volt ?

I have not used or seen a solidoodle 4, but as found on the internet, the controller board used in the printer is a version of the Sanguinololu, and the reprap wiki says that The board is designed to be flexible in its power source, working with a 12V/5V ATX power supply or any 7V-35V power source via the on-board voltage regulator. if you're using a board not older than V0.7 http://reprap.org/wiki/Sanguinololu However, I have also found images that show the Solidoodle with this board: http://www.reprap.org/wiki/SAV_MKI which can be used with 11-15V. This however might be for older versions of the printer. There are some things to keep in mind: if there is no voltage regulator on the board, make sure that all parts can take the voltage without overheating at some points.

Y-min stay triggered I have a FLSUN i3 220x220x240 with: an 2004 LCD (RepRap Discount Smart Controller) an MKS-gen-L-v1.0 printer board running Marlin firmware 2.0.5.x 3D touch sensor, a filament runout sensor. Everything works fine but for the mechanical Y-min switch: it stays triggered. (M119) YMIN worked under Marlin 1.1.2; everything is connected correctly and is physically working. I don't know what to do... Does maybe someone have an idea of what I can do? These are my config files: configuration.h configuration_adv.h pins_RAMPS.h

This MKS-GEN-L board is in essence a plain RAMPS board, and as such it uses the same pinout apart from some specific pins. Do note the include of the RAMPS pinout in the MKS-GEN-L at the end of the file. From your comment you have changed the pins 14 and 15, in doing so, you need to plug the Y-min endstop in the Y-max socket after uploading the modified firmware. With the unmodified firmware (no pin switch), if the Y-endstop works in the Y-max socket, this means that you have a hardware issue. The pin labeled 14 is connected to the Y-max instead of the Y-min. If you did the pinout switch and left the endstop in the Y-min socket, then you can conclude that the 15 pin is not connected to the Y-min socket. Basically you don't have a 15 pin that is exposed. Could be that there is an issue on the board with the traces or the soldering.

What are the dimensions of the FlashForge Creator Pro heating block? I have a FlashForge Creator Pro, couple of years old. I'm looking to replace one or both of the heating blocks, as they're getting old and pretty gunked up. Instead of buying two blocks at \$30 each, I thought I could take some aluminum and make two on my CNC mill. The only thing - are there any manufacturer provided dimensions? I could probably get by measuring with calipers, but I'd prefer the exact specifications.

The FlashForge Creator Pro uses a MK10 hotend: The Micro Swiss MK10 All Metal Hotend Kit for instance is reported to be a drop-in replacement for the FlashForge Creator Pro, it uses M7 threads. The heater block for an MK10 has a threaded hole for the thermistor (M4), but some use a machined hole for PT100/3 mm thermistor cartridges. The block measures around 20 x 20 13 mm. The images below should give you enough information to create your custom blocks. However, there appear to be 3rd supplier after-market blocks available on on-line webshops and market places The Flashforge original spare part heater blocks show that they are slightly different (the top image shows symmetrical heater blocks while the spare parts are not symmetrical), so above drawings and caliper measurements should give you enough information to reproduce the heater block. It would be a great addition if you added your own answer once you measured your blocks and created some drawings!

Thermal runaway on extruder hotend I am getting thermal runaway even after PID autotunning many times. I tried 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 cycles and after reuploading FW onto the printer but I still get the error... I've built a copy of Prusa's i3 mk2 by following Building the cheapest possible Prusa i3 MK2. I have tried autotune with the cooling fan off, 50 %, and 100 %, but nothing changes. The printer is in a closed cabinet room. I was just watching it printing + temperature graph, and after ~20-30 minutes it starts jumping from 199.3-5 to 200.6-9... And that causes, after a few minutes, thermal runaway. The fan was on for 15 minutes or more. Any help?

If a temperature of (rounded) 201 °C is triggering TRP, then one of three things is the culprit: The TRP Hysteresis is awfully trigger happy. See What is Thermal Runaway Protection? Your Heater cartridge is not properly mounted and has a bad connection to the heater block and upon heating and expecting a much higher temperature but not measuring the associated increase it triggers TRP as it thinks "DANG! My thermosensor or heater cartridge must have fallen out of the heater block!" Your Thermosensor has occasionally erroneous readings that are interpreted as temperatures way over or under 200 °C and trigger TRP. To rule out the problems, do the following: Check the mounting of the thermosensor and heater cartridge. Tighten if needed. The thermosensor should have no cracks (glass) or deformation (metal cylinder)!. Check resistance and wiring of the heater cartridge (it should have some depending on the type) and thermosensor (If you use a thermocouple sensor, you might need to flip wiring). Use a terminal with a graphic interface and look at the temperature output line as you heat up and print. If it has spikes or sudden valleys, you get occasionally erroneous readings and should go back to recheck your wiring or replace the thermosensor. Only after making sure the physical side is ok, look at the TRP code and Thermal Settings in configuration_adv.h. Only alter these if you know what you are doing, as you do so at your own risk - the settings in the distribution are well proven to be safe, while alterations might turn TRP effectively off and turn your machine into a fire hazard. Which factors to increase carefully is detailed in this answer.

Dual extruder with gear shifting I am planning to upgrade my printer with a second extruder. Since my printer is a Tronxy X8 it's frame is not exactly vibration resistant, so I'd like to keep the print head weight down. At the same time I really don't want a Bowden setup. I came up with the idea of making a dual extruder driven only by a single stepper with a gear shift setup that switches the stepper between the two extruders. The idea seems simple, but googleing didn't turn up anything else. Is there anything I am missing that would would make such a setup unfeasible? Did anyone else build something like that? A clarification, because it came up in an answer: What I imagine is this: One stepper motor is connected to a gear shift system that is either connected to Extruder A or Extruder B, depending on the gear. When shifting it just connects the stepper motor to the other extruder. So it is still similar to a regular direct driven dual extruder system, except that it only uses a single stepper to drive two extruders, each connected to it's own hotend.

You'll need a custom firmware. Yur custom firmware will have to react to the "Change extruder" command differently than a normal firmware: instead of just swapping to a different extruder, you'll need to perform some operations to alter the gearing (possibly a solenoid?), and possibly include some kind of "break" to make sure that the filament is not slipping back without the extruder attached. However, there already is a setup that pretty much does this: the Prusa MMU2 uses something similar. The MMU does use a Bowden setup, but you could use Bowden and direct drive in combination, especially if both motors run in sync.

Printrbot simple metal not auto leveling I have a printrbot simple metal with the heated bed upgrade. Its been working fine until Cura updated, now, after the x,y, and z axis zeros, the print starts without moving to the other corners and auto leveling the bed. Does the new version of cura require me to turn the function on or should i try to re flash the printers firmware? Thoughts? Thanks. UPDATE using an older version of Cura, the printer auto levels and works as expected. Is there any clue why the new update of cura stops this function?

See if you can check what the starting G-Code is. I havn't used Cura but what I think has changed for you is that your new software is homing just using the G28 command and not the G29 command. I think if you can look into your slicer settings you will find an option to change what the starting gcode is and you will probably want to change it to something like this G28 X0 Y0 G28 Z0 G29

Advice on power supply wiring for the UK I've been looking at the Ender series and decided to take the plunge. But I'm unsure on electrical matters. The 110 or 220 volt switch, I assume goes to 220 V as I live in the UK but my main question is, from what I've read they come with an EU plug and a uk adapter, is it safer to switch to a 'kettle lead' for it to have it's own fuse and be grounded or is the adapter it comes with fine? (I've never been a fan of adapter and I've read in different places that they're fine or that they are horrible.) Please help as if I need to buy a cable I'll do it the same time I buy the printer. Thank you all in advance for any help I get, hope to join this community properly as soon as the printers come back in stock anywhere.

The fuse may be academic, because there might be an integrated fuseholder in the PSU itself. That said, adding another fuse in the form of a proper UK plug certainly won't hurt. I'd certainly do this, too. Fuseless plugs have no place in my home/workplace For the rest - yes, the 220V position for the switch is good. Grounding, again, certainly can't hurt, but the PSU is probably double-insulated, which doesn't require it.

Height of the prints are always larger This problem is driving me crazy, no, seriously speaking. I bought this printer this week and started to calibrate for accurate dimensions. I printed the one-and-only calibration cube (20x20x20 also a 10x10x10) and well, the dimensions for the X & Y axis are perfect, but the Z-axis is a big problem, almost 1.5 mm bigger than expected. I tried everything in order to resolve this issue, I checked to see if the steps are correctly calibrated using a ruler and moving my extruder up and down, precise as you expected, no weird sounds coming from the Z-axis and stepper while printing. I calibrated the E-Step, also the bed leveling is done automatically using the BLTouch probe. Also I want to mention that the first layer is perfect (took time to calibrate this too). I am using Cura for slicing using the default profile for the Ender 3 Pro, Premium PLA, 210 °C for the first layer & 200 °C for the rest, 50 °C bed temperature. I will leave here some photos, perhaps somebody could give me an idea. As you can see from the images the Z-axis is scaled-up perfectly. This difference is about 1.5 mm for both cubes (the one with 20 mm & 10 mm). Has anyone encountered this type of problem before? EDIT: I will attach some pictures with the first layer. Right now I observe some wobbling in the Z axis and saw that the printer is not perfect laid on the table, one corner was lifted. So I tried to flatten. Waiting for the test print.

Since nobody had any idea what cause the problem, I investigated for a full week. The problem is related to Fade Height and .... a warp bed, since I have ABL (Auto Bed Levelling) and Fade Height enable. The compensation was way too big, something like -1.4 or bigger. So, after I bought a new glass bed and set the fade height to 0 the problem is gone and the prints are looking normal, like -.2 mm or -.3mm in heights.

Clear coating resin 3D prints I'm looking to put a UV-blocking clear coating on some of my resin 3D prints. I've tried krylon UV-Resistant Clear Coating but it seemed to react with my print making it softer and easy to break. I'm trying to coat a thin Lithophane so I would rather not make it any softer. Are there any better options for a UV-blocking clear coat for resin 3D prints? Printer used: AnyCube Photon (dlp) Resin used for Print: ELEGOO ABS-Like 3D Printer Rapid Resin Lithophane maker: lithophanemaker

I'd go for the easy option of using a composite setup: Acrylic lacquers themselves are very low reactive and can serve as a foundation before the UV clear coating is applied. The acrylic lacquer itself doesn't change coloration if exposed to sunlight, but the light can still pass and discolor the lithophane. Your Krylon clearcoat technically is an acrylic paint, but to be used from a rattlecan, other chemicals are added - a whole lot as the MSDS tells us. The list of chemicals besides the paint in that can are Acetone, n-Butyl Acetate, Propane, Butane, Xylene, Ethyl 3-Ethoxypropionate, Cyclohexane, Ethylbenzene, Bis(pentamethyl-4-piperidyl)sebacate. Three simple chemicals I put in italics - they are very good solvents that easily react with the resin print. Propane and Butane create the pressure in the rattle can, the other four chemicals make up the actual lacquer. I have observed the mix of Acetone, Cyclohexane, and Ethylbentene (with possibly others) softening PLA, so it is totally possible that they react unfavorably with your resin print. As a result, I suggest using a brush or roller to apply acrylic paint from a can (not spraycan!)

Prusa i3 MK3 latest release first layer calibration issues I am trying to get my first layer calibrating done but no matter what I do, I can not get the lines sticking to the bed. My first question is the distance of the P.I.N.D.A. What I did was what Prusa recommends on this pic: I am using Prusa Slic3r with PLA and all default values. I am doing the first layer calibration of the setup menu and got the lines which you can remove and the last square which the nozzle is picking up so you don't have it on the print bed. The very first line on the left corner is not really squeezed. I am looking for some greenhorn help here.

Calibrating the first layer height involves two steps: The first step, as illustrated in that picture, is to adjust the PINDA probe to be roughly the right distance above the nozzle. The PINDA only has a sensing range of about a millimeter, so if it's too high, it can't detect the printbed; if it's too low, it will interfere with the printed object. The second step, which you're having trouble with, is to calibrate the exact distance between the PINDA and the nozzle tip. The printer prints out a test pattern; while it's printing, you turn the the dial on the printer control panel to adjust the "live-Z" value. Typical values for a properly-assembled printer are between -0.5 and -1.0 (more-negative values are closer to the print bed). If the live-Z value is outside that range, you need to adjust the position of the PINDA probe. The official Prusa procedure is good for getting a rough calibration. If you want more precision, the "Life adjust Z - my way" procedure on the Prusa forums is good. Basically, you print out a large one-layer square, adjust the live-Z value halfway through, and see which half has a better first layer. Repeat until satisfied.

No stepper motor movement on Ender 3 Pro I've recently updated my Ender 3 Pro to the latest Marlin 2.0 firmware and when I press autohome or try to move the axis, I hear a very quiet noise from the motors trying to move and then they just don't. I did get an error message about EEPROM when I first booted the printer after flashing but I just pressed reset and the issue hasn't come back even after trying multiple different firmware versions.

This is theoretical assumption, but I suppose that your steps/mm values are now wrong in EEPROM - specifically they are set to 0 (zeroed steps per mm)? Could you please use LCD and navigate to Configuration > Advanced Settings > Steps per mm and check what values are set there? If there are zeros, could you set them to positive values (e.g. =80) and check homing again? Than you may save changes using Configuration > Store Settings. I just made following test proving that this may be the cause. I set steps per mm for X=0 (executed G-Code: M92 X0 from serial terminal) and tried to move X. The stepper motor was enabled (quiet noise or hiss), but it not moved at all. There was no additional feedback e.g. on LCD. Pretty similar. If this is not the only broken setting, then option Configuration > Restore Defaults should reset EEPROM to values defined in Marlin's configuration. I needed to perform Configuration > Store Settings to make it persistent. But this will reset many other values, so I would suggest to write down all current values from LCD before doing the reset, for reference in future (in case they were valuable). And still you may not see all settins in LCD, therefore I would use g-code for this operation - see below. These operations can be also performed from serial terminal using G-Code commands: M503 to verify and copy current configuration, and M502 followed by M500 to perform factory reset.

Tevo Michelangelo nozzle below build plate? I got a Tevo Michelangelo as first 3D printer today and already got a problem with the bed leveling: The extruder nozzle is way below the build plate. (When I auto-home the axes, which I've done several times). I thought to just adjust the plate downwards, but it was incredibly slow, and there was almost no progress. Here's a picture, sorry for the bad quality: Should I continue adjusting it downwoards via the screws (It's getting harder), or is there some other way to solve this? Or am I just making a dumb mistake?

Just move the Z-endstop up a little higher, also make sure the bed leveling screws are not completely screwed in. So: Move the head of the printer up. Move up the Z-endstop so that the nozzle is a little higher than the build platform. Home the printer. Disable the stepper motors and move the head over the bed to a certain position (e.g. a corner without disturbing the Z axis), once you get to a new position of the bed, raise the bed by unscrewing the screws until a piece of paper shows noticeable drag when pulled between the nozzle and build platform. Goto 3 until you have done all corners several times, also the center of the bed. It is advised to once in a while re-home the printer, this way accidental Z-axis movement is compensated again.

How to create a support structure in tinkercad? I've created a case for my Raspberry Pi in Tinkercad and would like to 3d print it. However, I don't know how to create supports! I tried looking it up, but I got a model that I don't know how to import, and some best practices for supports. So how should I create them using Tinkercad?

If you're using the term "supports" to mean the extra material that the 3D printer needs to allow material to be deposited in "mid-air," your slicer will have a setting that permits this. Knowing which slicer is going to be used would enable someone to advise you directly of the location of the settings. If you are going to be using a 3D printing service, you need not address those types of supports. The printing service will have qualified operators who will select the correct settings for your specific model.

Prusa i3 Dual Extruder Setup Issues I have a Folgertech Prusa i3, on a Ramps 1.4 with Marlin and I use Repetier-Host to control it. I am attempting to convert it to a dual extruder Bowden setup, and I can't seem to get the second extruder to work, although the first works just fine. This is my problem: I am not getting a reading in Repetier-Host for the thermistor of the second extruder. It is at a constant 100C. When I turn on the cartridge heater for the second extruder in Repetier-Host, the cartridge heater does not heat up. This is what I have done: For the second extruder, I connected the wires from the thermistor to the pins for T2 and the wires for the cartridge heater to D9. I have not updated anything in the Marlin firmware. In Repetier-Host, I selected that there are two extruders, and a second extruder is indicated under the 'manual controls' tab. This is what I have double checked: I confirmed the second thermistor works because it indicates a proper temperature reading when plugging it in both T0 and T1. I confirmed the second cartridge heater works because it heats up when connected to D10. I apologize in advance if this is an amateur question, but I can't seem to find an answer anywhere. If somebody could at least point me in the right direction, or let me know if there is something I did not include in my post, I would really appreciate it, and hopefully it would help somebody else coming across a similar problem. Thanks

Thanks to the comments, I was able to narrow down the specific issues in the firmware. The firmware version was really out of date, so I recommend finding the latest stable version. Therefore, I found the latest stable version of Marlin, downloaded it, and created my own edited version. I went line by line in configuration.h and configuration_adv.h, with the old version I had side by side to the newer version, making any and all appropriate changes. Below are the lines I found most important to evaluate when setting up a second extruder. Make sure the you have the right board selected from boards.h: #define MOTHERBOARD 34 Make sure the # of extruders is specified: #define EXTRUDERS 2 Make sure the sensor is active: #define TEMP_SENSOR_0 6 #define TEMP_SENSOR_1 6 #define TEMP_SENSOR_2 0 #define TEMP_SENSOR_BED 6 This should be considered: #define HEATER_0_MAXTEMP 240 #define HEATER_1_MAXTEMP 240 #define HEATER_2_MAXTEMP 240 #define BED_MAXTEMP 90 Everything under this comment should be looked at: // Preheat Constants These would allocate the second extruder for other motors: #define Z_DUAL_STEPPER_DRIVERS #define Y_DUAL_STEPPER_DRIVERS #define DUAL_X_CARRIAGE I'm sure there are other parameters I may have missed, and these are specific to my Prusa i3, but I hope this helps out anybody else in the future.

Dual extruder clogging problem I have attached a dual extruder (2 in 2 out) to my 3D printer. There is a repeating problem of clogging while printing. I have fixed Chimera hotend. A big fan, which covers area more than the double extruder, cools both cold ends. An additional fan directly on the front (as seen in the picture) cold end cools the ribs directly. The back does not have an additional fan. I tried to print after attaching an extra fan; the first print went well but from there on, the hotend gets clogged every time I print. The clogging happens in melt zone. I have tried cleaning the hot-end, but to no avail... My settings are as below: Print speed = 60mm/sec Temperature = 210C Filament material = PLA Filament diameter = 1.75, Nozzle Diameter = 0.4 Dual extrusion switch amount = 16.5mm Retraction speed = 40mm/sec, Retraction Distance = 4.5mm, Disabled Wipe and Prime tower and ooze shield Please advise what to do.

It appears (now confirmed in your question) that you are using a Chimera 2-in-2-out hotend like depicted below: Chimera hotends generally use all-metal heat breaks (not confirmed yet) which are harder to operate than "normal" PTFE lined hotends. A common problem that happens is that heat creeps up causing problems as a result of too slow printing or too high retraction length settings. Basically your problem is clogging related to all-metal heat break printing. This is recently asked in this question: "Apparently systematic nozzle clogging". Please read the answers to that question as they describe very well what happens and what to do. Quoting from this article explains that it is a heating/cooling issue: Jams and clogs are often from a combination of excessive heat and non-optimal material flow. This effect is worsened by poorly cooled all-metal hot ends, high torque extruder gears, small nozzles/layers, slow printing speeds, too thin first layer, and excessive retraction. Please do read this article and the solutions they mention to get yourself acquainted with the problem and its solutions. In your case this could well be a cooling issue in combination with a too high print temperature and a possibly too high retraction length setting (depends on the length of the Bowden tube). The fan you mounted in the front (onto the cooling ribs, so the rightt fan in your image) is too large for this hotend. You attached the fan to the left top mounting hole so that it exceeds the right and bottom area of your cooling ribs. Furthermore, this larger fan has a larger center (hub) to house the bigger engine so that you end up with a lower cooling flow for at least the right extruder as most of the cooling ribs area is blocked by the fan hub. Please fit a fan that fits this hotend. Printing a fan adaptors may not work as well, these fans have a very low static pressure difference, so a convergent duct may not work as well as you might think. Considering your temperature you are printing PLA; PLA could usually be printed well in the 185 - 195 °C temperature range (depending on the PLA), 210 °C seems a bit on the high side. Another solution could be replacing the heat breaks for lined heat breaks: As an aside, to explain a suggestion, in Himanshu's comment to coat your filament with some oils: Apply some oil on PLA filament with cotton. Oil does lower friction in an all-metal hotend, but please beware that this needs to be vegetable oil. The reasoning behind this is that the oil hardens inside the throat to create a smooth coating on the inside, not lube the inside of the throat. This thread has some interesting material on that. However, general consensus is not to do that: Micro-Swiss use slippery platings and such, they don't need it. I've also used B3 Picos and E3D v5, v6, Volcano and Chimera and even that one garbage QUBD mk7 knockoff. Never needed oil. or Seasoning hotends is a myth that refuses to die. Just don't do it, it does more harm than good.

Heater cartridge connector for Original Prusa i3 MK2S I am thinking about rewiring the extruder heater cartridge. What is the connector on the Rambo Mini? I'm thinking about putting a similar connector close to the extruder to make replacement easy. I tried looking through the schematic but could find the part number for the connector (I believe on page 4?).

This is referred to as a Terminal Block Connector. More specifically this is a 2-position pluggable terminal block connector commonly manufactured by Phoenix Contact and others. Newark.com Sale Page: Pluggable Terminal Block, 5.08 mm, 2 Positions, 24 AWG, 12 AWG, 2.5 mm², Screw Larger Picture: 2-Position Terminal Block Connectors

Ender 5 Underextruding Recently I cleaned up the bowden tube and the nozzle, after that I noticed the 3D was underextruding because the walls of the prints were weak and the first layer didnt adhere on the bed. I watched some youtube tutorials on how to fix this and pulled the bowden tube until the nozzle, cleaned inside the tube and removed clogs. My temporary fix is setting the flow on Cura to 200%. I added a extruder visualizer and it seems to be working just fine. Any ideas why it is underextruding? I'm using PLA at 200C, bed at 60C

If you pulled the Bowden tube out of the hotend and then got this, you almost surely installed it wrong, leaving a gap between the tube and the nozzle for molten filament to fill and jam in. Remove it again with the hotend hot, and if there's a mess inside, look for guides on cleaning it. Then, to reassemble, loosen the fitting from the heat sink by 3/4 to one full turn, press the tube in as far as it will go, then tighten the fitting down to compress the tube against the nozzle.

Not able to insert hobbed drive and filament in the extruder drive I am building a AlfaMendel 3D printer (edited : The original question named it to be Prusa Mendel I2). I printed the extruder drive using PLA material from the STL available in the package but I'm not able to insert the hobbed drive as well as the filament in it. The dimensions of hobbed drive is correct. Is the problem related to shrinking of print material while printing the extruder drive or something else. I have included few pics of the extruder drive and hobbed drive. This image shows the maximum possible insertion of hobbed drive in the extruder drive.

Your parts are not in the Prusa Mendel i2 as found here or here. Also note, quote: Parts included in Github repository have the wrong dimensions for the nut traps! Download the correct version from [Thingiverse Greg's Hinged Accesible Extruder] Are you sure you have the correct parts for the original Prusa Mendel i2? Maybe you have a different version? The original extruder mount uses an M8 hobbed bolt, not an MK8 hobbed extruder gear. The first is 8 mm in diameter, the latter is 9 mm in diameter. Edit: After you updated your post to hint to the correct printer, it appears that my answer still holds. You did use the incorrect extruder gear. The 9 mm gear doesn't fit in the extruder part as it requires an 8 mm diameter extruder gear. It might be difficult to find a 8 mm hobbed gear with a 3 mm shaft diameter, they are usually 5 mm (as in the stepper shaft diameter) or 8 mm (as in the diameter of 8 mm bolts that are frequently used for extruder setups). You could redesign the part (load STL in a 3D CAD program and make the changes). By the way, PLA should not shrink so much. As can be seen in the photo's, it looks like your current printer does not print very accurately, that may also contribute.

Where is a reputable place to download Ultimaker Cura? I noticed that my version of Ultimaker Cura was out of date, so I tried to go to their website and download a new version. For whatever reason, I could not get the download link to work properly in Firefox with a slew of security extensions. Where are reputable mirrors for Cura? Download.Cnet.com and Sourceforge came up as sources, but years ago they both went to the darkside (SourceForge: HowToGeek, thecomputerpeeps). I don't see anything else that looks even remotely reputable in the search results. I did some analysis, and it appears that the drop down and form don't work correctly if you select "I don't want to share any personal information", leading me to think this is web page bug.

The answer to your question is: "From the application developer itself!". Below is the explanation how you can (directly) download Ultimaker Cura from the most reputable source: Ultimaker.com Regular download When clicking the link to download of the Cura application download button from the Ultimaker website you are presented with a pop-up GUI that asks you if you want to share where you are using the program for. When you select the required field and press download, the download starts. If this doesn't work, a direct download approach can be used. Direct download If the regular download method fails, or you do not get the pop-up GUI, you can use the direct link for Ultimaker Cura from the developer's website: https://download.ultimaker.com/cura/Ultimaker_Cura-4.1.0-win64.exe This link can be found at the download directory at the website: https://download.ultimaker.com/current/ This web directory overview also shows all previous releases and installers for other platforms. As of version 3.6.0, the download does not appear to be in the list, this link will show an overview: https://ultimaker.com/en/products/ultimaker-cura-software/list Do note that the latter link will show the pop-up. As of version 4.1, the web directory overview link will serve a 404. Github The Ultimaker Cura Project has a Github, where they offer the current and previous editions under: https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/tags

What is the melting temperature of a 3D printed part? Here is the context I've got an old car for which I have a small plastic piece who is broken. As it's an old car and a very specific piece, I can't find it anymore. So I was thinking about 3D printing it. My problem is this piece is on the carburetor, so close to the engine. This means, it can heat a lot, close to 90-100 °C. My question Do the pieces created with the common 3D printing techniques melt at 100 °C? If yes, what kind of other 3D printing technique can I use? Here is the piece I want to recreate (sorry for the bad quality), the scale is in cm.

The number you're looking for is the glass transition temperature (the lowest temperature at which the material can flow or warp), not the melting point. This depends on what material you're using; approximate temperatures for common printable materials are: PLA: 60˚C PETG, high-temperature PLA: 95 ˚C ABS: 105˚C Nylon: typically 70˚C or above ("Nylon" is a large family of similar polymers) Polycarbonate: 145˚C Any plastic under your hood is probably either nylon (for its durability, impact resistance, and chemical resistance) or ABS (for its strength and heat resistance). These are both difficult materials to print: ABS emits toxic fumes while printing, and tends to warp if you're not using a heated enclosure, while nylon readily absorbs water from the air, causing the filament to bubble as it's printed. Further, many printers can't handle the high temperatures needed to work with these materials. If you're going to print this yourself, I recommend using PETG and inspecting the part after a few days of use to see if it's warping. PETG is reasonably easy to print and comes close to your target heat resistance. If you're going to get someone else to print it, I recommend using ABS. It's probably what the original part was made of, and anyone willing to print ABS for you will have the heated enclosure and ventilation system to deal with printing it. I'd avoid polycarbonate unless you know the original part was made of it. Although PC is strong and heat resistant, it's also somewhat brittle and vulnerable to scratching. High-temperature PLA is also brittle, and requires a heat-treating step that will change the dimensions of the part. It will likely take several tries to get something that comes out the right size, and even then, you risk having the part break when your car hits a bump.

How do I remove a stuck resin print I have stuck resin print that won't detach from the bed of my Creality LD-002R LCD Printer. I guess I could break the print off piece by piece, but it won't budge with pressure, pulling with all my strength, or even hitting it pretty hard.

There are generally 3 ways, in order of least to most desirable, and at times you need to combine them in an escalation: Toss the vat. This is the most expensive and generally should only be the last resort, for example, if you damage your film. Careful Brute Force. This can damage the film, but carefully getting a wedge between the film and the print might be the only option to remove the last bits sticking to the film. If you have to resort to this, take your time. Using thermal expansion. We all know that materials expand when you heat them. The reverse is also true: materials shrink if you cool them. Different materials shrink differently. So by cooling the vat with as little liquid resin and the print inside can lead to the print 'popping' free, just like in an FDM printer. Note however that this might not work on its own in case you made a suction cup (then you need to resort to brute force or drill a hole into the top), and you should take extreme caution not to contaminate any food with resin, as the stuff is not safe for consumption at all. With the right setup, you might be able to heat the build plate carefully while the print itself is kept cool.

3D printer ends print by sinking in to it and getting stuck I am using cura with M3D entry level printer. When I print things more than 6-7cm/2.5-3inches, at the end of the print, the hot end sink back into the print then gets stuck as it tries to return to idle position. Please see the attached photo. Has anyone had this problem? Thank you The last 20 lines of gcode is: G0 X50.83 Y49.982 G1 F600 X50.541 Y49.975 E4399.62304 G1 X50.268 Y49.985 E4399.62637 G1 X49.999 Y49.999 E4399.63024 G1 X49.73 Y50.012 E4399.6341 G1 X49.457 Y50.023 E4399.63742 G1 X49.168 Y50.016 E4399.63941 G0 F7200 X49.28 Y49.87 ;TIME_ELAPSED:6301.614981 G1 F1500 E4393.13941 M107 M104 S0 M140 S0 ;Retract the filament G92 E1 G1 E-1 F300 G28 X0 Y0 M84 M82 ;absolute extrusion mode M104 S0 ;End of Gcode

As can be seen from the G-code file, the head is instructed to travel to x=0, y=0 (G28 X0 Y0 is actually a homing instruction to home the head and label the position with zero X and zero Y). After that it powers off the motors (M84). From your picture, it looks like the head digs in the print without moving to the home position, so G28 X0 Y0 is not working (although you mention it tries to move while digging in?!?). That is strange as there is no instruction to lower the head. Please alter G28 to G0 so that it reads: G0 X0 Y0 (or G1 X0 Y0 which does work and will instruct the head to move). The digging into the print could be explained by the weight of the head/carriage that cannot be held when the steppers are not powered anymore (as instructed by M84). When the nozzle is hot, the nozzle will then dig into your print. Edit: Now that I see your comment on another answer, your proprietary software may produce different G-code than Cura does, this could imply that your printer does not use a "standard" G-code interpreter or does not implement all G-codes.

I can't install plugins on OctoPrint? I have installed OctoPi on my Raspberry Pi 3B+, that is connected to an MKS GEN L v1.0 motherboard for my 3D printer (Ender 3 Pro). When I open my OctoPrint into a browser I can use it, but I wanted to install some plugins. First time I had an error that said my server was offline, after connecting my Raspberry to WiFi and setting up a static ip-address, I've connected my Raspberry to my main board, after that it said the status of OctoPrint was operational, so I expected it will work. Sadly, it says that my installation doesn't have internet, so I still couldn't install plugins. I see that in the "connectivity check" my host is 8.8.8.8 and my port 53; I've pressed on test and there it said "server is unreachable". What am I supposed to do?

This is a known issue (WIFI fine, but no internet connection to install plugins) and could well be related to firewall or blocking of certain ports by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). I quote from the provided link (OctoPrint issue tracker): Disabling the connectivity check did fix the repository access. The check was configure to use google (8.8.8.8) on port various ports (22, 53, 5000, etc. Not sure the default). I do not have any firewall set up outgoing, unless it is buried in the Raspberian install that I am not aware of. I stumbled across this issue with the same problem, and I fixed the connectivity check by changing the IP to OpenDNS with 1.1.1.1 instead of the Google DNS 8.8.8.8 set by default. For me this issue was resolved when I update Date+Time on the raspberry...

Why turning off model cooling for first layer? I had few printing troubles for first layer yesterday (will certainly ask there as soon as I can take photos) but one of the things I've noticed is that the model cooling fan (the fan that is supposed to blow air on the printed model, not the fan that regulates the noozle temperature) is turned off for printing the first layer. It's a Dagoma DiscoEasy200, printing PLA on a non-heating bed (blue tape). Wandering down stackexchange, I also read turn off the part fan for the first layer from https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/a/5494/10836 So my question is: what's the reason behind turning off the part/model-fan for the first layer?

Filament expands as it gets hot. Cooling the filament will make it shrink, so cooling the filament deposited on the bed can lead to adhesion problems and warping of your products. This is exactly the reason why you use a heated bed (the delta temperature is smaller). So keep the cooling off for the first layers and you'll be fine. Additionally (having answered the question for not using cooling air for the first layer), I would like to add that sometimes you won't need any cooling at all (for other layers), or very little cooling. Please do note that some filaments do not like to be cooled down too fast; this may lead to weaker layer bonding or other issues. E.g. POM filament will harden very quickly when cooled causing the nozzle to bump on the quickly hardened filament knocking the product over. Also I found that too much cooling air when using PETG leads to "string-cheese" products caused by insufficient layer bonding. ABS is reported to be even more sensitive for cooling (shrinkage during cooling is higher than of PLA or PETG filaments); a frequent advice is not to use filament cooling when using ABS filament.

Sunhokey Prusa i3 axis x, y, z? My Sunhokey Prusa i3 arrived with a corrupted disc. I'm awaiting a new one and finished the mechanical build via YouTube videos. I've no clue which motor controls the X, Y, and Z, axes. I"m not even positive which axis is which. YouTube vids don't show the origin of all the wires/cables/cords they connect. Anyone know of any CLEAR and Normal speed (or slow-able) vid/diagram that shows the electronics wiring in detail?

X-axis is right-to-left (Carriage motor) Y-axis is front-to-back (Base/Bed motor) Z-axis is up-and-down (lead screws) There are several videos on YouTube. This playlist seems good.

How to theoretically calculate the maximum acceleration? I would like to calculate the maximum safe acceleration for my printer using the following parameters as input: printhead weight torque at the desired speed steps/mm and steps/revolution microsteps Elasticity of frame and belts are ignored. The Excel file to obtain the torque at the desired speed is available here. The other parameters are known in advance. The formula I used for the maximum acceleration is the usual $a=F/m$, where $F=torque*radius$: $acceleration = torque\ *\ (steps/rev\ /\ steps/mm\ *\ microsteps\ /\ pi\ /\ 2) / mass$ Using 450 g, 0.15 N/m (as predicted for my stepper at 200 mm/s with 24 V), 200 steps/rev, 80 steps/mm, 16 microsteps I obtain about 2100 mm/s2 which seems reasonable and pretty close to standard values. However, from what I understood the Excel file provides the prediction of a full-step torque, but torque is known to decrease significantly with increasing microsteps. How to introduce the effect of reduced (incremental) torque for microsteps to calculate a safe maximum acceleration value for a printer? For information: my stepper and my printer were sold back then with about that acceleration value preset and with that torque at nominal speed (half voltage, half speed than I assumed here). The print quality was fine, which seems counterintuitive considering the much reduced torque expected at 16X microsteps, about 1/10 of the value I used. I would expect many lost microsteps with the predefined settings. Or maybe it happens: if all the microsteps are lost, the positioning error would be 16 (micro)steps / 80 steps/mm = 0.2 mm. Important edit!!! As maybe someone noticed, the formula I used $F=torque*radius$ is wrong. The correct one is $F=torque/radius$ Taking this change into account, the final formula is: $acceleration = torque\ /\ (steps/rev\ /\ steps/mm\ *\ microsteps\ /\ pi\ /\ 2) / mass$ which results, with the given input values, in 52 mm/s2. This is much less than what is normally set in printers. I doubt that belt stretching and frame flexibility can affect the setting so much, therefore in addition to the microstep aspect, this one should be answered too, since the question is about "theoretically calculate the maximum acceleration".

You do not appear to have a correct understanding of how microstepping affects torque. What is calculated in the article you refer to is incremental torque. The word "incremental" is very important. A stepper motor consists of a permanent magnet rotor and an electromagnet stator. The electromagnets generate a magnetic field, to which the stator wants to align itself. Imagine the stepper motor being at rest. As we apply a torque to it, the rotor will start to deflect from its resting state in which it is aligned with the magnetic field. As you apply more torque, the stator will deflect more. Eventually, if we keep increasing the torque, the motor will no longer be able to hold its position and snap over to the next step. The torque at which this is happens is the holding torque. Essentially, you can think of the holding torque as the torque required to cause a full step deflection of the rotor's position (compared to where it would be aligned with the magnetic field). The deflection in response to a given torque load is called the static load angle. The article calculates incremental torque for microstepping. The incremental microstepping torque is the torque required to cause a microstep deflection. So, if we are using half stepping, the incremental torque is the torque required to cause a half step deflection. Naturally the torque required to cause a half step deflection is (much) lower than the torque required to cause a full step deflection. This is actually irrespective of what level of microstepping the motor is configured for. Causing a half step deflection requires the same amount of torque, regardless of whether the motor is using full or half stepping. All lower incremental torque means is that we're specifying the torque for a smaller deflection. It does not mean torque is reduced overall. I would expect many lost microsteps with the predefined settings. You cannot "lose" a microstep. The rotor of a stepper motor has physical increments, and losing a step is when it snaps to the next increment. The only thing you can lose is a full step. The stator of a stepper motor creates a rotating magnetic field. The rotor tries to follow this magnetic field, but (if under load) always lags behind it a little because the coupling between the two magnets behaves like a spring. In full-step mode, the rotating magnetic field moves in discrete steps. All enabling microstepping does is make the field rotate more "smoothly". However, it doesn't change the magnitude of the field. If you were to look at the graph of the acceleration of the rotor on a very small time scale, you would get a sawtooth wave. Each time the motor made a full step (i.e., the magnetic field jumps), the acceleration would be high (as the misalignment between the fields would be large) and then gradually drop as the rotor aligned itself again with the magnetic field. If you would use 16x microstepping, you would again see a sawtooth wave, but with a 16x higher frequency and with a lower peak-to-peak amplitude. However, the average value would be the same as for full step mode. The reduction in peak-to-peak amplitude corresponds to the reduction in incremental torque (and, for smooth acceleration, this reduction is actually good). The main reason to be interested in incremental torque is to determine the positioning error. If you imagine the printhead being at rest, a single microstep may not cause any motion because the incremental torque is too low to overcome static friction. So, using 16x microstepping will not allow 16x as precise positioning. However, maximum acceleration is not affected. The second part of your question, where you get the unrealistically low value of 52mm/s2, is based on a simple calculation error. The correct value is 52m/s2 or 52000mm/s2.

Levelling issues with BLTouch sensor; unlevel and weak adhesion I have a Creality CR-10 Max with BLTouch. After I have manually levelled the bed and set the BLTouch to do an auto level it seems to unlevel the bed and only prints one side of the bed. However, it’s not sticking to the bed properly as it can easily move the first layer by brushing over it with my finger. I have provided a photo of a test print below: I have cleaned the bed with an alcohol wipe to ensure no residue from my fingers are on the bed. I was wondering if any one can help me explain why the levelling is not working well and why the print doesn't adhere well.

I have the same printer, but what are you printing, is it an stl that you created yourself or that came standard with the printer? In the beginning, I had the same when printing the models that were delivered with the SD card. Can you check your settings as well on Cura, maybe the adhesion type is set to raft then the first layers are like that. If not then see what nozzle you are using and see what settings you have them on, I noticed also that the initial nozzle that was on my printer was a 0.8 mm and not a 0.4 mm. Also, did you check your Z-offset settings on the printer, when printing you click on adjust and then normally in the left top you see Z-offset if you go in minus (try with 0.5) every time and see if it sticks better. Can you try and check this. These things I also had, still figuring out the settings for the CR-10 Max so I'm not an expert, just sharing my things where I also struggled with.

How can I tell if an STL model will need supports? How can I detect if a generated STL model will need to be printed with supports? Context: I have a pipeline which parametrically generates OpenSCAD models, generates the STL, and sends them to the printer. I would like to (a) automatically detect the cases where supports are necessary so that I can specify the appropriate flags to the slicer, and (b) attempt to rotate the generated model so that supports won't be necessary.

You could try to: Slice with slicer (Cura in my case) with support enabled. Search for text: TYPE:SUPPORT G0 F1800 X237.873 Y184.24 G0 X233.869 Y183.237 ;TYPE:SUPPORT G1 F1500 E562.81355 G1 F900 X233.579 Y183.939 E562.91577 G1 X233.368 Y184.67 E563.01816 If it exists, then try to call it again: Use auto-orientation plugin to validate if there is a better (no support) model position. As an alternative, you could scan the mesh and looks for an angle greater than 45 or 50 degrees.

Does the Elegoo Mars printer support additional file formats? I recently bought an Elegoo Mars 3D printer. Generally speaking, I'm quite happy with it. But, I don't care for the slicing software, Chitubox. Does the Elegoo Mars support other 3D file formats? I have tried *.stl files, but they don't seem to work with the factory firmware.

It also works with the .photon format of the Photon slicer. It is only marginally better than ChituBox though.

Should I be doing PID auto-tuning with my fan at 100% (Anet A8) I'm using an Anet A8 with Marlin 1.1.6. I've read countless guides on PID auto-tuning and never saw that the fan needed to be on, but when I look at the Marlin source code's ANet A8 configuration (here: example_configurations\ANet\A8\Configuration.h) it states: ... // ANET A8 Standard Extruder at 210 Degree Celsius and 100% Fan //(measured after M106 S255 with M303 E0 S210 C8) #define DEFAULT_Kp 21.0 #define DEFAULT_Ki 1.25 #define DEFAULT_Kd 86.0 #endif // PIDTEMP So, should activate the fan before running the auto-test if I wish to update the PID values in Marlin for my Anet A8?

You should run the fan at what you expect it to be at the majority of the time it is printing. If you tune at 100% fan and never use a fan then it will be too aggressive, if you tune at 0% fan and use the fan then you will struggle to maintain/reach temperature.

Nozzle heats while autoleveling (or before) When I'm auto-leveling my Anet A8 with Marlin firmware, the nozzle heats to 195°C during the leveling process, which leaves drops of filament. I checked the resulting G-code but makes no sense to me: M107 M190 S55 ; set bed temperature and wait for it to be reached M117 Homing Axes G28 ; Home axis M117 Autoleveling G29 M117 Cleaning Nozzle ; Indicate nozzle clean in progress on LCD M109 S200 ; Uncomment to set your own temp run warmer to clean out nozzle M107 ; Turn layer fan off G21 ; Set to metric change to G20 if you want Imperial G90 ; Force coordinates to be absolute relative to the origin G0 X10 Y0 Z0.15 F9000 ; Move in 1mm from edge and up z 0.15mm G92 E0 ; Set extruder to 0 zero G1 Y190 E50 F500 ; Extrude 100mm filiment along Y axis 190mm long to prime and clean the nozzle G92 E0 ; Reset extruder to 0 zero end of cleaning run G1 E-3 F500 ; Retract filiment by 3 mm to reduce string effect G1 X3 Y190 Z15 F9000 ; Move over and rise to safe Z height G1 X3 Y0 Z15 F9000 ; Move back to front of bed at safe Z height to shear strings My printer heats the bed, then homes axes while setting the nozzle temperature to 195°C. Then autolevels and finally M109 S200 does its job. How can I prevent the nozzle from heating when there is no G-code for it (except the M109 S200)?

I am using CURA as my slicer, and it sets the bed and nozzle temp before printer start code is executed. You can easily check that by opening a file in a notepad and see, that there will be a few lines describing the job, nozzle and bed setting temperature and the user code that is inserted in printer properties screen. To change that behavior - you need to open the file and move the M commands down after leveling is executed. ;FLAVOR:Marlin ;TIME:45 ;Filament used: 0.0187665m ;Layer height: 0.2 ;Generated with Cura_SteamEngine 3.3.1 M190 S60 M104 S200 M109 S200M82 ;absolute extrusion mode lines above are added by slicer so temperature is set before instritions from START G-Code section: G21 ;metric values G90 ;absolute positioning M82 ;set extruder to absolute mode M107 ;start with the fan off G28; G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length G1 F20 E3 ;extrude 3mm of feed stock G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length again

Adhesion issues using AmazonBasics PLA I am a neophyte at 3D printing. My Ender 3 is now 4 days old and I modified it out of the box with a glass bed. My first print was a fairly complex item, but a mere 90 x 160 x 3.5 mm. Used the sample filament that was included with the 3, first print was a keeper. Today I was trying to use the AmazonBasics PLA 3D printer filament. I am not amused. I'm using the identical setup and glass bed as before but poor adhesion prevented a print. I cleaned the glass with acetone followed with 90 % IPA... No joy. Another cleaning using a dishwashing detergent and IPA, boo hiss! The glass bed is a Creality for the Ender, purchased separately For the first print, no adhesive was used, just the glass (cleaned the glass prior to the first print as described). Your suggestions are solicited.

Answer taken from OP's question ****Fixed it!**** Reset bed height to clear nozzle by 0.04 mm. Printed on raft. I appreciate the answers.

Tuning PID parameters for hotend I have a TEVO Tornado that I messed a bit with, so basically now I have: MKS GEN 1.4 board TMC2130 stepper drivers E3D v6 hotend A few days ago the heater cartridge so I replace it with the old one that was on the hotend of the TEVO Tornado. Now ideally both should be 40 W from what I found online but after I replaced it the heating didn't work as expect so I set out to re-tune the PID parameters but no matter what value I try the temperature is always oscillating below the desired temp. Say the desired temp is 200 °C then the head temp will oscillate between 187-200 °C. I tried M303 auto tuning but with no luck for some reason the temperature can't go above 160-170 °C when auto tuning so I get a thermal runaway error. I tried setting the D term to 0 and then to 1000 but the difference in behavior didn't change a lot which I think is weird... I thought the board might be going crazy so the timing for the PID controller is messed up but the thing is that is was working fine with the old heater cartridge. Any ideas?

Issue was with PID tuning nothing to do with the hardware. I switched to a duet wifi and used the auto tuning of the reprap firmware and now it is just working beautifully. I guess I was doing the manually tuning in such a bad way and the auto tuning on marlin was not working correctly for me.

Missing top layers in Cura I've just tried to make some small labels with embossed lettering. Base is 1.5 mm, with letters and a perimeter protruding by another 1 mm. After printing, I realised that Cura is not giving me a top layer, all I get is an inner and outer wall for the perimeter and the lettering: The base is OK, with 4 layers, but there is no infill at the top. Presumably there is a setting that I've missed (I can appreciate that maybe this is a detail to the slicing which is model dependant). Layers are 0.2 mm, top and bottom set to 4 layers. I had walls set to 1.6 mm, (4 layers) and the wall features here are 1 mm (i.e. 2.5x the nozzle). The features are solid so far as I know, not drawn as a hollow. I found a relevant bug for Cura: https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura/issues/1303 (and I also understand a workaround now, just need to write up an answer).

What is your source model? Typically this "missing layer" effect happens if the source has a wall thickness less than the size of the extruder nozzle selected. Cura will view that part of the model as non-printable. Meshmixer and TinkerCad (among many others) will allow you to set and change thicknesses in the model.

Hictop 3d printer upgrades? Where can I go to upgrade this printer? It's a hictop prusa i3 3d printer. Where do you buy heated beds suitable for ABS and PLA? Also, what kind of extruder do you guys think I should buy? This is were I bought it from. http://www.amazon.com/HICTOP-Desktop-Accuracy-Self-Assembly-Tridimensional/dp/B00N7I1ZVU

Assuming your electronics are open source (such as RAMPS), you can buy upgrades and spare parts from pretty much every 3D printer spare part provider out there, as long as they suit your needs and the specs of your printer. In other words, if you want make a headbed upgrade, find some bed that i.e.: Fit the size of your printer Can be mounted properly Can be used with your current electronics (and possibly software) In general, most DIY hobby desktop 3D printers today use more or less the same components mounted in various ways.

How to execute firmware command from gcode I wrote a command in Marlin firmware which changes Neopixel color based on extruder temperature. In my start G-code for I set the color to white. How to execute my above command from the end G-code so that the the color changes per request?

As your color is based on the temp reading, as far as I know, there is no G-code to read a temperature and push that value to another command. The way you can do it is: Static color change - use same method as you are setting to white Intercept firmware temperature reading function and push that value to led module

Hall Sensor Diagnostic I'm looking for some help with an ID3 Glacier Point 3D printer that I currently use. The hall sensors on one end of the X and Y axes have stopped functioning. I need to diagnose and confirm that the hall sensors are faulty before I can replace them (work stipulation.) I'm wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of some diagnostic technique to detect faulty hall sensors? Google hasn't been much of an aid here, unfortunately.

It's really pretty easy to diagnose a Hall effect sensor. If you plug the sensor into the board (so it has power), then wave a metal object (screwdriver tip should work nicely) very close to the head of the sensor, the light should go on if it's reading. If the light doesn't come on, there's an issue. An issue would most likely be the wiring. You may want to test the same sensor by plugging it into a known good port on your main board. Any of the axis stops should behave the same, but since it's both the x- and y-axis sensors which are not functioning, I'd try attaching them to the z-axis stop.

I mistakenly used 90% ethyl alchool to scrape some PLA off my bed; did I ruin it? I just printed my first cube from my newly arrived Artillery Sidewinder X1. I am totally new to 3D printing but I managed to correctly unbox, assemble and prepare it for printing. I used PLA filament and the cube ended up great. I removed it using a cutter gently pulling it up from the first layer and it popped right off. A little layer of material was still stuck on the bed and, I don't know why, my dumb brain decided to use ethyl alchool 90 % to scrub it off on that little surface. I immediately used some water to wipe the alchool off but it was too late. Now on that portion of the bad all I see is a matte area that I can't fix. Did I irremediably ruin my bed? I am so bummed I can't even describe it. All went great but I decided to do this on my own and I failed. I do know that the bed is replaceable but I just hope is not very expensive. Here's a couple of pictures to give you a look of the damage.

First of all, let's look at what kind of bed you have. According to a review, it is a "porous ceramic coated glass surface." Your bed is fine... Glass and almost all ceramics are virtually impervious to most liquids, be them alcohol or even most acids unless that acid is hydrofluoric acid. So on a chemical standpoint, your bed is most likely ok, just the alcohol managed to leech some of the coloration or deposit dust in the surface - which is no problem usually. The matte might even just be PLA stuck in the surface, so if this happens if you print in a different area, you know that is not damage per see it's a normal sign of use. So from that standpoint, I see no problem. ...but there are safety issues with the bed design Where I see a problem though is the construction of the bed itself: it runs on mains voltage and is heated directly, which can cause all kind of problems, especially breaking off the cable as there is no proper strain relief on the cable! Atop that, the review points out that the bed heats uneven, which can very quickly lead to stress and breaking of the bed. Because of this construction, I strongly advise to refit a strain relief and use utmost care no to touch the bed during operation. Make sure not to hammer onto it and don't overheat it to prevent thermal cracking.

Squential Printing: Some objects are too tall and cannot be printed without extruder collisions The following setup seems printable. Why do I get this error? Some objects are too tall and cannot be printed without extruder collisions.

The error message explains that you cannot print your objects sequentially as they are too tall for the gantry to go back to the bed level after the first object. In other words, your clearance between bed and gantry is too small.

Slic3r settings for flat slopes on top I am having trouble printing a hollow object using Slic3r. On flat slopes on top, there are gaps that I cannot get fixed. The perimeters of successive layers just don't cover each other. Cura however adds filament to cover the gaps. The bottom left bunny is sliced with Slic3r 1.2.9.99. The top right bunny is sliced with Cura 2.5. Take a closer look at the forehead and the back of the bottom left bunny. I have "extra perimeters if needed" turned on. But turning it off makes no difference. What am I missing? So far only adding infill and increase the solid top layer count helps to get a closed surface. But then everything gets stiffer. The bunnies are printed with nylon so they are a bit squishy. The printer settings in both Cura and Slic3r are: 0.4 mm nozzel; 0.2 mm layer height; No infill; 2 perimeter walls, and; 3 solid top/bottom layers.

This seems to be a recurring problem with Slic3r. Slic3r appears to have problems with perimeters that are not attached to infill. I suspect that it is getting confused on what is the inside and what is the outside. I know that seems a bit silly; but as you slice an object with indentations (like the bunny's face) then the perimeter can cease to be a simple closed shape and it gets confused. If you use a viewer to step through the gcode layers around the place it starts having problems you may be able to see what is going wrong. Here are a couple of examples of why I say this is a recurring problem with slic3r. I also recall seeing a video that showed the problem but I can't remember where. That was one of the reasons I don't use slic3r. Reported on Sic3r Git in 2012 - Can't tell for sure if this was ever fixed Infill Perimeter issue in 2015 Here are three options that may work Use a different slicer for this specific condition. Every product is going to have vulnerabilities - this may be one of slic3r's. Increase the perimeter and top and bottom layer thicknesses. Making them thick enough it will bridge the problem areas. Use a gcode viewer to inspect that area to see if it fixed the problem. That way you don't waste material on another fail. It sounds like you may have already tried this but you didn't like that it made the model stiffer. Repair the STL file using an application like Meshmixer. Maybe you will have to get the file close then tweak it where it doesn't. Here is good article from PinShape repairing and STL file. Good luck, hope this helps.

How to automate printing of multiple parts continuously? I would like to print multiple parts continuously (non-interactively), so I can leave the printer alone for a longer time. So after finish, parts could be moved somehow out from the printing area, so the next can start. Are there any methods of achieving that with standard desktop printers without having to use multiple printers?

The only thing I can think of off hand is an old mod for the early MakerBot machines. It first was released for the Thing-O'-Matic I believe, but is compatible with Replicator 1 machines (and its knock-offs). Here's the Thingiverse page, but look up Automatic Build Plate. Essentially, you can use the Replicator G slicing program and there is a setting for "ABP" or Automatic Build Plate. This will basically tell the ABP to run its routine after the controller receives the response that the printing program is done and roll the finished part off the edge of the build plate, then start the same program over again. Drawbacks: I don't think it's easily compatible with newer machines/slicers. But, it's open source Pretty sure you have to use Replicator G, which is outdated now and may make your machine sound like it's going to fall apart (I know from experience) Going off of @Pete's answer about solenoids. It reminded me that someone integrated a solenoid "ejector" (aka Boxing Glove) for their machine. Update (06/08/2016): Forgot to mention that if you choose to create your own "Boxing Glove" or conveyor belt, some software such as Octo-Pi and Repetier-Host allow plugins. So, you could interface with your hardware via customized code and integrate the functionality directly into the slicing application for the full closed loop operation.

Slicing problem - Slic3r prusa I'm trying to slice this model: https://www.shapeways.com/product/VVNUVZ6JL/dread-warrior?optionId=66361748&li=user-profile I'm using a .4mm nozzle and .1mm layer height. When using slic3r some of the layers seem to just not get generated. You can see this on the horns. It also has some weird artifacts on the shield of the model. I tried using Cura to slice the same model and while it does a better job for the horns it removes most of the face on the model. Are there any slicer settings I can adjust to help fix these artifacts? Is there any other slicer out there that may fix the problems? Is this just a problem of needing to use a smaller nozzle and lower layer height?

It's a nozzle size issue. The model contains a lot of details which is really challenging to print with a 0.4 mm nozzle. A big nozzle is just not able to print such fine details. You should switch to 0.25 mm or 0.15 mm. Just try to set a smaller nozzle in your slicer. There is a nice article on Prusa's blog showing the difference in printing details with 0.4mm and 0.25mm: EVERYTHING ABOUT NOZZLES WITH A DIFFERENT DIAMETER, especially chapters Examples of practical use and Printing miniatures. See the difference:

Creating a 3D modelled "mold over" an imported object Let's say I've made a 3D scan of my face and managed to get that into FreeCAD. How might I then create an object (it's a mask, okay?) that conforms to the shape of my face, with a given thickness, such that I can export and 3D-print that part only? So if I printed it, it would fit over my face, but still look like my face from the outside, too. It would be, say, 3mm thickness througout. To be clear, I'm not looking to make a 3D model of my head (the world does not need such a thing), or 3D model of a mold that I can use to replicate my head. I just want to make parts that conform to the shape of other, complex, parts.

Instead of using FreeCAD, I would import the mesh data into a vertex-based 3D modeling software, such as blender. After stitching the model in any areas where you still have gaps, you remove any vertex belonging to areas you do not want to use for the mask. This leaves you with pretty much a skin-tight base for your mask. Select all the remaining surfaces and scale S them in all directions in regards to the origin so you create a little airgap 5% extra (1.05) should create enough space to sit somewhat comfortably, but you might prefer a little more. As a stand-in for the face, I use this approximation of a forehead... Next, we thicken that surface using the modifier menu: Select the Solidify modifier and set a thickness that looks good to you and that might be printable. Then make sure it pushes away from where your face is. Also make sure the Offset is at 1 or -1 to ensure that it does not stick out from the face-scan surface to the back! Now you got a perfect base to model on the outside of using the sculpt features while retaining the inner surface! Do yourself a favor though: print at least part of this model as a test fit and adjust the mask as needed.

How to print a voxel object? I recently downloaded Magicavoxel to give this voxel thing a try, and I was curious if there was a way to turn the voxel files into a file for printing? Magicavoxel doesn't seem to offer a way to export the project as STL.

Magicavoxel supports export as .obj, natively or with the right plugin. While .stl is the standard for 3d-printing exchanges, as it contains a "1-unit" length,(typically that corresponds to 1 mm), .obj is also accepted by most slicers. To get to MagicaVoxel's native export, look in the lower right corner, click export and see this pop up: Press the top-left OBJ option and you get a save position window where you can store it. Then open it with your slicer and choose a scale - most .obj files do not contain a scale as the format does not contain a unit measure by default like .stl and has to be given one.

Problems with the right Z axis My 3D printer was working perfectly, but one day I put it inside an acrylic box and put it to work, that was not a good idea, because the Z axis grabbed the box, after that, the Z axis started to rotate strange, I even tried to change the wires between the motors and the drivers, but it didn't work. I have a suspicion that the drive must have a safety criterion, so when something strange happens it stops sending the necessary current for the stepper to run, if it is possible. Does someone have any tips on how to make it work correctly again? Remembering that the motor that is working in a strange way is the motor on the right side of the Z axis, the motor on the left side looks normal. Below I will leave a video showing how the printer is working, like, if it moves just a little bit with the Z axis, it looks like it works normally, but if I move it a little more, then it starts to get weird. On this printer, I used a AtMega Arduino, with RAMPS 1.4 shield, with A4988 drivers, "NEMA 17" steppers and and I'm using the Repetier-host program to control the printer. Video:

I've had this happen before on various Prusa i3 style printers, especially with my homemade tight self printed POM linear bearings for the Z linear shaft. The problem is that the right side Z axis has some sort of friction caused by a skew frame, probably caused by the incident you had earlier. You need to check whether the X axis carriage goes up and down smoothly. Unscrew the lead screw couplers or the trapezoid nuts and check the movement. If it catches friction, try solve where it comes from. The friction is causing the stepper to skip steps and causes the unsynchronized up/down movement. Please check if the frame or the rods have not bent, the distance between the linear guide rails needs to be the same over the complete height.

What are the pros and cons of writing nozzle size vs using e3d style dots on nozzle? e3d uses this scheme to mark the size of their nozzle: How do I read this scheme? Do we read the second row of dots after completing the first row of dots or we read 1 dot from row 1 and second dot from row 2 the again 3rd dot from row 1 and 4th dot from row 2? It can be seen here in the nozzle: Other nozzles usually have size engraved on the hex flat face: Which one of these is a better scheme to designate a nozzle? is one cheaper to machine than other?

dots First of all, reading the dot pattern: for all but the 0.15, the total number of dots is read, and there is only 1 dot per side. So a .5 nozzle has dimples on all sides. The only outlier where the dots are not all one next to another is 0.15, which has 2 dots but they are interspaced by one blank side. 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.6 0.8 0.5 (which was added after the .6 and .8 had already been established) 2 interspaced ones - 0.15, also added after the 0 to 5-dot group had been established. dots vs. inscription The inscription is, compared to the dot pattern, much more shallow and can vanish under scratches. Also, the dots are easier to recover from being caked in plastic. On the flipside, the dot pattern isn't easy to read intuitively, it doesn't follow an easy pattern (the 6 and 2-interspaced-dots are later additions into the setup).

Bed size and nozzle homing offset in Marlin 1.1.9 firmware This is driving me up the wall, hope somebody can give me some advice... I have an Anet A8 (metal frame, so 'AM8'). Bed is the original 220x220 mm. When the nozzle is at the X/Y end stops it is positioned 16 mm 'west' away from the bed (in free space) in the x-axis, and 5 mm 'north'. The problem I'm having is with the X_BED_SIZE (surely 220) and X_MIN_POS settings. I keep falling into either the nozzle home a long way from the center (should be 110,110), or getting a message about end stops being too narrow for the bed. Given my sizings above, what should the following be?: // @section machine // The size of the print bed #define X_BED_SIZE 220 #define Y_BED_SIZE 220 // Travel limits (mm) after homing, corresponding to endstop positions. #define X_MIN_POS 0 #define Y_MIN_POS 0 #define Z_MIN_POS 0 #define X_MAX_POS X_BED_SIZE #define Y_MAX_POS Y_BED_SIZE #define Z_MAX_POS 240

The original Anet A8 has: // The size of the print bed #define X_BED_SIZE 220 #define Y_BED_SIZE 220 // Travel limits (mm) after homing, corresponding to endstop positions. #define X_MIN_POS -33 #define Y_MIN_POS -10 #define Z_MIN_POS 0 #define X_MAX_POS X_BED_SIZE #define Y_MAX_POS Y_BED_SIZE #define Z_MAX_POS 240 So in your case it would be: // The size of the print bed #define X_BED_SIZE 220 #define Y_BED_SIZE 220 // Travel limits (mm) after homing, corresponding to endstop positions. #define X_MIN_POS -16 #define Y_MIN_POS -5 #define Z_MIN_POS 0 #define X_MAX_POS X_BED_SIZE #define Y_MAX_POS Y_BED_SIZE #define Z_MAX_POS 240 Tuning the bed to print exactly in the middle so that large prints fit on the build plate is described in question: "How to center my prints on the build platform? (Re-calibrate homing offset)".

First 3D print made up of diagonal strands Just got a Creality Ender 3 yesterday. Set it up and ran the dog test print. Photo below. I used the sample filament that came with the machine. I'm not 100 % what kind it is, but assuming it is 1.75 mm PLA. No matter what temperature I set the end and bed, when I launched the print, it would change to 200 °C hotend, 45 °C bed. Is that because the two temperatures are set within the gcode file? Do I need to set a higher nozzle temperature? And to do so, will I have to alter the G-code file? Does the head need cleaned? I did try some blue ABS I bought, and didn't work, so I switched it to the sample filament. There was still some blue ABS in it, but seemed to be gone after a few seconds after the extrusion turned pure white. But might there still be some ABS clogging or slowing the filament? EDIT: When I ran the test file with ABS, the material didn't adhere to the bed or itself, just created a jumbled bird's nest of spirals. Then I found something online that I needed to use the temperatures on the ABS spool. I set the temperature to 245C nozzle, 100C bed. But as soon as I ran the print, the nozzle went to 200 and the bed 45. Is the motor that moves the filament moving too slow? Is the head moving too fast? Should I use a glass bed?

Based on your comment to the comment of 0scar: When I go to Fillament, I get: E in mm3: On; Fil. Dia. 1.750 That's almost surely the problem. Unless the model was sliced for "E in mm3", this setting needs to be off. What it does is change how the printer interprets extruder moves in the G-code: rather than in linear mm of filament to move, as volumetric mm³ to extrude. At 1.75 mm diameter, that's a factor of 2.4 mm³/mm, so you'll only be extruding 1/2.4 = ~41.5 % of the material needed. That extreme underextrusion will give exactly the effect you're seeing.

How to attach insulation to Hot End I bought some heating block cotton to insulate the exposed surface of my hot end. I thought the yellow as double-sticky but it appears to be Kapton. What can I use to attach it to the extruder? My extruder is already covered on four sides. I want to cover the other two.

Kapton tape would be the logical material. It's unfortunate that your vendor did not supply that as a separate item, rather than sticking it to the "cotton" (I'm guessing not actually cotton, as things might get a bit scorching for cotton, so I'm assuming some type of ceramic fiber or the like.)

How to print edible food? I would like to print edible cookies or ornamentation for a cake. Is printing with edible materials achievable by standard thermoplastic-like 3D desktop printer? Or you need to buy a special printer to do that?

You cannot print edible models using a "standard" consumer 3D printer without first installing an "hot end" capable of depositing edible - normally thicker - substances as well as a suitable extruder mechanism. However, there are not necessarily any technical limitations in the electronics, software, slicers etc. in a typical printer that wouldn't allow you to install such an upgrade. For instance, you could calibrate your extrusion rate and nozzle width to suit batter and similar. Some commercial printers, such as the DeltaWASP allow for upgrades that print clay, which wouldn't be very different from printing liquid food.

CoreXY Calibration Issue I have a Tronxy X5S and I am having issues calibrating my X and Y axis. When I print a 20 mm3 cube it comes out 19.9 mm x 20.4 mm x 20 mm. I have already made the belt tensions as even as I can get them but it did not change the calibration cube size. I have added this upgrade to my printer for the idlers and motor mounts: I have also upgraded the hotend to a V6 clone, after this change is when I noticed the discrepancy in the calibration print. What else can cause the X and Y axis to be uneven in a CoreXY printer besides uneven tension in the belts? UPDATE: Its seems Oscar was correct in his assessment that my printer is not printing square. I printed this calibration square to measure the diagonals and I got: $ \overline{AC} = 141.82 $, $ \overline{BD} = 141.35 $. I believe the correct value for these diagonals should be $ \sqrt{2} \times 100 \approx 141.42 $. Oscar also mentioned that I can adjust my firmware to correct this but I would rather fix the problem than apply a band-aid. Does this indicate that I did not assemble the printer frame correctly?

Oscar's answer is the correct solution to this issue. My printer was printing skewed and there is a built in correction for this in Marlin. Unfortunately the X5S does not have a boot loader and I don't have an ISP programmer (yet), so I am unable to re-flash my board at the moment. In the mean time I created a software fix for this issue. I used a script to add a Affine Shear Transformation to the stl file. This adds a reverse skew to the model so the print comes out (closer to) square. Basically read all the points from the triangle mesh (STL file), apply XY shear transformation preserving Z, re-save the STL.

How to start a print in the center position after a change in parameters using M92 and M500 G-code I have a Core XY Custom DIY Printer, but actually I have a problem with the measure in Axis X and Y. When a print a test cube with the measure 20 mm x 20 mm 20 mm, the object printed result with these dimensions. Z = 20 mm X = 15 mm Y = 15 mm Well, I know how solved this problem, because of long time ago have the same problem, do a question, and that was answered, and this moment solved my problem. answer old question Now I use the same process Connect the printer to my pc Use Simplify 3D for send gcode to the machine M503 for get the set values M92 for change the values X and Y M500 for store the new values for default in the memory of the printer M503 for check the actual values, and these are the correct So, I print the test cube, the measure are right, but with two problems Every time I.m will go to print, if turn off the machine, the process to be need repeat, in other words, the gcode M500 doesn't work. the nozzle doesn't start the extrusion in the middle when the parameters were changed. Send M503 for known the parameters. These parameters are the set by default At this moment in the printer. G21 ; (mm) M149 C ; Units in Celsius Filament settings: Disabled M200 D1.75 M200 D0 Steps per unit: M92 X80.00 Y80.00 Z400.00 E100.00 Maximum feedrates (units/s): M203 X100.00 Y100.00 Z2.00 E10.00 Maximum Acceleration (units/s2): M201 X2000 Y2000 Z50 E5000 Acceleration (units/s2): P<print_accel> R<retract_accel> T<travel_accel> M204 P2000.00 R2000.00 T2000.00 Advanced: Q<min_segment_time_us> S<min_feedrate> T<min_travel_feedrate> X<max_x_jerk> Y<max_y_jerk> Z<max_z_jerk> E<max_e_jerk> M205 Q20000 S0.00 T0.00 X5.00 Y5.00 Z0.40 E5.00 Home offset: M206 X0.00 Y0.00 Z0.00 Material heatup parameters: M145 S0 H180 B70 F0 M145 S1 H240 B110 F0 PID settings: M301 P13.70 I0.71 D65.64 After sending code M92 X106.64 Y106.64 G21 ; (mm) M149 C ; Units in Celsius Filament settings: Disabled M200 D1.75 M200 D0 Steps per unit: M92 X106.64 Y106.64 Z400.00 E100.00 Maximum feedrates (units/s): M203 X100.00 Y100.00 Z2.00 E10.00 Maximum Acceleration (units/s2): M201 X2000 Y2000 Z50 E5000 Acceleration (units/s2): P<print_accel> R<retract_accel> T<travel_accel> M204 P2000.00 R2000.00 T2000.00 Advanced: Q<min_segment_time_us> S<min_feedrate> T<min_travel_feedrate> X<max_x_jerk> Y<max_y_jerk> Z<max_z_jerk> E<max_e_jerk> M205 Q20000 S0.00 T0.00 X5.00 Y5.00 Z0.40 E5.00 Home offset: M206 X0.00 Y0.00 Z0.00 Material heatup parameters: M145 S0 H180 B70 F0 M145 S1 H240 B110 F0 PID settings: M301 P13.70 I0.71 D65.64 Red circle, the middle of the plate or surface printer, in this position, start to print with actual parameters by default, and respect the limits(black square), but, with the measure in axis X and Y wrong after printed the model. Green circle, the nozzle start in this position when changing the parameter in axis X and Y, printed with the measure correct, but by taking a position that is not the right one, it assumes other limits and spends almost half of the print surface area.

Every time I.m will go to print, if turn off the machine, the process to be need repeat, in other words, the gcode M500 doesn't work. This tells me that your firmware has the EEPROM support needed for the M500 command disabled. Fixing the firmware You need to update your firmware to enable storing the information in the EEPROM: the line should read as follows without any leading // #define EEPROM_SETTINGS // Enable for M500 and M501 commands When you are already updating your firmware, you should also fix your firmware to have the correct steps/mm, as those are off in your build. An example for the line you look for is #define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT { 106.64, 106.64, 4000, 500 } Workaround automatic setting of the Steps/mm fix There's a way to fix it on the user side though: When slicing, your Start-G-code needs to include M92 X106.64 Y106.64, best before homing. That way you make sure that your printer sets the correct Steps/mm whenever you load a printjob. Home position via offset If the home offset is wrong, you can fix it as the next line before G28 - if the home position is for example 10 mm of the trigger in both X and Y, you'd add M206 X100.00 Y100.00 Z0.00 - If your printer has "home" properly defined in the center of the build plate and your slicer is set up to respect that, this should do it. You need to via move and 0-ing Another way to get the printhead to the center is to use first G28, then insert a movement to the center of the bed (G0 X100 Y100 for a bed 200 mm across) and then order G92 X0 Y0, defining that point as the origin. necessary next line! In either case, the setup of Marlin also prevents you to move to the "negative" area due to the software endstops by default. So you need to add M121 after it to be allowed to go into the negative space. Start G-code in bulk M92 X106.64 Y106.64 G28 G0 X100 Y100 ; move to center G92 X0 Y0 M121

3D printing source material and superglue I've seen there are several different types of source material for 3D printing. My question is: Which of those would hold up under regular Loctite superglue or plastic model glue? I'm asking because I want to try 3D printing, and I have a project in mind. But I don't want to spend too much, so I'm looking to get a small 3D printer. I want to make a clock, and I can design the step down gears to make in a small printer, but I'd need a large base for so many smaller gears. I want to print pieces of the base, and superglue them together.

CA glue works on PLA, especially if you're gluing parts that fit together rather than small surfaces that just touch, but I'd encourage you to consider alternatives just because there are so many more ways to attach things when you have freedom to design the parts, and non-glue approaches admit disassembly, repair, etc. Some possibilities include: snap fits parts sliding into grooves threaded holes and bolts threaded interfaces.

What is the point of diminishing returns on the STL refinement level in Fusion 360 on an Ender 3? When exporting an STL from Fusion 360, one must select an STL refinement level to use for calculating the maximum triangle count. For FDM printing (0.05mm and above layer heights), where is the point of diminishing returns on STL refinement level when printing PLA and PETG on an Ender 3 with a 0.4mm nozzle? All mechanical components on the printer are stock.

I don't know that this can be definitively answered for a specific printer and all arbitrary designs. The refinement level basically determines how smooth a curved surface will turn out. The STL file format can only express an object in terms of triangular-shaped surfaces, so Fusion 360 will need to approximate a curved surface by breaking it up into triangles. Flat surfaces and straight edges can be represented perfectly, so they won't be affected. Low refinement will use a small number of relatively large triangles. On a part like your example, the cylindrical shaft will have noticeable facets. Higher refinement means a larger number of smaller triangles. If you have "Preview Mesh" checked as shown, you will be able to see the triangle wireframe, and you can use your own judgment if it's "good enough". Ultimately, higher refinement means longer processing times and larger file sizes. The final print time won't be affected much if any. Personally, I always use high refinement. Even on my modest system, it only takes a few more seconds to prepare a multi-hour print, and maybe a few hundred kilobytes or a couple megabytes on my hard drive that I will barely notice. This is a small tradeoff to ensure the best possible STL definition.

How to extract 3D information from a 3D model for calibration? I made two "OBJ" 3D models of myself using Sense 2 scanner and using photogrammetry with Meshroom. I would like to extract some information about myself to be able to scale the model properly and to be able to compare the accuracy. For example, distance between shoulders or circumference of the neck/chest. Another option would be to hold a reference parallelepiped and then scale the model based on the known distance between faces. How can I do that? I can calculate the distance between points I can click using Meshmixer, but circumference or the distance between parallel faces is more difficult. The tools Meshmixer offers for the purpose don't seem to work well. What are my options?

Extracting various measurements from 3D models is easily done using the following free online tool: https://0x00019913.github.io/meshy/ I scanned a person using the Sense 2 scanner and I compared the values from meshy for the hip and waist with those measured in real life one day after the scan: the difference was about 1 cm, which can easily be explained by the uncertainties in the choice of the measurement point and moment of the day. This shows that both the 3D scanner and meshy are quite accurate. The tool is also very easy to use.

Painting Text on Model For a model that has raised text on it, how do go about painting the very top layer of text, to make it stand out from the background? Lets say I printed the whole model the same color, what type of paint would work well, and not get on the background too? Here's an example of a model that has raised text: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3025280

You don't provide any dimensions or sizes, but... Assuming that the text is sufficiently elevated from the rest of the model, you could use a firm solid (as opposed to soft and spongey) roller, of an appropriate width. This should enable you to paint just the text without getting paint on the rest of the model. If the text is small and in a "valley" or groove, then a narrow roller would be required, in order to avoid the surface either side of the text. If the text is not on a flat, or smooth surface, then a small diameter roller might be required. If you can't find a tiny paint roller, you could jerry-rig one using a paper clip and a roller wheel from an old cassette tape

CT Segmentation Model Intersection I am using (micro)CT data and generating 3-D models using CTAn - a SkyScan piece of software: Bruker - Control and reconstruction programs. Basically I am using simple thresholding to create 3-D model STL files. What I would like to do is get the number of voxels where the surface area of the two models touch. Imagine having a model that is a sphere with another model within it that is exposed on a portion of the sphere. I want to know the surface area of that exposed portion. Does anybody have any advice? I have been banging my head against tools like 3D-Slicer, Seg3D, ITK-Snap and so on and have not been able to find this capability.

This solution assumes the following a-The scaling factor for the object is correct i.e real world dimensions . b- There is a .STL file available . c- This will take some 3ds max skill and time . Steps to be followed - 1- Take the .stl file into Autodesk 3ds max . 2- Now we are going to trace the exposed surface using a process called reptology . Here is link to get you started - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azkbuZloTqo . 3- Once you are satisfied with recreating the mesh and sure it is as accurate as humanly possible , run the measure utility on the recreated part . This is the link . https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-12CDEA7A-042E-4CB3-9BF6-8191D3290CD8-htm.html . If there is a upper side and a lower side to the model then you should divide the surface area in half ( in this case it would be ). 3Ds max is very accurate if your part is designed properly . 4- This can be done directly on the .STL file if you can efficiently isolate your target area , lemme warn you this is not an easy task .STL files are notoriously difficult to edit. ( its much easier to redesign on top ) Try it should work out fine . Please do not waste time processing .STL files on 3D-Slicer, Seg3D, ITK-Snap they are mostly for file preparation i.e (.STL file generation ),viewing and study purposes only .

Ender 3 Calibration Cube Fail + Can't Print Circles After noticing that my ender 3 couldn't print a 'perfect' circle I decided to use a calibration cube to see if that could be the issue. These were my results: I did have some successful prints before noticing these problems but it would be great if anyone could help/find a solution. I think it may be because of the belts tension as I had accidentally over stretched it by putting it over the wheels instead of under: is it worth getting a new belt then? I use 20% infill, with triangle pattern in cura, using the standard 0.4mm nozzle. Edit After doing a different testprint and measuring, it revealed that both had an accurate 20mm Y and Z, but only an 18.5mm X. Might I have destroyed my belt when I mounted it overstrained? Edit2: After purchasing a new X belt, the calibration cube was much closer at 19 x 20 x 20. But still not at a good enough tolerance for my liking. Additionally, when printing a cylinder, two relatively flat edges were printed with it either side (perpendicular to the x-axis).

First, check that the calibration part you have is actually a cube. Maybe you downloaded a trick 'calibration cube' model. Cura will show he overall dimensions of any model which it is slicing. Ignore any print quality issues first off. A hollow calibration cube is mainly used to check the X/Y/Z motion and so long as you print at a sensible (slow) speed), the other parameters shouldn't have much effect (so long as the first layer is OK, and you get within 30% of the right extrusion). If the calibration cube is within +/- 0.5mm on each side, it's probably good. Under/over extrusion, caliper technique, etc, can explain this sort of variation, and you might want to use a bigger test part like this star on my thingiverse account once you think you're close. The 'steps per mm' setting is determined within the firmware, it is part of how your printer consumes G-code. For a delta printer, for example, there is some fancy maths to combine X/Y/Z into the motor movements. This means that you can't change steps/mm in Cura, you need to either change the firmware defaults and 'reset to factory settings', or modify the parameters in EEPROM by sending G-code. Seeing too small a calibration part (for a Cartesian printer) can easily be explained by problems in the printer's motion system: Stepper missing steps due to jerk or acceleration too high Stepper missing steps due to binding/friction in the bearings (Send M84 to idle the stepper motor, and move X by hand) Teeth missing on the drive belt (may show up on a diagonal 'bar' print) Loose drive pinion (maybe backlash on the flat on the spindle means the problem is greater on small parts) - see below Flex in the drive mechanism (e.g. belt mount to traveller is loose) An annoying feature of a lot of these problems is that for any particular repetitive sequence of steps, you might see a very consistent result. Even thought to problem is something being badly adjusted, it gives the impression that the problem is calibration. The drive wheel is held in place with a grub screw, see this diagram from the Anet-A8 assembly diagram.

How to add extruder to RAMBo Mini I have given up on getting the RUMBA board to work. I tried to add a P.I.N.D.A. (or PINDA) probe, but that didn’t work. I tried to add a BLTouch sensor, but that didn’t work either. Now the RUMBA board is not communicating with my PC. So I have moved on to using a Mini-Rambo but the one drawback is that it only has one extruder capability. I would like to know if there is any way to add an extruder to the Mini-Rambo. Whether it be a separate board or soldering or something. I am open to anything.

I would say that the clue is in the name, MiniRAMBo. The Mini part is related to its diminutive size and reduced functionality. Extending the board would require patching in a secondary board to the MiniRAMBo board via pins1 that may or may not exist, and would probably be more trouble than it is worth. Looking at the board layout certainly shows that there are not any readily available connections for such an expansion. If you want two extruders then the RAMBo would be a better bet, as it has 5 stepper motor driver outputs. It would certainly be easier, and quicker (as well as cheaper) than a MiniRAMBo plus a secondary daughter board). That said, as the MiniRAMBo has two Z-axis controllers, it may be possible to repurpose one of them, if they are wired independently of each other and separately controllable. Although these lines suggest otherwise: It has 4 stepper drivers and 4 mosfet switched outputs. and Differences from Rambo MiniRambo has: 4 stepper drivers vs. 5 and Motor Drivers 4 A4982 1/16th microstep motor drivers(2 connectors on Z for Prusa Mendel and other dual Z printer designs) So, it would appear that the two Z axis drivers are wired together. 1 By pins, I mean external board pins/connectors - rather than the pins of the µController itself

M502 will reset all configurable settings to their "factory defaults", which settings are those? From the M502 documentation page can be read that M502: Reset all configurable settings to their factory defaults. Please note that this phrasing from the manual has been used in the question title! To also reset settings in EEPROM, follow with M500. Note that: This command can be used even if EEPROM_SETTINGS is disabled. The question is what is the definition of "all configurable settings"? Are these the settings that are displayed with M503, or are there hidden settings?

What Marlin does when M502 is called is defined in the configuration_store.cpp file. It resets: Max acceleration Steps per mm Max feedrate / speed Min segment time Acceleration (Normal, Retract, Travel) Min feedrate Min travel feedrate Jerk settings Junction deviation Home and SCARA offsets Hot end offsets Filament runout sensor distance Tool change parameters (Swap length, extra prime, prime speed, retract speed, Park positions, Z raise) Backlash correction distances and smoothing parameters Extensible UI Magnetic parking extruder settings ABL (fade height, stored points, nozzle offset, servo angles Delta calibration data (Height, Endstop offset, radius, rod length, segments per second, calibration radius, trim angle) Dual / triple endstop adjustments Preheat parameters PID parameters self-defined thermistors LCD contrast Power loss recovery Firmware retraction Filament diameter (for volumetric extrusion) Endstops (if disabled) Stepper drivers Linear advance parameters Motor currents (digipot) CNC coordinate system (if selected) Skew correction parameters Advance pause filament change lengths

Delta printer distortion I have make a little test with 4 dots aligned with A tower, B and C tower. Distance W and S are the same in the stl but not in the print. I have tried diferent values of diagonal root but S always is smaller than W, and all S are equal (more or less 38.20mm) and all W are equal (more or less 40.80). I expect that W and S will be 40mm. How can fix this problem? Update: Here is the stl I use: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2vwjbo387cmk5qa/DeltaCalibration%20v15.stl?dl=0 Update: I have replaced the steper motor in tower B but same result.

i bet your towers are not standing straight (vertical) or your bed is not clearly horizontal i've recreated your picture with some assumptions (for example that your SW calculates properly and your steppers and motors act well) take a look here if you deliver your printer dimensions tower height (from the base) tower distance from the center bed distance (height) from the base i can calculate what is inclination angle on all towers but i suppose it's not really important the important thing is to set them straight ;) we can see from the picture that towerA is the most inclined to the center or the bed highest point is next to towerA (and i bet one of those or both cause the issue) EDIT i've made some calculations based on imagined assuptions of the tower height here are details towerH | inclination -----------+---------------- 300mm | 0.11deg 400mm | 0.08deg 500mm | 0.06deg seems to be quite small but in fact your differences in dimensions are also small inclination of towerB is bigger as there is bigger difference in dimensions so maybe the issue is more in bed "horizontality" would be good if you would check and measure these params EDIT2 here goes the explanation why bed inclination causes dimension distortion of course it's exaggerated but it's just to show the issue

Ender 3 Pro, Motherboard v4.2.7, Marlin 2.0.1 Firmware reset Upgrading motherboard to v4.2.7 How do I reset the firmware after making wrong mods?

You could download the firmware version directly from the vendor and choose the one that is supposed to be on the board when it was shipped to you. Put the bin file on the SD card from your laptop/computer and reinsert the SD card in the printer and start the printer.

Printerbot printing stringy My Printrbot is always printing stringy, despite changing the setting on my z probe by entering command M212 Z-.1 through Z-1.5, with and without a heated bed. My prints look roughly like the one on the left. How do I fix this?

The most common cause of print issues like this is incorrect first-layer gap between the nozzle and bed. You can tell if that's the problem by trying to print with a raft and/or letting the print continue for a while. If the raft helps and the print eventually "heals up" and only the bottom few mm are bad, then you have a bed leveling / nozzle gap issue The bed must be leveled to the nozzle properly, or nothing will work right. When using a probe, you need to follow the manufacturer's instructions for how to configure it. For example, are you adjusting the Z offset in firmware configuration.h or in EEPROM? Printrbot should have a guide for this. If the nozzle gap is fine and the stringiness continues farther up the print, there are two main causes: XY or Z movement is larger than intended due to incorrect steps/mm value or wrong microstepping setting Severe under-extrusion Of the two, under-extrusion is far more common, and unfortunately has lots of possible causes: Printing too cold for the material E-axis steps/mm is incorrect for the extruder drive hardware and microstepping Extruder stepper current is too low Extruder hardware is misaligned or jamming or the teeth are full of plastic dust Partial nozzle clog or damaged PTFE tube in the hot end Commanded flow rate through the nozzle is too high, such as if you're trying to print big, fat strands at high speeds Incorrect slicer calibration (eg extrusion multiplier is too low) or inappropriate slicer settings (eg extrusion width too large for the nozzle size) Excessive filament feed path drag between the spool and extruder drive The first under-extrusion tests you should start with are: Preheat and try to push filament through the hot end by hand. Can you get a strand to come out without a ton of force? Does it go mostly down, or curl back up to hit the nozzle? Remove the hot end from the extruder drive, and command 100mm of filament motion through the extruder. Measure how much travel you actually get. It should be close to 100mm. With the hot end removed, command some filament motion, and try to stop the filament from moving by hand. Does it take some significant force to get the extruder to stall or slip? Based on these, you should have a better idea of what needs to be fixed.

da Vinci Jr. nozzle diagram Has anybody taken apart a da Vinci Jr. 3D printer nozzle? My first time trying to clean the nozzle after it jammed, I broke off the filament immediately before it gets heated, inside the nozzle assembly. The XYZprinting video, "da Vinci Jr. 1.0 - Advanced Nozzle Cleaning", shows the filament coming out easily when heated, but now I'm seeing that I should have cut the filament by the feeder and pulled it out after heating. I have a long length of wire that is similar to the tiny cleaning wire that comes with the kit. Is it safe to heat up the nozzle and push the wire all the way through? I tried pushing from the other direction with the large cleaning tool (as shown in video). I also tried heating the tip of the filament and pushing it to the jammed filament inside the nozzle and reconnecting it. It held a while as I tried wiggling it when heated but did not break the jam loose and broke off again... What should I do?

After watching the video, it looks this is a Bowden style extruder. The extruder assembly is encased in the black box the OP mentions. The assembly is user removable. It appears they also include two cleaning tools Small (0.4mm?) wire to clean the nozzle tip Large (1.7mm?) rod for pushing filament down that is stuck in the cold end It appears the OP tried accessing the filament in the cold end by removing the fitting at the top of the assembly without opening the assembly. Unfortunately that caused the nut holding the fitting on from the inside fell off. At that point he was in a bit of a mess. I believe the manufacture's intent is to "ram" any broken pieces in the cold end through the hot extruder by using the provided rod and pushing while the extruder is on. It seems that it should work but would not be easy to do if the filament broke off outside the extruder (which seems to be the case). At the point he left it, it would seem that he would either have to do surgery or replace the extruder assembly.

Does the material a bed is made out of affect the cooling time of a part? Let's say I print a part out of ABS and wait for it to cool. I could theoretically do this with several copies of the same printer, modified to use print beds of different compositions. Will the material a bed is made out of affect how long it takes a part to cool?

What bed material cools faster? I found an extensive list which relates various materials to their thermal conductivity, k [W/mK]; the lower thermal conductivity, the better the material insulates, and the slower the print bed will resist changes in temperature - both heating up, and cooling down. Here are the thermal conductivity for some common materials for 3d printer beds: Aluminum 205 Glass 1.05 Acrylic 0.2 Air 0.024 (for reference) There is also the matter of thermal capacity, but I will not go into that right now (need to do some research myself first!). Will bed material affect cooling time? Bed material, I believe, is not necessarily related to print cooldown time: it depends on the situation, such as whether we are discussing cooldown during or after printing, and if the bed is heated or not. If you are not using a heated bed, I believe the bed material doesn't matter at all. With a heated bed while printing, only the first dozen layers or so are probably affected by the rising heat sufficiently that it affects the printing process. With a heated bed after printing, the thermal characteristics of the bed will determine how quickly the print cools (and thus can be removed). Also remember that other physical properties, such as flatness (both cold and during heating) of the bed material is vital for successful prints, and that not all materials can tolerate heating equally well!

Filament moving around and not sticking to bed I have only just set up my Anet A6 today. I am trying to print a calibration box, but the print is moving around the bed while trying to print. Any ideas how to fix this? The documentation is very vague. Basically I am very new to 3D printing. I purchased an Anet A6 and have set it up stock. I am trying to just print the box directly from the demo models on the SD card. I'm using the standard filament that comes with the printer. I'm not sure what type it is. All settings are default.

If the printed material moves with the nozzle, you might have several problems at hand, e.g.: adhesion, nozzle to bed distance and overall level. Nozzle to bed distance needs to be the thickness of a plain A4 or Letter paper. This needs to be at the same distance (when pulling the sheet of paper you need to feel a little drag) at the complete area of the bed. This is sometimes difficult as not all beds are perfectly flat from itself. Finally, you need to pull some tricks out of your sleeve to get the filament to adhere to the bed. Many example can be found, popular ones are using blue tape, glass bed, glue stick, PVA based spray (e.g. strong hairspray or dedicated spray cans like 3DLAC or Dimafix, etc.), or a combination of these. You just need to experiment some more what works best for you, but it is good to start with a correctly levelled bed with the proper nozzle gap. Sometimes, increasing the bed and filament temperature with 5 °C for the first layer also helps.

Are 3D printed gears applicable for industrial use? Are 3D printed gears applicable for industrial use? I want to print some gears with ABS. What will their lifespan be? How long will they last if I use them, for example, every day?

Survivability of parts is a very tricky topic, because a lot of factors go into it. While ABS is a common industrial plastic for molding, FDM introduces quite different challenges that can impact the time a piece lives. I can't estimate a lifetime for you, but I will illustrate why we can't estimate it for you, giving you things to think about in your design process: Problem 1 - What's the printed internal part geometry? FDM introduces boundries in 2 (r,z) dimensions . Not just the z layers above each other do have boundries that can and will become plane of failure, each layer consists of one filament1 that was deposited side by side to itself. These neighboring pieces (distinguishable by r in cylindrical coordinates) have a boundry that is not of the same strength as staying on the same piece and following it around (and changing ψ) a solid chunk of ABS (as you would get with molding). under stress, these boundries can crack. If you want to force your piece to have such a fate just to see how it looks: mount a 0.4 mm nozzle in a machine calibrated for 0.35 mm and run a 0.35 mm sliced print - it should be easy to crack it apart into a long snail of filament. Or declare your filament to be 3mm in a 1.75mm machine. The Horrible underextrusion and lack of pressure against already deposited filament makes it possible to unravel the whole filament at times. Problem 2 - What is the intended use? Use is not the same as use. Yes, it might sound unintuitive, but depending on how a piece is used, stress on the part is different. Let's take the same two gears. We put one of them in a hand mixer and a superlight drone. In the mixer it will spin rapidly against medium to tough loads (depending on dough) over medium periods (the timeframe here is usually minutes at max) of time. In the drone it will have considerably less load, but it will spin for much longer, maybe up to hours if the pilot is very capeable and the batteries last. In both cases wear and tear will be quite different. Problem 3 - What determines strength? Strength of the part is not only determined by the filament used, it is ALSO determined by tons of other variables. Print orientation. With enclosure or not. Humidity during print. If the surface of the part is sealed or not after the print. If it was postprocessed somehow to increase capabilities. If the piece is printed hollow or solid. How long did it cure or harden after the print... There are so many variables, that each guess would be quite wild. Problem 4 - How to get the lifetime now?! You can't guesstimate the reliability of a product from its design and makeup only. That is why design departments create prototypes: To rigerously test the products. This is how they learn how safe or sturdy their product is. They make prototypes and purposefully put them under various kinds of stress until they break. For gears this involves spinning them in a gearbox for hours nonstop until they break, force them against a blokaded gearbox till they break, run the gearbox dry, hot or freezing, and also under other very destructive conditions. Part of this destructive test is an accelerated life time test that, just like other tests in this stage, tries to find out the maximum parameters it is useable with. A common test for hand mixers apparently is to run them 2 minutes against some gooy substance, then stop some time before repeating. 1 - For the math inclined: the filament can be represented as a function in cylidrical coordinates, f(r,φ,z)=r(ψ)*φ(ψ)+z(ψ), where ψ the path-parameter of the filament - or in other words the length already traveled. To some degree, a G-code is generated by first creating such a function and then creating the tool path from this.

How can I solve the problem of line distortions on my prints? Hello guys I have a little problem with printing. Whenever I print something there are always these lines my printer does, it's not a very big deal, but it looks rather ugly and I'd really appreciate it if anyone could help me if you know what the problem is. I post also a picture to show you the problem clearer. From what I see (observing how my printer prints), I noticed that it starts printing at one point and then when it arrives again after a circle to the starting point to print the layer above, it stops just a millisecond (instead of keep moving smoothly) and I think that's how the problem is created. I'm pretty sure its not the printer's problem, but probably the G-code or the filament... I don't know for sure. Here some details: Printer: Creality Ender 3 Pro Slicer: Cura Filament: PM filament, PLA, 1 kg, 1.75 mm

As towe noted in a comment, that's Z seam. The mechanism by which it happens is mostly the same as bulging corners. The print head is moving considerably slower just before and just after the layer change, decelerating to a stop then accelerating back up to speed in order to perform the slow Z-axis move, but the rate of extrusion, which is dependent on pressure built up (in the compression of the filament, and possibly expansion of the bowden tube) between the extruder gear and the nozzle, not directly on the motion of the extruder gear, remains the same. In my opinion, the best fix for this is upgrading to firmware that compensates for it. In Marlin firmware (the stock Ender 3 firmware is based on Marlin 1.0), this feature is called Linear Advance. You tune a spring constant for your material's compression, and after setting it, extrusion is roughly proportional (linear) with respect to logical E-axis moves, regardless of the speed the print head is moving. However, upgrading firmware is nontrivial to do, and has a lot you might have to tune/tweak to get it working the way you want. Short of that, there are a lot of ways of mitigating the problem: Select "Outer Before Inner Walls" option (in Cura, or equivalent in other slicers) and "Infill Before Walls" when slicing. This will ensure the layer change happens inside the model (on an inner wall) not on the outside surface, because outer surface is neither the first nor last thing printed on the layer. Increase X/Y acceleration and/or jerk limits so that motion can start/stop a lot quicker, so there's a shorter period for the disproportionate extrusion to happen in. But if you do this too much, you'll get layer shifts (failed prints) or at least bad vibrations that show up in print surface. My Ender 3 can handle accelerations up to at least 3000 mm/s² in X and Y and 10 mm/s "jerk" (a misnomer, thus the weird unit) and you can likely go higher if you experiment. Tell slicer to retract at layer change. This will prevent extrusion from continuing during the Z move, but won't help with the extrusion during the time you're decelerating/accelerating in the XY plane. Increase Z acceleration/jerk. This will reduce the time spent during the Z move, and might even allow the head to keep moving without coming to a full stop during layer change (but that can't happen if you turned on retract at layer change). Print at lower speed. If the max speed is lower, it takes less time to decelerate/accelerate from/to it, and nozzle pressure will be lower (so extrusion is naturally closer to linear). Enable coasting in your slicer. This is a hack that really poorly approximates what Linear Advance would do, but it can lead to underextruded walls and brittle prints. I always had bad luck with it and don't recommend it, but it's an option. I would recommend starting with items 1 and 2. #1 is good for a lot of other things too, and the only tradeoff is that overhangs might print worse (in my experience that's not really the case and they sometimes print better even). And #2 will get you faster prints (sometimes at lot faster) which is nice.

Add a laser module to Reprap Guru Prusa i3 I have a Reprap Guru Prusa i3 v2 3D printer. Here is a link to the 192 MB manual. And here is the link to the resources page for the Reprap Guru. Page 58 of the manual discusses electronics. I purchased a 5.5 W laser from an online resource (AliExpress). It has its own controller module. It has one connector with 3 pins 12 V Gnd PWM I want to now connect the laser module in-place of the 3D printer nozzle. I have been able to install it physically, but not sure how to connect it to the Reprap Guru Prusa i3 board. I am not an electrical engineer, but I am capable of connecting wires with clear instructions. Any pointers on how to connect this module to the 3D printer board is appreciated. Updates: The board of my 3D printer is an Arduino Mega 2560 board. I have been able to power the laser on using the fan connections and it can burn stuff (so it works). I have connected to the D9 pins Now need to figure out where to connect the PWM from the laser module to the Arduino Mega 2560 board

By connecting to the D9 output header (see RAMPS 1.4 shield schematic below) you only have 2 wires that represent a scheduled load and ground. You actually need to connect the positive (red) lead to the power supply 12 V and the negative (black) lead to the ground. The third wire (usually a different color) needs to be connected to the actual D9 in your example; note that this one is connected to the MOSFET! And as such not readily available, it is far more easy to use an other free pin. Just use the PWM pin (attached to the MOSFET) of the print cooling fan (that schedules the MOSFET), you can then schedule the laser power with G-code M106, e.g. M106 S127 to select half the power (S255 would be max power). Alternatively, and probably a much better solution is that you can use any free (but exposed) pin of your microprocessor; you can set the value of that pin using G-code M42. M42 switches a general purpose I/O pin. Use M42 Px Sy to set pin x to value y, when omitting Px the LEDPIN will be used. The only electrical wiring you need to do is to attach a wire (solder or connect to a header) to bundle that with a power and ground wire and route that to the laser module. Note that the PWM pins of the Mega are numbered D2 through D13. Also, D44, D45 and D46 are also PWM capable. Checking the RAMPS 1.4 (the board/shield of the Reprap Guru) pinout, you will see that D8, D9 and D10 are used for the MOSFETs (and as such not easily available and would require soldering). E.g. D2 and D3 are used by the X max/min endstops (note that most printers don't use an X-max, so pin D2 may be free on your machine). For your purpose, any of the following pins can be used: D2, D4-7, D1112-13 and D44-46. Best option would be the D11 pin (on second thoughts, D4 might be a much better option as the timer associated with PWM on pin D11 is internally used in Marlin for generating interrupts); it has a pin you can connect to the SERVO header pin. The image shows the location of the pins: An example to connect a laser module is seen in this image:

Wanhao Duplicator i3 Mini - Not reaching temperature -> screen freezes I have been having some issues with my Cocoon Create Model Maker/Wanhao Duplicator i3 Mini. The hotend doesn't get up to temperature. I will go to any of the heating functions (start print, preheat, add filament, etc.) and it will begin to reheat the nozzle. The temperature rises until eventually, it stops at any number that is not the desired print temp and the screen freezes. Sometimes it will stop at 150 °C sometimes 180 °C. It all seems quite random but the screen is frozen when this happens. If anyone had any thoughts it would be much appreciated. My last printer was abandoned due to a similar issue and it's incredibly frustrating.

The solution was posted in a comment, as the asker hasn't posted an answer yet, it is answered in this community wiki answer: Ended up replacing the thermistor which solved the problem.

How are things like a USB casing designed for 3D printing? How are professional or regular products designed on the computer for manufacturing? Do they do it by making a 3D model and then getting it made by manufacturers/plastic factories, or the process is different? If it's by making 3D models then what kind of programs do they use - Regular 3D software like blender? I also understand that you can get a 3D model printed by 3d printing services, but are they the same as mass manufacturing companies, by that they make the product by 3D models.

3D printing provides a faster method for prototyping and have always been labeled as prototyping machines. Until recently, it has been rare to see 3D printers used for "mass manufacturing". Yes, most mass-produced products start the manufacturing process with a 3D model. 3D models can be created in many different applications such as Solidworks, AutoCAD, Unigraphics, Blender, even Sketchup just to name a few. In product development, the 3D model will then go through prototyping. Rapid prototyping can be done using a 3D printer by utilizing cheap materials and almost no labor cost. Here are a few costs that can be associated with the different prototyping methods. Traditional Prototyping (Typically involving "traditional", subtractive manufacturing methods such as CNC mills, lathes, routers, etc.) CAM programming Fixturing CNC Machine Setup CNC Operating/Labor Rapid Prototyping (Typically involving a 3D printer or other additive manufacturing methods) Model preparation (for slicing) Printing Operation Object post-processing Removal of supports Curing/Cleaning of part (for non-FDM/FFF printing methods) Once a prototype is produced, the designer will adjust the 3D model accordingly based on results of the prototype. This process will be repeated until the prototype is adequate for the purpose of the end product. When the product design is ready for mass production, it will go through traditional manufacturing methods such as: CNC Machining (subtractive) Mill Lathe Router Laser etc. Injection Molding etc.

Ender 3 cracking magnetic bed My first magnetic bed mat for my Ender 3 Pro is cracking underneath. On the top side there is a bubble in the middle which prevents any viable print. The layers are probably separating. I am new to printing but have read many articles on hiccups to expect, fixes etc. I do understand these magnetic mats can break down. They're pretty cheap on Amazon (something like \$12 for a 2-pack). Not a huge deal. I've printed only about 1100g worth of filament over 30 prints. Despite their cheap price I don't feel I got a proper amount of mileage out of the mat. I keep my bed at 60 °C and 215 °C for the filament. I'm pretty sure 60 °C is below the maximum temperature for this kind of bed. I am struggling to find articles on this issue. What can I do to prolong the life of these mats? I have removed the mat (with its print) while the bed was still hot to remove items just as much as removing cold items. Am I supposed to wait until it's cold? The cracks I only assume are from flexing the mat. I'm not trying to fold it here. I do pull on the item as I'm curving the mat to break it free. I can't explain the bubble. The bed deteriorated after my first large print which took 27 hours. Prior, longest print I had was about 5 hours, most prints 1-1.5 hours. Is this a factor?

My personal technique for removing prints (particularly larger prints) is not to flex the mat at all. Instead, I wait until it's cool and then work the spatula under an edge and move it under the model to basically peel it from the mat. Smaller prints usually pop right off if I start with this technique from one end. Surface area on the bed (for a single part) is most important to how much work is involved. For example, a raft or brim will greatly increase the surface area. The spatula is long enough that usually I can reach everywhere under the model so eventually it will pop free. I might have to work around the model a bit before it reaches this point.

PMMA print distortion and inconsistencies I am working on refining my PMMA printing process and I am trying to print as close as possible to the theoretical 100 % density of the material. I am making good progress and am slowing increasing the extrusion multipliers to try and find a good set of print settings. I recently have run into an issue where the bottom ≈1/3 of the test cylinder is coming out rather distorted (see picture). The problem seems to sort itself out as the finish around the top of the cylinder looks fine. Do any of you have any experience with PMMA or have seen this problem before? My initial thought is that it is heat driven and as more material is added it becomes less of an issue as there is more mass to dissipate the heat. For reference I am printing on an Raise3D Pro2Plus, for my prints I am running the extruder at 250 °C and the heated bed at 100 °C. I am eventually going to need to print rather large cylinders and would like an even surface finish along the length of it. Test Cylinders, right and left show distortion on the bottom and the center shows a bizarre print where half of the cylinder was fine and half came out very jagged.

Commercial PMMA may soften already at 85 °C. The higher you go away from the bed, the colder the air is, so the issues solves itself. Try lowering the bed temperature, at least to exclude that as cause. The second cylinder shows the very common issue related to uneven cooling. Probably your part cooling fan is blowing only from one side. Try using a better fan shroud or add a second part cooling fan.

How to automatically add support and "base" to the model I am printing? Most of time my prints fail due to lack of support and "base" for the 3D model. I'd like to know if there is any software that can automatically check my model, and add support and a "base" to it, if required.

This program type you seek for is called a slicer. However, you got to manually choose support structure and rafting - the tricky part is getting the configuration right for your build. To my knowledge there are no slicers that decide automatically to raft unless you configure to raft always and you have to enable support.

Why is Print Adhesion almost good, but still not right? It feels like my print is almost there, I spent a long time fine tuning the calibration with a fantastic set of G-code files from Chuck Hellebuyck. I am using an Ender 3, on which I have modified the heatbed to carry a glass sheet, otherwise factory standard. The prints are done on the bare glass. When I printed a window some 14 feet (~4.5 meters) away was open to the cold New York winter. The cooling fan on the Ender 3 is mounted on the right side of the hotend and uses a simple declector, it can be seen in picture 2. However, my print is not perfect yet. I'm using 1.75  mm PLA at a temperature of 200 °C for the 0.4 mm nozzle and a bed temperature of 60 °C. Out of the 4 corners, 3 printed perfectly, the back-left one did lift. What do I need to do to fix the bed adhesion issue?

Based on the pictures, this looks like the bed wasn't clean enough, thus why it didn't adhere correctly in some spots. The lifted corner is the worst, but I can see a couple more spots where the PLA didn't stick well enough, though the brim prevented it to completely lift off the bed. I would advise you to not print with the window open, even if it's only slightly ajar. Weather conditions and temperature will affect the quality of the print, even if it's only a small variation in temperature. I've had enough failed prints due to a shift in temperature to know that, even though PLA isn't affected as much than ABS by temperature changes through a print. You might also try to increase the bed temperature a bit, up to 70°C or 80°C. I've looked at the recommended temperature for PLA with my UM3E and it says 80°C for the glass bed. You should always make sure that the glass bed is clean: ie no dust on it and no grease. Yes, touching it with your fingers will leave a thin greasy residue in the form of fingerprints, and even one fingerprint can prevent good adhesion and result in the problem you had. There are various products to clean glass beds, I've personally found out that the cheap yellow-colored window cleaner from Karcher works wonder. Do not use the standard blue colored window cleaner products: the blue one has a chemical in it that is made with the express intent to prevent anything to adhere to the glass, which is obviously not what we want. The yellow-colored cleaner doesn't have that chemical, and it cleans without depositing an anti-adhesion film on the glass. If a thorough cleaning isn't sufficient, you can look into various adhesive products. While there is quite a lot of adhesive solutions marketed as being specifically for 3D printing, with insane prices most of the time, I've found that a simple UHU glue stick works wonders. I usually do not need glue when printing PLA, but I use it for Nylon, ABS and other filament that absolutely require it and it's a breeze to work with, and it cleans easily with soap and warm water.

Upgrade firmware without Slic3r and USB connection? When printing a part today on my Prusa i3 MK3, I was prompted to upgrade the firmware. I went to the website and downloaded the firmware as a .hex file. When reading the attached firmware upgrade instructions, it seems there's only one way: use Slic3r and connect the printer via USB. These instructions are also available online. However, my printer is too far away from my PC and I'm printing from SD card only. Can I upgrade from SD card as well? Hopefully next week I'll get the Raspberry Pi Zero W so I can use Octoprint for printing. Does that combination support upgrading the firmware? I have tried: this Prusa forum post suggests that upgrading via SD card is not possible. this Prusa forum post mentions that there once was a way to upgrade the firmware via Octoprint, but the post is very old (last entry from January 2017) it's not a duplicate of this 3D Printing question, since all solutions require a USB or serial connection.

No, you cannot update the firmware from an SD card. Yes you can update from a Raspberry Pi (RPi). A RPi runs a Linux distribution, when you install the correct tools you should be able to update through USB using the RPi. For simplicity and time it would be an idea to lend a laptop for a few minutes.

3D printer out of normal printer (HP PSC 1315) I thought as a fun project to make my own 3D printer out of a normal printer parts + some parts out of old CD-ROM drives that are lying around. The printer of my choice is an HP PSC 1315 one. But I have these questions: Does this printer users stepper motors or is using a combination of DC ones and some sort of position sensor? What kind of electronics and firmware I can use for this type of builds?

No, Printers are not good sources Common printers contain at best one stepper motor in the scanner, and it is usually too weak for use as an X or Y stepper, but for a very slow printer they might be useable, especially if you could source 2 or 4 of the same type. The main motors in the printer are almost universally DC motors that get their turning signal as a voltage from the main board, which again uses positional information from an encoder strip/disk. Using both of these to make a 3D printer is usually not feasible. However, they usually have good rails (sadly often of non-standard diameter) and might be salvaged for a decent optical sensor. See also Thomas Sanladerer's video about this.

Anet A8 - SkyNet3D freezes randomly at boot I have a problem with my Anet A8. It is a little strange because it does not always happen. When I turn on my printer, it freezes on boot in the second splash screen. If I turn off and turn on several times, the printer works OK. The printer firmware is: SKYNET 3D - V2.1 - BASED ON MARLIN RC7-BUGFIX - FOR ANET 3D PRINTERS It was modified by me but I promise that I did not touch the boot section. Could the Anet A8 motherboard be dying ? (before this issue it worked perfectly) Update 1: I am changing some wires (power supply and hot bed). I think it has improved... In my opinion, I think that is better change all wires... Update 2: Some wires were black :-( (I changed them and the printer run well)

The Anet A8 is a low end printer which works better after installing a better (read safer) than stock firmware (stock firmware does not have thermal runaway protection which is considered to be a hazard). It is good that you flashed another firmware that does have thermal runaway protection. The electronics of the Anet A8 are also questionable, the stock connectors are not rated for their task and wires could have been of better quality and thickness. Now that your older SkyNet3D firmware does not boot properly anymore, it would be time to check all the leads, possibly use new wires of proper gauge and flash a new version of a more recent firmware. SkyNet3D has been forked from Marlin Firmware and is no longer maintained as all functionality has been implemented for Anet printers in the Marlin sources. If your printer still is giving you problems then when booting, a new set of electronics (e.g. board and steppers) would help out.

What are ways to avoid heat creep? Printer configuration and many settings affect heat creep. Heat creep stopping extrusion doesn't necessarily involve melting the filament too high above the nozzle. All it takes is making the filament too soft. The filament may bend and wad up (the importance to avoid gaps in the hot end allowing this). On direct drives (not Bowden tubes) the filament can get soft so that the teeth on the direct drive cuts a notch in the filament instead of pushing it through the nozzle. [moved to answer] Fig. 1: Some typical signs of heat creep on the filament of a direct drive. 1) notch in filament where gear spins in soft filament. 2) normal teeth marks in filament. 3) soft filament bending. 4) soft filament bunches in open area. With a Bowden tube, the filament widens at the end. Fig. 2.: Another example of heat creep with a direct drive extruder. Note: Setting the retraction too high can cause the extruder to jam, but this is not heat creep. Although, the symptom could be mistaken for heat creep. Also note: Printing materials like PETG too fast can clog the nozzle because the filament doesn't have time to melt. This is the opposite cause from heat creep. A defect in the filament can jam in the tube to the hot end, as well as the filament hanging up on the spool or in the path to the hot end. This can also stop extrusion. Of course different materials change the characteristics of heat creep, but what are other things affecting heat creep? This is expanded from How is heat creep characterized?

Things to consider (This is expanded from How is heat creep characterized?): The air volume of the cooling fan on the hotend heat sink affects the temperature gradient across the heat sink. Usually the size/geometry of the fan depends on the printer design, so the main parameter of a fan that controls air volume is the rpm. I've noticed fans fitting hotends from 6,000 to 10,000 rpm. The higher rpm the better as far as preventing heat creep. Of course, make sure the fan is spinning properly. The raising the temperature of the extruder increases the chance of heat creep. A high resistive connection to the sensor will cause a lower that actual temperature reading. Thus, the controller will raise the hotend to a higher temperature than set, which can cause het creep. Razing the temperature of the heated bed, especially when the printer is in an enclosure, increases the chance of heat creep because this raises the temperature of the air the fan blows across the heatsink. What can be useful is using higher extrusion and bed temperatures for the first layer, then set lower temperatures on subsequent layers to reduce the chances of heat creep. The slower the print speed the higher the chance of heat creep. That's because a slower print speed gives the filament more time to heat up in the extruder. Many slicers have a setting that slows down the print speed if a layer will finish below a given time. If this slowed down time causes heat creep, the extrusion will stop when the printer reaches these smaller area layers. Too much travel of the extruder without extruding has a similar effect because the filament isn't moving. I verified that connecting isolated structures on a design with heat creep can eliminate it. Using a little more material for thin walls is better than scraping prints. Example: This is easy to demonstrate with PETG. Design a table printed top down 100 mm square with four legs 5 mm square and 100 mm long. Set the parameters so that you start to get heat creep when printing the legs. Now put four 1 mm thick walls between the legs to get the heat creep to go away. Sometimes if you start a second print without letting the extruder cool down from the first print, heat creep will cause the extruder to jam. The heater block might be too close to the heatsink so that they bypass the heat breaks reduction in conducting heat. Hotends for temperatures 245 °C and below can use such things as Teflon tubing in the heat break to isolate the filament from the metal. But, +250 °C nozzle temperatures need all metal hotends. The PID settings in the firmware might be letting the hotend temperature overshoot too high.

How should I make my PTFE tube smaller? So, some background. I bought a e3d Lite6. When assembling the hotend, the PTFE tube does not even go in 1/4th of the way. I found out that the issue was that the PTFE tube was too wide. It measured 4.26mm (outer diameter) and the heat break is only 4.1mm (inner diameter). How should I make my PTFE tube smaller?

I would advise buying a new tube for a few reasons: PTFE tubes should be either 4 or 6 mm external diameter (for 1.75 or 3 mm filament respectively). Chances are that if your external diameter is that much off from the nominal value, the inner diameter will also be inaccurate, and this could cause a lot of problems during printing, as the filament will likely bend slightly and unpredictably within the tube and the pressure in the nozzle will be unstable, as well as retraction may work inconsistently. A non all-metal extruder is designed with the assumption that the inner and external sections of the PTFE tube are concentric. This may or may not be the case for your tube, but it is likely that any hand-made modification to the tube will cause the above not to be true. PTFE tubes are pretty cheap (around 2€ per metre or less, when bought online). That said, should you still want to manually modify your tube, I would proceed like this (beware: untested!): Insert the end of the tube onto a drill bit that fits snugly into it. Insert the drill bit into a drill press or a drill held in a vice or otherwise immobilised. Let the drill spin the bit/tube at a moderate speed Move a piece of fine grit paper up and down the portion of the tube on the bit, trying to apply consistent pressure. Check your progress with a caliper or a micrometer often, and reduce increase the grit while approaching the desired result. Best luck! :)

Remove the Marlin Boot screen I added a custom boot screen to marlin by adding _Bootscreen.h to the project root folder and it works fine. The problem is that the custom screen shows quickly and disappear then the marlin boot screen is then displayed for a longer time. I want to remove the marlin boot screen. I dug around in the source code and found a void lcd_bootscreen function in the ultralcd_impl_HD44780.h header. This seems to be the function that is loading the marlin's boot screen due to the comments in the code. I added return; to the first line of code in this function but the marlin's boot screen is still loading. How can I remove the marlin boot screen. How can make my custom boot screen wait for more time? The marlin version is 1.1.8.

You can add return; command in the ultralcd_impl_DOGM.h file. void lcd_bootscreen() { #if ENABLED(SHOW_CUSTOM_BOOTSCREEN) lcd_custom_bootscreen(); #endif return; // Add this line

How to block UV light (transparent material)? I want to build my own curing station for my resin printed parts. I know there are a lot of prebuilt machines but they do not completely satisfy my needs. I now want to know which material i can use to cover the chamber, but still be able to see inside. The material should therefore block UV light but still be transparent. The material should be transparent to only light above the UV spectrum, but should block UV light (UV-A, UV-B if possible) The material should be purchasable in sheets to be able to build a cover out of it (e.g. acrylic sheets) the color is not relevant as long as you can see through it The questions is now, which material satisfies those points? You can find reference on existing machines like the Elegoo Mercury Pro or the Formlabs Form Wash. Maybe somebody knows which material has been used by either one of them.

I contacted the manufacturers of curing stations directly and got some interesting feedback. Not all of them were keen on sharing their information, but two responded: Elegoo is using Polypropylene Creality is using polycarbonate I am sure they are using some additional UV blocking on the plastics with a coating, but thats all I could find out. Thanks to @Greenonline for pointing me in the right direction!

Ender 3 Nozzle does not clear bed I have a thicker glass plate on the bed. Also, I have a z-axis offset at the maximum value 50 yet the nozzle does not clear the plate. Why can't I adjust the axis beyond 50?

There are several ways to get the Z0 into a position the sotware can account for it without needing to write your own firmware if needed: Remove the build-tak-clone under your glass sheet to get the better heat transfer and remove a couple millimeters. Tighten the bed leveling to account for some millimeters. Move the physical endstop to account for the thicker build platform.

Different lengths of filament is extruded with different temperatures TL;DR: I'm looking to change the steps per mm but I'm not sure what to set it to. Do I decide on a temperature and change the rate based on the percentage for that temp? Or is there a more general setting I can put it to? Or is there a different underlying problem here? I'm running into an issue with my Ender 3 where when I print PLA at different temperatures I'm getting different extrusion rates. I've done the test where marking it at 120 mm and then extruding using PronterFace 100 mm and measuring the distance and this is my results. I did two tests of each to confirm results 185 °C 80 mm left = 60 % under extrusion 200 °C 31 mm Left = 11 % Under Extrusion 210 °C 32 mm Left = 12 % Under Extrusion 220 °C 28 mm Left = 8 % Under Extrusion 230 °C 25 mm Left = 5 % Under Extrusion When I feed 100 mm through the Bowden tube without the filament going through the hot end I get exactly 20 mm left meaning: 0% under Extrusion echo: Steps per unit: echo: M92 X80.00 Y80.00 Z400.00 E93.00 I have been having this problem since I started. I normally print at 210 °C at 50 mm/s with a flow rate of 103 % which seems to work well for most prints but on flat walls on prints it under extrudes in the same spot each time it comes around to that point. Steps I have taken so far: Different PLA filaments. All perform the same Replaced the nozzle with a new one Checked all fittings with the bowen tube system Printed a spring spacer to make the spring tighter on the extruder gear Changed the Vref from 0.75 to 1 for the extruder stepper The reason I changed the Vref on the extruder stepper is because the system would click back when printing as if the pressure was too great in the tube. Changing this has helped some of the under extrusion a bit. So. depending on the temperature, it's harder or easier to push the filament by hand through the hot end. Maybe I need a better hot end? Examples: My test print to replicate the issue. The ripple bit is brittle and under extruded. This was a Prototype piece for an up-sized print I was planning. After going around it under extrudes at the same point each time 210 °C Most of the print is fine just some parts are different. This is an inner wall. Heat towers

Obviously, your extrusion process is troubled by a lot of pressure. This can be seen from the extensive experiment you conducted with PLA extrusion at different temperatures. Please do note that 230 °C is considered pretty high for PLA! Usually it should be in the range of 185 - 205 °C: In general, PLA filament settings have an optimal printing PLA temperature range from about 185C to about 205C. If you’re using 1.75mm as opposed to thicker 2.85mm (or 3.00mm) your optimal print will be closer to the lower end of this PLA filament temperature range. The temperature dependency of filament diameter is explained that small diameter filament warms up way faster in the heating zone of the hotend than large diameter filament as the heat travels less far to the filament core. Basically, with 1.75 mm filament you should be able to print at 195 °C. The pressure that the filament exerts on the hotend and extruder is clearly too much and leads to skipped steps. It is strongly discouraged to create a function of steps per millimeter (or an over-extrusion by specifying a more than 100% flow modifier). This is a mechanical issue that needs to be fixed by addressing the hardware problem. Usually this is done by: fixing the extruder; is it skipping steps? does the filament tension get too high that it skips back pass the extruder gear? does increase the stepper current work? fixing the Bowden tube; is it clean? is there too much friction? are there kinks? fixing the hotend; is the temperature that is reported the correct one? (thermistor problem?) is the heat conducting properly to the nozzle? is there a tolerance issue in the hotend/heatbreak? is the coldend properly cooled? A few of these you already explored, others you have not. Unfortunately, you have to do a little more troubleshooting the get to the bottom of the actual problem that is causing this pressure preventing the extruder to extrude the proper commanded length.

Is it possible to print an object that has a "roof" without anything under it? I recently bought a 3d printer and right now i am printing a normal cube just to try it out. However I was wondering, when it has the last part left of the printing where it needs to create the roof, how will the filament stay there and not just fall down as there is nothing underneath? Will I need to check the "Support" function in the print-settings before hand or is there something else i need to do? Thanks a lot for the help/tips!

Sometimes a "roof" can be accomplished using the bridging feature of the printer. Depending on your slicer and on your printer's capabilities, the filament can extend from one edge of a structure to another without using support. The slicer will "recognize" the endpoints and the distance between and speed up the travel and possibly increase the fan cooling, allowing minimal sag between points. There are resources available on many model sites to print bridging test pieces to help determine the limits of your printer. Expect some sag on the first layer, with a reduction for each successive layer. If you have, for example, five layers for the top faces, the last of the five may cover the sag of the previous ones. Support is commonly used when there is no opposing endpoint to handle the bridging or when the distance exceeds the capabilities of the printer. An example of a bridging test piece can be found on Thingiverse, although there are many to be found with a simple search.