text:
Safe way of disposing resin
I have some leftover resin (100 ml) that I`m not planing to use anymore. What is a safe way of disposing it that doesn't involve curing?

One option would be to offer it to someone else with a similar printer.

When it comes to the disposal of waste local regulations and legislations will apply and especially for chemicals no advise can be given that will be valid everywhere.

@KlausD. we can give general advice based on the underlying principles of chemical waste handling. local legislation and regulations might differ, but the underlying principle "Make sure that it doesn't harm others" is quite universal.

Since you threw "curing" out the window, I won't offer a suggestion of putting into a disposable clear bowl and leaving it outside to catch some rays. Given a bit of time, it should get enough sunlight to cure up solid, then dispose of it like you would any other printed waste material from the same printer. Just a thought.

Definitely let sunshine cure that mess.   Analogy: here in Massachusetts we are supposed to let unused acrylic and latex paints completely dry out before throwing used paint cans into the trash.

Resin is notoriously hard to handle, especially as exposure to air and light can and will cure it over time. The uncured resin is a hazardous material.
Handling hazardous waste
The rules for safe disposal can - generally speaking - be broken down to this:

make sure the hazardous material can't contaminate water or food sources
make sure the hazardous material won't be touched or ingested accidentally

This means (for example for acids) that they are neutralized (to pH 7) and then handled as chemical waste.
WHY?
Why go all these lengths? Let me explain with an example from Germany: The city of Leverkusen is the main site of Bayer. They produce pharmaceutical and chemical products there, which includes a lot of chemical and hazardous waste. Bayer knows how to handle waste, they handled 541000 metric tons globally in 2015. Most of the following information comes from Germany, and is in German, but I do provide my sources.
For the remains of pharmaceutical product production at Bayer in Leverkusen around 2007, the process, as I was told on a tour to the fabrication plant, was generally speaking this: The nasty stuff got neutralized and reacted in ways to make it inert, the resulting sludge got dried and incinerated to destroy most toxic compounds. The remains were bagged in thick plastic bags that were carefully stored with a catalogue of what was stored where in a dedicated chemical waste landfill with (iirc) 3 independent groundwater protection systems, covered with a thick plastic sheet, then with a several meters thick cover of carefully constructed layers of dirt, clay, cement, more plastic, gravel, and rock to protect the rhine and the ground-water. Today, this process is done by the Currenta in a similar way.
In the past, the landfills were less secure: the old landfill that was started by Bayer in 1923 in Leverkusen. It was used by Bayer, the local population and (for some time) the IG Farben. It was finally closed in 1965, contains 65000000 tons of waste, of which approximately 15% is residues of chemical processing (~1 million tons). Nobody ever cataloged what had been stored where in these times, one just knew that it was filled south to north. It had to be pretty much re-engineered in the 1990s and brought it to match the (then) current landfill standard, for example with a 38m deep cement wall: Checks had found that nobody knew anymore where what materials were stored and that residues - among them possibly LOST - had found their way to the surface. These chemicals threatened to get into the Rhine and the water supply at some point. It also lead to a case of public domain and following demolition (for public health concerns) of a group of houses that had been erected on one part of the closed landfill.
You see the length people go to keep you safe from chemical waste: LONG.
Now, how do we fix the problem at hand both safely and effectively?
Getting rid of small batches of resin
The basic rules of handling hazardous waste (the two bulletin points) tell us we should take a two-step process:

find a temporary storage solution (e.g. storing in a safe container)
decide on a process that can get rid of the stuff in a safe way.

How could one fulfill the target number 2? I came up with three options:

re-cycle the unused resin from the print-tub back into the resin for later prints of the same color/resin.
find a specialist to take care of the uncured waste ( => give it to the waste disposal center in a clearly marked container)
make the material non-hazardous and allow disposal through the home-waste ( => curing)

Your local waste disposal service might charge a fee for taking care of your resin, but your problems end when you hand it over with old paints or other chemical waste. Check out who provides these services and what laws, rules and regulations apply for small batches of resin and paints.
A different kind of specialist that would take the resin could be a maker or artist that plans to use it in their own SLA/DLP printer.
Making it inert could be done by curing with only sunlight, without the need of much special equipment or chemicals in a very well ventilated area and make sure nobody touches it: pour the resin into a (disposable) mold like a cardboard box or yogurt cup. If you can't have a well-ventilated place, storing the resin in sealed transparent plastic or glass container (plastic bottle or marmalade glasses) in sunlight can cure the resin very slowly over time. Note that it will take quite some extra time, as such containers do filter out some of the 400 nm light that commonly cures the resin.
The resulting resin chunk can be handled like any plastic block once thoroughly hardened through: Use it for other projects, as a paperweight or dispose of it through the normal waste.
tl:dr;

Until you have chosen a method to get rid of your resin, keep hold of it in a sealed container.
You might find a local maker or artist that would like your resin.
The best way to get rid of resin wastes without curing it yourself is handing it to a professional waste disposal service. Check your local laws, code and regulations about it.
Curing it allows disposal through the normal garbage cycle.


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Help with a Tool Change Script
So, I have a Raise3D Pro2, and I'm looking to perfect a tool change script for it, the goal of which is to reduce or eliminate the excess plastic that tends to build up on the nozzle when using the dual extruder. The printer uses the Marlin G-code flavor, and although I'm not sure this matters, I'm slicing in ideaMaker. The script is supposed to flow as follows:

Retract current tool
Move to X30 Y300
Check if the new active tool is T0

If T0, wipe nozzle 2mm circle
If T0, cool T1 to 165C
If T0, heat T0 to 230C
If T0 and not layer 1, recover
If T0, wipe nozzle again, this time for the new tool

Check if the new active tool is T1

If T1, wipe nozzle 2mm circle
If T1, cool T0 to 165C
If T1, heat T1 to 230C
If T1 and not layer 1, recover
If T1, wipe nozzle again, this time for the new tool

The current script I have looks like this:
; extruder switch gcode start
G10 S1; Retract for current nozzle
G1 X30 Y300 F6000; Move to X:30 Y:300
[if {new_extruder}=0]; LEFT Extruder is active (T0)
[if {new_extruder}=0]G12 P2 R2; Clean inactive nozzle 2mm circle
[if {new_extruder}=0]M104 S165 T1; Cool inactive extruder to 165c (T1)
[if {new_extruder}=0]M109 S230 T0; Heat active extruder to 230c (T0) and wait.
[[if {new_extruder}=0] and [{layer_index} NE 1]]G11; Recover current nozzle when not first layer
[if {new_extruder}=0]G12 P2 R2; Clean active nozzle 2mm circle
[if {new_extruder}=1]; RIGHT Extruder is active (T1)
[if {new_extruder}=1]G12 P2 R2; Clean inactive nozzle 2mm circle
[if {new_extruder}=1]M104 S165 T0; Cool inactive extruder to 165c (T0)
[if {new_extruder}=1]M109 S230 T1; Heat active extruder to 230c (T1) and wait.
[[if {new_extruder}=1] and [{layer_index} NE 1]]G11; Recover current nozzle
[if {new_extruder}=1]G12 P2 R2; Clean active nozzle 2mm circle
; extruder switch gcode end

The issue is that, when I run a print with this, it doesn't seem to run all of the commands. It does the move, and the cooling/heating, but the retract/recover and nozzle wipe doesn't seem to read. I'm not sure if that's because of a printer or syntax issue, or because those commands don't work the way I think they do.
EDIT: (by Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 - Added new code and logic back in)
New logic:

Retract current tool
Move to X30 Y300
Check if the new active tool is T0

If T0, wipe nozzle 2mm circle
If T0, cool T1 to 165C
If T0, heat T0 to 230C
If T0 and not layer 1, recover
If T0, wipe nozzle again, this time for the new tool

Check if the new active tool is T1

If T1, wipe nozzle 2mm circle
If T1, cool T0 to 165C
If T1, heat T1 to 230C
If T1 and not layer 1, recover
If T1, wipe nozzle again, this time for the new tool

The new script I have looks like this:
; extruder switch gcode start
G10 S1; Retract for current nozzle
G1 X30 Y300 F6000; Move to X:30 Y:300
[if {new_extruder}=0]; LEFT Extruder is active (T0)
[if {new_extruder}=0]G12 P2 R2; Clean inactive nozzle 2mm circle
[if {new_extruder}=0]M104 S165 T1; Cool inactive extruder to 165c (T1)
[if {new_extruder}=0]M109 S230 T0; Heat active extruder to 230c (T0) and wait.
[[if {new_extruder}=0] and [{layer_index} NE 1]]G11; Recover current nozzle when not first layer
[if {new_extruder}=0]G12 P2 R2; Clean active nozzle 2mm circle
[if {new_extruder}=1]; RIGHT Extruder is active (T1)
[if {new_extruder}=1]G12 P2 R2; Clean inactive nozzle 2mm circle
[if {new_extruder}=1]M104 S165 T0; Cool inactive extruder to 165c (T0)
[if {new_extruder}=1]M109 S230 T1; Heat active extruder to 230c (T1) and wait.
[[if {new_extruder}=1] and [{layer_index} NE 1]]G11; Recover current nozzle
[if {new_extruder}=1]G12 P2 R2; Clean active nozzle 2mm circle
; extruder switch gcode end

Welcome to 3D Printing! In your example, I'm not seeing the "S" value, which should indicate the number of repetitions of the pattern you're looking to print. I'm thinking your line should look like: G12 P2 S1 R2 ; (after the "if" statement, of course). Also, where is your G11 command after the G10? From what I'm reading, the G10 will be ignored if it isn't followed by the G11 command.

@Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2, The G11 is in the lines "[[if {new_extruder}=0] and [{layer_index} NE 1]]G11;", should be lines 8 and 14 in that code snippet. As for the S value, I'll give that a go and see if it changes anything.

I see the G11 now ... sorry I missed it. BTW, I'm no expert on this stuff, just kinda poking around. Hope it works for you.

One other thought ... if you have inactivated the nozzle, wouldn't giving it commands conflict with the assignment you've given it (ie: inactive)? (or is your comment at end of the G12 command (line 5) inaccurate and supposed to state "Clean active nozzle ...")

@Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 has a good point: try reorganizing so you send commands only to the currently active extruder, even if you have to  add extra  "activate" commands.

@Carl Witthoft I haven't gotten the chance to try it yet, but I did update the script in the code listing. I figure if I just remove those two G12's, and replace them with one that runs before it starts checking for the tools, that might work. If you or Paulster2 have any other suggestions, I'd appreciate it.

BTW, please don't edit what you put originally, add it in below as a new portion and mark it as an edit. You will confuse those who are looking at the question.

As far as I can recognize, the g-code file cannot be evaluated by printer firmware.
It is expected that slicer software will be aware of tool head selection and process tool changes according to g-code provided in an on-tool change in most slicers.
The best way to think about g-code (in RepRap word) is a one-way communication as the file is not treated as a script that can read and evaluate parameters on the go. (firmware capabilities).
references:
RepRap G-code list
Printer quick start guide

@CarlWitthoft thanks for your remark & may I see an example? as per https://reprap.org/wiki/G-code, I did not find that in a  RepRap 3d printing word, also provided printer manual does not mention that. So at this stage, if the printer producer is not mentioning that in firmware capabilities I am treating that printer as a RepRap like one, therefore I am threating g-code as read-only. I edited my text to direct to firmware capabilities not GCode itself

and the referece here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1069/4816/files/Pro2_Series_-_Quick_Start_Guide.pdf?15083834668884425755

Ok, fair enough.  Please move your references into the answer?

So... The commands can't be read by the printer then? Figures. I'll just see if using a prime tower fixes my issues. I'm trying to do this with ABS/HIPS, and the print I want to get off has some complex geometry, and will take at least 8-14 hrs, so I can't run that until I'm sure it won't screw up at 50% of the way. Thanks for the help guys.

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text:
Creality CR-10 slightly jerks when moves from right to left
So when CR-10 prints square (like on the video starting from 6 second) while being in the top right corner extruder jerks i.e. slightly moves to the right and then continues movement to the left. So the resulting prints are not so nice:

What can I do? I don't see issues in assembling but I almost definitely have them. What can be wrong?
UPDATE: Printer settings: nozzle temperature - 180, bed temperature - 65. I calibrated extuder according to the video. Bed level seems to be ok for me. I started using Difamix because of bed adhesion (sometimes even using IKEA mirror).
Here is my calibration cube size (I wrote only edges different from 20mm):

And here is the issues with calibration cube I found. Top layer:

Bottom layer:

Layer with Y is a bit rough (not a big issue as for me):

Also edge between X layer and Y layer is not very sharp, a bit rounded.

Welcome to 3D Printing!

The calibration cube with +/- 0.5 mm is still in the acceptable range. You can tune that later, by adjusting the steps/mm AFTER ensuring the filament feedrate is correct. The first figure is the important one, and I havent seen this before. Does reducing or enhancing the voltage on the stepper driver change this pattern? Is there a mechanical resistance or even noise along this axis if the printer is off and you move it by hand? Is the temperature on the nozzle stable?

i would try tightening the screws and belts, it helped a lot on mine

It looks like the nozzle is not perfectly perpendicular to the bed. It is also dragging which might indicate overextrusion or bad z stop calibration..

Hi! Thanks for answer. How can z stop be calibrated?

@tiktak Your nozzle is too far from the bed, you need to adjust the endstop or use the leveling screws to get the nozzle closer to the bed. Also calibrate the extruder to get rid of the over-extrusion.

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text:
Can't print on Wanhao Duplicator i3 Mini
After unboxing and setting up my brand-new Wanhao Duplicator i3 Mini, I can't seem to print. When selecting a model to print, the extruder does not heat up and the whole printer does nothing, yet the progress bar moves from 0 to 100 in a few seconds time (VIDEO LINK).
Please note that

the extruder does heat up when adding filament and does extrude a
small amount when adding filament
the servos all seem to work, as the
extruder moves around just fine when leveling the bed using the
wizard

I have done the following as per the manual:

Removed the cable ties which held the bed for transport
Attached the spool holder
Connected power and switched it
On leveled the bed using the wizard multiple times
Added a spool of 1.75 PLA filament as instructed by the manual/firmware
The included SD card wasn't recognized, copied the files to a new one, which was recognized.

This is the link to the file I'm trying to print.
I have flashed the firmware as described here but it didn't change anything
I can print using the Wanhao Cura software and a USB connection. For the time being, this is an acceptable workaround.
The nozzle size is 0.4 mm

Hi, and welcome! So if I understand correctly, your question is that you can't print from SD card? You seem to get a print done over USB.

Have you tried a different sliced file?

What is the nozzle size? Considering you are using .45 mm first layer and .5 mm layer height it must be a .8 or a 1. mm nozzle.

Please update your question with information that is asked in the comments. Your question could benefit from extra information so that people can generate answers to fix your problem.

Hello @Trish, I have tried multiple files, all present the same problem

Please note this is not a full answer, but it does address a problem pointed out in the question.

The linked file does contain some strange information. Although in the comments it is said to use a layer thickness of 0.2 mm, see:
;   layerHeight,0.2

with a first layer being 90% of this size:
;   firstLayerHeightPercentage,90

it actually does not.
The actual sliced layers are measured in 0.5 mm and 0.222 mm and 0.45 mm for the first layer!?! The first layer is at:
G1 Z0.450 F1000
; process Process1
; layer 1, Z = 0.450

the next layer is 0.5 mm, so 0.95 for layer 2:
; layer 2, Z = 0.950
M106 S255
G1 X65.347 Y84.268 F4800
G1 Z0.950 F1000
And then it becomes strange,
; layer 3, Z = 1.172
for layer 3 (so a 0.222 mm layer height), and 0.222 mm for layer 4 and so forth.
This is a pretty odd sliced file, which basically is not possible to be printed with a 0.4 mm nozzle (you should never exceed a layer height of about 75% of the nozzle width, so max. 0.3 mm for a 0.4 mm nozzle).
I don't know the firmware, but I find it hard to believe that the firmware knows what kind of nozzle is present (although Ultimaker does know that with their nozzle core concept they launched from the Ultimaker 3 series). It could be that your firmware does know the nozzle size and does not let you print these layer sizes. It is therefore recommended to reslice the print and other objects and take a closer look at the G-code files.


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PETG filament doesn't stick reliably to fake Buildtak surface
I just got my first spool of PETG and tried to calibrate an Ultimaker Cura profile for it on my Ender 3 today with limited success.
I've had severe issues with the filament not sticking to the build surface, instead balling up around the edges of the nozzle tip. (rather like this post) Sometimes it sticks alright, but that happens properly > 50 % of the time. I've never seen this behavior with my PLA materials.
So far, I've only been trying to print this calibration part.
Relevant Profile Params: (let me know if I need to post more, I think these are the relevant ones)

Layer Height: 0.2 mm
Temp

Nozzle: 240 °C
Bed: 60 °C

Print Speed: 60 mm/s (more specific params left to auto calculation)
Travel Speed: 300 mm/s (max)
Cooling fan

Initial: 0 %
Fan Speed: 100 %

Retraction

Distance: 5 mm
Speed: 50 mm/s

Skirt min length: 250 mm

I was initially going by advice from Thomas Sanlanderer's video on PETG, starting with 230 °C/70 °C, but when that really didn't work, I then tried the advice of a Reddit user (can't relocate thread) that said to try a lower bed temp. I then experimented with different bed temps in the 50's to mixed avail. Most other threads are talking about PETG + glass, which seems to work well with a PVA glue stick surface finish.
I'm getting a glass build surface soon (as soon as GearBest can ship it from across the pond), and I hear that will help, but in the meantime, I want to find a way to make it work with the fake Buildtak. What can I do to try to make this work better? My thinking is that the issue is with the bed config (temp, surface, etc.) and not with the nozzle temp, but I could be wrong.

I have printed kilometers of PETG and found the sweet-spot for my brand to be 240 °C for the hotend and 70 °C for the build plate (for my Ultimaker 3 that is, the extruder temp is 5 °C higher for my home build HyperCube Evolution). The reason for the 70 °C is that the glass temperature of PETG is around 70 °C. The PETG is flexible at that temperature such that there are no stresses because of shrinkage causing the PETG to keep attached to the heat bed surface (aluminium, glass, Buildtak, etc.). A little PVA based glue (stick) or spray (hair or specific print sprays) can even further improve the adhesion. A slow first layer also helps adhering better.
Note that the hotend temperature should be calibrated to the speed you are printing. If you print faster, a higher hotend tempearture is required. To determine the sweet spot for your filament you can print typical calibration towers that can be found on e.g. Thingiverse. Note that you need to manually change the G-code file after slicing of the tower or use plugins of your slicer to change the temperature at a certain level.
Furthermore, PETG does not like to be cooled by the print fan, so keep cooling fan rpm low to prevent layers not to bond (else you get a sort of string cheese print).

Edit:
I use parametric stair case style calibration prints that include the slicer print settings that are to determine the best settings for temperature, print cooling, layer size and print speed.

Additionally, I have found that PETG likes to have a little more clearance to the bed and go SLOW for first layers.

@mbmcavoy I use same clearances as PLA but a first slow layer indeed!

Thanks to the magic of r/3Dprinting, I have a solution. u/Lhelge helped me out with a tip:

I would suggest a higher bed temperature. I print PETG at 80°-95° for the first layer depending on which printer. Then I go down a bit for the second layer.

I then started out by trying a 250 °C/80 °C temperature config and sure enough, it worked great. I managed to tune my profile down to 250 °C/70 °C and up from 50 mm/s to 70 mm/s.


text:
Massive over extrusion after changing firmware
I have an Anet A8 printer (no modifications) and first printed a calibration cube. It came out okayish, within expectations. Afterwards I flashed the firmware to Marlin 1.1.9 and since then have very high over extrusion. In this picture you see on the left the original calibration cube with the stock firmware and on the right a cube with Marlin (unfortunately not a good picture):

In fact on the right cube you can see two narrow vertical lines in which extrusion appeared to have come out fine.
The cube on the left was without calibration. On the right hand side all axes, including the extruder, where correctly calibrated. The bed is level. The extruder has been calibrated in case of the cube on the right hand side (95.6 steps/mm). Material is PLA.
After flashing to Marlin the over-extrusion became such a problem that the nozzle is constantly dragging over the printed plastic. You might notice, that these are in fact different cubes, that is correct. I tried the same G-code from the left cube again, but aborted the print, because the nozzle was hitting the print too much.
I calculated a modified flow rate according to this tutorial and found that I would have to reduce my flow rate to 44%.
This appears quite wrong to me. What could be in the firmware change that causes such a massive over extrusion?

Hi Till B, welcome to SE.3D printing! Please update the question to include print material and print settings. Also post steps per millimeters settings of your steppers.

Very wise to change the firmware of the stock Anet A8. The stock firmware does not have thermal runaway protection which Marlin Firmware does have.
You should be able to print equivalent or slightly better with Marlin Firmware as you can tweak it better/easier than the closed firmware clone of Repetier that is originally loaded onto the board. My A8 runs perfectly fine on 1.1.9.
To identify if this is over-extrusion, you need to check out the settings of the steps per millimeters that are defined in your configuration.h file:
/**
 * Default Axis Steps Per Unit (steps/mm)
 * Override with M92
 *                                      X, Y, Z, E0 [, E1[, E2[, E3[, E4]]]]
 */
#define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT   { 100, 100, 400, 100 }

Furthermore, rather than calculating the flow reduction, you could calibrate your extruder.
From the images it it hard to say whether this is over extrusion or not, it does look like it is printed at a high temperature. Please update the question to include print material and print settings (hot end temperature).

I did follow the instructions for calibration that you linked. This is how I came up with the message that I should set the flow to 44%

@TillB About 96 steps does not seem awkward. Please post an image of the used settings of the slicer in your question! Also add if your belts are properly tightened or not?


text:
What are the limiting factors when trying to print flexible filaments with a Bowden extruder setup?
Other than the most obvious issue with the filament kinking in the tube, what other issues could arise when trying to print flexibles (i.e. TPU/TPE, Nylon, etc.) with a Bowden style extruder setup?
Can the kinking issue be alleviated by a well-constrained filament path (proper ID) in a properly sized Bowden tube?

nylon is not a "flexible" filament in the sense, it is a somewhat flexible "hard" filament

As a user of an UM3E, which uses Bowden tubes and has TPU as an available material, I can tell you that the kinking issues can be alleviated or downright avoided.
I've printed quite a few things with the Ultimaker-brand TPU 95, and never had problems with kinking in the tube.
Ultimaker uses 2.85 mm filament, with Bowden tubes adapted for those and a rear motor, i.e. the motor is on the back on the printer and not right on top of the print head.
I personally wouldn't consider Nylon as one of the really flexible material, but that's my opinion. Never had kinking in the Bowden tube with Nylon either in my UM3E.

To also validate the first answer, I have been printing with TPU95A for a number of years and it has been one of the most reliable materials to use. The strength of the product alongside the flex makes it a test and production based outcome with fewer issues. My printer for the most part of this experience was the Ultimaker 2+ that has a similar set up to the UM3 with a more traditional hot end.
Cautions: Some older material profiles have the heatbed at 60c. I have always had better outcomes from room temp (no heat on the bed).

Hrm. Interesting anecdotes.


text:
Does the Ender 3 need an 8 pin mini USB or 5 pin, or no difference?
I've been searching for a reassuring answer for a week now. What type of mini USB does the Creality Ender 3 need? I have studied about them and five pin seems to be the answer but I haven't found a reassuring answer.
If anyone knows the answer would you please inform me?

The ender 3 follows the USB standard for a USB-2.0/2.0 revised 5 pin USB-Mini-B.
To prove, a picture of it. Left, you can clearly count the 5 pins that conform to the standard.

as a side note: There is no 8 pin USB-Mini - Mini has the T-shape. In fact, there is not even a USB standard conform plug that has 8-pins! The standard allows only 4, 5, 9, 11 and 24 pins

At any rate, USB standards (except for USB-C) are hardware backward compatible. Even if the Ender 3 had a connector with >5 pins, as long as it is USB, the smaller connector would still work.

yes @ifconfig but there is no 8-pin USB Mini that fits into that socket.

@Trish thanks! You answered several of my questions in one go! And thanks for taking the time to add the picture. It both helped and added to my knowledge! Kudos!

@ifconfig thank you very much for the extra info. That is one good piece of information! Kudos!


text:
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 suspect the answer depends on your printer's layer thickness, X-Y illumination resolution, the type of resin in use, etc.

Well, I mean for a run of the mill hobbyist 3D Printer that goes down to 0.1mm (or possibly even 0.05mm) the answer should be pretty straightforward, no?
I can revise the question to remove the SLA question if that helps to make the question more specific.

Ok, now it depends on the position resolution of your Ender3 steppers,  the filament type, and the size of your extruder nozzle.

I'm not really sure how to answer the stepper resolution question. I use PLA and PETG filaments.

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.

STL file size should not matter these days as far as the memory and storage sizes are concerned. These are generally large enough (unless you have very large and complicated STL files of large dimensions), so saving an STL in low or high resolution should usually be a matter of megabytes. However, the higher the resolution the more processor calculation time is needed.
Fusion 360 defines the STL generation through 3 predefined settings from a coarse to a fine setting. Indeed, coarse settings may result in poor resolution regarding curved surfaces. If the resolution is more coarse than the print resolution, you will definitely see this in your sliced print as you can identify the triangles of which the STL file consists of.
As far as there is no clear objective point of diminishing returns, the question cannot be answered. But, slicing with a higher resolution than print resolution does not seem sensible, it creates larger files which cannot be printed to that level of detail. But there is no downfall other than larger storage space and computation speed.

If you print for example a thin wall cylinder vertically you cannot turn the refinement high enough to not see the flats on the surface.  My triangle counts are 524 for Low, 828 for Medium, 2206 for High, and if you select custom and pull the surface deviation slider all the way to the left you get 6572 triangles.  The Surface Deviation shows 0.004406 mm which you would think would be fine enough.  (This is for a 12 inch diameter cylinder with a 4 inch height and a wall thickness of 2.4 mm.  The numbers vary depending on dimensions.) However you can see this level of deviation in the surface of common FDM type 3D prints.  For those who are Metric impaired this is a deviation of 0.00017 inches or about 2 ten thousandths.  The situation I present is the best case for an FDM type 3D printer and for just about anything else this level of refinement would be overkill.  This is partially some arbitrary limitation in Fusion 360 but it is more a characteristic of using STL files.  For my purposes being able to specify a surface deviation two or three times more precise would probably eliminate the visible artifacts.  Increasing the refinement to the maximum possible will slow Fusion 360 when it computes the STL file and it will slow the slicer down as well but other than this there is no downside to using maximum refinement.

authors: Николай Каракан


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FreeCAD to design moving parts
I am trying to create a mechanism with moving parts, and would like to see how it works (whether it even works) before printing it.
For example, there's a servo with a bracket, and I would like to see how far can the bracket move before colliding with other objects.

Unfortunately I cannot find any information on how to set pivot points and rotate objects around these points in FreeCAD. Is this even possible?

If the user manual doesn't mention it, it's probably not a feature available in FreeCAD.  You may have to consider some more powerful (not free) tool.

Fusian 360 is free for most use cases and includes moving joints as well as animations of those joints.

freeCad has a draft rotate function in DRAFT workbench:

Select an object;
Press the Draft Rotate button, then;
Click to set the rotating point and rotate.

You will get used to that after a few trails.
There is a step by step guide on freeCad site.
There is also a short demo of the function here.

Because... links die, but content typed in here will be archived and searchable.

I suppose that's as far as I can get with FreeCAD... Not as comfortable as in Blender, but kinda solves the task :

The link says that three different clicks are required (center point, reference point and rotation point - 5 steps in all). Whilst you do give the main overview, I think that (maybe in this case), a full reproduction of the five steps could be more useful :-) Admittedly, the video may be harder to explain in text (but it probably is doable)

I would also like to take a look at the A2plus Workbench (Freecad Addon). There you can define constraints which can help with this problem. As far as I know, parts cannot be moved with the mouse pointer, but angle parameters can be entered.
https://freecadweb.org/wiki/A2plus_Workbench


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Issues with connecting Pronterface to Anet A8 printer
I was recently told I should probably update my printer's firmware from the current version (ANET_A8_20160701V2.0) to Marlin (going to use v1.1.9). To do this, I dutifully downloaded both Pronterface and RepetierHost trying to connect with either one of them to my printer. I've checked the Device Mangler (Manager) and found the USB does connect and is recognized on COM5, yet neither software are connecting. The software sees COM5 as active as well, but I get back an error stating "access is denied" for some reason. What might I be doing wrong?

After some trial and error, I discovered you need to set the baud rate to 115200 in the printer settings. I went through and tried each of the baud settings available until it connected. Glad I started with Pronterface, as RepetierHost has a lot longer baud list :o) Setting the baud rate is not inuitive as to the issue, as getting back "access denied" to me implied something else was going on. After that, was able to run direct commands to the printer through the USB port without issues.


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Under extrusion, looking for specific information
Have a Monoprice maker select with a Micro Swiss hotend, and am using Cura IIIP.
Edit: plus Janbex PLA 1.75mm filament.
Trying to print a Pi camera mount, but am getting (I believe) under extrusion, as seen here.

My Cura settings are these.

Does anybody see any obvious problems? What should I try to change?
Edit: have played around with different temperatures, and some other settings (eg the filament diameter), but lost track of the reasons. Was following various instructions on web pages.

Your filament is 1.75 mm, but you specified 1.6 mm in the Filament option Diameter (mm).
Furthermore, your layer thickness is very small (0.06 mm), why not try 0.20 mm first; a thicker layer will cause a higher extrusion flow. It could be that the print speed is too high for the low layer size.
Your initial layer 0.3 mm is also high, the maximum for a 0.4 mm nozzle.

Why did you change so many parameters? The standard values work pretty well.

It worked fine after I changed the diameter to 1.75 and the thickness to 0.2 (initial 0.25).

side note: Most printers can easily achieve 0.1mm (I rather like it that way), but any lower is hard for many printers.

@Trish: 0.06 was the standard setting I think, and worked fine for a while with the original extruder.

FWIW  my AnetA8 runs with 0.4 mm nozzle and 0.06 mm layer just fine (and up to about 1.0 mm layer height for less resolution); with PLA.


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What is the best way to print a coin with depth map?
If I have an image like the one attached, what’s the best way to create an accurate depth map of it? I have photoshop CC and 3ds Max, but I don’t know what settings work best with Slic3r. There is a plethora of settings and combinations to choose from in either programs.
Did anyone do this before? If so, can you share your technique?

Sadly, it's just about as impossible, as the answers point out.  OTOH, if you want to create a lithopane  ,  there are several websites that will do so from your image quite simply.

@CarlWitthoft lithophane and speedprinting need solid Q&A still - good reminder!

From a single image from this perspective (front view) you cannot map the coin surface in detail. There is reported limited success in estimating the depth of single images, but, this is for images with a clear perspective (e.g. like a picture of a room showing the walls and floor at an angle). In order to map the surface you will need to have multiple images and preferably know the direction of lighting on that object.
People with one eye cannot estimate depth very well, you need two eyes and a trained brain to understand the differences in depth.

You can create a depth map based on a black and white image, where blacks are lows and whites are highs. My question was related to this.

@NLed Please add that to your question then. I'm very curious how you then would define how high a white color is and how low the black. If you have a legenda it is easy, but how would you determine that from a single front view.

@NLed, your attached image does not have that property.

@NLed You can from a greyscale picture that is formated in this special way. a B&W photo does not have this property.

@0scar I literally just did this in Photoshop, and managed to get a 3D object out of it and print it. Will post it as an answer to my own question.

@NLed Please do note that a  lithopane is not an accurate depth map of the coin, it does not map the surface of the coin, it maps the coin so that if you put it in front of a light you see a similar image as you started based on translucence. If that is what you are after, you should update your question, as it is formulated now, you want to get the coins surface map i.e. 3D profile.

@0scar Photoshop will take a minimum value in cm/mm (black) and maximum height (white), anything in between that gradient will have a height between min and max. I'm going to answer and do a tutorial to my question.

@NLed Yes but the problem is that the image of your coin is not in a black to white scale, it is a color scale with highlights, so you cannot make a heightmap. The stars and the 1899 are placed on a plane surface, but if you make a gray scale image of this and convert to a heightmap you never get the actual coin. This is what Trish and Sean hint at.

I designed a coin to use as a tokens for a RPG. I decided to make it from scratch instead of making a height map. I tried two different approaches.
Smooth height changes
I found a 3D model of the head I wanted to use on my coin. Then I cut it in two, and placed on of the pieces flat side on top of the coin. I then flattened the head to make it more appropriate for a coin. When I sliced it whit the layer height supported by my printer I noticed that I lost too much of the details in the head.
Layered height changes
I found a picture of the head I wanted to use and drew outline of the different parts of the head that I wanted to include. I then added each drawing with a different thickness to the coin. This gave me a clear drawing on the coin, and is what I ended up printing.

Printing
I printed the coins standing up. 2 of my 42 coins failed because the coin fell over during print. I printed 4 and 4 coins at the time, on placed in each corner of the print surface. I finished one entire coin before starting the next.

Thanks for answering!! How did you design it? What program did you use?

I used Fusion 360, which is free for non-comercial use.

If you have a depth map (a raster file with the height at each point), OpenSCAD has the ability to read the height map and create a 3D object.  That 3D object can then be exported as an .STL file, and sliced normally.
I have done this (maybe 3 years ago), and it worked well.
This site includes a list of available tools.  I probably used one of these, as I could easily convert my particular depth map to a PNG or other image file.
Once the file is in STL format, you can choose how best to print it for your printer.


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Compensating for smaller extruder gear
Assume somebody has a Monoprice Maker Select and has changed from the original brass extruder gear to a D4 Plus one, which is slightly smaller (10.6 vs 10.9 mm outer diameter).
This person might be wondering if he/she needs to compensate for this difference, and which setting that would be in Cura IIIP.
(Have never calibrated the extruder and am still not sure it is absolutely necessary, since the difference in the gear size is only 3%.)

Just re-calibrate your extruder steps/mm https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/how-do-i-calibrate-the-extruder-of-my-printer

If you change the extruder wheel for a different sized wheel, you need to calibrate the extruder to make sure that if you ask to extrude 100 mm it actually extrudes 100 mm. This answer on the question "How do I calibrate the extruder of my printer?" describes how to do that.
It is not required to flash your firmware. The G-code command M92 can be used to set the new amount of steps for the extruder. The Monoprice Maker Select has a Melzi control board that is running Repetier firmware. This G-code command is supported by Repetier firmware.
You need to be able to connect a so-called terminal to your printer. Applications as Repetier-Host, Pronterface, OctoPrint, and probably many more have so-called terminals where you can interface with the printer by sending command to it when the printer is connected through USB (please mind the communication speed of the board, called Baud rate, these are not the same for all boards).
Sending M503 will report the current settings for M92, e.g.:
M92 X100.00 Y100.00 Z400.00 E100.00

Extrude 100 mm without the hotend attached so you can measure the amount that is extruded. If that is 80 mm you need more steps $ \frac{100\ mm}{80\ mm} \times 100\ steps/mm = 125\ steps/mm $
You now need to send M92 E125 and the new steps are set. Use M500 to store the setting.
You could also change the flow extrusion parameter in your slicer, but it generally not good practice, it is better to fix the printer rather than adjusting in the slicer. However, if you do want to fix it in the slicer, as mentioned in the comments, you can also add steps setting in the start G-code script: "To get around flashing the new values to the ROM, you can add this to the machine settings in Cura under "Start Gcode" this way it will append your values at the start of every print.". Note that other slicers have similar functionality.

Will it not actually be easier to flash, though?

@TomasBy That depends on your skills, in principle this is easier.

To get around flashing the new values to the ROM, you can add this to the machine settings in Cura under "Start Gcode" this way it will append your values at the start of every print.

@PerplexedDipole Thanks for reminding, good suggestion! I'll add it to the answer.

This will affect your extrusion rate. The best place to change this would be in your E steps located in the firmware but you can also compensate for this by changing the flow percentage in Cura, a setting of 103% (10.9/10.6) should get you close.

I guess calibrating is better, as it may have been wrong all along.


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Apparently systematic nozzle clogging
A Monoprice Maker Select V2, upgraded incrementally with a Micro Swiss all metal hot-end, machined lever, and D4 extruder gear, systematically fails to produce complete prints, as seen below:

The following observations can be made.

The nozzle clog appears at different heights/elapsed times, so it does not seem to be because of heat creep, which ought to take the same time to take effect, each time.
All the clogs so far have been easy to clear manually, once the hotend has been made accessible.
The filament (1.75 mm PLA) is quite new, has only been sitting on the spool at the top of the printer, seems regular in density, is not visibly damaged etc.
In the original configuration, before the upgrading, the printer worked fine for some months.

One possible explanation might be inconsistent temperature in the extruder, but the display does not show any great variation.
Any other theories? These latest prints were made at 210 °C.

The nozzle clogging was verified, each time, by trying to extrude using the printer controls; and then cleaned manually by taking off the "cold end" part, heating the extruder, and pressing the remaining filament out by hand.
Not so long ago the nozzle was cleaned with ethyl acetate and a needle, so I do not believe carbon build-up is the explanation.
Cura settings:

Did you by any chance disassembled nozzle from heat block? There is a chance that the nozzle is not (or was not) adhering to the throat and that creates deposit which blocks filament. The best way will be to clean the block, nozzle and throat, especially thread.

Possibly the same question as "Extruder prints fine up until further down the print"

Now you have your print settings added, I've updated the answer. Basically, you print too hot, too slow and have a far too high retraction length. This causes heat to affect the filament before it enters the nozzle, with high retractions (retracting hot/flexible of heat filament) you then quickly cause a blockage to develop.

The Micro Swiss hotend uses an all metal hotend. These type of hotends are more difficult to operate considering they do not have a Teflon liner that shields the filament from heat exchange from the cold end (the Teflon/PTFE tube acts as an insulator). From this article:

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.

The bold faced text in the quote sums up what is causing this. A smaller gear requires more force/torque as the arm i.e. the radius is smaller.
The article describes what steps you could do to alleviate the problem. Of all the suggestions, "Minimize retraction", seems a possible candidate for you to look into considering the posted print settings. As this is a heat related problem it is advised to also increase your printing speeds, these are pretty low (30 mm/s for slow and 60 mm/s for normal printing) and also check the cooling of the "cold end" (the fan that cools the radiator fins). Also reduce the printing temperature, 210 °C is pretty high for PLA filament, personally I don't go over 200 °C (note that this depends on your filament, but most PLA brands can be printed in the 185 - 195 °C range).
You have a pretty large retraction specified. The Ultimaker default is 6.5 mm is considered to be large, but works perfectly for Ultimaker machines (read Bowden tube setup). In my Ultimaker 3E which uses all metal hotends, or, in my custom HyperCube Evolution, also Bowden, but with a lined hotend, 6.5 mm retraction works perfectly.
Please look into this answer and this answer. Both describe that the retraction performance is worse with all metal hotends. My experiences are exactly the same with metal hotends, at least the cheaper production ones (I tested cheap all metal hotends, but also ran into problems because of production and design errors, I have not tried the better quality heat breaks/throats yet).
Please lower the retraction setting considerably to see if it has an effect. The Monoprice Maker Select uses a direct drive. Direct drive extruders do not need a large retraction length setting. If the filament is hot in the throat (as there is no PTFE lining that in fact acts as an insulator), too large of a retraction may not be reversed when the filament cooles during the retraction.

I think you might be experiencing what is described in this question: "Extruder prints fine up until further down the print". This answer describes issues of the metal heat breaks.
To comment on your statement in comments above, I am not suggesting you should use a liner in your current extruder. I'm pointing out the differences. Metal hotends are just more tricky to operate regarding retraction and heat management.

@TomasBy You should increase the speeds, current values are way too low. Only for the first layer you could do a 20/30 mm/s (don't go under 20). If it was my problem I would revert to default Ultimaker Cura settings and start over by first reducing retraction.

@Oscar: there are quite a few differences between the default settings in the sw and the suggested values in the manual. I have now tried several different combinations of speeds, with low retraction and 200 deg. print temp., and am getting the same results all the time, with some minor variations. Under-extrusion apparently in the form of some temporary clogging (the filament spool does not move) but no actual clogging of the nozzle. I can extrude fine using the control panel.

@TomasBy That is the pain with those all-metal hotends (please confirm in the question that it is an all-metal hotend, so no PTFE lining in the heat break). It could be that when you extrude from the panel, the extrusion rate is higher than when you actually print, too low print speed cause heat to creep up.

Well, I have tried 30, 40, 50, 60 even 70 I believe. In the manual it says 70 mm/s is the max speed. It does not really seem to make any difference.

There are several reasons why the nozzles can clog.
Temperature:
If you set the temperature too low, the force to push the filament through the nozzle gets up. This can lead to filament grinding and this can lead to clogging. If you set the temperature too high while not extruding, the filament can degrade, which may lead to clogging. So always test the temperature and viscosity by manual pushing filament through the nozzle.
Nozzle Size:
Many users do not like to change the nozzle but for many filaments 0.4 mm is not advisable. Try 0.6 mm. The print quality is nearly the same @ similar layer sizes, print time goes down a bit and the likelyhood for clogging is close to zero. Reason is that the flow resistance is proportional to r^4.
Grind dust/traction force -> Retraction:
I suggest a max of 2 mm to 2.5 mm for direct extruders. Higher values bring no benefit and lead to filament grinding. Bowden Extruders can use values > 5 mm due to bending sometimes.
Feeder Spring
Sometimes the spring of the feeder loses tension over time, thus the filement is not pushed forward and instead, grinded down.
Feeder Gear
Another problem can be related with the pushing gear of the feeder (which you mount on the motor). I use gears with fewer theeth. They produce traction force and stay clean from grinding dust. Gears with many small teeth become dusty and produce less traction force.


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Geeetech Prusa i3 Extruder seems to push more filament, gear slips/skips?
I got my first printer, a Geeetech Prusa i3, and for the price I paid (160$) I am so blown away. As I saved so much money, I treated myself to a legit copy of Simplify3D, which I am happy with.
I'm using white PLA filament (supposedly 1.75 mm) with a 0.3 mm nozzle. The hotend temperature range is 215-240 °C and the bed is usually at 90 °C (with hairspray it gives a nice shiny solid bottom surface). My goal is to print with 0.3, or with 0.2 if 0.3 is to big for the nozzle (ideally a 0.3 nozzle can print 0.3 layer height).
The problem:
It seems that, especially on the first layer with bigger prints, or any layer that continuously pulls filament through the nozzle (outside lining of a layer), the amount of filament that gets "printed out" isn't enough compared to the amount of filament that is pushed in by the extruder gear. This, in my theory right now, causes the new filament to stay in place until the melted plastic in the nozzle is used, which then makes room again for more filament to be pushed through. Until this happens, the gear slips/clicks and can't pull anymore filament.
The mechanics seem to work well, and I don't think the nozzle is clogged. I would guess that some settings need to be manually adjusted to keep the amount of filament pushed through the nozzle equal or less than the amount the nozzle can actually push through, but what is weird to me is that this happens semi-randomly. I have searched online and the issue intermittently appears with other people, but I haven't found a solution yet.
What settings would I need to test?
Here is a link to some current successful prints and a layer mess up example(batman bust).
My biggest print so far (Batman Bust) is amazing, but even here you can see certain layers where the gear couldn't push filament through and the gear skipped a few clicks, causing it to print less when it was suppose to print on the following instructions. This happens a lot more, but when it happens during an infill you obviously can't see it from the outside. The individual layer-height seems maybe a bit too small (0.1 for batman), and the times where the extruder usually skips and clicks appear when I print bigger sizes (0.2 and 0.3). I want to start printing more complex and bigger things, so using 0.1 seems like an overkill in detail and takes way too long.
Edit:
My filament is the generic Geeetech white PLA that I ordered together with the printer.

Welcome to 3D Printing!

Can you specify the exact temperature your nozzle is at ? You mention 215- 245 °C, 245 °C is way to high for PLA and will result in minor clogs during long prints or complete jams due to over heating and carbonising of the PLA. Just try printing with 215 or 210 degrees only. Also please mention the brand of PLA filament your using . Next your Bed temperature is way to high , 60 °C works fine if your filament is PLA . I also suggest you should mention what are the current values of parameters like print speed, flow rate , number of perimeters , retraction height ?.

@ Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 Thanks, it's fun and I think it's good Motivation to pursue more engineering and coding projects!
@AxelFernandes I don't know these at the top of my head but I will post some of those after work! Could you explain how a hotter temperature would clog it? I would assume that the plastic would melt faster and therefore leave the nozzle easier?

A nozzle with a nozzle width of 0.3 mm cannot print a 0.3 mm layer height. You could do that but you should not as you ultimately pay the price in the form of a less aesthetic finish. The general rule of thumb is to maximize the layer height at 75 % of the nozzle width, so a 0.3 mm nozzle would allow for a maximum of 0.225 mm. The rationale is that the filament leaves the nozzle as a tube and needs to be flattened to make it flat and adhere to the previous layer, too high layer heights increase the pressure in the nozzle (more filament is needed) causing a less than ideal extrusion and cause the extruder to skip; this is identified by observing a distinct clicking noise.
Please lower your layer height (try 0.2 mm) and decrease the printing speed to see if this works better.
Furthermore, for PLA, temperatures for the hotend (unless you have some sort of a special PLA filament) and the bed temperature are too high. Please aim to print PLA at about 200 °C with a bed temperature of 50 - 60 °C.

This sounds right, I will try this after work.
The heatbed at 60 almost always ends up losing the print after the first layer, the hot heatbed (90) seems to work well and helps get the first layer to melt together a bit more before cooling off. I will try this later though and post here again, thanks!

Too high temperatures of the bed can cause "elephant feet" and should be avoided. Try cleaning the bed and use a PVA based glue or spray. 3DLAC works very good, but gluestick can also be used. The bed does not need to melt anything, it just is needed to get in the neighbourhood of the glass transition temperature of the filament. For PLA 60 °C should be more than enough.

@SeanHoulihane I'm not native English, but I do try my best, sometimes my phone makes up different words than I intend to write, less aesthetic means less beautiful for those who did not make it up from the context. Fixed the typo!

I fixed it!
The problem wasn't the temperature, it was the spring that puts the pressure on the little wheel against the gear. That was too strong, so the entry of the extruder was to tight. The gear worked fine and the settings worked well, I just had to adjust the spring a bit to carefully lower the pressure. I just printed another Golden Key and it looks perfect!
Thanks for all your tips on the other settings, I will experiment with tose to see if I can increase quality even more, but it seems to work perfectly now for a 160$ printer :)


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Cura 3.5 doesn't launch repeatably
When I was notified by Cura that 3.5 was out, I looked at the changelog, and I installed the new version. It worked normally for a time, until once when I went to launch it and cura.exe forever sat idle in task manager doing nothing. I reinstalled Cura 3.5 and tried again.
That then worked for some time, maybe another couple days, and then the same thing happened again. Rince and repeat, maybe for a few more cycles. Now, Cura 3.5 doesn't like to do anything even fresh out of the box. Restarting the computer does nothing.
I've looked at the cura.log file in AppData/Roaming/cura and found a peculiar line:
...
2018-10-10 21:49:33,591 - INFO - [MainThread] UM.VersionUpgradeManager._upgradeFile [369]: Upgraded .\fdmextruder+%232_user.inst.cfg to version 4000005.
2018-10-10 21:49:33,605 - DEBUG - [MainThread] UM.Backend.Backend._logSocketState [178]: Socket state changed to Listening
2018-10-10 21:49:33,650 - INFO - [MainThread] UM.Backend.Backend.startEngine [74]: Started engine process: C:\Program Files\Ultimaker Cura 3.5\CuraEngine.exe
2018-10-10 21:49:33,652 - DEBUG - [MainThread] UM.Backend.Backend._backendLog [94]: [Backend] Calling engine with: ['C:\\Program Files\\Ultimaker Cura 3.5\\CuraEngine.exe', 'connect', '127.0.0.1:49674', '-j', 'C:\\Program Files\\Ultimaker Cura 3.5\\resources\\definitions\\fdmprinter.def.json', '']

It looks as if the issue is when the Cura GUI tries to connect to its backend slicing engine. Is my analysis correct? Is this a known issue/is there a known fix?
I'm going to try to report this to Ultimaker if nothing comes up here.

This should be mentioned at the Ultimaker forums, not here. I have had similar experience with an older version of Ultimaker Cura. Removing the appdata and re-install fixed it for me. Look at this topic.

Yea... that seems to work. Any word on why the issue exists in the firstplace?

File bug reports.  Or, to be precise, first check for existing reports over at Cura, then file.

Yea... I'm in talks with NA support now. @0scar's solution worked for a few hours, or as long as I keep the cura window open.

Issues like these are not new, I have experienced similar issues (see e.g. this topic, but more can be found) with an installation of an older version. At the moment of writing there is already a reported issue with Ultimaker Cura 3.5.
It is generally best to mention problems with a specific software application at the developers own forum or tech support. This will catch a more specific type of users as well as the developers themselves.
A workaround, but not a definite solution, is to remove the settings (on the Windows platform these files are located in AppData/Roaming/cura) that Ultimaker Cura uses and remove prior installations and do a fresh re-install of 3.5 and see if this works. Just rename the directory to e.g. AppData/Roaming/cura_old, this way you can always go back.
The drawback of this solution is that all material profiles and printer setups are lost as you start completely new. This is not a problem if you have a single printer and no custom materials defined, but in my case it was a lot of work to get all profiles back.
These issues could be related to the profile settings and storage model, which, at the time of the older installations was not very stable. A new material model was required, if that has been replaced is still a question.

A crude solution if there ever was one, but it does work.

EDIT: temporarily..... The issue is back, even with clean config files.


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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.

I advise you to clean your PTFE tube. As I see you are using custom plywood frame. There might be some dust in your tube. Also try to increase extruder temperature by 5 degree. You can also put glass on your base because wood is not smooth as glass.your extruder nozzle may catch some wood dust while printing. Apply some normal clear mineral oil (called Sewing Machine oil in INDIA) on PLA filament with cotton. I never face clogging issue in my Tronxy X8. I just put few drops of oil on cotton and rub it on filament for approx 1 meter.

@Himanshu Dust in tube can happen (usually filament grinding dust), but the nozzle catching up wood dust seems very unlikely. Also when suggesting using oil, please do mention it to be vegetable oil, as this oil forms a nice coating on the inside of the hotend preventing filament to stick to the metal hotend, synthetic oils will not do that.

Possible duplicate of Extruder prints fine up until further down the print

Ok, you are using a Chimera hotend, does it have all-metal heat breaks?  This is kind of crucial for solving your problem. Please add that to the question by pressing [edit].

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.


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

Welcome to 3D Printing!

I'm honestly unable to tell if that's a genuine welcome to the 3D Printing site, or if that's a "that's 3D printing for ya!" comment. Haha. I think my z-axis woes may be colouring my view so I'll say Thank You! ;)

It's a definite welcome! We are glad you are here to ask your questions. We are also sorry you're having issues ... hopefully someone will have an answer for you :o)

Have you tried to replace the switch or the cable? Have you tried hooking up a 3D print terminal (e.g. Pronterface, OctoPrint, Repetier) and access the printer over USB. You could then send M503 to get the current settings, please copy them into the question (to prevent endless discussions and information hidden in comments) so others may help you solve your problem!

Yes, both Repetier Host and Cura (which I use now) is installed on my PC. Fantastic suggestion… which I will follow if the problem crops up again. The behaviour has disappeared on its own and I have no explanation for it. Many, many attempts at levelling before didn't work and then it just worked the next day when I levelled the bed without changing anything, it stopped in the right place. I think I will replace the endstop regardless.

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

Thanks. The acrylic plate was making contact and fully depressing the micro-switch. All cables and plates were attached and snug. Nothing was getting in the way but I appreciate those troubleshooting tips.
I had previously triggered the micro-switch manually and it stopped the gantry from lowering. The issue is that the Z then lowered well past the 0 point established by the trigger.
The behaviour has disappeared on its own and I have no explanation for it. Next time I levelled the bed without changing anything it stopped in the right place.

I'm not familiar with your particular model, so this may not be directly applicable.
For many printer models, a swing thru thingiverse.com will find you a replacement z-stop switch mount that uses a threaded screw to set the z-height at which the microswitch fires.  It may well be that you simply need to offset that height by a few mm to get your first layer to mate well with the print bed.
Here are three examples, albeit for various models.  12488  ,    1829747 ,
2856144

a good idea, mine is replaced as well.

Agreed, great idea. Thank you! Once I'm back up and running I'll print one for my model. That will definitely make things easier to set in the future.


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Hemispherical Bowl : how is it possible?
I was reading up about how to extrusion print an overhang greater than 45 degrees, when something weird stuck me.
I see lots and lots of 3D extrusion printed bowls that have perfectly printed hemispherical surfaces. However, given that there is some deformation expected as part of the print process, how is it possible to get a perfect hemispherical  bowl - where both inner and outer surfaces are perfectly hemispherical?
Note: I am not talking about surface smoothness, but about the shape of the bowl itself. I understand that surface smoothing will make the bowl look great, but it will not fix a deformation in the shape of a print.

Is the 3D-design tag necessary? I see nothing that implies this is something that has to do with design but instead this is a problem of turning a design into a print, which is [tag:slicing]

@Trish It may also dependent on design, execution or maybe a combination of both, therefore I added it.

you are speaking about pretty much a half ellipsoid-ring rotational body, which only has 3 parameters: thickness, long axis and short axis of one of the ellipsoids. The question itself presents itself as "How is this (simple) construction made printable?", which is quite more slicing, than design.

There are several factors playing together. For example orientation, printer & slicer settings and more.
Reminder
First of all, not all overhangs of greater than 45° need support. Many printers manage up to 60°, even 70° is not unheard of - with the right settings. Pretty much all printers manage tiny 90° overhangs.
U-Bowls (open side up)
Let's look at bowls that shape like a U - the dome is at the bottom. With a flat contact surface only the next areas need support, and with PVA or other easily removable support structures on the rise, it is no problem to use support and leave no trace. With support, there is no sagging, so the bowl gets its "perfect" look even though there are overhangs and support used.
n-bowls (open side down)
The other way around - dome on top - is probably the more "smooth" one, using different tricks to get it set.
The outer wall now sits on the infill like the inner we had before, perfect, but we used that for the inner wall before. But what about the inner one?! Well, we need no support for the sides till we reach, let's say 55° angle. Can we go further without support? Yes... if we are tricksy!

Print the walls from the center to the outer wall, as then the inner walls stand on the lower layer and can hold the new, neighboring, floating wall
Have more than 2 walls! Why? Well, simple math: You go up by $z$, and out by $(n-1)\times d$ where $n$ is the number of walls. We have a maximum overhang angle of $\tan^{-1}(z^{-2}\times((n-0.5)\times d)^2)$ before our walls don't stand on the wall below by more than a half wall. As one can see, $z$ and $d$ are fixed in that calculation while a higher factor $n$ directly increases the value of the angle. As long as there is support for the wall (like the neighboring, already printed wall), you get some kind of dome.
Print thinner layers. If you decrease $z$, you also increase the maximum angle that has one wall standing on half a supporting wall.
Print slow. Printing slower allows the material to cool and harden while still somewhat held up by the cohesion to the filament that comes from the nozzle. This can support a higher overhang angle.
Cooling. Together with slow printing, you might want to use an extra strong cooling solution to speed up the solidification. Aim well.
Print narrow1 domes. Why is it much easier to print more narrow domes than wider domes? Part of the answer is how much geometry does not need to be supported by itself, another part is the weight of the full structure: A narrow dome spans a smaller distance. This means it has less area of a high angle to the last layer, and the overhangs, in general, are shorter. This can result in better printing.

1 What counts as narrow is printer and filament dependent. It is no problem to print small spherical hollows in a print if they are just small enough as the overhang then is just short enough so it can carry itself. At some point it gets too much though.

Wow, what an excellent write up! This answers some of the questions I was alluding to in chat the other day. Much appreciated :o)

authors: Яна Михалицына


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Extruder drive cog slipping on filament
I've been printing PLA on a Pegasus 12" for 2 years. Print quality has been great but in the last few months the quality of the prints has deteriorated. After looking into it, it seems when the head moves away from the spool and puts the filament in tension (and pulls on the spool) the extruder cog slips on the filament.
That results in traces where no plastic gets extruded the furthest away the head moves from the spool (the spool is on the left in the picture below):

The cog slipping can be seen between 0:22 and 0:27 on the video below: the cog on the right spins continuously but the ball bearing on the left stops spinning for 5 seconds.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/cTfySUgXDy1XKXGv8
The end result is a part with multiple gaps, especially on the side farthest away from the spool.

I've cleaned the teeth of the cog (removed plastic dust) to improve traction but that didn't solve the problem. I've also tried to clean up the extruder by inserting a wire from the hot end side, no improvement in print quality.
Any ideas on how to fix that slipping problem?
Edit with solution:
To complement Oscar's answer below, here is what I've done that fixed the problem: it turns out the issue was coming from a lack of friction on the filament. To increase the friction, I've slipped a pair of 0.25mm thick pieces of plastic sheet between the bearing axis and the mount. See pic below.

That increased the force on the filament enough to fully solve the slippage problem. The print quality is perfect now (see pic below).

The plastic sheet trick is just a short term fix. I'm going to try swapping the drive gear for a slightly thicker one and contact MakerFarm to see if there is any long term modification they recommend.

does the same happen on a fresh spool of filament? it could be too humid or brittle, depending on the bend angle, which explains why it works closer to the spool. If it were just an extruder issue, it wouldn't likely work well anywhere.

Yeah I ran a comparison test with a new spool of filament, freshly opened but the problem still persists.

These symptoms are generally caused by friction in the extrusion path.
First, you should make sure the spool of filament can unspool freely.
Second, in order to prevent slipping of the filament, you should consider increasing the force of the roller bearing onto the filament and extruder wheel, or increase hotend temperature. A (partial) clog can also be causing this. You could try a "cold pull" or "atomic pull" where you heat up the filament to print level, push a little through by hand and let the nozzle cool to about 60 % of the printing temp and then steadily pull the filament out of the hotend, this should remove all gunk inside, repeat if necessary. A too low of a layer height can also put the filament extrusion under pressure.

As an aside, slipping of filament is often accompanied by an audible clicking noise. There are a few questions on this topic.
It also looks as though your bed is not centered in the middle as you are printing outside the bed limits in the front and have a little room left at the back!

I've tried a cold pull. The filament broke inside the heat break during the pull so I disassembled the hot end and cleaned the nozzle which had significant deposit inside. Unfortunately that didn't solve the problem.

In addition to the answers from 0scar, you might check your hot end temp. I was having a similar problem with slippage and prints that would literally fall apart in my hand even if they looked ok.
It turned out that the filament I was using which claimed to be PLA actually wanted a much hotter temperature than most PLA. Once I bumped it up to around 216-218 °C the slippage stopped and the prints came out beautiful. Might be a possibility if this is a new filament for you.

I've been printing at 225deg C consistently for the last 2 years with good results but just to be sure I did a print at higher temp (231C) and one at lower temp (207C). That didn't solve the issue.


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3d print aluminum valve cover for car
I am interested in 3d printing from aluminum valve cover for car SAAB valve cover
I am thinking of creating 3d scan and the placing order with i.materialize or similar online services.
I am curios if this is feasible at all, since  I am interested in 3d printing functional part not just a souvenir. Also since 3d part does not have smooth surface, will sand blasting help without affecting dimensions?
Also what would be an approximate cost of 3d scanning and printing?
I really do not know where to start and would appreciate any directions.

I suspect getting this 3d "printed" will be more expensive than buying it OEM and will not be as strong

Welcome to 3D Printing! I agree with @PerplexedDipole here and with answer below ... this is not a cheap process. 3D printing is used for "one off" and validation, not for production printing. If you had something special you wanted done (ie: and atypical design) this might be a way to go. But really, you could have a new one cast and finished from an old one cheaper than you could have one 3D printed. Personally, I'd go buy a TIG welder and some aluminum sheet metal and make my own before I'd pay someone to do as you're suggesting. I'm not dogging you here, it's just an observation.

@Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 there is robot-arm-welding, which can be a form of additive manufacturing, but the robots for that are in the 5 to 6 digit area. and the produced part needs to be postprocessed a lot. AFAIK it can't print in place. And the valve cover consists of more than one part assembled.

Thank you all for clarifying! Clearly, I had very poor understanding of 3d printing.

Printing in Aluminium is not very easy (like welding Aluminium is not easy as well) my company is looking into aeronautical applications. The powders are expensive and the end product it porous.

@0scar, Is printing from any other metal cheaper or easier?

No, metal printing is very difficult because of the large temperature differences, I've seen printed products warp 20 mm steel plates (this is where the product is build upon). Orientation and support material is very important, more than it is for polymers.

After careful inspection: the part is injection molded plastic as it seems. (look at the "underside"

@Trish I guess so, I have no expertise. All I know is that it starts failing fairly quickly (oil leaks). I am guessing plastic is simply not thick enough. I know for performance cars plastic valve covers are sometimes replaced with metal ones.  New parts are either pressed or CNC. CNC for BMW is about $2,000 CAD

You are checking apples against oranges here: Your part might be leaky because of various reasons. It could be a bad part. It could be the seals aging. It could be the wrong part for your motor. It could be, that a changed motor performance simply does no longer allow this part to work for you put more stress on it than designed. Sometimes plastic parts are even meant to break as safety features - better break this item and have the machine vent pressure here than vent the pressure because some other part breaks and vents the pressure into the user. But that is an engineering question.

On the other hand: the mose expensive part of CNC is not always the machine time, it is usually the material, as you have to "cut from the full". Atop that comes often design work or design protection fees. If a metal cover has the same or better performance to the injection molded plastic is hard to tell, but as it is an automotive part and might change the performance, it might make your car not longer matching the car type written into the papers - it might count as illegal tuning and void your insurance. I am not a lawyer, but inform yourself.

This is a very large part. My estimate for the cost would be a few thousand to get this printed in metal, if not tens of thousands (assuming it even fits the maximum build volume of the printer, which is only 440mm on its longest axis).
3D scanning also isn't a very reliable way to reproduce parts, especially for something mechanical that needs to be precise. You can not just scan something and then print it like making a photocopy. A lot of manual design and reverse engineering work would be involved.

atop that... I don't even know of any aluminium printer. I know they use steel...

@Trish https://www.stratasysdirect.com/materials/direct-metal-laser-sintering

@Trish At work we print Aluminium, but it is pretty difficult. Scalmalloy is one of the few powders that can be used too print in Aluminium. We also print superalloys, which are very heat resistant materials typically found in the hot path of jet engines.

@Trish - I'm aware of stainless steel & titanium, which Koenigsegg talks about in this video Not the "typical" 3D printing method, but still additive manufacturing. The end print looks pretty magnificent if you look at the quality and what it actually does.


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Using heat-set inserts with SLA printed part
I have an SLA printed part I want to put a brass threaded insert in using a soldering iron. The insert is slightly larger than the hole so I would assume the edge will melt and re-freeze around the teeth. Are there any issues with melting SLA or this idea in general?

Why not go with a press-fit, plus a couple drops of epoxy if so inclined?

@CarlWitthoft it's a thin thru hole unfortunately, and when I modified the design (this is an assembly not a single part) I can no longer access the back face to put a nut on, hence the idea of making it threaded.

The plastic used in SLA printing is what is known as a thermoset plastic, as opposed to the thermoplastic plastics used in FDM printing. What this means, is that it can not be melted. The reaction that hardens SLA materials is irreversible. If you heat up the plastic it won't melt, it will just burn (if it gets hot enough). What you're planning is a bad idea, and it won't work.

OK, that's that idea out of the window, but thanks for the advice. I don't think there are any good alternatives for putting an insert in sadly, looks like I'll have to put the mount somewhere else (it's an old model and I really don't want to reprint it).

Well, there's an indirect solution:  print the part with an oversize hole with a deliberately rough boundary .  Then line the hole with some fresh plastic, insert the metal part,  and heat to melt& fuse the new material into both the metal part and the boundary.    Seems like a lot of work to me.

@CarlWitthoft indeed. Thankfully there are other non-SLA parts in the assembly I can reprint more easily, it's just more awkward to mount the sensor there. But it looks like that's the best option.

Another approach would be to do as Carl suggests, but apply the liquid resin to the inside of the insert. If the resin is daylight cure or UV cure, placing the insert area in the sun should fuse the insert in place.

There is an alternative.  Use screw to expand inserts before final curing.
After washing, but before curing, place the threaded insert into the hole.  Use a screw to expand it into the hole walls.  Curing will then 'fix' the insert into the hole.
Hope this late advise is usable.
TC Carr
https://www.mcmaster.com/screw-to-expand-inserts/

Is it possible to make the hole larger, put the brass insert with a pre-installed screw inside the hole, fill the area with resin and cure with UV lamp?

Hi and welcome to 3DP! Unfortunately, your answer does not answer the question. Without wishing to sound harsh, StackExchange is a Q&A site, and not a forum of threaded messages. The reason for this is to aid the search for answers to issues, and provide it in a structured Q&A way. I know that this might seem a pain, but can you repost your question using the Ask Question link at the top of the page? When you repost your new question, please feel free to refer back to this original question using the URL, seeing as it is the reason why you posted in the first place. Thanks!


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On my TEVO Tarantula, is there a way to test that its heater pins are working?
I can no longer print anything because I get a E1 heating failed error on my TEVO Tarantula every time I try to heat the hotend. The bed heats just fine.
I've removed the heating element and thermistor from the hotend. The latter works fine, the temperature rises when I pinch it with my fingers. The element doesn't appear to have any broken connections.
I recently did some cable management and disconnected the element's wires from the board. After reattaching them, I was able to print a couple of things so the error has occurred since then. (They didn't turn out, btw, so maybe this was the beginning of a fault?)
The wires going to the board's E1 pins are secure. I've swapped them back and forth and reconnected them numerous times but no luck.
I know the most likely problem is a faulty element but before I buy a replacement is there a way to test the heating pins themselves? Some way to test the element separate from the printer?
Also, is there a way to have the element heat using the E0 pins? I've found tutorials on how to define the heater pins in Marlin but their code references don't appear in my configuration.h file.

I haven't tried it, but would assume you could put a multimeter (set to VDC) onto the two connections for the heater pins and check the voltage output during what would be the heating period. If there's voltage output, your heating element would be at fault.

Thanks. I'll try to get my hands on one (I've always wanted to own one). I've ordered replacement heating elements in the meantime so hopefully the original is simply shot. If not, I'll need to see about switching over to the other heater pins somehow.


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Inconsistent filament flow on anet a8
My Anet A8 was working and printing great until my hotbed connector snapped and shorted out my motherboard. After replacing the connections to my hotbed and my motherboard I can't print anything because the filament flow is very inconsistent. It often laying down nothing. See my included picture.
I've tried a bunch of suggested calibration settings but none of them worked:

increased extruder temp,
decreased speed,
increased flow,

Any ideas or thoughts would be great.

Welcome to SE 3D Printing! Have you looked inside your extruder housing to see if the filament is getting chewed up by the motor? Could be your extruder heater isn't heating and therefore not dumping filament.

Please list all the calibration steps which you have confirmed since this 'problem'. Start by assuming that potentially anything could have broken/come loose/been corrupted.

Thanks everyone for the tips. I posted this question on another board and it was suggested my extruder was clogged. After unclogging everything works great again.

Please note that the problems you faced are typical for the Anet A8, the connectors are underrated for the application. Also, do note that the stock firmware does not have thermal runaway protection, which is considered to be very unsafe and could potentially lead to burning down your house! Please flash a firmware that supports thermal runaway protection, like e.g. Marlin Firmware.

Basically you just tried to change some parameters to see if they have an effect. This is generally a good idea to get an idea of the problem, but a more technical approach would be to start from the beginning and exclude things you have tested. As for now you cannot conclude why the print looks as shown in the image, e.g. it also looks as if the nozzle to bed distance is too large.
The question remains if your 3D printer board did survive the shorting of the hotbed leads!
To troubleshoot this particular problem it is advised to check whether the extrusion process still does what it is asked to do. Disconnecting the hotend from the extruder and measuring how much filament is extruded would be the first thing to check. Please look into How do I calibrate the extruder of my printer?. It seems odd that the extrusion is off if the firmware has not changed, or alternative settings stored, but to be sure it would be the first thing to check. From this exercise you'll learn whether the firmware is set correctly and the extruder working properly. It can still be that the extruder gear slips, e.g. because the filament does not have a lot of friction when disconnected from the hotend.
When the extrusion process works and the commanded length is extruded, you can update the question with what you have done. After this, and if the problem persists, you can look into nozzle clogging and filament resistance for instance.


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CTC Formaker Air Printing
I have a CTC Formaker 4 in 1 3D Printer. It has worked great for a long while but now it is messing up. It will print fine for awhile and then the filament will stop coming out but the printer keeps moving like it thinks it is still printing. If I clear the print job and start over, it again prints fine at first but then I get the same end results. Please help me fix this problem. I have not been able to find a solution on Google.  Also I am using the latest version of MatterControl.

Welcome to SE 3D Printing! Have you verified your hot end is keeping heat? It could be the heating element is not keeping up. If, when you restart your print, the hot end is allowed to fully heat, it could start printing again without issue, then slowing down after the heat diminishes.

Help us help you! What is your expected behavior? Did you modify the machine? Is the filament getting ground to shreds? Is the temperature of your hotend holding? is your thermo-sensor and and heater cartridge properly seated? Are all the connectors to the bard properly set? are they working?

All of that checks out.  Everything was working fine and then this happened.  Nothing has been modified.  I just want to be able to get through a print.

Does this happen at the same point in the print every time? Is your head maintaining temperature? Is there friction on your delivery path?

It does not happen at the same point.  It usually prints for awhile then it does this.  I was printing a T-Rex skull last time and it almost got done when it stopped.  This last time is barely got started when it stopped.

This sounds like a clogged nozzle. Try driving the filament into the hot end manually to verify that the plastic is flowing correctly. If there is a clog or other impediment in the nozzle, the filament will become curly as it is exiting the nozzle. A clear nozzle will always result in the filament extruding as one straight piece.

it might be this or anything else - the question is not clear enough...

The nozzle is not clogged, the filament extrudes in a straight piece.  The temperature is all fine. It does stop extruding at the same point each time even though the extruder is moving like it is still printing.  In each print, there is more layers on one side of the print than on the other sides.  Just so you know I am trying to print the AstroPie case parts.  The first one that I printed was the base and it printed fine.  Then I started having the problem when I started to print the heatsink.

Increase the print temp.


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Z Axis inconsistency - Geeetech I3
I'm 3D printing almost 2 years, and I expected to have better result after changing to complete smooth rods with new bearings.
I have a problem with my Z axis giving me inconsistent prints; I already replaced the leadscrews, E3D clone with Bowden tube, I decided to replace all smooth rods on all axis and also the bearings. After I replaced all this, my prints are still bad, also I'm very dissapointed with the results after the replacements. I have checked all I could think of; PID tuning, belts, ....) but I'm running out of ideas.

Printing settings:

print speed is 40mm/s,
retraction is 3mm at 30mm/s,
extruder 205°C for the first layer, then 200°C

There is nothing wrong with your Z axis, your X / Y have probably some play or backlash somewhere in the system.

Welcome to SE 3D Printing!

Would you mind to try to explain your problem and attempted solutions till now more? I have problems understanding your problem.

Yesterday I tried some improvements, first I replaced the Y belt pulley, and aligned the frame which I thought to be non-perpendicular and removed the spool holder (which was the culprit of my problem) Attached photo shows a print after these improvements. I have insulation on my hotend.
I think this is the quality I could expect from this cheap printer. Maybe I could reprint X axis gantry, but I'm a little tired of doing something on my printer.

Update on my prints

I see some elephant foot, but i will fix this by lift nozzle a bit, but is there some more improvements (temp, retraction, z-hop, coasting, ....) ?

Did you have a spool holder on top of your frame? Than it was vibration (as I mentioned in my answer) induced by spool/carriage interaction that caused the problem. Print looks fine now! Glad to hear it is fixed! I have updated my answer to make it more complete.

Spool is not on the frame, it's on the wall, but i think i have to make some improvements for spool holder

Print look very good now. To understand what was causing this, I would guess that you had some friction on the wall spool?

From the pictures can be seen that you have good lead screws as there is no cyclic anomaly/wobble present at the side. It appears as though the lines at the sides of the print are more or less random X/Y positional inaccurate.
These lines can be caused by various reasons. From what is read you tried to improve the mechanical system by upgrading the hardware. It could still be the case that there is still some backlash or play left in the system (e.g. I had once had too much tolerance on the holes of the linear shafts in the printed X-Z mounts causing similar problems). Vibration should be looked into also, e.g. do you have a binding bearing or a large mass on the printer that interacts with the carriage movement like a spool holder on top of your frame. Or maybe the micro-stepping does not work optimally, so check the stepper driver currents.
If it is no mechanical issue, it could be that you are facing inconsistent extrusion caused by variation in filament thickness or gear slipping or too much tension on the filament by friction in unspooling. Or else a hotend temperature variation. Maybe insulation on the hotend helps.