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How to efficiently pack a build plate?
I have a project that has lots of parts to print. I want to pack as many as possible onto the build plate. Does anyone know of software that can do intelligent packing?

Consider not doing that ;-) If the printing fails midways you need to scrap all parts while the printing lead time will not be significantly faster if you print it in batches (certainly when a failure occurs you're better off with multiple batches).

Any good slicer can do so... but I recommend against stacking parts to achieve more than 8 hours in FDM. HOWEVER, stacking as much as possible in SLA and SLS reduces the running costs as you distribute the running costs of spare parts and material on all the printed parts.

mathematician here: "packing problems" are largely unsolved. The best you'd ever get is by rolling your own recursive code. See "simulated annealing" for methodologies.

@Trish not looking to stack parts, just fit more parts onto the build plate, 2 dimensional packing.

in SLS you pack 3D, in SLA you fill the platform as much as possible, in FDM, you don't want that.

@0scar: If you use fancy controller software over USB, some of the programs have support for cancelling just one object. You could still get damage to others from stray material if not caught quickly but apparently it still makes sense for some users...


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Part cooling fan on when printing TPU?
I could have sworn I read somewhere that when printing with TPU to make sure the part cooling fan is blowing. But I just did a quick Googling and couldn't find anything stating such on Matter Hackers or All3dp.
I currently don't have a part cooling fan attached (waiting for square nuts to come in). I've been able to get by printing PLA without the fan. I'm curious if this is going to be a major obstacle with TPU.

In my experience printing PLA without cooling is an utter mess of warping/curling corners, so my guess would be that if the stuff you're printing is such that you're happy without a fan for PLA, you'll probably also be happy without a fan for TPU. But I haven't printed with TPU yet (just modified-PLA flex materials) so I don't think I'm qualified to give a real answer yet. Incidentally I have my first roll of TPU arriving tomorrow to play with, so if I find anything interesting I'll post an answer for you afterwards.

By the way, you could just print the square nuts you need to attach the fan....except that you're going to have a hard time printing that kind of detailed part in PLA without a cooling fan.

TPU seems to need about as much cooling as PETG in my experience: A bit doesn't hurt, but none is also just fine.

My preliminary result with TPU seems to be that you want low cooling fan, if any, so you're probably ok without it. Too much fan seems to preclude not layer bonding, but bonding of adjacent wall lines. I'll follow up with a real answer after more testing though.

You'll probably be fine printing TPU with no fan. I just started printing with TPU, and did a lot of test prints to find out what settings work. Fan made little difference. With hotend at 230 °C, which I started out with, 0-20% fan was fine. I eventually increased temperature to 250 °C, which made extrusion more consistent and allowed me to reduce linear advance K-factor somewhat, and at that temperature having a bit more fan (I'm using 40% now) seems to help the material hold its shape, but it mainly made a difference at higher print speeds (over 35 mm/s) where the motion of the nozzle was "pulling on" the still-very-soft material just extruded. At 30 mm/s and below, fan still doesn't seem very important.
All of this is likely to vary somewhat with the properties of your machine. However I think it's safe to say you should be able to find a combination of print speed and temperature that make it possible to get by with no fan.
Follow-up: Upon further experimentation with TPU, I would say you really don't want any fan at all, except possibly for bridges. I've found significant distortion to shape just from air pressure from the fan, and at higher speeds the fan makes the print brittle just like what happens with PETG. Layers of TPU really seem to want time to melt together to bond, and without a fan blowing on them they don't seem to lose their shape during that time.

This is pretty consistent with my first print too. The only real problem I had was with bridging. The file (a phone case) has two gaps to bridge for the charger and mic hole. I assume that once I set up cooling those bridges will be better.

@Lux: Same problem here. ~40 mm bridge was good, only one string drooping. Credit card length bridge did poorly though. Probably should experiment with supports & use Cura's support tree to handle these bridges.

Sharing fan percentages like in this answer is only helpful if you use the same printer model, cooling fan and cooling duct. As there are many 3D printers and many cooling fans, ducts and solutions, this cannot be readily adopted to every 3D printer.
So, in such a case I would rely on the manufacturers of the filament e.g. the flexible filament I use has settings for different printers listed here. TPU is not very prone to warping. The general rule for cooling of TPU is found to not use it for the first 2 layers and after that proceed with a moderate cooling flow. What that value is for your printer is left as an experiment. Several test/calibration print designs exist (e.g. for bridging) to test this out. It is said that a little cooling aids in better aesthetic prints (finer details) while less cooling results in stronger layer adhesion and thus stronger prints.

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sort: votes


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Anet A6, Marlin 1.1.x, bed leveling with sensor probe
I have an Anet A6, an SN04 sensor for the Z-axis, and Marlin 1.1.x software that has automatic bed leveling enabled.
My question is (looking at the image below): "It seems my bed leveling is not working correctly. What can I do to improve it?"

You can see several things below:

I tried to use glue to make the first layer adhere better.. works only for small prints;
the middle part of the print is being done quite okay;
the outer part are either too low or too high.

I used the following procedure to get my leveling "right":
First I set the z-offset with the M851 command, followed by M500. Then I performed the bed leveling with G29 T, followed by M500. Then I started my print.
Maybe I need more grid points for my bed leveling, even though I have this interpolation method on. Or do I need to check the implementation of the bed leveling, maybe something is just plain wrong in the software.
What is your recommendation?
Current bed level status (M420 V)

Send: M420 V
Recv: Bilinear Leveling Grid:
Recv:      0      1      2      3      4      5
Recv:  0 +0.709 +0.609 +0.519 +0.456 +0.448 +0.404
Recv:  1 +0.525 +0.440 +0.370 +0.325 +0.304 +0.298
Recv:  2 +0.368 +0.282 +0.222 +0.177 +0.189 +0.182
Recv:  3 +0.221 +0.152 +0.100 +0.055 +0.069 +0.082
Recv:  4 +0.086 +0.020 -0.028 -0.060 -0.050 -0.020
Recv:  5 -0.027 -0.093 -0.138 -0.187 -0.163 -0.146

It's almost 1 mm off according to the grid, I would start levelling the bed better.

The whole bed is slanted by ca 0.7 on the front row and .5 on the back, and 0.3 from left to right at the top, -0.1 on the bottom. That screams "relevel!"

@Trish but wait... shouldnt this bed level thing compensate for the skewness??

Yes it will, bit still you need to deliver a bed as level as possible, this bed needs manual levelling. Automatic levelling is not magic, if the bed is not level your prints don't have a straight bottom and are skew. It levels out in about 10 mm, depending on firmware settings.

@0scar ah thanks. But if it does correct for it.. then how come this first layer is not properly corrected? Currently my thought is that maybe the correction matrix is used in a 'transposed' way. A reason I could think of was that the bed leveling starts in the bottom right corner, but my bed origin is in the bottom left. Of course a simple correction can be made for that, but I cannot check for now if it does

That is strange, starting in the right (wrong ;-)) corner. Can you share your config file by posting it somewhere online, e.g. PasteBin?

Will do that! But will take some time because of a week holiday. Another thing I tested was the level of G1 Z0 after bed leveling that I skewed on purpose. That seemed to show a proper correction with the bed level data.
So maybe it is that the bed leveling and z offset are too noisy somehow.. Will get back at you!

Eventually it was a mixture of things that sort of solved this.

Setting the Z-offset a bit more tight helped some
Probing with more gridpoints helped
Instead of using glue, I used painterstape. Way easier to refresh and easier to take prints off. I wanted to try kapton tape, but painterstape was good enough for now.
Manually leveling the bed to a better position also helped.
(After edit) recalibrating my two z-axis motors.

In the end, I think my bed has become a bit curved over time. So a final solution would be to print on a glass bed, but that was not really an option when using the SN04 sensor.
I am moving now to a BLTouch sensor + glass bed to make everything perfect again.
EDIT: important note, I also put off bed heating. Since I am working with PLA, it was not really necessary. Doing this allowed me to use painterstape, otherwise it would 'fall off' eventually.
EDIT2: I think I have thought of a better explanation. I am using an Anet A6 and it might be because the x-axis was not parallel to the plate. Meaning that my two z-axis stepper motors were not calibrated properly.

Painterstape is good enough, but has to be taken into account in leveling. With a touch probe it automatically is, but with an inductive one, you need to account for it.

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New PETG spool from eSUN is making popping sound while extruding
I just bought new eSUN PETg filament. When I started to extrude it, I heard popping sound same as moisture boiling out of it. I don't expect new eSUN vaccum sealed filament having moisture content. Is there any problem with my e3d v6? Is it possible that due to old filament, moisture is residing inside my extruder assembly and new filament is carrying it while extruding?
My settings :

print temperature: 250 °C,
bed temperature: 80 °C,
retraction length: 6.5 mm,
retraction speed: 25 mm/s,
print speed: 10 mm/s,
layer height: 25 micron

What do I do in this case? Should I clean the extruder assembly?

10 mm/s print speed is very low, try with at least 50 mm/s.

Do you actually mean 25 micron (0.025 mm)? That's an extremely thin layer height and I doubt PETG's properties admit printing that fine even if your printer could manage. In my experience PETG likes thick layers.

Was the spool vacuum sealed before you opened it? Did you put it right from the box onto the printer or did it rest some time? How long did the sealed bag sit on the shelf?

How do you know it's new?  might have sat in a warehouse for 5 years

Welcome to 3D Printing Stack Exchange!  Nice first question, but you should still take the [tour] and read over the [FAQ] -- you'll get a little rep for doing it, at the least.

You should always dry new spools of nylon, PETG and flexibles in the oven. ABS and PLA likely not needed.

It really isn't reasonable to expect moisture to be inside of the extruder assembly; it would be the filament. Assuming there was moisture somewhere, the filament would not have time to absorb it in the short time it is inside of the extruder. Once it got to the hot block, any moisture would steam away and shouldn't give you that snapping sound; the moisture needs to be inside of the filament for that.
Because the filament is inside of a vacuum packed bag with a desiccant doesn't really mean anything if you think about it. The desiccants are typically inside of the spool hole and the plastic bag seals that chamber where the desiccant resides. The filament is on the other side of the spool and the desiccant can't really do anything beyond dry out that pocket of air that it is inside; the filament itself isn't really exposed to the desiccant.
If you can also imagine a balloon, do you know how the air/helium slowly leaks out of it after a few days until you're left with a sad pocket of air loosely contained in a bag of wrinkly rubber? You can imagine your bag that the filament came in as a balloon too, but instead of leaking air out, it is leaching moisture in. This of course takes a really long time and depends on the quality of plastic the bag is made of, its thickness, and the quality and properties of the material the filament is composed of. Because the desiccant isn't between the bag and the filament, as soon as moisture gets in the bag, it's likely it'll be immediately exposed to the filament.
When I first started 3D printing, I opened up a fresh spool of black ABS from ColorCubed. It was nicely vacuum packed and with a silica-gel packet, but after immediately opening it and putting it in my new printer and then printing with it, you could tell it was so saturated with moisture that you'd swear you could wring it out.
It is possible you got a shoddy spool, it is possible that you got a really old spool. I'd advise looking into some techniques to dry out the filament and going from there.
Welcome to the community, by the way!

The extruder can't hold much water and transport it to the melt zone.  Filament can.  The printer behaves like the filament is wet, so try drying it.
Try putting the filament in your electric oven at the lowest temperature (often 170 °F to 180 °F) for an hour and see if the behavior improves.
Keep the filament at a distance from (or shield it from) the heating elements.

Remember to keep a really close eye on it too if you're trying to dry it in an oven; I've seen other people who put their spools in the oven to try drying the filament and have the spool itself actually melt and ruin all of the filament, even at low temperatures.

250 °C is a bit hot for PETG - It's in the range, but on the hot side. Popping is usually due to moisture. I've had many new, vacuum sealed spools of filament have moisture in them. Try drying it.
I'd recommend a dehydrator rather than an oven; with PETG I wouldn't go over 150 °F.
The problem with an oven is the extreme radiant heat from the elements can (not always) melt or deform the spool or even fuse parts of the filament in the spool together.

eSun has had quality problems recently (mid 2020), when they switched from the screw together clear reels to the molded black reels. I got an unprintable roll of PLA that was wet and brittle, others reported similar issues. This is theorized to have coincided with them moving production to Vietnam.
Try to dry it, but if that doesn’t help, try a different brand. As far as your settings, I’ve printed a couple reels of the eSun PETG successfully at 235 °C, with 75 °C bed (though bed would have nothing to do with moisture). Agree 10 mm/s print speed is excruciatingly slow. 50 mm/s is typical for a Bowden setup.

I understand that you write that if it happened once, it could have happened in the past that they shipped filament with high moisture content. At the date of posting the question, January 2020, does this fall in the window of eSun has had quality problems recently? If not, you might want to add a time-frame to that for readers stumbling upon this question with these problems.

@Oscar I looked back when I got the bad PLA with the different packaging, I got the good esun April 2020, the bunk roll in October 2020, but I imagine the changeover of stock might have been gradual throughout 2020? There’s a bunch of complaints on the Amazon reviews, long time customers who were having problems after the move. Hope they can figure it out, the Shenzhen eSun was the best I’d used.

authors: Вероника Шарипова

authors: ธนกรณ์ เหลาทอง


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AnyCubic Chiron shifting in Y axis
I have an AnyCubic Chiron, and sometimes the bed doesn't move correctly.  This causes the prints to shift and ruins the print.
I've spent a lot of time watching it, and noticed that when this happens, the belt stops moving for a short period of time, and then a "thunk" and it continues printing, with the slight from when the bed wasn't moving.
I've captured a video that demonstrates this.  You can see it get stuck about 22 seconds into the video.

It's a new machine, and printed fine for the first 5 or so prints, and then this problem started happening.  Now almost every print fails.
Things I've checked:

Belt tension seems fine.
Belt is not slipping.
The bed moves smoothly back and forth, no binding, nothing in the way.
When it's failing, it doesn't seem to be because the head is stuck on the print.
The screws attaching the pulley to the shaft are tight.
The same G-code file that used to print successfully now fails, and not in the same spot every time. Doesn't seem to be related to what I'm printing.

I'm not sure where to go from here.  Is this a bad stepper?

Welcome to 3DPrinting.SE! As you have looked into the mechanical aspects, the electronics are a big suspect in solving this issue. It looks as if it skips a whole lot of steps.

did you check for the possibility of the bed cable chain dragging somewhere, possibly from a piece that fell into the printer?

I did check for the cables getting stuck on something - nothing seems to be in the way. I can move the bed back and forth by pulling on the pulley belt by hand and it feels smooth.

The only thing that makes me suspect something mechanical is the little "thunk" when it starts moving again, like it got physically stuck and then unstuck. You can hear it on the video.  Need a printer whisperer to tell me what that means.  :)

I hear a thunk like that in 2 cases. 1) putting down first or second layer with insufficient clearance so extruder doesn't release any material & the filament advancer slips.  2) too much material released, making mounds or blobs which solidify high enough that the extruder tip runs into them next layer around. This can  push the part and/or drivers off position

YOu may well have a high point on your bed there - see how your first layers aren't covering very well.

In the photo you can see it continues to drift even when it's extruding over nothing. Seems like that would rule out bed movement blocked by the head hitting the model or the bed?

AnyCubic Support suggested I swap two of the motor drivers (X and Y) and after I did that, the problem disappeared.  I've had a half dozen good prints in a row now, no problems at all.
The drivers are inside the computer module - had to flip over the printer, take off the cover and pry out the top two modules and put them back in swapped.  Not difficult, but probably worth getting advice from AnyCubic before going ahead and doing it yourself unless you're comfortable with this sort of thing.


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Why can't I use PLA with ABS in a dual extruding 3D printer?
I have a XYZ Da Vinci duo and I want to run water soluble PLA with ABS How can I do that?

PLA Is not water soluble, don't you mean PVA? Note PLA and ABS arre different materials requiring different temperatures.

First of all: PLA is not water soluable.
Second: You want the melting points of the plastics to be as close as possible. PLA is printed between 180 and 200 °C. ABS is printed at 220 to 240 °C.
PVA on the other hand is water soluable and is printed in the same temperature range as ABS.
The setup is dependant on your slicer: you need to select one extruder as being the support structure one, the other as the main body one. Then you assign the filaments to them. Without knowing your slicer, I can't asnwer this better.

PVA adheres well to PLA, Nylon and CPE; adhering to TPU and and ABS is experimental.

While OP surely didn't mean PLA, 215 is in normal range of usable temperatures for PLA and 220 is probably not going to go badly wrong. 180 IMO is not usable; extrusion rate will be highly limited and pressure dependent.


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My printer is making mistakes on the right half of the print, but not the left
I am an absolute beginner having issues with my Monoprice Maker select v2 printer.
The left half of my prints look fine but the right half always gets messed up. When I watch it print the right half of an object it seems that the PLA isn't sticking even though I level the bed thoroughly beforehand. I don't think the problem is that the right half of my board is not sticky enough, because when I move the print so that the whole thing prints on the left half of the bed the problem persists.
I have attatched a photo to show what I am talking about. Any help is appreciated
Edit: I'm using inland pla. The extruder is at 220° and the bed temp is 60°

Looks like bed isn't leveled.

And in need of some glue or spray to adhere it better. You could try even better levelling and increase bed temperature. Please post temperatures.

unlevel bed and a dirty bed.

@Trish is it possible that my bed is dirty after just one print? I've only had it for a week or two.

if you touch it with your fingers, you might leave grease, which can impact the adhesion. However, it should be a mechanical thing. For new machines I suspect either an unlevel bed or an X-beam out of position. Note that 220°C for PLA is WAY too hot. At that tempoerature PLA gets super runny and doesn't properly stick. Go down to 200°C and try again.

@Trish: I use 215 for first layer with PLA, 210 after that. 220 is on the high end but doesn't seem extreme.

I found the problem. This model of printer Monoprice Select v2 has bed warping issues so when the bed heated up it would warp severely. I bought a glass bed and all my problems were solved.

Try cleaning bed with isopropyl alcohol to remove grease from the bed. (increases stickyness)
Try increasing bed temp to 70°C (increases stickyness)
If this is not enough, do a fresh bed leveling.


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Bed temperature command going to 0 °C with no obvious reason when print is started
Configuration

Printrun/Pronterface
Slic3r 1.3.0
Windows 10
Arduino Mega + RAMPS 1.4
Marlin 1.1.9
Prusa i3 -- Hephestos BQ with following modifications:

450W PSU (230V to 12V)
heatbed
3D touch
led stripe
ps_on with relay on the PSU

Issue conditions
I was printing fine until something happened, do not know what.
What I can tell is I can reach any bed temperature with Pronterface, and for any duration. (my little 450 W PSU provides enough power for my needs, like 60, 70 or 80 °C, a bit hard for 85 °C though)
But as soon as start the print (when the temperature is already ready extruder and bed -- and as I always did), the motors move the extruder in the bed center and then I get the following error :
Error:Heating failed, system stopped! Heater_ID: 0
[ERROR] Error:Heating failed, system stopped! Heater_ID: 0

Error:Printer halted. kill() called!
[ERROR] Error:Printer halted. kill() called!

If I check the temperature with M105 ; temp report, the printer gives me:

before I press the "start print" button >> T:245/245 , B:80/80
after I press the "start print" button >> T:245/245, B:80/0

so bed temp command is fine.....until I start the print
Temp command set to 0
What causes the printer to be halted is a huge temp difference between command and sensor.
In the provided G-code, the bed temp was lowered to 30 °C, which helps :

running the test faster
this shows that the problem is still going on (bed temp command to 0 °C)
I can "print" (move the nozzle without error but the PETG won't stick to the bed) and I don't get temp error.

See the full log here.
So, what does cause the bed temp command to get to 0?
Not from G-CODE
I checked in the G-code, and there is no M140 *0 nor M190 *0 until the end of the G-code, and I'm sure the problem is not comming from the slice/G-code because I ran some previously successfully run G-code/config and they fail the same.
Not COM related
I ran the same gcode on sd card (to see if the USB was involved), but the behavior is the same: as soon as the bed temp is reached and print started, the bed temp command is set to 0 (I can see command on LCD screen).
Hardware related?
I did not change the firmware, and print were going fine, before the printer was doing this, so I guess the root cause is Hardware.
Firmware involved
Because of the "0 °C command", the firmware react to something but I could not understand what is happening here.
when checking the firmware code, the only reasons why bed temp is set to 0 when print is running without asking for it would be

gcode_M140()/gcode_M190(): it could be bad interpretation of ascii command.
_lcd_preheat() ?
PID_autotune() : PID algo error?
ABORT_ON_ENDSTOP_HIT_FEATURE_ENABLED : maybe but it would also put the extruder temp command to 0

nothing that would really explain this...
Any hints?

I tried, by instrumenting code, to know where/when the temp bed is modified.
I found that it is called in the gcode M81 when starting the print.
Wait M81? isn't it M80 to switch on the PSU?
What I did in fact was both wiring this up side down and mixing M80 with M81.
But what I didn't know is that M80 and M81 are not strictly opposite functions.
Indeed, M81 puts the PS_ON signal to PS_ASLEEP != PS_AWAKE but also disable all heaters.
I couldn't see it without serial trace because the extruder temp is set back after the M81, but not the bed temp.
Problem solved.
Hope this can help people in the future to spend less time than me on that simple mistake.
Note: What remains a mystery, though, is: why was it working before on previous prints and then, suddenly, broke?!!

authors: نورا الجماعي


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Ender 3 Y Layer Shifting
My school started a robotics club this year and one of the teachers gave us an Ender 3 printer to use, they assembled it the year before but never actually used it so it was sitting in their garage, I attempted to print several different objects but all of the larger ones seem to suffer from layer shifting on what seems like the Y axis. I've looked at other threads and tried stuff such as changing the binder clips (add adding more), leveling the bed (again), tightening the belts, moving the print position to a corner, using a different slicer, and reslicing the models which all fail, when I print smaller objects, it prints fine. What could the problem be and what can I do to resolve this? I'm using Cura 4.4 currently.
Failed print:

What it should look like:

Successful print (smaller object):

Edit: I'm also using OctoPrint on a Raspberry Pi for remote control but the issue still occurs when printing from an SD card.

Is the Y belt tight? What are your jerk and acceleration limits set in the slicer?

@R..GitHubSTOPHELPINGICE Yes, I tightened both the X and Y belt, print jerk is 20mm/s and acceleration is 500mm/s
I'm using the Magic0.20 profile from https://www.chepclub.com/cura-profiles.html (had the same issue with the default profile)

Do the cables of the bed get caught on something? Does the bed run smoothly without the belt? What is the print speed?

Fixed it finally, seems that the X axis was not level. Thank you to everyone who commented.

Do you have an understanding of how that caused the Y shifting? It would be interesting to hear more

The entire issue was on the x axis, it didn’t have anything to do with the y axis, the x axis was lower on the right side. My bad for confusing the x and y axis :)


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Will Mod Podge work with PLA prints?
Looking for something to smooth out a PLA print. Would Mod Podge be a good solution? Will it stick?

From what I've read about Mod Podge, it is an adhesive with a vinyl acetate base. As such it is similar to both PVA (used for wash-away support) and ordinary white glue. One of the more common references to the product refers to it not being water proof, although the outdoor version of the product presents as being water-resistant.
As part of the research for this answer, I found references to overly-thick coats becoming milky. This follows a reference to applying thin multiple coats and allowing proper cure time between coats. That proper cure time is listed as 28 days.
Another set of posts suggest to cure the MP more rapidly than 28 days, one can heat the item in an oven to 175°F (80°C) which should not cause the PLA to melt, but may allow for sagging of unsupported parts. Testing is recommended.
MP is an adhesive, is known to stick to non-porous surfaces and would be no more harmful than glue stick for a PLA (or ABS) model.
Durability is uncertain. If you intend to paint the item after sealing/smoothing, you'll gain durability and water resistance.

I have used Ponal Express, a woodglue, as a smoothing layer inbetween a somewhat sanded PLA and an acrylic paint. It had a good result to get it almost perfectly smooth. It stuck quite well, no problem with it getting off under painting. DO note though, that sanding the glue layer can tear of larger pieces of the film, so do only apply the glue as the last layer.
Now, ModPodge is pretty much made from PVA or wood glue. The same thing I used, pretty much. So yes, it will work.


text:
Does moisture cause warping?
I'm printing flat objects (like rectangular) with PLA on a glass bed and 70 celcius degrees (also tried 75 celcius too, 65 celcius and lower ends with adhesion problem in general). Also I use brims too. Most of the time, after a while it shrinks and warps (when print continues).
Room temperature is steady, there is no airflow to cool down things..
I tried to slow down to 20mm/sec. I tried to increase heat for first layer... Nothing helps.
I am suspicious about moisture of the filaments. Can it be related?

Warping is caused by the plastic shrinking as it cools and inadequate bed adhesion is usually the what lets it warp. Either cleaning your print surface very thoroughly with rubbing alcohol or using something like a glue stick on your print bed will mitigate that warping enough that you won't suffer problems with your print. Printing too hot can also be a problem because the plastic will need to even cool more after it is extruded and could possibly lead to more stresses buildup in the plastic.
The dimensional stability of PLA really depends on the quality of the plastic. Storage conditions come into play as well, but it is mostly the quality of the material you need to worry about; I have some cheaper PLA that has gotten brittle due to having absorbed moisture despite being in a (albeit somewhat loosely closed) package with desiccants, and I also have a different brand of PLA that is of much higher quality that I just leave out in the open; this PLA doesn't exibit signs of moisture damage. Higher quality filaments are designed to resist moisture better and be more stable in terms of dimensions. With the cheaper brand of PLA, I have also experienced warping, but that is not due to moisture in the filament; that was actually from a new roll.
When a filament absorbs too much moisture, it can become brittle but still print. Excessive moisture will cause any water in the filament to vaporize when passing through the hotend and form bubbles that will ruin the finish quality of a print. You'll know if filament is excessively wet because you will hear quiet and sharp snapping sounds as the result of the bubbles that are formed in the plastic popping. You will also be able to see steam if you examine your hotend with a bright light as it is extruding.
I'd suggest trying a different brand of filament if possible, cleaning the print surface / adding glue, or at the very least, a new roll of filament.
(When using a glue stick to increase first layer adhesion, it could be worth noting something unusual I found; adding glue to the build plate of a Prusa i3 MK3S actually reduces bed adhesion in my experience. It might be worth playing around to see if super clean works for you, or if super sticky does. The build plate is coated in a very finely textured PEI if that is some information that could help your case.)

Thanks! This seems like a really nice platform and I am excited to be a part of the network.

I m new to 3d printing and I am experiencing problems of adhesions. In my few attempts, glue was reducing adhesion because by the time the plate had been heated, the glue was completely dry. adding more glue right before the start of the print helped; but I'll have to repeat this observation.

PLA doesn't usually have water absorption issues. It usually prints just fine ... Maker's Muse did a video using 7yo PLA filament (IIRC) which had been stored in the open. Printed without issues. Not saying all PLA's are going to work as well, but I don't think it's a place I'd be looking first for an issue. Moisture in the filaments usually exhibits itself as popping and spitting as the filament is extruded leaving blank spaces in your print.


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Is it possible to attach a laser engraver to a SLA / resin 3D printer?
While trying to figure out if I should start 3D printing with FDM (Creality Ender 3) or with SLA (Elegoo Mars), I got hooked on the bonus feature of attaching a laser upgrade on the 3d printer to make paper cutouts and cards. I read that its quite easy for the Ender 3 and dozens of other FDM printer, but I could not find anything about adding a laser to resin printers.
Question: Is it possible at all to attach a laser engraving module to a SLA 3D Printer like it can be done to FDM?
Additional information about pro/cons regarding this topic would be nice and are truly welcome.

Why would you want to?  A resin printer has no mechanism for securing your paper stock to the build plate.

Not with consumer equipment.
FDM printers are functionally three-axis motion control machines: "extrude quantity W material at position X Y Z, continue to next W, X, Y, and Z."
Adapting it to control a laser position is a relatively simple task, because most of the logic is the same. "fire laser for W duration" instead of "extrude quantity W material". Moving the laser around is functionally similar to moving the print head around.
Consumer SLA (aka "DLP" or "mSLA") is an entirely different logic, a different process. It is effectively layer-by-layer snapshots, rather than multi-axis motion control. They do a whole layer at a time, then lift the whole object up for the next layer: "flash layer 1 for W duration, lift bed Z, proceed to layer 2."
Professional/industrial SLA printers that use lasers exist (like SLS), but they're tuned to precisely cure photopolymer resins, not cut things.


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MKS GEN L unknown motherboard error
This is my first time asking for some help on here and I have Googled, but only found a few reference to this issue. I know I am doing something dumb but I have no clue what it is.
I get an unknown motherboard error every time I try to setup my MKS GEN L. At first I found that in the boards.h file there was no reference to this board and the pins.h file was not there either. I have added both of these in and still nothing. I have checked the configuration.h and as far as I can tell I cannot find the error.
I have tried this in 1.1.9 and 2.x of marlin and get the same error.
The message is:

    Arduino: 1.8.9 (Windows 10), Board: "Arduino Mega or Mega 2560, ATmega2560 (Mega 2560)"

In file included from sketch\MarlinConfig.h:33:0,

                 from C:\Users\name\OneDrive\Desktop\Ender 5 1.1.61 version (1)\Ender 5 1.1.61 version\Marlin\Marlin.ino:31:

pins.h:235:4: error: #error "Unknown MOTHERBOARD value set in Configuration.h"

   #error "Unknown MOTHERBOARD value set in Configuration.h"

    ^~~~~

In file included from sketch\MarlinConfig.h:39:0,

                 from C:\Users\jcgra\OneDrive\Desktop\Ender 5 1.1.61 version (1)\Ender 5 1.1.61 version\Marlin\Marlin.ino:31:

SanityCheck.h:311:6: error: #error "BABYSTEP_ZPROBE_OFFSET requires a probe."

     #error "BABYSTEP_ZPROBE_OFFSET requires a probe."

      ^~~~~

SanityCheck.h:624:8: error: #error "Z_MIN_PROBE_USES_Z_MIN_ENDSTOP_PIN requires the Z_MIN_PIN to be defined."

       #error "Z_MIN_PROBE_USES_Z_MIN_ENDSTOP_PIN requires the Z_MIN_PIN to be defined."

        ^~~~~

SanityCheck.h:909:4: error: #error "HEATER_0_PIN not defined for this board."

   #error "HEATER_0_PIN not defined for this board."

    ^~~~~

exit status 1
#error "Unknown MOTHERBOARD value set in Configuration.h"

This report would have more information with
"Show verbose output during compilation"
option enabled in File -> Preferences.

My config file is as follows Config.h.
Please let me know if there is anything else you might need to help with this matter and thank you for your time and attention.

What firmware are you using? Marlin has your board in the boards.h file under 1110 in Marlin 2.x.

In this iteration I had 1.1.9.  I have used 2.x and I get the same problems.  In the later versons of Marlin the MKS Gen L is missing from Marlin all together.  It is only seen in the 1.1.9 so far unless I am missing something.

Well it's not missing in Marlin 2.0 on Github: https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Marlin/blob/2.0.x/Marlin/src/core/boards.h

I've just went over the configuration.h you posted, and it appears you're using the 1.1.6 (or older) release of Marlin. The MKS_GEN_L was added in 1.1.7

As explained in the answer by @towe, you are using an older version of the configuration file, it appears that you aren't using the latest sources from the 1.1.x and the 2.0.x trees.
In addition to the answer, the MKS GEN L is basically a RAMPS board with RAMPS pin layout except for a few pins. The board is defined in both 1.1.9 and 2.0.x (if you scroll down you see that it includes the pin definition for a RAMPS layout: #include "pins_RAMPS.h"). This being said, you could get it to work in pre 1.1.7 release of Marlin if you must. Choosing a RAMPS board for MOTHERBOARD constant and overriding/defining MOSFET_D_PIN to 7, X_CS_PIN to 59 and X_CS_PIN to 63 will make the firmware work. But, it is advised to get the latest version, even Marlin 2.0.x will run fine on Arduino Mega 2560 based boards.

bahh I did not catch that.  I have adjusted and this was what I needed.  The version of marlin i was downloading only had mks base and mks 1.3.  The version you linked had the right thing in it.  Not sure how i missed it.  Thank you!!!!

The MKS GEN L board was added in Marlin release 1.1.7 .
According to the configuration file you've linked and previous Marlin releases, your copy of Marlin is release 1.1.6. While all Marlin releases before 1.1.7 had "010100" as "CONFIGURATION_H_VERSION", earlier versions had less features than listed in your configuration file.
In Marlin 2.0.x, the MKS GEN L is also available.
Since you said it was also unavailable in 2.0.x, please provide a copy of your entire 2.0.x setup.


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Edge warping on BIQU Magician
Whenever I print something on my BIQU Magician 3D printer, there is often edge warping. What should I do to resolve this problem?

You should post the bed and hot end temperatures, the speed at which you print, the type of filament used, if any bed adhesive is used. Other factors which you think might be relevant should also be posted.

Hi Eric welcome to 3DPrinting.SE! Note this is a very common (adhesion) problem which has been asked before. Do note that you give too less information to work with.Photos are always welcome!

Your question is lacking detail and as such is hard to answer without knowing a couple of things about your printer setup. Please [edit] and fill in the [placeholders] in the template I added and then remove the leading "<" and trailing ">" afterwards. This will turn it visible and help us help you find the actual problem.

Do the edges of all prints (regardless of where they're placed) warp, or do prints warp more on the edges of the actual print surface? The first has been discussed extensively here, the latter might indicate a calibration error.


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Running costs of 3D printing
In the year that I have had my Flashforge Adventurer 3 I have just had a second extruder head break.  The replacement cost (in AUD) is 135.00.
But, I'll also need a new nozzle and a replacement ribbon cable for the extruder head.  That will add another $40.00.
Apart from filament costs, that brings the cost of "consumables" for my printer in the last year close to $350.00
I'm beginning to think this makes the running costs for my 3D printing very high, but I have nothing to compare this with.
Does anyone care to share what it costs them to keep a 3D printer operational per year?  Do my costs seem high?

Your running costs seem high, but realistic for a relatively closed-ecosystem printer. A replacement extruder head would've cost me around $20 on my printers. Nozzles are effectively free at $5 for 5, and I create the wiring harnesses myself.
As for other consumables, the things that spring to mind would be the V-slot rollers (around $25 for a complete makeover) and perhaps the extruder grab wheel (~$10 after lots of printing).

This is highly dependable on printer and the usage and is not answerable, this will more likely start a discussion. As such this is not a very good question to ask. E.g. my Ultimaker 3E (more than 10 times more expensive than a Flashforge Adventurer 3) doesn't need much maintenance, but if it does, the parts are expensive (e.g. nozzle "cores" for about €150, maintenance kit for €100+). After kilometers of 2.85 mm PETG I'm still using the first "cores". How does that compare to cheap low end printers?

@0scar I have a TronXY X1, which I swapped to a genuine e3d-v6, which still prints with its first nozzle and without any other maintenance done but the mods I installed to get it to run. MY ender3 though needed a replacement extruder, 2 nozzles and I am in my 4th or 5th build tak surface... it all depends on printer, setup and what you run through it! For example if you print PC, you either buy a 100€ ruby or print away stainless nozzles en masse.

Of the four comments so far, I have received one that could be considered an answer.  Just because it is not a technical question with a specific answer does not make it an invalid question.  I expected to canvas a range of opinions on this subject before summarising it all as an answer.  I accept that the question could be refined.  I'm really interested in 3D printers at the level an individual might buy and be responsible for rather than high-end ($50-$500k) equipment for business use.

Will, what is a "reasonable" maintenance is extremely dependant on your hardware! You might run your printer shop on 250$ printers and expect some 100$ in spare parts before your printer paid for itself. Or you might have a SLS printer, your running costs might be mainly power, powder and a costly laser-tube per 1000 running hours. Or you hava a stratasys system, you might pay only filament and power... and a quite expensive service contract per year... It all depends on your equipment!

I have a Prusa I3M3+MMU2, which I have had for a year.
During the first year, the display failed under warranty and replaced for free.  The power supply also failed, and although Prusa replaced it, I was in a hurry and bought another supply to use as a backup for about \$60.00.
I have used two rolls of paper towels, a bottle of acetone, and a quart of isopropanol, for maybe \$5.00.
I have bought a spare thermister for about \$10.00, but haven't installed it yet.
I bought a couple of new nozzles for specialized materials for \$35.00, but the nozzle I got with the machine isn't worn.
I bought the textured build plate (when it was finally available) for about $30.00.
So, my running cost, exclusive of electricity, is about \$140.00, including buying accessories which haven't been consumed.
I have also bought way too much filament, which you aren't counting.  Filament cost has dwarfed my other expenses.


text:
Printing Filatech PETG with HyperCube E3Dv6 Clone fails after 3 smooth layers
Recently I got a PETG filament from Filatech to print with my HyperCube printer with E3Dv6 clone Hotend. First 3 layers for every print are pretty fine but 4th layer doesn't stick and my prints fail like the picture below:

I use the following settings:

Slicer: Cura with Generic PETG profile
Hotend Temperature: 240 °C
Bed Temperature: 70 °C
Fan Speed: 100 % at the second layer
Print Speed: 50 mm/s (first 3 layers @ 30  mm/s)

I also tested 225 °C and 250 °C hotend temperatures. Both failing at the 4th or 5th layer. What is the issue here?
BTW I successfully printed with ABS and PLA with this printer.

PETG doesn't like to be cooled at 100 % fan speed. If it cools too much it won't stick (well) to the previous layer. When does the cooler fan kick in? I suspect after the 3rd layer.

Please add to your question when the part cooling fan kicks in at 100 %.

@0scar Added print speed and fan start layer. Now I think it might be related to both fan and print speed. 3 first layers print with 30 mm/s.

50 mm/s is about the upper limit of PETG for my filament with a E3D v6 @ 240 °C. I get better results with slightly lower speeds. I'm in the process of fitting an E3D Volcano to increase print speeds as I'm using 2.85 mm filament. Try lowering the fan speed first.

As this is material dependant, you are facing not a printer, but a settings issue: your slicer needs the right settigns to print PETG.
The first layers look good, but then we get signs of stringy printing. Stringy printing usually happens if the filament comes out of the nozzle too cold (I had tried to print PLA at 170 °C and it would look somewhat similar) or if it gets cooled or stretched too much (forced a print failure by speeding up a 60 mm/s print, somewhat similar around 250-300%; though the filament was not hot enough then too). This, in conjunction with the information, that you print PETG suggests the following things to fix:

Reduce or deactivate cooling. PETG often doesn't need cooling at all.
Reduce print speed. As 0scar said, 50 mm/s is a good upper limit on a well honed in machine. As your other layers with 30 mm/s were fine, you could possibly go down to 40 mm/s, if less cooling alone doesn't help.

Is the speed recommendation based on volumetric extrusion? For example, 60 mm/s and 0.6 mm extrusion width is equivalent to a 80 mm/s with EW 0.45 mm.


text:
Should I remove Cmagnet base for installing glass bed?
I was using Ender-3 Pro's CMagnet bed but I switched to glass bed (because original bed is warped) and left the magnet base (not the bed itself but the glued bed which CMagned sticks) on heated bed. So now it's 3 layered (heated bed - magnet bed's base - glass bed) bed.
Should I remove this magnet bed's base and put glass on the metal heated bed directly. Or it's not that important?

The more layers, the higher the temperature you need to set the heated bed to reach the same print surface temperature as before (air is an insulator, so when entrapping air between your layer you insulate the heated bed).
I do not know the weight of the magnet base, but, keeping adding weight is not a very good idea unless your bed goes up and down (movement in Z direction is generally much more slower than in Y direction), but the Enders 3 bed goes back and forth. The more mass the axis needs to displace the less accurate the print.


text:
Thread pitch of Ender 3 bed leveling screws
What is the thread pitch of the Ender 3's bed leveling screws? The diameter measures about 4mm. Are they M4 0.7 (coarse) pitch or 0.5 (fine) pitch? I'd like to develop rigorous formulas for the amount to turn the knobs by after measuring (or visually inspecting, since I can see an accurate 0.2 mm first layer decently well) leveling-test patterns in the corners rather than using a closed-loop tune-and-retry approach.

Ideas for measuring this are nice, but I wonder if there's a spec on it available somewhere..

Incidentally, it's easier to see the arrows on the knobs if you fill them in with paint, e.g. use a white paint pen and wipe off any excess immediately.

I measured mine with a thread gauge and it says the pitch is 0.7 mm.
So, as the stock adjustment wheels have 14 bumps around their circumference, turning by one of those is an adjustment of exactly 0.05 mm (assuming no backlash).
I can't speak for anyone else's, but due to the availability of replacement height adjustment wheels which don't specify alternative thread pitches, I guess that's the only one in use. I encourage you to verify my finding before relying on it.

An additional piece of information: the stock adjustment wheels have 14 large sinusoidal bump crests around their circumference, so turning by one of these is an adjustment of exactly 0.05 mm.

@R..GitHubSTOPHELPINGICE Thanks, I added that to my answer in case someone else finds it useful.

Just as Andrew, I did run a quick test to measure it: on my corner closest to <0,0,0>, a little stud is poking out. Just enough to screw on a threadcutter I know without any cutting happening:

Indeed, it is M4x0.7, aka coarse thread.

Possibly tongue in cheek here, but if you can detect a 0.2 mm change, you may be able to determine visually the thread pitch, although it means de-tuning your bed for the experiment. Keeping close count is part of the experiment and you can reverse the count easily enough.
Make contact with the nozzle at the location of one screw. Count the turns in order to set the screw back to original location (or don't worry, re-tune later).
If the pitch is 0.5 mm, two complete turns would give you a millimeter, while the 0.7 mm pitch will give you 1.4 mm. Make it four turns and the difference is more apparent. That would present a 2.0 mm compared to 2.8 mm for the two types of threads.

I don't know what the value is, but there are a few ways to find out. It is very hard to measure this with a caliper, but it can be done, mark the upper and bottom of e.g. 10 windings and measure this with a caliper. Alternatively measure how much the screw drops after 10 full turns.
There are special tools that give you the answer directly, they cost a few Euros/bucks but can be very handy; a thread gauge, just place the 0.5 mm and the 0.7 mm beside the screw and you will instantly see which is the correct one.

I bought mine at a typical Chinese vendor site.

An even more obvious way to measure this would be to get (or even print) some M4 0.7 and 0.5 nuts and see which (if either) successfully thread onto the exposed bottoms of the screws. With real metal ones you'd have to be careful not to damage the thread with the wrong one, but printed ones would be harmless. Probably would need a long interface to ensure that it doesn't "work" just by bending a couple threads.

Could also print a thread gauge like that, though it might be some work figuring out a way to do it with sufficient resolution.


text:
Cura how to fix "on air support"
I'm trying to generate G-code for handle in Cura.
Unfortunately Cura generates wrong supports - first layer of support has now background in starts in the air (see attached files)
So how to fix it? Is there any way (configuration etc.) to prevent such kind of supports?

Cura profile

Hello Andrew, welcome to 3DPrinting.SE!

I think your question already has an answer on question: "Cura is printing support on nothing?". It could be related to the slice options, if you could post those related to support settings it might be helpful for your question.

I've just uploaded, check it out, please

Please read the answer in the linked question, this exactly explains your problem. You have a 2 layer Z gap defined (assuming you are printing 0.12 mm layers). How many layers are "air"? You can enable "Touching Buildplate" for the "Suppor Placement" option with tree support.

What exactly shall I do? Current value of "Support z Distance" is 0.24 (Calculated automatically). I've changed it do 0,12 and 0, same issue. Enabling of touching build-plate option removes support inside the hole. I've decided to test "touching build-plate" with tee-support test feature. I'll share with result later.

OP has commented that he tried the suggestions in the linked comment already.

Is "XY overrides Z" perhaps your problem?

Well, enabling of "touching build-plate" with tee-support worked. Thanks for advice


text:
Problems with noise, heat bed temperature and no X / Y endstop sensor on Makerbot Replicator 2X
I bought a used Makerbot Replicator 2X, and I have some problems printing with it. The first problem I run into is the first layer adhesion to the print bed, it seems like the temperature of the bed starts to drop directly after first heating it.
Also, calibration seems to be a problem, because when using the Home Axes function, the extruder is moved to its home - but there seems to be like a missing endstop sensor, because the stepper motors starts making a whole lot of noise.
Also, when moving the extruder manually using the Jog function, there is a lot of noise and also it's possible to move it out of its range (same type of noise as with the Home Axes function).
I understand that the bot I bought is not to be expected to function as new, but I need to understand what the problem is and how I can fix it. Is there parts missing even?
Trying the Home Axes and Jog functions resulting in a lot of noise: https://photos.app.goo.gl/j3HX9qHvZCEBnPru7
Printing with no adhesion and a falling Platform temperature: https://photos.app.goo.gl/PHVtheWCRRmhz7bu7

Welcome to 3DPrinting.SE!

First, your Y-belt is way too loose! (seen at the beginning of the first video). It is so loose the idlers barely grip onto it!
Second, the X-endstop metal pin is loose, seen at 1:22 of the first video. Could be that the endstop is not working. Maybe you can hook up your printer to USB, you can then send direct commands to the printer, e.g. M119 will report the status of the endstops. Sending this code multiple times will alternatively pressing the endstops manually you can find out if they work.
From the second video can be seen that the nozzle to bed distance it too large, and if fixed and still not adhering you need to apply an adhesive (hairspray/glue stick/or 3D print adhesion spray).
This printer is in need of some serious maintenance! Depending on your technical skills this may be a challenge!

The Y-belt problem has been solved now! Turns out that one of the bearings holding the inner Y-belt cogwheel was lying in the bottom of the printer. When I put it on the axis and pushed it back, the Y-belt looked a lot better.
The reference you made to 1:22 in the first video, do you mean the metal lever on the endstop sensor that is shaking a lot? The endstop sensor for the Z axis looks exactly the same and shakes as well, it doesn't seem fixable neither like a problem?
I'll level the bed closer to the nozzle and see if the adhesion works better!

If I get you correctly, it doesn't seem like I'm missing and endstop sensor at least? :)

I would expect all the endstops to be present (depending on the previous owner and that owners skill), I would only be worried for the functioning state.

Progress! It seems like the Y-belt really is working now, and adhesion got much better when I got the nozzle closer to the surface! However, temperature of the heat bed is still dropping. I assume that will be a problem in terms of adhesion (especially with a large first layer?) and perhaps warping?
See this video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/CiNKD92G5qhHnVeG9


text:
How do you call the Z-axis mechanism in a Cartesian 3D Printer?
How do you call the mechanism that allows linear motion along the Z-axis in a Cartesian 3D Printer?

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

I would go with "z-axis mechanism". Not everything has one word for its name.

I would like to analyze it .. I think it is possible to do that with Kinematics .. But I am not sure where do I start .. Maybe in the Math or Physics Stack Overflow, but first I would like to have an idea of what to do ..

I would suggest "z-axis assembly" to refer to the collection of all the parts that contribute to z-axis motion/stability.

So, I would go the same with the "x-axis assembly" and "y-axis assembly" .. I don't know ..

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

and, How is it called for the X and Y axis?

X-axis is ofren caled X-axis assembly or portal/cantilever ; Y-axis is usually the Y-axis assembly or Bed-movement ; This does not work for a CoreXY, where X and Y are called the "Horizontal" and Z the Bed-movement.


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OctoPrint Unable to Connect to Lulzbot Mini
We have a Lulzbot Mini at my office (i.e. it's not my personal printer). It's connected to an OctoPi and I've been able to get just one file to print on it (which I had to cancel due to leveling issues). Others have used it successfully in the past.
However, right now, every time I try to connect to it through OctoPrint, I just get gibberish back:
Connecting to: /dev/ttyACM0
Changing monitoring state from "Offline" to "Opening serial port"
Connected to: Serial<id=0x6f830510, open=True>(port='/dev/ttyACM0', baudrate=115200, bytesize=8, parity='N', stopbits=1, timeout=10.0, xonxoff=False, rtscts=False, dsrdtr=False), starting monitor
Changing monitoring state from "Opening serial port" to "Connecting"
Send: N0 M110 N0*125
Send: N0 M110 N0*125
Recv: �Np|\x04n6H\x15\x06'
Recv: \x10ONv�HO
Recv: J%�i�h�ON,=\x0c\x14\x07�|i�Mx86B~1~\x04g\x1a\x1e�HO
Recv: J%P|H~\x03�^�-\x08n6�M�w��K�'
Recv: \x08�^�;V7JO\x1e\x0b�\x08\�H^�Kqp|\x08\x13\x08H\x08\x04P|"]+X{\x16�\x08nl�P<\x08\x14\x08]�x�
Recv: �J�X�\x1a�H3H6F�J�J%�J/H\x08^�I\x08ZY\x08\x07:&h\x0f^\x17�}�$p|\x08\x14
Recv: ^HJ�J�\x08�J\x1b�*':f\x18�k\x1e>H]�Zf�J�Z�J�%\x08^\x08W�X�\x1a�\x0b\x1e\x1eH]�Z�Kq?N!KP�.N!Kka�.a\x0b'
Recv: �J�J�JH�I�JHJP|@_a\x13�\x16�/m\x7f\x1fy�\x16=�6\x1b�VO6�=�6\x1b�f>�K7f\x7f�K{f>�K\x1bf��+'J�z�J\x08@�\x08�J%�\x18%�(�J\x17�
Recv: \x07
Recv: �M!
Recv: gJ�j�I�j\x08N�x�\x1a\x7fB
�\x0b]F�J�J�x�
Recv: V
Recv: o\x16�F�J�Z�j\x0c.�\x08%�\x05\x07J�j�5�\x18HJ�J�X�*�\F]{L$P<\x08�\x08~5Ip|\x04}&@\x1faF�J�J�If�\x1a33l\x7f�N\x0bYp|\x088
No answer from the printer within the connection timeout, trying another hello
Send: N0 M110 N0*125
There was a timeout while trying to connect to the printer
Changing monitoring state from "Connecting" to "Offline"
Connection closed, closing down monitor

The only thing I can think of right now is refreshing the firmware, but before I do that, I figured I'd ask here. Does any one know what this gibberish is and how I can restore this printer to regular operation?

If the printer returns gibberish, the Baud rate of the connection is incorrect. You are using 115200 in the example above. For older Mini firmwares, it should indeed be 115200. For the newer 1.1.5.xx builds, it should be 250000.

Thanks! This turned out to be the issue with connecting to OctoPrint. I'm still having other issues with the printer, but that's outside the scope of this question.

@p.s.w.g Feel free to post more questions! We welcome new content! Welcome to 3DPrinting.SE!


text:
Can you fix a warped, removeable build surface backing?
I have an Ender 3 with a removeable build surface. The build surface backing has become warped - the center is at least 0.3 mm higher than the corners. I'm not sure what the material of this plate is - it's the part behind the BuildTak-clone surface that sits on the aluminum heat bed and is clipped to it. This makes it impossible to level the entire bed, and annoyingly tedious to level it enough just to use the center, since the paper method doesn't work at the corners. Can this be fixed, or do I need to source a replacement for it?

uhm.. photo please? my Ender3 has nothing clipped. BuildTak is glued to the aluminium bed... Do you have the removeable build-surface?

@Trish: Yes, I think most of the later ones do; AIUI only early ones shipped with the buildtak-clone glued to the aluminum bed. Anyway the question was a setup for a self-answer because I figured this could be useful to others.

Ah, that is the removeable Build Plate "upgrade", yes. I think that is a steel plate.

@Trish: It's definitely not steel. Reportedly it's some sort of acrylic.

hmmm, could you share a picture of the backside of the plate? it could be some sort of fiberglass reinforced plate or something...

Yes. I rigged up the following setup with blue tape and clips and a pen for tensioning, used the nozzle (unheated) to hold the center down against the bed, and set the bed to 100 °C for about an hour. Afterwards the curvature was in the opposite direction and easily compensated by clips.

If the backing of the build surface softens under heat, one might strap it into a contraption to heat, or just put it into an oven on a flat surface, baking it with some weight to flatten it fully.
An alternate to fixing the removeable build plate itself, one might considder to buy a (spring)steel plate and glue a new build surface onto it. Such a plate is really sturdy and would be mountable with the same clips. It might be also faster in heating behavior as steel is usually a better conductor than plastics. It might be thinner than the original sttack though.
Now such a steel plate also is magnetic and could be alternatively mounted by adding a set of high temperature resistant magnets set into the heat bed. Such a rework does however have a higher work needed than a pure fix.


text:
Linear advance calibration technique
Marlin has a Linear Advance calibration pattern generator, but I find it's hard to use because:

It only prints the initial layer on the bed, where bed irregularities interfere with accurate reading of it.
It doesn't do proper retraction and priming, so a mess of strings and underextruded initial segments/non-adhesion mess up the results.
It's hard to visually evaluate.
Getting a very wide range of K values involves multiple runs.
It's hard to clean up.

Is there a better procedure for calibration of K value for linear advance?

Note that while this is a self-answer, I'm open to more/better answers too.

The same effect as Marlin's test pattern, with alternation between fast and slow segments, can be achieved with a skewed tower and Cura's overhang settings, providing the opportunity to interactively adjust K value during the print, or insert changes at particular layers in the gcode for automated test towers.
I'm using the following OpenSCAD to make a skewed cylinder:
multmatrix(
   [[1,0,1/8,0],
    [0,1,0,0],
    [0,0,1,0],
    [0,0,0,1]])
cylinder(d=40,h=40);

with Cura set to:

no top/bottom layers or infill
single walls
treat walls with 1° overhang as overhangs
print overhangs at 25% speed

These values can of course be tuned, but the extreme low overhang angle and 8/1 slope is to prevent actual physical overhang-printing considerations from messing up the test.
Vase mode might work even better for this if it supports overhang settings, since it would avoid the layer seam.

Nice. I've been using the Marlin pattern in the past for Klipper's Pressure Advance, but there are some really disgusting features hidden in the g-code that's generated.

You can use Klipper tuning tower and change the K value at each layer using Gcodes.
You can find the model here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3957406
I find easier to see the best results this way, also you can test way more settings in a single run, while the Marlin pattern generator lets you test only few values at time.
Remember to print without infill.


text:
creating support for a surface
I created an stl file of bathymetry using Matlab and the results can be seen in the two pictures below in Blender. The problem I have is that it is very thin with overhangs. I would like to add some kind of support. For example put a solid block underneath it like in the third picture.

I can't seem to figure out how to do this in Blender and if I try to fix the stl file in Blender it puts a surface through my original surface. I also tried to use Microsoft 3D printing repair but it takes hours to queue.
How to I change my stl file so it has enough support to be printed?

You generated a simple surface. You do however need a closed body to print. You might get away with using that surface as a cutter for a block and removing the top half, but there is an easier way using blender:

Select the whole ara with A
Extrude with E then Z to constrain direction
pull until you have an item that is fully thick everywhere
Scale the currently selected, extruded vertices with S then Z then 0 to force them all into the same plane
possibly move the vertices down till they all are below the bottom surface

Now you have a positive thickness, solid body! Run a simple "remove double vertices" on this bottom if you want to reduce file size, but there you go! Export as STL and print!

This was a huge help. The first three steps were easy to follow. It was a bit difficult to scale it into the same plane, so I just added a cube and put that underneath it so it would support all.


text:
Z level babystepping works inconsistently after BLTouch was installed
After I installed the BLTouch sensor, the manual adjustment of the Z offset is unreliable. I found that for it to work, the software endstops must be disabled. If they are enabled, the nozzle won't move either up not down.
But if they are disabled, it sometimes works and some others does not, I can't find a pattern to it.
Any ideas of what I'm doing wrong?

By disabled you mean de-activated in the firmware?

There's an option in marlin that adds in the move axis menu an option to disable soft endstops. Disabling it this way allows the user to move any axis below 0 and above the printer size.
I'm using marlin 1.9 btw


text:
TFT35 and G-code preview
Is there a way to have the Bigtreetech TFT35 v3.0 show a G-code preview while printing - similar to the MKS TFT35?

Could you please expand the question, possibly with images, what is meant by previewing G-code while printing?

What Firmware are you using? Because you need to modify the firmware.

If this is related to print preview image, the MKS has a dedicated software/firmware release showing a preview of the model (probably generated from G-code). It might be the case that the Bigtreetech is an older fork of that branch, you could look into that.

I'm using version x.x.25 and I've made the changes in the firmware that I've found that relate to g-code preview, but I just get a blank icon displaying and now there is a long filename error when using the SD on the main board. I suspect there are other places to make changes in the firmware, but I am not finding them - I was hoping somebody else had experience with this.


text:
3D printing extruder not warming up
I faced some problem with my 3D printer device. It seems the bed warms up without any problem, however, the hotend does not warm up!
Could you please help me identify what the problem is?

A photograph of the status panel would be helpful.

Are there M104 or M109 G-code commands found in the G-code file? Does the hotend warm up when you heat it up using the "prepare" menu item, e.g. for PLA? Furthermore, what kind of printer, hot-end are you referring to? Loose connection, broken heating element are the first to look at for a mechanical/electrical issue.

I really hope the extruder doesn't warm up as this would be a problem with your stepper motor :)
I'm sure you mean the hotend doesn't heat up. This could be a number of things but i would start to double check the pinout in your code vs the pins on your mainboard and measure if it gives 12v/24v (depending on your PSU) output.
There's a lot more info required to properly help you.
What board are you using?
What OS are you using? Marlin or something else?
Share the relevant code of the OS for the hotend config/pinout
potentially share pictures of your wiring

This answer contains a lot of questions, this is not how SE works, this is not a forum, please save these for the comments under the question. When you have enough (50) reputation you will be able to post comments. Your questions are valid and the OP should add this to the question, however, they do not belong here.

How does that make sense? I can post answers but no comments before i have points, but to gain points one must answer questions. This is a really strange system and i don't appreciate being told what i say doesn't belong here. If that's how new members are treated I will find the way out very fast.

First, I want to make sure if your hotend is really not heating up. If you are saying the numbers are not showing (like when it is heating, the number on display or octoprint says 0/180) this could be a Thermistor problem. Check to make sure if your hot end is heating up by putting a paper or filament under it. DO NOT touch with your hand.
Second, If your hotend is truly not heating up, then several things can be happening.

Your hotend is wired wrong. Make sure your board is correctly wired.
Your hotend is dead. Change to different hotend and see if it works.
Your hotend is not getting enough power.

authors: กมลชนก คะริบรัมย์


text:
Help needed implementing Bear Upgrade
I am attempting to build a 3D printer using the Bear Upgrade for guidance.
In this moment, I am implementing the X-Axis. The X_end_idler consist in two parts, the idler and the belt tensioner, as you can see on the following pictures:

The belt tensioner is inserted inside the idler. It is attached to the idler with two screws on the back part of the idler.

The tensioner holds a 2GT Idler Pulley as per the image:

So, here comes my question to anybody that has attempted to implement the Bear Upgrade:
How is the pulley attached to the tensioner?
The tensioner has a hole that crosses from side to side, but there is no space on the design where to fit a screw head nor a nut. I am a bit lost here and would like to know if there is a trick I can follow, before attempting to modify the design.
Here I attach the link to the pieces: Bear_extruder_and_x_axis

Bear_upgrade

What about a 3 mm axle/shaft, as it is enclosed it will not fall out. You could even cut the head of a screw and use the threads.

Or maybe a roll/spring-pin?


text:
Simplify3D, connection disapear after slice
I have a problem with some models like this (trim_tabs version) : https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3401852
When I import the model on simplify, the tabs are sticky to the model (see pic3.png) but when I slice it, on the preview, tabs are not sticky to the model (see pic1.png).
I tried to do it on Cura and it works ; tabs stay stiky to the model (see pics2.png).
What's wrong ?
I attach my Simplify and Cura profile to help.
To get pics and profiles :
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NkMBosI-xalRGjTSua1xDejZ2MKWZcV9

Welcome to SE, but please embedd the pictures. Google-drive does not work well with old machines, and for example I can't see them, so I can't try to help you; Slic3r is a specific program, not slicing in general.

I've tried that item as well.  In fact, other than the heart, I built a remix  which works better but is still difficult to free up after printing.  Those tabs you're concerned about will print better at a very low (thin) layer setting.
I am pretty sure that the original design is faulty.  All the "leaves" have gears which cause them to rotate when the threaded ring is turned.  But the designer made all leaves identical!  Each one needs its gear's  null-position set differently so that it properly meshes with the thread positions of the outer ring at that leaf's placement.  Some day I may remix to adjust those gear positions....

It's not uncommon that different slicers have different effects on different models.
The techniques used to slice the models differs. If the model you slice works fine in one and not in the other it's sometimes a setting but sometimes just the slicer.
Just use the slicer that works :)


text:
Nozzle goes down after bed leveling BLTouch
I have two printers, one is an Anet A8 and the other one is a CreatBot DX plus. On both of them I installed a BLTouch, firstly on the DX and today on the A8. I have never had a problem with the probe, but today I am experiencing some problems. I just set the offset, by doing the procedure, and I found to that the Z0 is -0.8 mm.
Problem is, when I start to print (I use Cura as a Slicer and OctoPrint), I run G28 and G29, everything is fine and the bed gets mapped. When the print starts, something weird occurs: the nozzle goes down for the regions where the bed is higher! So, the layer that is put down, is very thin and the nozzle actually dives into the bed! It is like a Z0 too low, so the nozzle crashes into the bed, but it is not because in X100 Y100 it is perfectly fine! Could you have any idea why this occurs?
What have I tried?
Changing bed springs
Because I was curious, and impatient I changed the springs with the Ender ones I bought online. The problem is still here! I can see the bed closer to the nozzle during bed leveling, compared to the left side. So I screwed the right side, to see any difference. However, the nozzle seems to be always closer on the right side! I checked the X rods, they are leveled.
Searched online
I checked almost everywhere online and I found out that it could be a problem related to the bilinear bed leveling. So I changed to linear, and apparently now I can print! I believe it is something related to the mesh the firmware creates after the leveling, which is avoided for the linear. <I will let you know tomorrow, after I change the frame whether the bilinear will work or not! I can still see that the left-side part of the print is closer to the bed, but now I can print at least. Will let you know! Bye!>

Welcome to 3DPrinting.SE! Is the bed flat or is there a bump that is not mapped by G29?

Do you have a Z offset stored for the head somewhere?

ZO already stored and no bumps on the bed :/

Check and potentially replace your bed springs as this is a common cause with cheap bed springs.
An immediate workaround is redoing your Z-offset but most likely after a while you have to repeat it until you replace the bed springs with stronger ones.
After replacing springs you have to redo Z-offset again.

Hi thank you! I will do it once I will change the whole frame, so in 2 days. Hope it will solve the problem!

In my opinion, you should check if you get consistent value every time you G29.
If you didn't do anything and the value keeps changing that means your bed is not durable which could be due to bad bed springs.
Now if you do get the same value, again and again, that means your bed is okay.
This means you need to see your Cura. You may have something set in the Start G-code that might be causing it to move further down.

Hi thank you! Because I am waiting for the metallic frame, I will change the springs once it arrives, on Monday. In the meanwhile I will do some G29, because I can feel the bed a bit loose when I touch it! But I don’t get how the bed could move so much just after a G29. It is super weird, I do G29 then the print start and the nozzle goes down only on the right side of the bed! I can clearly see it, because from left to right the printed lines disappear!


text:
CR 10 mini not detected as serial interface (Win 10)
I want to use my secondary Win 10 PC for OctoPrint (Direct connection to the Printer via USB) but Windows detects the Printer as

Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed)

I'm 99.9 % sure the cable is not the problem cause it works perfectly fine on any other device. I've tried installing multiple driver versions (including the one that came with the printer) but no luck yet. I also tried different cables/USB ports, no luck either.

From Properties->Events->Information I get this:
Device USB\VID_0000&PID_0002\6&23938f4b&0&4 was configured.

Driver Name: usb.inf
Class Guid: {36fc9e60-c465-11cf-8056-444553540000}
Driver Date: 06/21/2006
Driver Version: 10.0.18362.1
Driver Provider: Microsoft
Driver Section: BADDEVICE.Dev.NT
Driver Rank: 0xFF0000
Matching Device Id: USB\DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR_FAILURE
Outranked Drivers: usb.inf:USB\DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR_FAILURE:00FF2000
Device Updated: false
Parent Device: USB\VID_8087&PID_0024\5&2564d19a&0&1

Did you install the driver? This looks as if the CH340/1 driver is not installed.

I use Linux, so I am not familiar with Win10 stuff. But, it seems that the device driver has asked the USB device for its identifying codes (PID and VID) and got no recognisable response. Could be a bad cable, but you seem to have checked that. Could be a fried USB interface chip, so check whether you have any luck trying to connect to any other computer. If you can find someone with a Linux machine (or you have something you can run Linux on), the logs will tell you a lot more about what has been tried and what failed (or not).
Note that the parent USB device is VID=8087 (being Intel Corp.) and PID=0024 (being the Integrated Rate Matching Hub).

So apparently Windows is the problem. My printer is recognized as "ttyUSB0" on Ubuntu 18.04. From now I will only talk about Ubuntu. Now the problem is that I cant connect to the serial port. Every time I try to connect i only get sth like "Permission denied - Line in use". Same results with Root user or sudo


text:
Inconsistent vertical walls on a Robo 3D R1+
I'm trying to troubleshoot an issue with my 3D printer (Robo 3D R1+). It cannot print vertical walls well any more. Here is a picture of what it looks like:

The walls are very inconsistent. To correct this issue, I've tried:

Changing the nozzle
Tightening the hotend (to remove wobble)
Dehydrating the filament
Using brand new (good quality) filament
Printing faster & slower
Printing hotter & cooler
Trying different slicers (Ultimaker Cura & Simplify3D)
Putting on a belt tightener

The 5 motor drivers are all new as well, but this was already happening before I changed them.

Check for play/loose nuts of the X-Z carriage/assembly.

Could be inconsistent Z movement. Get calipers, measure how much the Z moves when directed to move 100 mm. Let us know.

What layer size are you printing?

Isn't it Z wobble? Do you have the same effect on different parts? ( I mean, check if the same fatten/tighten patterns appear on the same height on different models).

Mmm... you've tried lots of obvious things. I don't have a printer the same as yours, so my help is generic.
How about a thorough check of extruder and filament path, since it may be just inconsistent filament feed? I've seen something similar happen when the filament reel was not rolling freely. Less likely, but also check that the frame is still solid and nothing has come loose.

Despite the picture being a bit small and blurry, it is quite obvious that something is off. A better picture might help closing in on the problem with more precision.
From what I can see it could be wrong extrusion settings. I'm making a wild guess based on personal experience that the printer is over extruding way too much. I had similar looking parts a few years back after a firmware update. I simply forgot to update the steps/mm for the extruder.
Any recent firmware or hardware updates?
From your explanation I understand you changed the drivers. Maybe an issue based on microstepping? (The corner looks like the nozzle was realy in the material while printing.)

It looks to me like you might be over-extruding.  Have you calibrated the extruder?
How-To:  MatterHackers Extruder Calibration Video
More Info:  all3Dp Over-Extrusion Page


text:
BLTouch missing build plate on levelling
I have finally sorted the problems out with the frozen screen, but inevitably there's always more to take there place.
I have installed the latest version of the 'Tiny Machines' Firmware but on trying to do a 'Level' on the bed the nozzle/BLTouch sensor moves to the front left corner and tries to take a 'level' reading whilst the BLTouch sensor is 20 mm off the build surface, so the nozzles hits the build surface.
Can anyone point me in the right direction to where the settings are to correct this?
I have an E3D v6 HotEnd and to the left of that is the BLTouch Sensor (60 mm to the left and 6 mm forward).

Hi, welcome to 3DPrinting.SE! Are you compiling the sources yourself, or use a premade hex file? Which Marlin version?

Tiny Machines firmware is based on Marlin firmware. Note that I personally am more comfortable using the original sources than a fork or copy from another derivative source. Using a derivative means that you will have to wait a second development commitment to post new features and bug fixes.
A similar reasoning is applicable using premade hex files opposed to compiling the sources yourself.
There are 2 things (related to the bed X, Y positioning) you need to be aware of when using a Z probe. When using the probe you must ensure that the probe deploys on the bed during probing.
First, define in your firmware that the probe can only deploy in the center of the build plate. In e.g. Marlin firmware this is described in the configuration.h; you need to enable Z_SAFE_HOMING:

// Use "Z Safe Homing" to avoid homing with a Z probe outside the bed area.
//
#define Z_SAFE_HOMING

Second, you need to define a confined bed area for the sensor to deploy, this is described in question: "How to set Z-probe boundary limits in firmware when using automatic bed leveling?".

Note that flashing an existing firmware does not guarantee anything, the used firmware from Tiny Machines (or e.g. from TH3D) try to simplify the firmware configuration for you by adding additional specific settings/constants (#defines), underneath the waterline all sorts of things are then handled for you. Personally I'd like to be in control and do the modifications myself. If the probe position you use is different from the probe position used in the pre-build firmware you will not be able to use this firmware safely. We can check this: e.g. in the Tiny Machines firmware there are 3 predefined positions for the sensor, in the sources itself none is active (see below), so it is not known which option is used for compiling the hex files they made available:

//#define CREALITY_ABL_MOUNT //Using creality ABL mount
//#define E3D_DUALFAN_MOUNT // Using HD Modular mount as above with 2 5015 blowers and sensor on the right
//#define E3D_PROBEMOUNT_LEFT // Default is probe mounted to the right for E3D. Set this to invert.

When you define one of these options above, the probe position can be read from:

   #if (ANY(ABL_BLTOUCH, ABL_EZABL,ABL_NCSW) && ANY(HotendE3D, HotendMosquito))
    #if ENABLED(E3D_DUALFAN_MOUNT)
      #if ENABLED(E3D_PROBEMOUNT_LEFT)
        #define NOZZLE_TO_PROBE_OFFSET { -63, 5, 0 }
      #else
        #define NOZZLE_TO_PROBE_OFFSET { 63, 5, 0 }
      #endif
    #else
      #define NOZZLE_TO_PROBE_OFFSET { 32, 5, 0 }
    #endif
   #endif

You will see that the E3D_PROBEMOUNT_LEFT and E3D_DUALFAN_MOUNT need to be active (you see that E3D_PROBEMOUNT_LEFT is embedded in the E3D_DUALFAN_MOUNT option, this cannot be correct...) to get a probe offset of (-63, +5) which is close to your probe (60 mm to the left and 6 mm forward translates to (-60, +6)). This is exactly why I use the Marlin firmware from the main source code, not a simplified derivative (which in this case is not accurate and unknown what options are used in the pre-build hex files).
Please note that the original Marlin sources also maintain configuration files for many printer types, e.g. the CR-10S is also listed in this overview.

Many thanks for your time and help. the only reference to what you have described is:#if PROBE_SELECTED
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_LEFT MIN_PROBE_EDGE
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_RIGHT MIN_PROBE_EDGE
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_FRONT (MIN_PROBE_EDGE + 5)
#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_BACK (MIN_PROBE_EDGE + ClipClearance)
#endif.  I am very new on modifying these text lines, How would you alter these?, I have tried adding a number after the line but i get an error


text:
Is there an engineering/physics foundation for application of airbrush nozzles?
Lately I noticed that there is a new type of nozzles (called airbrush nozzles?!?) available; typically found on those online overseas vendor sites. The nozzles are advertised for usage in E3D hardware, but are not found amongst the E3D genuine nozzles.
These nozzles look like this:

What are the basic physics principles or what is the engineering relevance for application of airbrush nozzles? (Gimmick or actual product improvement?)

While these long skinny tips make it easier to print in 3-axes as the answers describe, that's not their original intent so far as I can tell.  The long skinny profile allows for different extrusion properties as well as better airflow from any cooling fan you may have.

An obvious drawback is the lack of a flat surface around the opening, resulting in a severe limitation of the extrusion width to exactly the nozzle width (plus some percent). This nozzle cannot efficiently push the filament against the nearby perimeters because it cannot constrain its height and it cannot flatten the top of the already extruded one. So layer adhesion may not be a big problem, but perimeter-to-perimeter likely is.
Also, the thinner wall and extended length will reduce the filament temperature, however I don't know whether a simple compensation would do, since cooling will depend on filament speed and travel speed.
Regarding the cooling, you can check also the original designer's goal:

A big problem with small. hot and slow prints is the heat radiation of
  the hotend and nozzle itself. To get as little as possible heat into
  the print, the nozzle needs to be as long and pointy as possible. The
  longer the nozzle, the bigger the distance between heater block and the
  print. And the more pointy it is, the less heat radiation can affect
  the print. A nice side benefit: the cooling fan can blow better onto
  the print and "around" the nozzle.

I read that they use an extra 20-30 °C for printing, so you might be right on your second paragraph. Steel conducts less heat and the thin pointy nose cools the filament. This may be an issue for PLA, you don't want to overcook it...

If the nozzle tip is made of steel then its actually a better insulator than the brass nozzle.

But it's thinner and has a much worse surface/volume ratio

They are used for nonplaner 3d printing.

https://all3dp.com/4/nonplanar-3d-printing-gives-the-smoothest-top-layers/
The gist of it is, that You can achieve smoother, curvy top layers that are more true to form, buy using a nozzle like the one you mentioned. Also, they can be used to print multiple objects at the same time, where is faster to print 10 to 20 layers of one object then switch to the next object on the build plate, rather than having to print each layer of each object sequentially. This reduces build time, stringing, voids and the potential knocking off the part by the nozzle (as it moves to print the next object, since that object may have shrunk/expanded since the nozzle last visited it).

Since OP asked "Gimmick or actual product improvement?" it might be nice to address too whether these are strictly an improvement or a set of tradeoffs. I'd imagine the latter. For example they probably have a much harder time keeping extrusion temperature consistent.

It's to early in the game to tell what the tradeoffs are. It might be layer adhesion, who knows. I hope it's not a hype thing like velocity painting.

I did not think of non-planar printing, but indeed that would be an engineering application.

the thermodynamic tradeoffs are obvious: you radiate more heat and cool the filament more for a finer deposition.


text:
Poor surface quality when sweep interrupted
I just started 3D printing a few weeks ago, so I'm still trying to get a handle on the tricks. I printed something with a flat surface and a few raised pieces (shown below). I'm pretty happy with the surface quality overall; however, in the locations where the print head came back for it's second pass the quality is worse. Is there any way to fix this? I'm assuming it's a slicer issue...
Using Ultimaker Cura 4.4 & Ender 3 Pro

Hi, welcome to 3DPrinting.SE!

Are you referring to the diagonal matt surface finish, or the light grey bands in the lower-left corner?

It looks to me like you have underextrusion in these regions probably due to loss (oozing) of material during travel moves prior to printing them. Aside from small gaps in the surface sweep at the part you're talking about, I see a long slightly-diagonal light-gray line between the middle of the right and the middle of the bottom of your image, which appears to be material that oozed during combing.
Make sure you have retraction enabled, have sufficient retraction (at least 6 mm for bowden; somewhat less for direct-drive) and either disable combining or set max combing distance very small (like 1.5x nozzle width) and see if this helps.


text:
What glues to use for PETG?
In analogy to: What glues for bonding printed PLA to injection-molded plastic?, what are the best glues to use for PETG?
I mostly print in PETG and have occasional failed prints which I usually reprint. But what if I'd like to repair a print e.g. a split between layers or a part broken off?
Knowing that PETG is more "greasy" than PLA, what typical glues can you use to create a good bond; this question excludes using heat to (re-)bond.

From  forum

Bison plastic - works great for me, only it's not "quick dry" but it's very strong, not brittle, holds PETG and PLA very strongly.
  Buy paint stripper that is/contains methylene chloride (dichloromethane). It will solvent weld both PLA and PETG.

Or see  other forum  which recommends Eastman-910 (original brand of cyanoacrylate) or any equivalent, polyurethane glue, or even epoxy.

A strong epoxy like BSI 5-15 min works great for me. I use it to bond high power rocket fin halves printed from PETG:

If Carl's answer that cyanoacrylate glue works is accurate, I would suggest Loctite 420 or equivalent. It's diluted with solvents sufficiently to behave as a liquid rather than a gel, and in my experience on PLA it not only bonds the joint, but wicks between the extrusions and bonds walls/layers together much more strongly and waterproofs the part. As long as it bonds to PETG it should do the same for PETG.

authors: هيثم صلاح جوجل


text:
Meshlab creates weird bubbles when using poisson surface reconstruction
my task is to create a watertight surface out of a point-cloud (It's the model of a dam).
For this I'm using MeshLab.
First thing I did was importing the .ply-file into Meshlab and normalize it.
This looked like this:

So far so good. For Remeshing and creating the surface I wanted to use Poisson Surface Reconstruction.
I tried different parameters but this is my best result:

As you can see it creates some weird bubbles in the lower right part of the model.
And I can't figure out why this happens when the rest of my model gets modeled in the way I want it to be.
Thanks for your help!

Solution: After trying a lot of different filters with different tools, I came up with simplifying the point-cloud. After that, using the poisson surface reconstruction filter worked just fine without creating any weird bubbles.