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Ender 5 won't lift the Z-Axis before printing
I've had an Ender 5 for about a year without problems. But just recently, the printer is not lifting the Z-axis before printing. It will home great but when it moves to print the purge line it lifts the bed down about 2-3 millimeters and the nozzle is not even close to touching the bed anymore.
I've checked the starting G-code in Cura and it all looks fine but I'm still having problems.
Current Start G-code:
M201 X500.00 Y500.00 Z100.00 E5000.00 ;Setup machine max acceleration
M203 X500.00 Y500.00 Z10.00 E50.00 ;Setup machine max feedrate
M204 P500.00 R1000.00 T500.00 ;Setup Print/Retract/Travel acceleration
M205 X8.00 Y8.00 Z0.40 E5.00 ;Setup Jerk
M220 S100 ;Reset Feedrate
M221 S100 ;Reset Flowrate

G28 ;Home

G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder
G1 Z2.0 F3000 ;Move Z Axis up
G1 X10.1 Y20 Z0.28 F5000.0 ;Move to start position
G1 X10.1 Y200.0 Z0.20 F1500.0 E15 ;Draw the first line
G1 X10.4 Y200.0 Z0.20 F5000.0 ;Move to side a little
G1 X10.4 Y20 Z0.20 F1500.0 E30 ;Draw the second line
G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder
G1 Z2.0 F3000 ;Move Z Axis up
M503

After hours of testing (which included reinstalling firmware, formatting various SD cards, and changing G-code and slicer settings), I did find a function to restore factory defaults and that did the trick. I'm still not sure how something wrong got stored in the memory but it did and resetting to factory defaults worked.

Can you tell me how you got it factory reset. My 5 pro I can't figure out how to get original firmware back. I installed a bltouch and formware and that messed everything up and now my bed goes all the way to the bottom of the machine instead of the top. Ive disconnected the bltouch and can't get it to work right now

@Carter, if you could [edit] and expand upon your answer, w.r.t. where you found the function to restore factory defaults (maybe with screen shots, if appropriate), then that would be most useful. Thanks. Oh, and maybe mark your answer as the accepted answer as well, using the tick icon.

Not sure what firmware ur using and what setup you have so here’s a few answers. First, you can type the gcode commands M502 (to reset factory defaults) and M500 (to save) in a text file and stick it into the printer (I believe it should read the commands instantly). Second, if you are running Octoprint, you can input those same commands in the terminal of Octoprint. Third, there should be a function perhaps under Configuration that should restore factory defaults. Finally, as a catch all, you can go to the Creality website and download the original software to send to the printer via SD card.


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Can I build a 3D image of a warrior type character if I only have one image of that character from one frontal view
Ok I’m so new at Blender. Half the time it’s knowing what question you have to ask to get the answer you need...
I want to make a 3D printable warrior type action figure but I only have one very detailed frontal view. Can I input that image into somewhere and it gives me a 3D model to start from? Like will it generate a 360 view? I have no idea where to start.

Although this question is linked to 3D printing, it might attract better answers at Blender SE.

That said, please don't cross-post the same question across SE sites. If you do decide to post on SE.Blender, then close/delete this question first.

This is a duplicate of (take your pick): This is for one photo: Can I use a 2D photo to get a 3D printing model? [closed], these two are for multiple photos: How to optimally make a 3D model of an object using photos?, or How can I get a 3D model from a bunch of 2D photos?

In short, no. A 2D image has insufficient information to determine a 3D form.
If you want to do this yourself, what you could do is start with the 2D outline in a program like Blender (as 0scar mentioned in a comment), extrude it to make a thin "cardboard cutout", then begin shaping it into three dimensions from there. Imagine it like cutting a slab of Play-doh with a cookie cutter matching your 2D outline, then using the picture and your imagination as a guide to form it into 3D. I'm not sure whether something like that makes any more sense than just starting from scratch modeling it.
Alternatively, nowadays there might be some "AI" models to produce a reasonable guess at what 3D structure you want, with the knowledge that it's supposed to be a person, for a 2D image you provide. I'm not sure if there's anything yet of usable quality, but it's something you could look for.

Yes and no. It is sufficient for making a 3D model, but not in the way you want. Basically, you cannot turn a 2D image into a 3D model automatically, so you will have to do it manually. The image you have can be used as a reference image, and you will have to use some artistic freedom when creating the backside. It is basically the digital version of creating a clay sculpture based on an image. Perfectly possible, but it does require quite a bit of skill and patience.
If you want to learn how to do it, search for beginner tutorials on YouTube about ‘sculpting’ in Blender.

If you only have a 2D photo then as others have already said its not really possible.  However if you have the action figure itself you could try a technique called Photogrammetry where you use your phone to take multiple images of the object and then use software to build up a model. Search youtube for guides on Photogrammetry or 3D scanning with your phone. I've never done it but certainly something I'd like to try!

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


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Blobs or white patches in lithophane
I'm getting zits or blobs in lithophanes while printing on my Ender 3 and 10S Pro. I tried a suggestion: change resolution in mesh fixes of Cura to 0.5 (from 0.05 default). That removed the zits.
But now there are white patches as shown in the image. I reduced the resolution to 0.2 but to no avail.
Anyone else encountered this problem?

Maybe it's a bad batch of filament, with dirt or uneven thickness that wouldn't be noticeable in regular printing.  Have you tried a different spool or brand?

No. the filament is fresh out of box and is of esun cold white. so I think quality is not the issue.

I got the answer now, it has to do with the resolution settings in the lithophane software I was using.
I had to set minimum resolution of the lithophane to 0.4 or 0.8 (I'm using a 0.4 mm nozzle).
UPDATE: sorry. The problem still persists. unable to get rid of the white patches.

What was the default resolution that wasn't working well?

It was 0.6mm...

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Dual-colour prints on Creator 3 are very messy, though single colour very good and nozzle alignment seems good
Recently got a Creator 3 (v2) and single-colour prints are great, but dual colour Benchies are coming out quite bad. Initially, I thought it was X/Y calibration as when I printed a dual-colour cube, I could feel a slight bump as I ran my fingernail across the joins. I tweaked that and the cube now seems good (pics attached), but the Benchy came out the same, with a lot of scruffy plastic in several places.
I had the same with some old Balco filament and now with Technology Outlet filament (all four reels have printed fine on their own, the prints are really good).
I'm using Flashprint 5.1 for slicing, with mostly default settings (though infill reduced to 10 % and temp increased from 200 °C to 210 °C for the Technology Outlet filament). I'm using an Ooze Shield and a brim. Stock 0.4 mm nozzles.
Any suggestions on what the issue might be or what I can do to improve it some? The dual-colour pic on the Benchy website looks way better, so I don't think it's just that these parts of the models are difficult to print.
Thanks!

You have a problem with retraction or more broadly with what happens to the material in the inactive extruder while it's waiting to be used again. I'm not sure what your printer does, but there are various strategies for how to handle this, which can possibly be mixed:

doing nothing and letting it make a mess
a large amount of extra retraction to get the filament entirely out of the heated zone, followed by a slow unretract into the heated zone when the extruder becomes active again
using a priming tower (sacrificial junk part) to re-prime the inactive nozzle when it's activated again
priming in thin air and using a wiping brush to clean the inactive nozzle when it's activated again
maybe others

You need to figure out what options are available for your printer and how to tune them to get results you're happy with.

Thanks! I was using an Ooze Shield for these prints, but someone else suggested they had better results using a wiping tower so I'm going to try that. I did try increasing retration from 1mm to 5mm and it made a significant difference, so I think you're right this is the problem (for some reason I was thinking it was something like calibration of the two nozzles positions). Thanks!

Using the towers was worse, so likely will stick to the ooze shield. Thinking about this more though, I'm surprised changing retraction helped so much, since the ooze shield is printed first on each layer, so I'm surprised it doesn't take all the stringing/oozing and prime the nozzle ready for printing on the part. Maybe I should try and get a good recording of a print to see exactly what's going on.

I watched some prints more closely and realised me issue is actually not when the nozzle comes back after being parked - that works fine (the ooze shield correctly primes the nozzle). It's when it lifts away from the part (to go back and park) that it's actually oozing out string. So oozeshield/tower/etc. are not going to fix this - I was mostly messing with the wrong settings!

In that case it's probably just wrong retraction settings. Don't use zhop. Nozzle needs to move purely horizontally immediately after retraction or the extrusion won't be cut off but will pull from the nozzle. In theory zhop might be great if slicers would emit a 1 mm horizontal move first, but I don't know of any that support that.

The only z-hop option is disabled. It seems there's a forced hop during nozzle change. I found a possible workaround - I've added two sacraficial columns/cylinders (one for each nozzle) and ensured they're positioned so that they're printed last. The nozzle now travels without a hop to them, then the hop is after the cylinder, so it should get the stringing. If the print comes out well (looks good so far), I might see if I can convince FlashForce to add some setting or something to fix this - seems like a rather silly issue with a slicer for a fairly expensive printer.

Yes, great printers (even inexpensive ones) are so limited by all the slicers doing really stupid things, and it's perpetually frustrating...

By the way, the stringing looks worse with one of your materials than the other. You might also try drying them both, especially the one stringing worse. Drying cannot make the issue go away entirely when there's another cause (like the hop here) but moisture-contaminated filament does string a lot worse.

They're both brand new filaments I just opened because I had the issue with some older filament, so I don't think it's likely there's any moisture in it. I actually reversed the colours in the last print, and the opposite one seemed worse (in the same places), so I think it might just be the way the model is - something about that point seems to be worse (less filament is used on that layer, so maybe there's more molten plastic left at the end of the layer to pull out than if it had been feeding more cold filament into the top?). Will try some lower temps shortly too. Thanks!

Perhaps something else that isn't helping, is that FlashPrint is showing red lines in some areas (at least for my curent test print), and I'm not sure why - my feelins is maybe it thinks the models are overlapping? But I used "Align Models" to align their origins, so I'm not sure why that would be the case https://imgur.com/a/0ZMO35C

I've tracked down the cause of this, although I don't yet know a solution. It only occurs with dual-colour prints and I noticed the stringing is coming from when the nozzle moves away from the print, not from the new nozzle coming towards it.
After watching some prints, I realised what it is. After finishing with a nozzle, the bed is lowered (like a z-hop), and it's thta action that is pulling filament out of the nozzle causing the string. For a standard single-nozzle print, this action does not occur, and no filament is pulled out.
The only z-hop option in Flashprint is disabled, so I'm not hopeful I can fix it here though. Perhaps other slices may do better (I'm going to try Cura next).


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Printed object is half the height it should be
I am having extreme extrusion problems with my Ender 5. I had nearly perfect quality since I got it about 2 years ago but recently I replaced the board with a Creality 4.2.7 Silent Board and I'm having some problems. I've calibrated the E-steps to where is consistently extrudes 100 mm but what should be a 20x20x20 mm cube is 20x20x10 mm (as shown in the picture). Since I haven't really had experience with this sort of problem yet, I have no idea how to fix it.

If the image is suppose to be a 20 mm calibration Cube when it comes out half the height, your problem is the steps per millimeter of the Z-axis, not the extruder. The object you printer is half the height it is supposed to be, so the bed isn't lowering enough and requires more steps. You should double the current value.  If the bed doesn't lower enough per layer, the layer advances only half the value it should be while the extruder isn't aware of this half layer height and deposits the normal amount of filament looking as if it over-extrudes per layer. This does look as if there is something wrong with the extruder, but in fact this is caused by the Z-axis movement.
With M92 you can get and set the correct value:

Get the current steps-per-unit settings using M92 with no parameters or M503 on older versions of Marlin.

If the Z-axis has 400 steps/mm in your current setup, you should use 800 steps/mm instead. Note, the steps per millimeter value depends on the driver's and the micro-stepping setting. You need to work that out if you change your board (driver type and micro-stepping jumper or software setting).

I guess the new firmware I put on had 400 steps/mm has  a default while is should've been 800 steps/mm. Thanks!


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Level height doesn't match the starting print height
I have a Creality CR-10. Every time I go to level the printer and start printing, the starting print height is way higher. After I adjust the height, the filament looks weird when printed, smaller or squished almost.
I don't see a setting that looks incorrect and I have printed this item and many others before. I don't know how to fix it. I have cleaned the nozzle, changed the filament and the filament tube. I don't want to drop a lot of money on a new one but I'm struggling to figure it out.

Can you put a little more detail in your question on how this leveling and adjustment of the height is done. Also photos of the squish may be helpful.


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What causes the FEP to be dented during resin printing?
Just a simple question about my FEP sheet getting dented after print.
I just bought an Elegoo Mars 2 Pro and had trouble getting it to stick to the bed, after some painful bed leveling and realizing my exposure times were too low for maroon resin, I finally got it to stick to the bed by the 4th print.
Now before I start my next print, I want to know what causes the indents in the FEP sheet below so I can prevent it from happening again.

Is it too High exposure time, bed leveled too low/tight, or both?
Now I will also note, that this print was with the standard rook test print the mars recommends you do first, also that my print was very hard to remove from the bed when finished, I had to use a lot of force to rip it off.

The rook is normally difficult to remove, it's designed this way.
Have you tried resetting the height of you build Plate?
If it makes a grinding sound when doing the first 2 or three layers your build plate might be traveling too low.
Also try re-leveling your build plate, e.g. I pushed so hard when I tried to take my rook off that I un-leveled it.

You have not done anything wrong!
Usually, each resin type is suitable for a specific VAT floor. For example, for PDMS floor you should use very specific types of resins.
FEP is known to be very strong and difficult to ruin. But still a couple of things you need to consider:

When the resin cures it does generate a substantial amount of heat, you definitely can decrease it by a better level (less resin) or dimming (slower chemical reaction). Some FEPs could stand 450 °C.
Separation force, it will depend on the area being solidified and how strong the resin stick to your FEP.
How tightened the FEP is also important. You do not want it to be very tight.


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Creality CR 6 SE firmware
I recently bought Creality CR 6 SE, I learned there are third party firmware available, I want to know which one is best known for CR-6

Welcome to 3D SE! What research have you already done? What kind of features are you looking for? Do you have any mods on the printer already that the firmware would need to have? Please [edit] with more information.

I'm quite new to 3D printing world i do not have that much experience, while just learning about my printer i watched some videos where people were up grading their 3d printer firmware released by some 3rd party, as i came to know that more efficient firmware are available just wanted to know better one, based on experienced user's opinion.

The recommendation that has been given to others, and I as well, is to get to know your printer, what it does, how it does it, then look into doing the upgrades.


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My first 3D print, will my setting work?
I'm planning to print using a public 3D printer (Ultimaker 3) and was wondering if my settings will work. There is a 4 hour time limit. The parts don't need to be strong.
I've provided some screenshots of the model I'm planning to print and of the settings I'm planning to use. Dimensions of the print are 61.1 x 75.0 x 50.0 mm. Filament is PLA. Also if there is still something I can do to speed up the print, I'm happy to hear your suggestions.

You could look into the "combing" option, this may prevent some excessive retracts per layer, reducing the print time.
You should add some infill percentage to give the walls stability and provide a base for the top. It is difficult to see if the holes run through the whole object. If so, you definitely need some infill. PLA usually doesn't need a brim (blue lines on the bed around the print parts, option "adhesion"), but it will not be a problem if you use it.
Having an Ultimaker 3E I usually print one object at a time. The more objects on the plate the higher the change that something happens causing you to loose all your prints. You could print one object first to test it out (limited time) adjust and print the others later.

Thanks for the feedback. I ended up just printing one of the larger walls as a test. The print seemed to be going fine at first but after it had finished about 2.5cm of the vertical wall something went wrong (here is a picture link). From what I found online it seems that the nozzle could have clogged up? Or do you find it more likely that the print failed due to my settings? I'm going to have another go today with different setting anyway.

The issue that caused my print to fail was the filament spool getting stuck.

@Pajunen I was about to mention that it looked like either a clog or a filament entanglement.


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Creality CR 6 SE Z-axis issue
My new Creality CR6 SE was doing good but suddenly its Z-Axis (head extruder) randomly sometimes stays above the required configurations and sometimes below.
For example after auto leveling when I adjust the Z-axis with paper under it, it aligns fine at 0.20 mm after print if I start next print at same Z-axis configurations 0.20 mm randomly some time it gets below the past configurations and the extruder is very close to the bed or even badly touching the bed.
But sometime after the next print, it's above the bed that filament stays around and does not stick with the bed.
So the solution is every time I start new printing I have to level Z-axis, after trying it a lot, it is always best set at 0.20 mm.
I have to set the Z-Axis each time I print; how can I avoid this?

Are you saying you have to level the bed each time you print, or did I misunderstand? Leveling every time is pretty standard.

What is the question? You seem to have posted an issue, along with a workaround.

Are you saying you have to level the bed each time you print, or did I misunderstand?
Leveling every time is pretty standard.
The question appears to be "my bed doesn't stay level. What's wrong?". So my answer is, "That's normal, nothing's wrong."


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What options exist for augmenting the automatic bed-leveling?
When I print this file, one section smears. The print head is dragged through the soft filament.
At first I thought my aluminum bed was warped, so I upgraded to a glass bed. Test prints were much better, but still had a section that smeared.
My suspicion is that one of the motors needs to be adjusted just enough to balance out the one sector where the print head is too close to the bed. Is there an easier way to calibrate? Is it even possible to do a manual calibration on a per-axis basis on a delta-style printer?

Like a previous comment mentions about the rarity of Delta questions, could you provide a picture that we can see what is happening?

Is it even possible to do a manual calibration on a per-axis basis on a delta-style printer? - I think this is covered in a very old question: see my answer to Delta printer nozzle not moving square with a perfectly level bed (as if the bed is bent… but it isn't). IIRC, you calibrate each tower in turn, starting at time 13:37 in the video. Does that answer your question, or have I mis-understood..?

I'd love to watch the video, but it is marked as private. :-\  Could you make it available to me?


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How to print a part of the model using the same structure as a raft?

Using Cura or another slicer if needed, how could I print the part that needs bending using a structure similar to the one used for rafts.
In Cura, for reference they look like this:

I know this structure is probably good enough for the base of this object, even though other problems may arise later. So how can  I have something close to this structure in Cura for a part of the model?

Does "Different infill in the same part" answer your question? You can e.g. use different infill or different shells, e.g. no shells or walls.


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Print bulging and curling on the edges
I recently installed the BigTreeTech SKR E3 mini V2.0 on my Ender 5 and I'm having some print quality problems even when using the same settings as before the board swap.
The edges are rough and curling and there is some bulging on the X and Y-axis. I printed a 20 mm cube and after measuring it, the middle is about 19.9 mm wide (on the X and Y-axis) but the top half and bottom half of those same sides measure up to be around 19.6 mm which is a pretty large difference when compared the near-perfect ones I used to achieve.
I've tried calibrating the E-steps and lowering the wall speed to 20 mm/s but I've had no luck. Is there anything I can do to fix it?

Try to calibrate acceleration and velocity. After changing the board this settings aren't the same as on default board.

Please show images

Note: This question has received some close votes from the community (re. needs details and clarity). However, there is a solution in this comment. If that comment could be posted as an answer, then that would be great.

This mostly happens if the belt has very little tension, this will be the issue 90%, if not please comment below, I'll give you other solutions.

I did tension the belt the best I could (which wasn't too much from the original) but I think it did help a little. I also took off the Hero Me fan duct I put on and I think that helped a ton too. I was having some clogging issues as well and when I disassembled the direct drive kit I had on, I found the fan duct mount was cracked and was leaning about 20° forward. Because of this, I think the fan duct was dragging way too low and touching the print when travelling fast and this caused a ton a problems. Thanks for all your help!

@Carter - your comment sounds like it should be posted as an answer - as it solved the issue

This is a Wiki answer posting the solution from Carter's comment. If the OP (Carter) wishes to post and accept their own answer, then this wiki answer can be removed.

I did tension the belt the best I could (which wasn't too much from the original) but I think it did help a little. I also took off the Hero Me fan duct I put on and I think that helped a ton too. I was having some clogging issues as well and when I disassembled the direct drive kit I had on, I found the fan duct mount was cracked and was leaning about 20° forward. Because of this, I think the fan duct was dragging way too low and touching the print when travelling fast and this caused a ton a problems.


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Low quality printing on tall 3D models
I have the FlashForge Dreamer NX which prints with good quality on small models. However, when the model is taller than 2 cm or 2.5 cm (around 0.8 or 1 inch), it really loses quality.
Here there is a picture so you can understand what I mean. Which setting do I have to change? Have a look the the base is very acceptable, but then, the printing is not acceptable.

I'm using FlashPrint 5, but I can switch to any other app if it is needed.
UPDATE
I'm using PLA 1.75. Here are my settings.

Settings look okay, except for a very thick first layer of 0.4 mm and an extrusion width of 2 mm (not related to your problem), you should look at the answer I posted.

The cause of the meshing is under-extrusion. When under-extrusion happens, several problems can cause this. E.g. heat creep (probably not the issue here because heat creep is usually not recoverable, but not unimaginable since this is an enclosed printer, you could try printing at a lower temperature and look into less aggressive retraction settings), or an extrusion problem.
Since this is an intermittent, recurring defect, this could typically be a result of spool entanglement or any other defect in the extrusion path. Once the entanglement or friction on the spool has resolved itself, the print continues as if nothing happened.
You should print again and look at what happens. Also pay attention to the extruder, it may be skipping steps or hasn't got enough force to push the filament through.
Check the extrusion of filament also by disconnecting the extruder and manually feeding the filament through a hot nozzle. It should be easy to push the filament through the nozzle at temperature. If not, try cleaning the nozzle doing a cold/atomic pull (feed filament hot, cut the power to the hotend, wait until the temperature drops considerably and suddenly pull out the filament, preferably with nylon or cleaning filament or any other high temperature filament).

That looks horribly familiar; I call it meshing.
It's underextrusion, which can be caused by lots of things.
I cleaned, then replaced the hot end, Bowden tube, and both couplers trying to solve the problem, but then the Z axis was binding.  Tried a couple things for that, what seems to have worked was loosening a couple of screws flanking the Z screw.  Prints are still coming out a little short, so I think I'll have to shim the Z screw brace.


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Adventure 3 ABS problems with raft and quality
So I started using ABS yesterday, I have done multiple prints and the quality was amazing to start with, but now I'm getting small protrusions out of the layers. I use the FlashPrint fine settings for ABS.
But I am also having issues with the raft. The first layer doesn’t actually get put down and the ABS is trying to be forced into the nozzle and it makes a hell of a sound, but the second layer goes down quite easily. Now I have recalibrated the bed multiple times and the 0.1 mm change in the nozzle height during the calibration causes it to go from one extreme to the other as it spews out in an inconsistent thickness causing the nozzle to then hit the 2nd layer as it prints the next. I'm guessing the slight bumps in the raft may cause a drop in quality.
There are no issues with adhesion. It sticks very well annoyingly.
And there are no issues with peeling.
Any tips?
Sorry for the long read, not good at explaining.

Hi Blake, welcome to 3DPrinting.SE! Why not add a photograph? Pictures say more than words.


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Advantages dual extruders FDM printer over a single extruder printer?
I've been Resin printing for a while, but was considering getting an affordable FDM printer for large simpler models, and for when the mess of a resin printer is just too much of a pain to be bothered with.
I was considering buying the Elego Neptune 2 FDM printer, then I saw that for about $60 more I could get a version with two extruders.

Other than the obvious printing in two colors, is what can I do with a dual extruder that I can't do with a single one (Regardless of whether it's cost effective). Anything practical, anything cooler?

As an owner of a dual extruder printer, an independent dual extruder machine (IDEX), I can shed a bit of light on the topic. One of the better features of an IDEX but not necessarily capable of the printer you've selected is duplication and mirroring. By using both extruders simultaneously, print time for "production" quantities is halved. As noted, this is not possible for the selected printer.
That leaves wash-away support as the other feature besides two colors. Instead of printing support material as with a single extruder printer, the second feed is available to use PVA, which dissolves in warm water. You can have models with internal supported cavities that would be nearly impossible to remove in single material prints, but need only to be placed in water and agitated to provide a cleared model.
Using PVA support material also eliminates the marks on a model from support structures, reducing post processing labor. My experience with PVA is that it's challenging to print, requiring tuning the print parameters. It also tends to carbonize in the nozzle if temperatures are a bit high, but that again follows the tuning aspect.
As referenced in the comments, a dual extruder machine can also create parts with interlocked material. I have seen, for example, wheels constructed with a PLA hub and rim and TPU for the tread. I've not created such an item (yet) and overlooked that option. Typically, you'd want to combine materials with similar temperature requirements, but with certain constructs, the mechanical components can accommodate some disparity. Thanks to R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE for the reminder.

Aside from supports, you can also do interlocked dual-material prints - for example, incorporating TPU joints into a print-in-place object mainly made of some rigid material (PLA etc.).

To add to what is here, one other advantage of dual extrusion is one material, but two different nozzle sizes. With a small nozzle for detailed walls (.25mm-4mm), and a large nozzle (say .8mm) for infill or top and bottom layers, you can cut down on print time dramatically while having fine layers and line width for the walls.


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Ender 5 radial fan (part cooling fan) screw size
I’ve been having problems with my old fan shroud that I printed and when I went to install the new one the little screws that hold it in fell in the carpet which pretty much makes them lost forever. What is the diameter and length of those? I’ve checked a few Reddit posts but I’ve found tons of different answers like M3, M2, M1.8, etc. so I’m not so sure.

Pretty thick carpet if you lost 4 screws!

Considering this printer is a Chinese designed and built printer, the most obvious choice for screws is metric system screws. These are most probably M2 screws; if you look at the screw heads (Allen key screws) the size with respect to the fan (40x40x10 mm => fan thickness is 10 mm) seem confirm the assumption (head height is 2 mm as seen in the image of the dimensional analysis below, which is typical for M2 Allen bolts).
The length should be easy to calculate if you have a caliper laying around, else you need some ingenuity using a ruler and an object smaller than the diameter of the screw and a maker (to measure the threaded part in the metal cover). Measure the lug thickness of the fan (about 3 mm if you look at the image of the dimensional analysis below), add some length where the screw enters the metal casing (about 2 mm). For the bottom screws you'll need slightly larger screws since the shroud is also attached. Two sets of 2 screws should do the trick, you'll need at least M2x5 and M2x8, but measure before you order. A reference for the Ender 3 (which seem to use the same hot end casing) refers to M2x8 and M2x12 screws:

The stock blower fan uses something like M2x8 for the top, and M2x12 for the bottom. The hot-end cooling fan is M3x10, and so are the screws that hold the fan shroud on. The heat-sink screws are M3x14.

Dimensional analysis based on image:

I know the length is 8 mm and I used some calipers to measure the diameter of the screws I had in hand. The 2.4 mm and the 3 mm were a little too big. I think I’ll try to talk to the Creality support. Thanks

@Carter I made a dimensional analysis, the screws are probably M2, I also added a reference for the screw sizes.

Thanks! I didn’t have any of the screws on hand so I was nearly clueless of their size.


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Can SLA printers produce strong engineered parts?
I have an FDM printer, I printed ABS for years.
Since SLA printers became really cheap lately and are able to print finer details, are there resins out there as strong as ABS/PLA?

Sounds like someone might need to test a few parts and find out.  Print the same test part both ways and see if there's a significant strength difference...

short answer is no in general for the same part (this has to do with how things being bonded have more weak points to crack and fail vs extruded -strongest bonded will be weaker than strongest extruded except for maybe some ceramic), but maybe for the same use case- you may be able to build finer structures within the same requirements that produce better results.

If you look to cheap ones (< 100 Euro/litre), not likely. Either more flexible like Siraya tenacious, or less impact resistant. If you look at Formfutura resins (at least 100 Euro/litre), you'll have better luck.

Not inherently
SLA prints are usually very glasslike in their internal structure and thus are often quite brittle: They tend to break with a very distinct, sharp failure mode. Their compression strength is often high but their tensile strength is limited, and their resistance to side loads is low.
Due to the printing method solidifying the resin layer by layer, there is an inherent stress pattern, resulting in the items having a much lower strength than monolithic casted resins that cured in shape.
Yes, as an intermediate step
However, their print resolution makes them an excellent solution to create a mold which then can be used to create the actual part. Due to the thermal properties, one can't melt SLA prints, making lost-model investment casting not available.
Greensand casting isn't available for most resin or plastic materials. However, if the part is removable from the sand shells, it is a method that could make metal copies of your SLA printed masters.
As an alternative, rotary casting might be possible if the part can be removed from halves. Also, such prints are perfectly suited to making high detail silicone molds with limited undercuts, into which high durable liquid plastics (PVC) or 2-component casting resins can be cast for curing. In contrast to SLA resins, these cure into a monolithic product, which then is often much more durable to side loads.

I'm an owner of both an FDM printer and a resin one:
I've long searched a resin capable of printing durable objects even in tiny details but with poor luck.  I've tried ABS-Like resins, and they provide a slightly better resistance than regular resin but do not expect great improvements; I've tryed the siraya tech Blue V2 that is for sure much more durable but eventually would fail on the smaller details...
In the end i think I'll try the flexible resins like the Liquicreate flexible X or the Siraya tech Tenacious because those (similarly to TPU in FDM) can better absorb energy from impacts and having a smaller young's modulus can help when under load.

Have you checked expensive resins like Formfutura or the other ones which start at 100 Euro/litre and easily reach 200?


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How exactly can a 720P DLP print at a higher resolution than a 2k LCD?
I'm still confused on this. The Anycubic Photon Ultra is coming out soon, and it features an internal 720p Projector. The 720p resolution seems like a far cry from a 2k LCD (1280×720 vs. 2560x1440). Despite having 4x as many pixels, many articles are praising DLP as being much higher in resolution / detail. This is very counterintuitive... How can a DLP projector with less pixels produce a more detailed item than a 2k LED exposure?

How can a digital camera produce images several times the resolution of the sensor?  They move the sensor and overlay multiple exposures.  Optically or physically moving the DLP chip or its projected image can give a combined "image" from multiple scans anywhere from 2x to several times the linear resolution of the DLP itself.
Such a print might be slower than an LCD, because of multiple exposures for each layer, but it might also be faster, because the light source can be far brighter than can be used with an LCD without damaging the liquid crystals themselvs.


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A 2D printer(standard paper printer),that prints forever?
Posted here because I couldn't find a 2D printing or printing category.
My question is:
Is there a printer that can print on ordinary A4 paper without the use of ink/toners/thermal paper or anything you have to keep buying?

Welcome to 3D Printing Stack Exchange.  This question doesn't seem to be about 3D printing, though I'm not sure what other Stack Exchange site it might fit (seems like you're after a pen that never runs out of ink more or less, which makes a nice science fiction Maguffin, but can't actually exist).  Please read over the [FAQ] and take the site [tour] to better understand how our site (and Stack Exchange in general) works.

Well... you need something that will make a permanent mark. If you want a printer that doesn't need expensive consumables, look at pen plotters. They are not made any more, but you can always build one. You can probably find DIY projects that use ordinary pens. Even better, they use the same technology as 3D printers. The only real drawback is that they are slow.
An older technology is the humble typewriter, and it is possible to convert some electric typewriters into printers. One possible problem is the availability of ribbons.

Also, look at dot-matrix printers. You can probably pick up used ones very cheap, but ribbon availability may be a problem.

@Mick: Doesn't the pen count as consumable ink? Re: slow, now that 3d printers have gotten so fast, I imagine the same could be applied to 2d plotters for some extreme speeds (no need for motors, fans, heat blocks, etc. on the toolhead).

@R..GitHubSTOPHELPINGICE For sure, but ball-point are a lot cheaper than ink cartridges (which is why mentioned "expensive consumables".

@Mick: OP doesn't seem to have qualified it as "expensive", or laser printers would already be a solution. (One $60 toner cartridge lasts basically a lifetime of home use.)

I agree this question is leaning towards off-topic, but is it entirely so? CNC machines seem to be partly on-topic, and the only plausible answer to OP's question as-asked is a sort of CNC machine, possibly adapted.

Oddly enough, the only printers that do this make punch cards or documents in Braille. Both require cardboard and require special encoding to read.

In theory it could print by scorching the paper. A laser cutting CNC machine can probably be tuned to do this. However, I'm not sure the result would be exactly what you're asked for. Aside from burning, there's little you can do to paper that will make easily visible marks on it that does not require some additional consumable.

I actually did this once. Didn’t have a printer, did have a laser cutter. It is possible, but incredibly difficult. White paper reflects most light, so the laser needs to output quite a bit of energy to even lightly scorch the paper. However, once a thin top layer has darkened it will suddenly absorb a lot more light, making the laser cut all the way through. There is a very thin line between no visible marks on the paper and cutting all the way through.


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Need firmware for CreatorBot 3d Pro II?
I lost the operating system in my CreatorBot 3D Pro II. How do I go about recovering the firmware?
[Further details about how I lost the "operating system" are forthcoming]

Welcome to 3D Printing Stack Exchange.  Please take the [tour] and read the [FAQ] to get a better understanding of how this site works.  Also, have you checked the manufacturer's site for a firmware download?  What else have you done in terms of finding out what you actually need?

You mean this printer: https://3dprinterworks-dev.myshopify.com/products/creatorbot-3d-pro-series-ii-max

Don't you just need to reflash the board with new firmware? That should be detailed in the manual.


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Calculating suitable pressure for compressed-air-based cooling
I've heard a bit about folks using air compressors with tubing to the toolhead and outlet openings there as part cooling. One example is the Berd Air, but from the information I can gather, it works with rather low pressures where the expansion of the compressed air is unlikely to get the air significantly below ambient temperature, so it's basically equivalent to a low-end fan. Indeed, this video comparing such a system against the HevACS found it rather ineffective.
If one wants to harness the cooling of compressed air to hit the part with air significantly below ambient temperature, what is the relationship between pressure needed and temperature drop? I assume one can work it out pretty closely with ideal gas law, but I don't understand how to figure in both the change in volume and pressure when the air exits the high pressure part of the system.

This question could be regarded as a physics question as it involves thermodynamics.

Indeed it has overlap of physics, engineering, and 3d printing, but the context is very much the latter.

While compressed air comes out cold, from the decreasing pressure, the air in the line would be at room temperature, so little blasts might not cool the same as a steady stream from the compressor.
Also cold air, vs room temp air might not be great for 3D print cooling, I think it would cause warping in many materials, because the plastic keeps shrinking the colder it gets. Once you’re past the glass temperature, you have no practical reason to cool it further.

@ChinchillaWafers: "Air in the line"? If you're doing this, you put the TX valve right at the toolhead both for the sake of flow and avoiding absorbing heat after decompression. The point of colder air is not to get the final temperature cooler but to cool quicker, since rate of cooling is proportional to difference in temperature. Ambient air at 23 ˚C rapidly cools the material from its initial temperature of 210 ˚C, but cooling is far slower by the time it reaches Tg. Getting the cold air down to near 0 ˚C (much lower is probably a bad idea for risk of freezing up) would help a lot.

Maybe you're thinking of 'Vortex Cooling' which uses a tuned vortex tube to create hot and cold airstreams. The Wikipedia example uses 100 SCFM of filtered compressed air at 100 PSI to create a 70 °C temperature differential.
Here's one on Amazon which is targeted at milling applications. Here's another...

No, I'm thinking about exactly what I asked about. I'm not sure whether this is an interesting alternative though; it may be.

From what I gather, it uses some trick to get the resulting temperature significantly below what it would be just from the expansion of the gas. That's very interesting, but probably not a direction I'd go because of excess toolhead mass - I want to use this eventually on a delta with an extremely light toolhead. And it'd likely bring the temperature so low you'd be dealing with ice.

@R..GitHubSTOPHELPINGICE, As shown on the first link, you can pipe the cool air where you need it- a lightweight, flexible plastic tube would do.

Firts of, I created a quick simplified simulation in Matlab of cooling from 210°C to bellow 50°C. Here is a plot showing the difference in temperature curves in time. As stated, it is simplified, because I guessed that a printed piece can get from 210 deg to 50 in less than 5 seconds when cooled properly to room temperature.
I used this differential equation:

where T is temperature, t is time, T_target is target temperature (temperature of cooling air), a is a constant which I adjusted to meet the above specified criteria (a = 0.5)

As you can see, you save about a second of cooling time. You say whether it is enough. In my opinion it is irrelevant for standard printing.
Here is the Matlab source code if you want to try and experiment with it (it might run in GNU Octave as well, but I haven't tried it):
clear;
clc;

a = 0.5;
targetTemp1 = 23;
targetTemp2 = 0;
tempLine = 50;

timeSpan = [0, 5];
x0 = 210;

[t1, y1] = ode45(@odeFcn, timeSpan, x0, 0, a, targetTemp1);
[t2, y2] = ode45(@odeFcn, timeSpan, x0, 0, a, targetTemp2);

figure("Position", [360, 1220, 1200, 800]);
hold on;
plot(t1, y1);
plot(t2, y2);
plot([timeSpan(1), timeSpan(end)], [tempLine, tempLine], "Color", "black", "LineWidth", 2);

grid on;
legend("Taget temperature: " + targetTemp1, "Taget temperature: " + targetTemp2);
xlabel("t[s]");
ylabel("T[\circC]");

function y = odeFcn(t, x, a, target)
    y = -a * (x - target);
end

That being said, here is how I calculated the needed pressure.
Constants:

c is specific heat capacity of air, κ is Poisson constant for air, ρ is density od air, V_2 is volume at atmospheric pressure, I estimated this value, Δt is temperature difference assuming the pressurized air is at room temperature and need to be cooled down to 0 degrees
The needed energy too cool the air by delta t is given by this formula:

And assuming this is adiabatic process with ideal gass, we can use this equation to find p1:

assuming V1 is given by:

I calculated the needed work W is 0.3 J and the pressure p1 is 148 kPa. To me this seems fairly low, I might have made a mistake somewhere or a wrong assumption. However, I would always suggest experimenting and finding an answer empirically, because there are too many unforseen variables like: air humidity, parts that would absorb/release the heat, direction and speed of the airflow, crossectional area of the outlet and so on.
Hope this helps.
[Edit] You can find the equations on wikipedia here and here. Sadly, it is in Czech, because the English variant does not have the equations in this format.

Thank you very much. I still need to read in detail to understand it all, but I think this answer contains what I was looking for. FWIW the Berd Air I mentioned in the question only has 80 kPa, so the moderately higher 148 kPa you got makes some sense.

For what it's worth, I do consider 1s significant, especially when working with 4s total layer times. If details are small, slowing down the nozzle further to extend the layer time does not work; due to slow speed it just puts more heat into the part, and the other option is doing a z-hop away from the part to let it cool, but that takes a lot more time and risks stringing.

On the machine I'm hoping to build in the future (delta with ultralight toolhead aiming for 600+ mm/s and 50k+ acceleration) sub-5s layers are likely to be the norm for a lot of the types of things I tend to print, too.

From what I understand, the 80 kPa advertised is relative to (on top of) atmospheric pressure, meaning ~180 kPa in total, whereas my value is absolute. Having even cooler air blowing across the print will most likely result delamination because of the internal stresses (one point at ~200 degrees, the other at ~ 0 degrees). Also looking at the Berd Air pump I seriously doubt it will create anywhere near 80 kPa. The motor looks to be a standard 775 brushed motor, which does not have the speed and power to create such pressure.

Not mentioning it is rated for 150 mA at 24V (3,6W) which is too little to even spin the motor without a load. As well as the rotor (which we cannot see) would have to be very well balanced not to vibrate violently. I say: save you money for something else. I would suggest increasing the flow rate instead of (dramatically) lowering the temperature. That would however increase the weight of the printhead. You will need to experiment to find a good compromise.

Perhaps a small vacuum cleaner that is inverted could create large anough air flow while moving the weight to a stationary frame. You could also consider having PC fans blow across the whole bed. That would however rule out higher temperature printing (like ABS) and waste a lot of power just to keep the bed hot.

Oh, I wasn't planning to buy the Berd Air motor - indeed it seems seriously underpowered. I was just noticing that the numbers are on comparable order of magnitude. Indeed I also plan to have whole-build-volume fans (I have 2 80mm ones installed on my Ender 3 now and they work great); it's not a problem because I mostly use unheated bed, and I'm working on solutions to get PETG to work well with unheated bed.

Note that I specifically don't want high flow of air close to the part; I've experimented with that before and the force of the air hitting the part deforms it before it can cool (you can measure a bias in wall position based on the relative angle of the wall to the source of air). Thus the desired to use lower flow with colder air.

Higher air flow can be achieved either by increasing the speed or the volume of the air being moved. If you keep the speed low and increase the volume (as with the PC-like fans), it "shouldn't" deform the print. Again, experimenting is needed (which you might have already done and I am pointing out something that is already obvious to you). So good luck.

Yeah. For high volume rather than high speed, it's hard to achieve with air exiting at the toolhead, because <10ms after material is extruded the toolhead is too far away to have much affect on it. That's why I went with large full-build-volume PC-style fans already. I don't mind you reiterating the possibility though; it's good to keep thinking of all options.


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Extruder skips steps, when filament is manually pushed through the extruder it works somewhat "flawlessly"
My Ender 3 started to skip steps on the extruder, therefore no more filament comes through the nozzle anymore.
When I push the filament myself through the extruder, it works somewhat flawlessly. It's almost like the stepper motor doesn't have enough strength to push the filament through the tube.
I already tried to:

Replace the extruder with an all-metal one
Replace the PTFE tube with a better one from Capricorn with the appropriate fittings
Ramp up the temperature from 190 °C to 220 °C

I'm printing with PLA, E-steps are around 95 and the speed is set to 50 mm/s.

Ender 3's extruder is notoriously underpowered. The consensus these days seems to be that you need a geared extruder to get enough torque to reliably extrude at decent speeds or with difficult materials like PETG. But if you're hitting the problem with PLA at low speeds something is most likely wrong.

So, this might not help everyone, but I fixed the problem by increasing the tension on the spring in the extruder and by changing out the stepper motor (I used the one that came with the new all-metal extruder) to a new more powerful one.
So, all in all, my problem was a combination of those two things.

When a different stepper is installed you need to make sure that it is properly setup, i.e. the reference voltage, or current, needs to be manually set or specified in the firmware depending on the type of drivers you use.


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Ender 5 start problems
I've had an Ender 5 for a while now and it worked phenomenally but recently I installed a BigTreeTech SKR E3 mini and I had to update the firmware as well which came with some problems I don't know how to fix.
Whenever I start a print, it'll home fine but then move the nozzle up way too much (about 10 mm) off the build plate. In a recent post, I found out restoring factory defaults fixes it temporarily but I have to do that on every print and I really need to find a change that will permanently fix it.
I'm currently running Marlin 2.0x and my start G-code is listed in the other post (Ender 5 won't lift the Z-Axis before printing). Does anybody have any idea how I can fix this?

I ended up changing the firmware from Marlin 2.0x in the BigTreeTech GitHub to the Marlin bugfix-2.0x in the Marlin GitHub.
I also removed my Ender 5 from my Cura profile and added it again so it would reset any G-code I potentially messed up while tinkering. So far it is printing great.


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Software for hollowing out models for printing on a resin printer
I'm currently using Blender to make models to print on a Resin printer, and Chitubox to hollow the models out. I'm finding that Chitubox is unsatisfactory and leaves lots of internal islands.
Can anybody recomend any alternative software that has a hollowing feature. Preferably a free one?

Consider to check out Lychee Slicer. It has a free version which generates a 30 second advertisement prior to slicing, but the features of the software are implemented quite well and intuitive. I've purchased a limited subscription and haven't found the premium features to be particularly desirable, but not having the advert is almost worth the cost.
I've not used Prusa Slicer, but it is also a free program and can be configured for MSLA as well as FFF printers.


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How to add custom physical buttons to a 3D printer in Marlin software
I have a 3D printer with MKS Robin mainboard + TMC2209.
How do I add a piece of code to Marlin, for example, to make a physical button to start preheating, etc. I would like to use the existing mainboard, I don't want to use OctoPrint.
I have basic knowledge of Arduino programming. I could easily write the software to run the function on a button press but I cannot find how to integrate it into Marlin.

Hi and a very warm welcome to SE.3DP! Personally, as a keen Arduino tinkerer myself, I really like your question and I would like to know the answer as well. However, unfortunately, I think that this may be off-topic here as it is more about SW dev than 3D printing related. It'd be better to ask on the Marlin firmware forum, or raise a feature request on Github repository. However, the latter might be either very slow or not elicit much of a response as they are very busy people - it's worth a try though.

Alternatively, you could take a few weeks out and try to become familiar with the Marlin source code yourself, and code it yourself - which is certainly not within the realms of impossibility.  I would also say that SE.Arduino probably isn't the place to ask either. Maybe the Arduino forums, but again, it might not get much of a response, although probably a better response than on Stack Exchange - the reason being that adding code to firmware is not a simple Q&A issue, but rather a long winded discussion. All in all, the Marlin forum is probably the best place to start. Good luck..! :-)

I thought that this (firmware modification) had already been asked but I can't really find the question that I remember... It might have been 0scar's question, Can G-code scripts be run automatically on inserting an SD card when using Marlin Firmware?, and also of interest (although it recommends OctoPrint) is How to make physical buttons send G-code?

ultralcd.cpp
Maybe, just maybe, this post from how to add a physical button to extruder motor control? #10394 could help (the emphasis is mine):

rather than directly work on stepper.cpp, I would rather suggest to take a look at the LCD control part, and integrate an emulation of the prepare/move/Z-axis code. As for accessible pins, perhaps use any unused endstop ones ?

This would make sense, as it is similar to the location (i.e. file(s)) that required changing for 0scar's question Can G-code scripts be run automatically on inserting an SD card when using Marlin Firmware?. The file in that case was ultralcd.cpp (see my answer).
However, ultralcd.cpp seems to have been either removed, moved or renamed to ultralcd_st7920_u8glib_rrd_AVR.cpp. It doesn't look hopeful. Previously it was in a 3rd part bugfix, see this answer, and the link of that ultralcd.cpp is now dead.
Keypads code
Alternatively, this post helpfully suggests:

This is not a feature we would add. But it's possible to do movement with buttons by hooking into the LCD code and following the technique currently used for the KEYPADs.

So, that would seem to be a promising place to start. I'm not (currently) sure which file(s) that is though. It might be the code that handles the RepRapWorld keypad (see below).
RepRapWorld keypad
This could also be useful, the RepRapWorld Keypad:

Hook it up to your RAMPS AUX-2 port. Configure the firmware to use the keypad. The keypad is fully supported in Marlin Firmware.

You could emulate (i.e. reverse engineer) this piece of simple hardware (the most complex IC on it is just a shift register) and use the already built in code.
FWIW, a similar sounding (9 button) keypad is referenced here, Adding custom keypad, marlin
However, upon further reading, it is unclear whether the RepRapWorld keypad is still supported, see Feature request: add suppport for reprapworld keypad #1142. Apparently RepRapWorld didn't (6 years ago) support it nor supply the source and expected the Marlin coders to support it for free.
Other references and links
Nevertheless, the following post also suggests other sources of information that could be of use:

For best results getting help with configuration and troubleshooting,
please use the following resources:

RepRap.org Marlin Forum
Tom's 3D Forums
Facebook Group "Marlin Firmware"
Facebook Group "Marlin Firmware for 3D Printers"
Marlin Configuration on YouTube
Marlin Discord server. Join link: https://discord.gg/n5NJ59y

After seeking help from the community, if the consensus points to to a
bug in Marlin, then you should post a bug report.

It should be noted that, as a rule, the Marlin people prefer potential issues to be discussed on the Firmware Forum first, before any bug report or feature request is submitted to Github. This is to stop their Github issues page for getting too cluttered.
Also note that Tom's 3D Forums are now dead.
See also Marlin/ LCD-Keypad Code Mod, although the thread seems to consist mostly of posts bemoaning software maintenance and life-cycles, and then sort of loses steam and dies at the end. However, this post mentions uiconfing.h or ui.h.

It should be easy to add a button according to https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4932876, it uses a button and macros to (un)load filament. Although this is for RepRap firmware, it might work for Marlin also.


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Which glass for heated bed
I am building my CoreXY 3D printer with 350x350 mm heated bed at about 4 mm thickness. I just found out that borosilicate glass is unavailable at the local glazier. He offered tempered or ceramic glass instead. Which one should I go for? I read that both are a more expensive option to borosilicate glass, but I worry about the temperature stability, warping of the glass (in case of the tempered one), and parts (not) sticking to it. Any experience is appreciated.
PS. The ceramic glass of this size would cost me about 45 USD. The glazier did not tell me the price of the tempered option, but I reckon it will be around 30 USD, which is much more acceptable if it does the same job.

Side note, I've printed years on the bare aluminum plate with 3DLAC, that works well too! :-) Good question to probe for alternative sheets of glass! I know some people just use plain window, mirror or photo frame glass, that also works for a while. I'm curious to see the answers.

Well, I will probably go with the tempered glass. But since my printer is still far from finished, I will not have results for quite some time and by then I will most likely have forgotten to post them here. I plan on having one side bare glass and a PEI sticker on the other side. If anyone can share their experience, it will be most appreciated since I have to tell the glazier what I want in just a few day at maximum.

I'm no fan of PEI, since I print mostly PETG, the prints get fused with the bed. Even with 3DLAC difficult to remove. We cannot foresee when this question is answered, hopefully before you have to order.

I print mostly PETG and ABS with at least a thin layer of gluestick (even a layer that was applied days before is good enough). This keeps PETG from sticking too well, and ABS sticking well enough to print models as large as 20x20 cm. Btw this is with Prusa i3 MK2.5 with Kores glue stick.

The primary advantage of borosilicate isn't that it's resistant to thermal shock -- as someone already noted, there's not much in the way of rapid heating or cooling in FDM printing (yes, the filament is hot, but its mass is low enough the glass it touches won't pick up much heat).  Rather, it's the low expansion.  Common soda-lime glass (window glass, mirror glass) expands several times as much as borosilicate, which means it will also shrink several times as much when it cools back down.
If you're holding constant temp throughout the print, and give adequate preheat time, that won't matter, but if (for instance) you heat the bed 10 °C hotter for the first layer, then cool it, plain glass will shrink enough to potentially cause the print to come loose, while borosilicate won't.
Ceramic glass is like borosilicate only more so (akin to Corningware) -- but again, not worth paying for unless you expect to change your bed temperature during the print.
For any kind of glass, my own preference is to use glue stick.  I apply a "squiggle"  (a precise metric volume), use 91% isopropyl to spread it evenly over the build area, and my prints stay stuck, but pop right off when the glass cools a little.

People choose borosilicate because of its thermal properties.
Between ceramic and tempered, I would suggest tempered glass, it's not good as borosilicate when comes to adapting to rapid temperatures but better than ceramic. The other option I would suggest will be "Aluminium", which is much better.

Do you mean bare aluminium plate? Everywhere people say that prints do not stick to that.

@MStarha You can print perfectly fine onto aluminum build plates, I've done that for years. From the first day I got my first printer I tore the tape, removed it to print directly onto the plate, never changed that for that printer.

@0scar But you print mostly PLA, right? I almost never touch PLA because my prints are mechanical parts and PLA is too brittle and melts too soon for my liking. Though it is tougher than PETG or ABS. I worry that it would not stick well enough. Plus I do not want to hammer the print of the heated bed itself inside the printer. Or I would have to get another aluminium plate cut, which would cost me about the same as the tempered glass. Also I asked for help on reprap.org forum with interesting, but contradicting, answers.

@MStarha I rarely print PLA nowadays (under 3 kg), I've printed 20+ kg of PETG/NGEN, mostly mechanical parts as well. You just need to add the correct bonding agent. 3DLAC has served me very well, used it on aluminum or glass. Getting the prints from the plate hasn't been an issue (until I used a PEI sheet... PETG fuses with PEI).

Ok, thank you. Some people also report that PETG stuck to glass so much it took a piece of glass with it.

Mirror glass is commonly used. It's flat and cheap. There isn't really a sudden thermal shock to worry about, and if you're going to be printing at temperatures that need borosilicate glass, you might find the aluminium parts of the bed sagging. Remember to ask for the edges to be smoothed.
Thinner glass will transmit the heat better - but you might be able to get tempered glass as thin as 1/8" thick (~3.2 mm).

I print with PLA and use 3 mm mirror glass secured with a bulldog clip near-ish to each corner, and Elnett "Normal Strength" hairspray for adhesion (applied holding the glass over the bath to avoid it getting everywhere) - it's easy to clean off under running water. Demounting the parts cleanly is a simple matter of popping it in the fridge for half an hour if they don't come off with a slight nudge.

I was thinking that mirror as a print bed looks quite cool, but the reflection seems a bit impractical to me. I also plan on putting PEI sticker on the other side, and that could be a problem.


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Is the Anet A8 plus still relevant in 2021?
I'm currently looking for my first 3D printer. I may be a stranger to 3D printing but my I'm a tool and die maker by profession, so the DIY and learning curve involved don't scare me in the least.
I found via AliExpress this machine - the Anet A8 plus. Main appeal to me right now is that they have local stock since I live in Brazil where choice is highly limited. The thing is, I don't see a lot of stuff about it online, as compared to, say, Creality machines.
What I would like to know is, is the lack of discussion online a sign that the design is obsolete/irrelevant by now? Or is it still a viable choice in 2021?

Hi and welcome to SE.3DP! I'm not sure if this question will led to opinionated answers, some people may love this printer, and others may hate it. That said, IMHO, as a first printer, it should do what you want, and probably will serve you well. Most printers require constant tinkering/maintenance and this model would not differ. There are probably better printers out there, and probably worse ones. Unless the A8 has a serious design flaw, it should probably be OK. Even if there is a design flaw, it probably could be rectified with a few customisations.

In order to talk about relevance, we need to look into the design. Over the years, printers have moved on from wooden and acrylic frame parts to aluminum frames. The latter are much stiffer and more easy to build and connect other stuff too. The old acrylic Anet A8 had a community rework to the AM8 which is the aluminium 2040 profile upgrade of the A8 parts; the acrylic parts where prone to break and flexed, hence the vast amount of upgrades for this printer. So, the A8 plus printer has a sturdy frame.
However, this is a budget printer, but so are the Ender and it's clones. It is way better than the original A8. One of the negative aspects of the Ender type machines is the roller system and the single Z screw driven gantry, you see many topics that relate to the tensioning of the rollers. The Anet A8 plus uses the linear guide rods we know from the well proven Prusa i3 design. This design can also give you problems with e.g. Z-banding when low quality lead screws are used.
A weaker aspect of the Anet A8 plus is the hotend/extruder combo. It houses a full size stepper onto the X-Z gantry, adding a lot of weight, there are better solutions for this combo. The hotend itself is fairly simple, e.g. the Ender range has decent hotends, but the default plastic arm of the extruders tend to be a problem looking into some recent questions.
All-in-all, yes, the Anet A8 plus could still be considered relevant and will give you decent prints. If it is the best choice is up for debate. It is a question of what you want! Do you pick a printer that is less popular, or one with a huge fan base and modding scene (also spare parts, upgrades, firmware flavors, etc.).
If we look at your background of tool and die making, you may want to build a printer yourself, the Anet A8 plus printer may be a first welcome addition to make your own. E.g. although the Prusa i3 style printers can produce decent prints, all top printers use different kinematics, e.g. CoreXY, H-bot or Ultimaker Cartesian.

For me, printing started with a 180 Euro Anet A8 which has led me to building my own take on the AM8, a HyperCube Evolution (CoreXY) and buying an Ultimaker 3E...


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First layer inconsistency
I have been having issues on my Ender 3 v2 for a while regarding the first layer.
As shown in the images, certain sections of the layer are decent while there are almost seemingly periodic points in the layer where it seems to be too low. I have leveled multiple times, checked my extruder settings within my slicer where I adjusted the extrusion multiplier to 105 % as I thought this was an under extrusion issue. Before adjusting the extrusion multiplier, nozzle, and bed temp, the problem was worse so it seemed to have helped a bit but it is still inconsistent.
Any ideas as to what could be causing this?

Observations:  1. I cant tell for sure but it looks like the extrusion width is set too thin for the nozzle size. 2. The three darker bands plus the dark corners for the infill looks like a repetitive under extrusion.  It may be a good idea to check the filament flow path, tangled spool and extruder tension.

Please post images inline not as off-site links that can rot.

Cropping the images, before posting them, would be a good idea too.

It's difficult to see your first layer well with this low magnification.  Your 1st layer z-height appears to be too high.
This question isn't directly related to your issue, but may give you some insight: Wavy lines on 1st layer only
If your initial z-height is too high, the nozzle will not flatten out part of the first layer extrusion and the extrusion will not stick well to adjacent extrusions.


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Mid print error: Hot end pushed print bed clean of. Part still glued to the bed
I'm using a Creality Ender 3 V2 with BLTouch and Smith3D Marlin firmware.
Yesterday I designed a speaker adapter ring for my car in Autodesk Inventor. I converted the part to OBJ and sliced it in Cura. It was a fairly simple circular-shaped part that would normally not cause any issues.
The first layers went on great, did not expect it to go bad at all. When I woke up this morning, I found my print bed on the floor, luckily still in one piece, with the part still glued on. The clips holding the bed down flew off, and my BLTouch broke clean off.
I checked the part for warping, but it was straight as an arrow. I checked for burn marks, none. I couldn't find the area of impact either, probably because the BLTouch took most of the impact and flexed a bit.
I checked the Cura slice for weird motions but there didn't seem anything wrong.
What could have caused this? The printer was hours into the print when it happened.
The only thing I can think of is that Cura somehow incorporated bad G-code causing the Z-axis to move halfway through the print.
Any input is greatly appreciated. I don't quite trust my printer anymore.
I think we can safely assume that the print head moved down on its own. I live alone without any pets. Harry the house mosquito, albeit extremely annoying, is probably incapable of pushing the print bed off. The pushpin wouldn't be remotely strong enough, and the BLTouch mount snapped in half as well, so there was a lot of force applied here.
Would cosmic rays actually be able to cause this?
Nothing was connected via USB. So that leaves 2 and 3. I ran a clean version of Cura, that I always update, so it should be at the latest version available as of September 6th.
As soon as I find the time, I'll swap out the BLTouch or revert back to the stock one until new pushpins arrive. I'll probably try out a fresh slice from Cura and hope for the best I guess.

Assuming that we know one thing for sure, we can identify 3 possible causes:

The print-head moved down
The BLTouch lowered its pushpin
Some external factor pushed the bed off
Cosmic rays could have caused a bit to flip

Assuming you kept your Ender 3 in Marlin flavour, the print head could have moved down in 4 possible ways:

something connected to USB sent a G-code signal
the printer inserted a G-code signal (very improbable that a printer sends self-destruct signals)
Cura inserted something into the code. Cura plugins sometimes add G-code that might not be visible in the preview. You can also rule this option out by printing from the same file from the same SD card again.

I don't know if the pushpin of the BLTouch is strong enough to break the BLTouch. Does it show any strain from sideways force?
Do you have cats? Dogs? Birds? Kids?
If a bit in the RAM of the AVR controller is flipped, it could for example, move the print-head down instead of up. This is very rare, but it does happen occasionally and cause big problems.

the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center doesn't indicate any appreciable activity over the last 24h so probably the first three.


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Wavy corners when printing calibration cat
I've recently set up my Snapmaker 2.0 A350 again after moving apartments. I started by calibrating it. There was a couple of issues I'm familiar with that I could solve but one I don't know what to do about.
The corners of my CaliCat are wavy, the best I can describe them.

I'm using Cura as my slicer and the Snapmaker's filament. I know they're not good but I got it with the printer and want to finish it on less important jobs. My thermometer for the nozzle might be wrong, I was getting "elephant's foot" and drags marks in the bottom layer until I lowered the temperature to 180 °C. If I lower it to 175-170 °C, the prints fail. The rest of the settings are on default from Generic PLA and I'm using the Snapmaker profile that Cura came with.

It looks like you might have loose belts, and/or Z wobble from problems with a lead screw or how it's mounted. I'm not familiar with your printer so I'm not sure how plausible those are.

https://asset.conrad.com/media10/isa/160267/c1/-/sv/002350349PI00/image.jpg?x=600&y=600
This is how it looks.

What is the Z motion system based on? I can't really tell from the picture. Are there lead screws behind the vertical beams or belts or what?

Sadly i don't know but i will look into it and get back to you. The beams have a metal sheet to protect their insides from dust as the machine has an interchangable tool head , with the alternatives doing laser cutting and CNC.

Yes there indeed seems to be a screw on the inside. I'll disassemble and maintain all of them on the weekend and get back here with how it went.
https://forum.snapmaker.com/t/beware-of-loose-lead-screw-nut-fasteners/2505

OK, if there are Z lead screws it's very likely a problem with the screws or how they're mounted. If they're not perfectly straight or if they're overconstrained or similar, they can apply tension in different directions in the XY plane as they turn, causing this kind of wavy effect. You could measure the wavelength and see if it matches the lead or pitch of the leadscrews.

The defect looks like Z wobble, this can be caused by the lead screw, check the internal guide rails and rollers, see this video for assembly/disassembly.

It's worth measuring your heater-block and bed temperatures to verify that they are actually as far off as you believe.

The least expensive, but most difficult way is to use the thermocouple on a multimeter that can measure temperature.

Easier is to use a single point pyrometer for a non-contact measurement.

The easiest, but most expensive way to measure the temperatures, is to use a thermal imager that will tell you the highest temperature within the image.

Note: This is not the final answer, but too much for a comment.  Please do not let this discourage posting a final answer.

This is possible, but I would not expect such a severe effect from temperature variation unless the measurements are way off, to the point that it's underextruding from the temperature falling so low.

@GitHub True, but tweaking the temperature if it's not off just complicates finding the problem.  I put this as an answer because it is too long for a comment, and ill formatted in a comment.  I don't expect it to be the final answer.


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M503 command is reporting "Maximum feedrates" with duplicate and empty values: M203 X200.00 Y200.00 Z5.00 E Y1000.00 Z100.00 E5000.00
I'm pretty stumped on this one.
Investigating an issue I was having with an OctoPrint plugin, I've come to realize my M503 command is reporting duplicate and empty values. This is not an issue with the plugin, but an issue with the native M503 output.
Here's what I'm getting:
echo:  G21    ; Units in mm (mm)
echo:  M149 C ; Units in Celsius

echo:; Filament settings: Disabled
echo:  M200 S0 D1.75

echo:; Steps per unit:
echo: M92 X80.00 Y80.00 Z400.00 E93.00

echo:; Maximum feedrates (units/s):
echo:  M203 X200.00 Y200.00 Z5.00 E Y1000.00 Z100.00 E5000.00

echo:; Acceleration (units/s2): P<print_accel> R<retract_accel> T<travel_accel>
echo:  M204 P500.00 R500.00 T500.00

echo:; Advanced: B<min_segment_time_us> S<min_feedrate> T<min_travel_feedrate> J<junc_dev>
echo:  M205 B20000.00 S0.00 T0.00 J0.08

echo:; Home offset:
echo:  M206 X0.00 Y0.00 Z0.00

echo:; Material heatup parameters:
echo:  M145 S0 H185.00 B45.00 F255
echo:  M145 S1 H240.00 B110.00 F255

echo:; PID settings:
echo:  M301 P21.73 I1.54 D76.55

; Controller Fan
echo:  M710 S255 I0 A1 D60 ; (100% 0%)

echo:; Stepper driver current:
echo:  M906 X580 Y580 Z580
echo:  M906 T0 E650

echo:; Driver stepping mode:
echo:  M569 S1 X Y Z
echo:  M569 S1 T0 E

echo:; Linear Advance:
echo:  M900 K0.00

echo:; Filament load/unload lengths:
echo:  M603 L350.00 U400.00

This is the problem:
echo:; Maximum feedrates (units/s):
echo:  M203 X200.00 Y200.00 Z5.00 E Y1000.00 Z100.00 E5000.00

Why would my feedrate be reporting an empty "E", an additional "E5000" and then two of each "X" and "Z" arguments as well? At first, I thought maybe it was a duplicate Z-Y-Z-E followed by another.. but it's followed by Y-Z-E only.
My printer specs:

Ender-3 Pro
SKR Mini 2.0
Micro Swiss hot end
Direct drive extruder
Marlin build is straight from the BigTreeTech repo

Thank you in advance for any help.

Do you get the same if you just send M203? Also to be clear this is not causing a issue directly that you know of correct?


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Exploding bubbles while printing polycarbonate
I have a Kuka robot that I use to print large objects (output around 18 kg/hour). I am printing recycled polycarbonate pallets.
The problem I am having is that exploding air bubbles are appearing frequently. The extruder has four heaters with temperatures:

210 °C (first heater)
230 °C
250 °C
260 °C (nozzle)

The fan is turned off.
Any ideas what could cause this problem?

I would assume either the pellets have a manufacturing defect (air trapped in them) or the bubbles aren't air but water vapor, meaning the material has absorbed water. If you haven't dried it prior to use, you probably need to.

That's not air, that's water. Polycarbonate has water in between the molecules, it's part of the plastic. Heating it causes the water to boil.

Some plastics, and PC is quite bad about this, are hygroscopic, and will absorb water if they are not kept in a low humidity environment.
Usually the manufacturer of the plastic pellets has a data sheet that specifies a drying process that should be used to condition the pellets before they are melted.  Typically this consists of a baking process with a time/temperature profile, and can be incorporated into the pre-feed before it gets to the melt zone.
However, if the bake time is too long or your feed too fast, you may have to precondition them separately.

I dry the plastic for a long time and also bake in the pre-feed hopper. Could the feed/extruder ratios be causing this? What about the temperature of my heaters?

Have you looked for the manufacturer's drying guidelines?  Possibly you aren't following them closely enough, maybe some of the temps are not right.

Possibly baking it is not enough.  I've seen datasheets that indicate baking with humidity control as well.


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Bed crashing into print head when levelling
I have been printing okay for months, but, I had an overnight print failure for the first time; so turned off the printer. Restarted it, thought I would need to level the bed. Normally when I turn on the printer it will go to the X, Y, endstops then center on the bed; it did not do it this time...
And now when I do a bed leveling. Press leveling on the screen. the printer will go to the X and Y stops, the center and the bed will lower and comes up and the BL Touch will drop out, contact the bed and the bed goes back down, the bed comes back up and contacting the BLTouch again, and the bed will go back down. All is good so far. Then the bed comes back up again BUT does not stop and crashes into the print head. I have tried and tried for hours to sort this out but have failed.
Can anyone help whit this? I have asked on many forums without any success?
I have not changed anything, and have been printing for 7 plus months without an issue. I even have not changed anything, I have a video of the problem:

As a comment, I see you skipped a step. If this is the solution I'll post a proper answer. If you look at the following video, you will see that you need to manually press the homing button before you do the leveling. It is best to check that first.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSOVAdKw4ss

Thank you ( hiome is normaly set first just not in this vid).
However, after looking at the video clip you posted the link for it did show me something  This was to open a print file and have a look at the Z Compensation setting. the setting in my last print was a staggering 25.34mm !!!! how and why i do not know. So i reset it to 00.00 and then cancelled the print and went back to doing the levelling and all when ok this time. I do not know how or why the Z compensation had changed it is normally around 1 .to1.05 ish. as i say i cannot find how or why it had changed
Thank you


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How to make Ender 5 use BLTouch probe for Z homing?
Backstory
I set up the BLTouch module as explained in the guide that came with it - that included unplugging the Z axis switch, and replacing it with a pair of wires from the BLTouch module.
I managed to burn the firmware available from Creality, however this didn't have an offset for the fact the BLTouch module is offset from the hotend, and I couldn't manually edit the .hex file to add in offsets.  I tried using the G Code command to update it on the EEPROM, but that didn't work and it always probed off the edge of the bed.
I then decided to flash new firmware based directly off Marlin 1.1.x, as there are some videos on Youtube about how to do this.  I used the pink USB ISP supplied with the BLTouch to flash the Arduino bootloader to the motherboard, and now I can use the Arduino IDE to program the board.
I uploaded my configured Marlin firmware (see below), but it isn't working properly.
Problem
When I home the printer, the X and Y stops go to the switches, bump and zero correctly.  However, when the Z axis is homing, the BLTouch probe stays retracted, and it starts heading for home - I forcefully shut down my printer when this happens because I know there's nothing to stop it from crashing into the print head and breaking things.
How do I configure my firmware to use the BLTouch module as the Z stop probe?
Although the probe clicks in and out a few times when I power on the printer, I'm not entirely sure that it is even working - going to the BLTouch menu and choosing Cmd: Deploy doesn't have an effect.
On the up side, when it goes to the centre to home (due to Z_SAFE_HOMING), the BLTouch module is over the centre of the build plate instead of the hotend.

Configuration
You can see the Marlin repository I'm trying to use here on Gitlab, or a direct link to the diff between the inital Marlin configuration and my changes.
These are some hopefully relevant configuration changes I've made:
// Configuration.h

//#define USE_XMIN_PLUG
//#define USE_YMIN_PLUG
#define USE_ZMIN_PLUG
#define USE_XMAX_PLUG
#define USE_YMAX_PLUG

#define BLTOUCH

#define X_PROBE_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER -44  // X offset: -left  +right  [of the nozzle]
#define Y_PROBE_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER -6   // Y offset: -front +behind [the nozzle]
#define Z_PROBE_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER 5.7  // Z offset: -below +above  [the nozzle]

#define Z_HOMING_HEIGHT 4

#define Z_SAFE_HOMING

// pins_MELZI_CREALITY.h

#define SERVO0_PIN 20 // Wondering if this is correct?

These settings have been left as default, but they look relevant maybe:
/**
 * Z_MIN_PROBE_USES_Z_MIN_ENDSTOP_PIN
 *
 * Enable this option for a probe connected to the Z Min endstop pin.
 */
#define Z_MIN_PROBE_USES_Z_MIN_ENDSTOP_PIN

/**
 * Z_MIN_PROBE_ENDSTOP
 *
 * Enable this option for a probe connected to any pin except Z-Min.
 * (By default Marlin assumes the Z-Max endstop pin.)
 * To use a custom Z Probe pin, set Z_MIN_PROBE_PIN below.
 *
 *  - The simplest option is to use a free endstop connector.
 *  - Use 5V for powered (usually inductive) sensors.
 *
 *  - RAMPS 1.3/1.4 boards may use the 5V, GND, and Aux4->D32 pin:
 *    - For simple switches connect...
 *      - normally-closed switches to GND and D32.
 *      - normally-open switches to 5V and D32.
 *
 * WARNING: Setting the wrong pin may have unexpected and potentially
 * disastrous consequences. Use with caution and do your homework.
 *
 */
//#define Z_MIN_PROBE_ENDSTOP

/**
 * Number of servos
 *
 * For some servo-related options NUM_SERVOS will be set automatically.
 * Set this manually if there are extra servos needing manual control.
 * Leave undefined or set to 0 to entirely disable the servo subsystem.
 */
//#define NUM_SERVOS 3 // Servo index starts with 0 for M280 command

There are 5 wires (of which 2 ground) if you have 2 wires (black/white) on the Z-endstop, where are the orange, red and brown connected. The latter are essential for the servo function, these should be connected correctly and configured correctly in firmware. What controller board do you have (and version) and which pins are you using, adding photos might help.

@0scar You were on the right track!  I was way out of my depth and ended up setting SERVO0_PIN to the ZMIN pin and not what it should have been according to the breakout board.  Sadly there's basically no documentation from Creality, presumably because they want you to use their own pre-compiled hex files.  All's well that ends well!

Glad to help, the servo pin depends on the board, hence not posting an answer, great to see you posting your own answer!

I've solved this now.  Here's the problem:
// pins_MELZI_CREALITY.h
#define SERVO0_PIN 20 // Wondering if this is correct?
Funnily enough, it wasn't correct.  Pin 20 is the Z MIN pin, as defined in pins_MELZI_CREALITY.h, and not the servo pin used by the BLTouch module.
At 8:04 of this youtube video, he says that that value should be set to 27, "if we're using a pin 27 board or splicing pin".
I tried it, and the BLTouch module now responds, and homing works!
For anyone else who comes across this problem (it's strangely very hard to find online), add the following code:
#define BLTOUCH
#if ENABLED(BLTOUCH)
  #define SERVO0_PIN 27
  //#define BLTOUCH_DELAY 375   // (ms) Enable and increase if needed
#endif

Many thanks for posting your solution! Pleas accept after 48 hours to minimize the list of unanswered/unaccepted questions. Now work your way through https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/16604/automatic-bed-leveling-abl-with-a-sensor-bltouch-inductive-capacitive-how and enjoy printing (you still need to provide a bed as level, or trammed, as possible)! :-) Nice video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSOVAdKw4ss


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Klipper firmware on OctoPi asks for MCU for flashing
I have Marlin firmware on an Anycubic Vyper 3D printer and I want to use Klipper.
My Raspberry PI 3B runs OctoPi and I installed Klipper from Github. Now I want to flash Klipper, but when I select Raspberry Pi for flashing I get an error that flashing on Raspberry is not supported. For the attached Vyper printer I have no knowledge of the MCU to select.
What MCU to select in Klipper for Anycubic Vyper?

The printer controller board (the controller that came with the printer) needs to have the basics for being controlled by Klipper, hence the flashing, you should select the MCU of the 3D printer, that is not your Raspberry PI. Usually it is a Atmega AVR or a 32-bit controller board.
It appears the Anycubic Vyper 3D is using a 32-bit Cortex-M3 MCU, but please check what your controller has.
Please read this article by All3DP, it describes exactly the same as above:

Use your device’s arrow keys and enter button to navigate the pop-up menu, and go to the “Micro-controller section”.
The Ender 3 V2 uses an STM 32-bit board, so click the “STMicroelectronics STM32” option.

Do i need to open the 3d printer in order to see the controller?

@Leder You may want to do that, but I'm convinced that you have a 32-bit board.


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What is this white layer on my 3D printer?
I left my printer to print a circular object and when I came back I saw it didn't print anything but left this layer of white on the surface. I can't get it off, I've tried washing it and scraping it off with the chisel, nothing works.

Does it effect print adhesion? Might just be a mostly cosmetic issue, trying to clean it may just cause more damage.

My guess is it's damaged print surface from the hot extruder mashing against the print surface.  Your description seems to indicate that it isn't a layer.

I'm inclined to agree with @Perry Webb: That looks like heat damage

If it actually is residue from the material you were trying to print, pressed against the surface so tightly and so thin that you can't separate it, the best way to remove it is printing a new object on top of it, using the same material, with the bed properly leveled (i.e. not smashing the nozzle into it again) and with the bed and nozzle temperature high. If things go well, it will then come off with the print when you're done after the bed cools. This is because printable thermoplastics tend to stick better to themselves than to the bed.

I have similar marks on my print bed from when I was learning the proper way to level the bed. It has not harmed my prints but it just doesn't look right.

@GitHub While this is true for most filament materials, it is not true for PETG.

ABS scrapes off best with the bed hot, but this will distort a print.

@PerryWebb: What happens with PETG? It adheres better to the bed? I think it might work with PETG if you get the bed really hot -- in my experience, PETG can be difficult to get adhesion between the first and second layer because the bed sinks too much heat out of the material for it to bond well. If not for that, I'd print PETG on a fully unheated bed.

@GitHub The trouble with 1st and 2nd layer adhesion with PETG is usually caused by the initial z-height being slightly high to keep PETG from sticking too well to the print surface.  If the initial z-height is slightly low without an extra print surface such as a glue stick layer, PETG can stick so well to the print surface that it rips holes in the print surface.  Heating the bed might help.  I would try printing the PETG at room temperature, then heat the bed to get a thermal mismatch for removal.  Of course, this is backwards from getting a good printed object.


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Convert STEP file to mold file
I need to turn a prototype into a mold. Conventional metal molds are too expensive.  I have the STEP files of the prototype. Is there anyone here that does that?

Glad you are here but this is not the type of site that you are thinking of. It is a question/answer site to solve issues with 3D printing. The site does not offer services. Also, please be careful when putting personal or business information out on a publically accessible site.

HI and welcome. Please [edit] your question, rewording it to ask how to do what you want to do, else it may end up being get deleted. As agarza has already stated no services are provided on this site and requests for recommendations for services are off-topic.

If you already have the STEP file, you can load that file in a CAD program to create the mold yourself. You do need to add an interface to pour or inject the material you want to make the prototype from (also add an overflow opening, depending on the product). I think this answer answers your question.

most CAD software will let you subtract one shape from another producing a negative that can resemble a mold.  Depending on the geometry you need and the material you intend to use, you will need to make multiple pieces of the mold and alter features for easy removal.


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Inconsistent E-step calibration test results
My Ender 3 has been having intermittent under extrusion issues.  Layers of good density alternate with weak mesh.  When printing multiple objects at once, sometimes one will be almost entirely good, while the piece next to it is all meshy; so it's not even consistent within layers, or between sections of the print bed.
I've cleaned it and replaced everything from the stepper handle to the hot end.
Today I've been trying to calibrate E-steps, and they're all over the place:

Initial tests produced from 19 to 23 mm (should be 100 mm)
I calibrated to an average of those, and then tests ranged 105 to 115 mm
I tried a different spool of filament; that one produced 58 and 67 mm.

What can be causing these inconsistent results?

Getting 19 to 23 when it should be 100 is not something you can "calibrate out". It's indicative of a serious (likely mechanical) failure somewhere. Put the esteps back where they started (93) and look for the problem. Your extruder tension arm is probably cracked or the spring has no tension, or the hob gear is damaged or full of plastic shavings.

Thanks.  I replaced the tension arm (no apparent damage), spring, and hob gear just before calibrating.  Any other suggestions?

Is the hotend jammed? Can you push material through it by hand without difficulty? When you do esteps tests, can you tell if the material is slipping on the hob gear, or if the hob gear stutters or stops turning? It's possible you have electrical or logic problems causing it to lack torque or otherwise miss steps.

Uhoh.  Somebody installed the new gear wrong.  Reinstalled, estep test at 97mm, adjusted, test print in progress.  thanks!

Oops.  I had replaced the tension arm, spring, and hob gear before calibrating.  Turns out I attached the gear too low, so it wasn't pushing the filament through.
Adjusted the gear, and calibration tests became consistent.  Printing nicely now.

It is appreciated that you returned to answer your own question, thanks!


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What are the maximum recommended layer height settings for a large but low detail model on an Elgoo Saturn?
On an Elegoo Saturn resin printer, I'm going to print some background scenery. The models have large flat surfaces and little detail. I will add this later using traditional modelling methods.
I want to print these out as fast as is safe what is the maximum recommended layer height that I can use?


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Alunar Prusa i3 hot end replacement options
I had a print fail a while back and the filament covered the hot end. I attempted to replace the nozzle to fix the no filament issue but it looks like the unit has a cheap Chinese heater block that I have seen mentioned or It's a really old model which is nothing like the current ones with heat sinks. I am hoping to find a replacement heater that will work in place of this hot end. I suspect from looking at the design and the things I have read that I will likely need a different heater block. It might just connect the heat tube with the nozzle if both are bottomed out which was mentioned as not a good thing. The heat tube/break seems to be the reason I can't properly get the filament out as it is letting it melt too far up since it has the nut against the heater block and no radiator.
This has a picture of the print head mount. I suspect I have to change that out in order to handle the new styles of print heads.
Any suggestions are appreciated.
It should be a heat break but does not look like it was implemented that way the first picture shows the unit.  It screws into/through the bottom of the carrier has a fan on it but no proper heatsink.

The Alunar M508 is very similar to the old Anet A8 3D printer (I'm positive that it is a copy). Note that both are acrylic frame printers based on the Prusa i3 concept.
The images of the Alunar M508 appear to show the MK8 hotend. As you mentioned, these are old hotend designs that have been caught up by new designs.
In order to use a different, higher quality hotend, you need to look out for community designs for your printer model. Thingiverse is a good source, e.g. Alunar m508 Upgrades is a good place to start. You could look out for an e3D V6 if you want a Bowden (remote extruder) or a BondTech type (direct extruder). You need to print out a holder (plate) to accommodate the bearings, securing/fixing the belt and holding to fans and the heat sink.

I am seeing some anet stuff and it looks correct. Will try a simple hotend with the cartridge thermistor.