text:
Very first 3D prints, but bad quality. What can I do?
To start with, as stated in the title, I am very new to 3D printing.
We're a toy/boardgame shop and we're experimenting with 3D printing because it could open up a huge market for us. To this end, I'm asked to try to get this off the ground, but also for me it's a big experiment.
General Information
Printer: Craftbot Plus
Slicer: CraftwarePro (1.1.4.368)
Filament: PLA - 1.75 mm
Designed in: Tinkercad
Problem
I designed a puzzle box in Tinkercad. Here are some images of the design:

I've printed it twice, but both have some problems. I made some pictures, hopefully showing the flaws clearly.
Print 1
This print actually came out pretty ok, but not the quality I'm looking for.

Print 2
For some reason, this one came out way worse in my opinion. I didn't change any settings. The reason why I made this second print is that there are some design flaws in the first print.

As you might be able to tell, this one has some more severe problems, like the prolapse on one of the corners of the lid and some threads that just seem to be broken off here and there.
Question
My question is basically, what is likely to be the problem, and how should I solve them. Are there some settings on the printer, or in the slicer that needs to be changed? Or could it be something with the design, for example, would it be better to have the lids laying down on the bed, instead of standing up as I have them in the design right now?
Also, here and there seem to be threads of plastic where I think there should not be any.
What have I found myself
Since I'm very new to this, I wasn't really sure what to search/look for. I know it's expected to do some research yourself before posting any question, but I really didn't have a clue where to start.
Though, while typing in the question, 2 suggestions showed up:
Suggestion 1
I have bad print quality, what should I do?
I'm not sure this looks like any of my problem areas, but somewhat similar.
Suggestion 2
Bad quality at horizontal faces
This looks very much similar to how some of my areas look. Is the problem described in this post indeed the same as mine, based on the pictures?
Conclusion
In both posts, "Under Extrusion" is mentioned this is probably something to look into?
Some personal observations
There are 2 things I noticed myself, maybe some conclusions can be made from this:

Something else I'm noticing while heating up the extruder is that plastic already leaks out in a very thin thread before it actually starts printing.

When the print is done, I notice thin threads of plastic between the different objects (Like a spiderweb), this probably has something to do with point 1.

When the printer is starting, I notice that the very first threads of plastic are not a fluent string, but sometimes get interrupted, as if no plastic is coming out of the extruder for a short moment.

Conclusion
Hopefully, I provided every information that is required to answer this question properly. I'm looking forward to any offered assistance.
In case any additional information is required, I'm happy to give this next time I'm at the office.
P.S. I had to remove 6 links (pictures) to get to my maximum of 8

It's quite a read! Welcome to 3DPrinting.SE! One of your prime problems is adhesion the other is orientation of the prints for printing,

Oscar is correct but also I'm seeing some bonding problem, this is for the quality of the filament, a higher temperature may help, but the low quality of the filament will remain. this becomes breakable parts, I had that problem with 2 reels last year. I had to use it on low streng parts.

Looking at your username, I'd say you are located in the same country, you can get very good quality filament produced in the Netherlands at reasonable prices. Postage is free for the Netherlands. What filament brand did you use?

@0scar We are indeed from the Netherlands. The filament we used is from Layers. Im not sure if that is the actual brand of the filament, but that is where the filament is from.
Also thanks for your short and long answer, definitely some information in there I can work with.

Welcome to 3Dprinting.SE! Lay3rs sells the brand I was referring to, ColorFabb. Note that SE is not a forum, it's just questions and answers driven by voting. Please stick around, ask questions, vote for good questions and if your reputation gets over 50 you can vote for answers. You can always accept an answer on your own question, you can even add your own answer and accept it after 48 hours. Please take the [tour] for more information on how stack exchange works.

There are several issues at hand here, first you have an adhesion problem.

This print shows that the print (as it is printed upright) has come loose during printing and lifted up. Such a print should have been printed as it is now laying on your table. You will then also get far better quality of printed holes. So, second is print orientation on the build plate.

This shows another example of adhesion problems, but it also shows that you initial distance between the nozzle and the bed is slightly too large. The paper method usually works fine, but you can use feeler gauges. Alternatively use a specific 3D print adhesion spray (3DLAC, Magigoo, DimaFix) or alternatively some hairsprays or glue sticks.
Third, design. Just a tip, I see that your design uses some sort of a pin:

you should avoid thin pole/spike like prints. These are difficult to print and usually very weak. Think of an alternative, an embedded shaft or a bolt is usually a much better solution.

Fourth, this shows that there was no filament printed, it could be that the spool had extra resistance or the filament was entangled. Check your filament spool.

Fifth, this shows that you have a retraction problem, the filament pressure is still too large when the head moves to the next coordinates, it then oozes until the pressure has been released. Changing retraction speed or distance may help.

I've also found recently that using 4 different slicers, I get 4 different results.
I was getting lots of zits on rounded surfaces such as cylinders/spheres.
I have an Ender 5 S1 with a Sonic Pad, printing at 200 hot end, 60 bed with default slicer settings for my printer.
I used:

Creality Slicer
Creality Print (still confused why Creality has 2 different slicers, and which one is the recommended one)
Ultimaker Cura
Prusa

Cura was the only one that produced zits. The other 3 printed very nicely.
Prusa was showing "artifacts" through the cylinder when there were threads on the inside. Basically, it looked almost like the threads were extruding through the entire outer wall of the cylinder (it was a female-threaded cap).
Creality Slicer was ok, but slower than all of them.
Creality Print was almost 2x faster than all of the other slicers, until a more complex print was performed and then Prusa seemed to be slightly faster.
This is an old thread, and I'm pretty new to 3d printing, but thought I'd share my experience here with different slicers in case they are having print issues, too.

Creality Slicer and Creality print are Cura derivates. The quality of your printing in Cura is highly dependent on your settings. I just printed a Cura 5.0 sliced object with seams only visible in two tiny spots, using my custom profile.

Good point, @trish - I should have mentioned these were mainly default settings for my printer (in fact, Cura's default setting has the bed size incorrectly, so I have from time to time, received "out of bounds" and had to tweak it.). Interesting update, I've been printing some Mario objects from RICO3DMAKER on Cults3d and am having issues with zits using Cura Print, but Prusa is showing them almost perfectly. So much to learn!

The "Zits" often are the Z-seam

I'm not sure this is the same. My prints with Cura have random locations all over, not just down the seam. I will try to find some time to play with this setting though and see if it improves the prints.

Another common reason for zits is uneven filament

Adhesion
Try raising your bed temperature a couple of degrees at a time.  Presumably your filament has some "suggested temperatures" on the spool, but they sometimes only give a hotend's temp.   For PLA some people get good results with a 50 degree C bed, I find nothing less than 60 degrees C.   Esun's rec seems to be 60-80 for the bed.
For the hotend my esun PLA+ suggests 205-225 and I print at 218.
Depending on the environment, draughts can upset things and trigger lifting.  If the printer is in a place where there are winds/breezes, or airconditioning that cycles on and off, the temperature fluctuations can start lifting.   Try putting your printer somewhere that there is no wind and air conditions are static.   I have a curtain around mine, and some people use enclosures made from popup laundry baskets or similar.  Doesn't have to be fancy.
You can try things with light layers of water-soluble gluestick on the bed, which works for me.  Others have had success in laying blue painter's tape on the bed but I found the heat made the adhesive a hot mess.
Orientation
That pin will never work - 3D printing has layers and items are always weak along the layers.  So that part is a poor candidate for 3D printing.
Instead, buy a large assortment box of M3 nuts and bolts.  These work much better than thin printed parts.
Also, that large lid should be printed laying flat on its back.  Even the action of the bed moving around could be creating enough breeze to cool that part quickly and cause shrinkage.
Design
That dovetail at the foot of the box, as printed it will have a layer line right across the base.  Since that looks like the most economical way to print this part, you might consider making the dovetail a lot wider, and it may need a slight draught angle added to help the lid engage smoothly.
The lid might spin around the pin and whack the dovetail clean off too - perhaps the two sidewalls should be raised so the lid only slides off in one direction?
Lack of filament
Holes in a printed part are a kind of under-extrusion, and mean there's not enough plastic at that time.  If your roll of filament is under friction then the printer may not be able to pull it in fast enough.
Also if the hotend isn't hot enough it may not be melting quick enough for your print speed, or there may be clogs in the nozzle from contaminations in the filament.
Suggestion
Start by levelling the bed, and then print one item in your set.  Use a "brim" to improve adhesion, and it will be done first.  As your printer starts the job, watch it closely and manually adjust the bed on the fly.
Imagine these as side-views:
____ __ _____   Nozzle is way too low, you're scratching the bed
____ __ ____   Nozzle is too low, so drop the bed down a bit.  The filament should have colour.
____ __ ____   This is about right.
____ o _____   Nozzle is a bit too high
____ O _____   Nozzle is a lot too high
____ O _____   Filament is floating in the air which is sub-optimal
Ideally you want to feel the printed filament line as a flattened line stuck to the bed, and not a round string lying on the print bed.  It should almost feel like the edges of a sticker.
Of course, the printer is moving all the time.  Do not get in its way, and if you do block the motion in any direction then the print will likely be ruined.

Thanks for the answer, definitely some information and tips in here I can look at.


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Installed BLTouch - what do I need to tell Cura? Just G29, or more to it?
I added a BLTouch to my Ender3v2.  Yay!  But my first layer is still as sketchy as it's ever been.
I've got the firmware updated, and I can see the auto-level process take place at the beginning of my print - I can watch the probe measure a 5x5 grid.
I updated the start G-code in Cura to do a G29 immediately after the G28, and I do see the auto-level sequence after homing at the beginning of all my prints, so things are happening.  But it doesn't seem like the auto-level has improved anything.  I've got single-layer test patterns that look OK on one part of the bed and look like the nozzle's crushed into the bed on another part.
Most of the web help I've found implies that all I need to do is insert G29 in the start sequence.
But other places talk about saving the auto-level settings to the EEPROM, M500/M501; do I need to do that if I'm running a new auto-level immediately before every print?
And I've just this evening run across the M420 command, which looks awfully relevant; do I need to add an M420 S1 command to use the auto-level mesh I just found with G29?

Hi and welcome to 3D printing.SE! SE websites are driven by questions and answers, your question contains multiple questions which makes it more difficult to answer as there are multiple answers. Please read the [help] section, accessible through the button with the question mark at the top right menu and read [ask]. Please split up your question by adding the other questions in a separate question! E.g. the question on the sending of commands is answered here. Please remove that from the question. The rest of the questions are related to G29. Thanks!

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Root cause fix for TPU overhang failures
Lately I've been having a lot of trouble with printing overhangs in TPU. The failures are very geometry/toolpath dependent, entirely reproducible in their location (same gcode gives same failures each time it's printed), and seem to occur where there is a convex (model-inward) curve over an overhang of more than 40° or so. My original test case for this was frog model with more severe overhang, but I since made a simplified conical overhang test piece at only 50° that's faster to reprint and shows the issue:

The frog print on the left is pretty much a complete failure. The one on the right is mostly a success, but shows some moderate flaws around one side (left, as viewed) and the front of the belly, and even slight flaws (hard to see in pic) around the other side of the belly. It was done using some of the mitigations described below.

The test piece on the left is nearly perfect. The other two show varying degrees of the overhang problem I'm experiencing, and make it easier to see what exactly is happening than with the frog. The extrusion seems to bunch up, then get stretched out too thin, in an oscillating pattern that builds up and shifts with each layer.
I've tried printing overhangs significantly slower and reducing speed and acceleration quite a bit on the outer walls and even on the inner walls too, and none of that seems to help. Nor does increasing the number of walls or the wall line thickness help. However a number of things do seem to help, and it takes two or more of these in combination to get a mostly acceptable result at 0.2 mm layer height:

Increasing flow to a level where the extruded mass is the expected amount (this makes wall dimensions excess so I usually don't do it)
Taking the infill up to 20% or higher and using an infill pattern where the infill meets the walls frequently (gyroid 20% or more seems best; I'm trying not to do this because I want to final objects to be more flexible in some cases)
Increasing Klipper square corner velocity to 30+ so that the entire approximated curves are traversed at constant speed with no acceleration/deceleration
Increasing Klipper PA smooth time window from 10ms to 40ms

Generally I'm able to choose some subset of the above that works, but it ends up being a matter of per-model trial-and-error, wasting lots of time and materials if the settings don't work, so I'd like to figure out what's really going on here so I can make predictions about what will work and ideally get a base configuration that "always" works. Also, I still don't have this working at thinner layer heights, which I'd like to be able to use for better detail, as TPU is flow-bound not motion-bound and I could in theory print much higher detail at the same speed with thinner layers.
My best guess at the root cause so far is that the overhanging walls simply do not have enough rigidity to avoid being displaced by the toolhead attempting to extrude against them, so any oscillation of the toolhead velocity or extrusion pressure causes them to deform in the pattern of the oscillation. Does this seem plausible, and if so, what might some other possible mitigations be?
For completeness, my printer is a heavily modified Ender 3 with (remote) direct drive extruder and fairly extreme cooling, but turning the cooling way down or even off (assuming sufficient layer time for passive cooling) does not seem to affect the behavior here significantly. So I think the question is mostly printer-agnostic and is really a matter of material behavior and slicing.

The root cause was a badly worn nozzle.
The problem described in this question gradually became more and more severe and began affecting PLA and PET prints with thin layers too. Eventually I traced it to the CHT nozzle, by swapping in a 50¢ plain brass nozzle, and found someone with otherwise very similar extrusion system to test on their CHT and confirm that the prints giving me problems came out fine for them. Replacing my CHT with a new one has now made it all better. My old one was roughly 0.16 mm shorter (by difference in Z offset) presumably from wear, and to look at the orifice, it was probably nearly 0.8 mm wide. If so, it was like trying to print 0.4 mm lines with an 0.8 mm nozzle, which is expected to fail moderately to badly, especially on overhangs. And this explains why increasing flow (or, as I later tried and had success with, using wider line widths) partly succeeded.
I did still have a minor variant of the problem with TPU after switching to the new nozzle, before recalibrating pressure advance, which I'd calibrated down somewhat before (due to less pressure with an excessively wide orifice). After recalibrating, the problem seems to be entirely gone.
I still don't want to discount the factors I found before. It seems very plausible that this could come back whenever TPU is being printed without a firm surface to extrude against. In my case, the primary mechanism of that seems to have been a nozzle whose opening was excessively wide from wear, but the same should still happen if the wall is wobbling from lack of reinforcement.

As best I can tell, the root cause really is that the affected walls are insufficiently rigid to build upon. In the frog model where even the "good" print was not perfect, the gyroid infill in that region, even when dense, was running parallel to the wall such that it did not lend as much rigidity as it otherwise would. The commonality between all the mitigations I looked at so far was that they either improve the rigidity of the wall or decrease the forces on the wall that might displace it when trying to print on top of it.
I'm going to focus on increasing the rigidity, because decreasing forces does not sound like it can be done consistently, independent of model geometry, at least not without going really slow and having fans extremely low or off. (Even though fan did not seem to be relevant to my test model, it absolutely will be if the model geometry happens to act as a fan duct.)
First of all, with sloped outer surfaces, the thickness of material making up the surface is not the wall thickness (0.8 mm with two 0.4 mm walls), because you have to measure it perpendicular to the surface. At 45°, for example, it's scaled down by the square root of two (so about 71%), and gets worse as the angle gets more severe. Even 95A TPU is extremely flimsy at that sort of thickness.
The slic3r family (including PrusaSlicer, SuperSlicer) has an option to mitigate this called "ensure vertical shell thickness". Cura, which I'm using, doesn't, but you can ensure the same thing by increasing the number of "bottom layers" (or "top layers" for an inward-leaning surface, but those are much less difficult to print because the infill supports them) and ensuring that skin preshrink ("Skin Removal Width") is not set so high as to remove the "bottom layers" that come into existence along outward sloped walls. The default of full wall width will remove it for all but the most severe overhangs, defeating the purpose, so it needs to be set lower. I use a setting of 0.39 mm, just below the line width, already for unrelated reasons, and that worked fine.
Now, on top of that, Cura defaults to printing one wall around skin ("Extra Skin Wall Count"), meaning most of the skin added as "bottom layers" would come out as a loop, rather than zigzag line fill. This is great when you want to print rigid materials fast, but also defeats the purpose, as an extra extrusion path alongside the 2 TPU walls already there does almost nothing to make them more rigid. You actually want the zigzag fill, alternating directions with each layer, as it adds a lot of rigidity you otherwise can't get with TPU. So "Extra Skin Wall Count" should be set to 0 here.
After making these changes, and using 5 bottom layers, I'm able to get successful prints of my test piece and the frog test with no other mitigations as long as I have the fan limited (using 30%, but my 30% is probably stronger than most printers' 100%, so likely not an issue for most folks). Using heavier flow further improves wall rigidity and makes it likely that fan doesn't matter, but it doesn't seem to be necessary. Using heavier infill is also not necessary; I can get nice squishy parts with only 10% gyroid.
One nice feature modern Cura has is separate settings for "bottom layers" and "initial bottom layers", so I can keep the latter lower and not waste material building on the bed surface while still getting strong diagonal walls and bottoms over supports.
TL;DR
Strengthen sloped walls by doing the following:

Increase number of bottom layers to at least 4 or 5
Ensure skin removal isn't removing skin along overhanging walls (reduce to below 0.4 mm)
Disable extra skin outlines

And maybe printing walls inside out, so outer wall laat.

@0scar: There are multiple reasons I don't do that. Originally the main one was that I found it greatly increased corner curling, at least for other materials, probably due to the sudden change in tension when pulling the outer wall around a sharp corner in an already-laid inner wall. I think I tried this once before with TPU, figuring it might behave differently, but didn't have any luck getting improvements with it and had worse results in some places.

I fixed my overhangs by increasing the nozzle temp. You need to heat it up enough that the elasticity is lost which makes it misbehave on overhangs and curl up.

I generally print TPU around 240 °C, and much higher than that makes it come out like water, so I don't think this is the problem. See the other answers.

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Easy way to visually inspect/preview large amount of stl files (on Linux)?
I'm a beginner in 3d printing, so please bear with me.
I downloaded a zip with about 100 STL files. I now want to pick one or two to print. The names of the stl files are not very helpful so I need to look at them to find the ones I want. I can open all of them one by one using Cura, or Tinkercad, but that is a very slow and long process with so many files. Ideally I would like to have an overview of all the files in little previews so that I can get an idea what they are to narrow down which files I need to open to inspect the details.
Is there a program with which I can do something like that? I'm on Linux, but tips about Windows/Mac software would also help since I can use it to search for Linux alternatives to that software. All tips are welcome!

I believe there are tools for both windows and mac that integrate with their respective file managers to give you live thumbnails of STLs.  Unfortunately, I haven't used either recently, so I don't know if they are still available.

I can confirm that the macOS file manager "Finder" does give a preview thumbnail of the .stl but it is static. I did try the fast stl viewer suggested by fred_dot_U and it does give a full 360 deg view of the file.

Using the search terms, "linux stl viewer," a number of results appear. One of the more promising programs, for Mac, Windows and Linux appears to be fast stl viewer, aka fstl. Image from linked site. Instructions included on the linked site to make fstl the default viewer for STL files.

Does it have functionality to batch generate thumbnails?

^ This -- without the ability to generate thumbnail images from the STL files, it would be useless in this instance, the OP clearly needs some level of automation functionality that a GUI wouldn't provide.

#!/bin/sh

if [ ! -d thumb ] ; then
  mkdir thumb
fi

for e in stl STL ; do
  for i in *.$e  ; do
    j=`basename "$i" .$e`
    if [ ! -f thumb/"$j".png -o "$i" -nt thumb/"$j".png ] ; then
      echo $j
      echo "import(\"$i\");" > x.scad
      openscad -o thumb/"$j".png --imgsize=100,100 x.scad
    fi
  done
done
rm -f x.scad

Quick and dirty script I've used to maintain a thumbnail directory.
It uses OpenScad to generate the default view for a part; not always the best view, but for most parts, this is sufficient.  Once you have the thumbnails, use gthumb or something to view them.

If you are on Linux, and a little capable in programming or scripting, a very handy tool is OpenSCAD. It can even be used from the command line from a shell.
You can load in STL files and offset them in a graphical view or loop through a list.

It's not too hard to write a script to use OpenSCAD to generate thumbnails for every stl and then normal image viewers like gthumb will work.

Cura's probably your best bet.  You can select several STL files and it will open them all, (memory allowing) then try to place them for printing.  If they can't fit on your print bed the items get placed off to the side.  Clicking on the object will show its name in the lower-left, so you can go rename the file to be more representative.
Tinkercad can only import one item at a time, and tops out at 25 Mbytes.

prusaslicer (and probably most slicers) can do this as well.  I've used this method myself often for a small number of parts I want to choose between.


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Bottom layer print speed - When do you reach diminishing returns?
When printing the bottom\initial layers on an FDM printer using PLA, how slow can you go before hitting diminishing returns (the speed at which you gain no additional advantages in terms of print quality or adhesion).
I'm using an Ender 5 with stock firmware and no modifications. 0.4mm nozzle.

The primary objective of a slower print speed for the first one to two layers is to ensure a bonding to the build plate. Print quality is not likely to improve at speeds slower than the stick/no-stick speed. For a given brand and color of filament, there will be a binary assessment. "This speed sticks to the bed" versus "this speed doesn't stick to the bed."
If there are quality variations in the print at different speeds, there may be other factors involved, such as extrusion rate, retraction distance, z-hop, etc.
It's difficult to consider a diminishing returns reference, as it's going to be "it works" or "it doesn't work." The increase in print time for going slower isn't going to contain much value in this situation.
To determine a specific speed requires experimentation. The default for your particular slicer in use is the starting point. One can increase the first layer speed by 5 mm / second and run a test. Examine the results for quality and adhesion. Increase by five for each succeeding test until the results become unacceptable.
Note that different plastics will have different speeds. I've not experimented with changing the default speeds except for TPU, which requires slower speeds.
You may discover that you can get away with much higher speeds than the default with one particular filament brand and color, but changing brand or color may change the results.
To address your comment, the two sections of your question appear to be opposites, but for both, only experimentation will find the specific range (not exact speed) you seek.

As per the original question, at what speed do you cease to get better adhesion, when does going slower not produce better adhesion?

Edit added to address comment.

I don't think it's quite as simple as this. There is a hidden continuously varying variable: the probability that a given layer-zero extrusion adheres to the bed, which also varies with geometry, size of the region, etc. It's very possible to have a first-layer speed that works fine for most prints, but gives you one or two dragon-body-segments failing to stick when you try to print an articulated print-in-place dragon, for example.


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First layers going funny
I've just bought my first 3D printer (Malyan M200 V2). For the most part, it's been really good and I've had no issues, apart from when printing the first few layers the printer doesn't seem to extrude enough material and doesn't form the correct shape. Whether it's a circle, rectangle, or anything else. So for example I've printed the below part.
The raft prints perfectly:

Then when it starts the first few layers of the actual print it extrudes a bit of material which then hangs from the nozzle and is dragged about the surface of the raft before stopping as more material is extruded. So when the print finishes the first layer looks messy like the one below:

But everything after the first few layers is perfect for example the top of the same print:

I've tried adjusting the temperature of the nozzle and the print bed neither has made a difference. The bed is level I've double-checked that. Trying to find the issue online keeps bringing me back to temperature or bed levelling.
I'm using this PrimaValue PLA Filament
The leaflet in the box recommends printing at 210 °C, I've tried 210, 215, and 220 °C.
The print bed I've been keeping at 60 °C which seems to have been working but I've tried printing down to 45 °C on the print bed and the same issue occurs. I'm not sure what an ideal temperature is for PLA, I've seen some posts saying that a heated bed isn't needed for PLA and others saying that it should be heated to between 50-70 °C (my printer only heats up to 60 °C).
I've looked at some of the settings in Cura and there are various settings for things like initial speed and first/last layer speed which sound like they might help but I don't know anything about them. I have tried slowing down the print but again I just watched it happen more slowly, albeit that did help some as that's when I've realised it doesn't appear to be pushing out enough material on the first few layers. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

The bed temp is fine at 60 °C, even down to 40 °C. As you are getting a nearly perfect first layer on your raft, you could consider to begin the print without a raft, perhaps only a skirt or brim with which to prime the nozzle. I'm not a Cura user, which prevents me from identifying which setting might be affecting the raft/first layer interface.

the start Z height is not the same of the nozzle, this is a miss calibration, may be an error of 0.2mm

Hi Thanks for all the suggestions. I've been experimenting with various prints using some of the different settings and it appears that I needed to increase the initial layer height. Now the first layers are printing as they should.

PLA doesn't need a raft.
Try printing without a raft. If you print with a raft because of adhesion problems, solve those first. A raft is only needed for filaments that shrink a lot and/or are printing at very high temperatures.
If you want a raft, check the distance between raft and print object and know that a raft never gives a smooth bottom. This is because in order to prevent fusion of the print object to the raft a distance between the raft and the print object is accounted for. A property that controls the distance between the raft and the print object is called Raft Air Gap in Ultimaker Cura. Default for my setup this is 0.3 mm which I find rather large.
For example (not raft, but support with a solid top layer, which is quite similar to a raft), I have used support structures with a roof to support large flat overhanging areas that where printed at 0.2 mm distance, this gave relatively good surface quality and barely no fusion to the print.

It seems to me that the problem is over extrusion. Those temperatures might be a little high for this PLA. In my settings I usually put it on 200 or 205 °C (when printing faster). But the real problem might be a wrong extrusion multiplier for the first layers or a mixed with temperature, low speed, or no retraction.
My advice:

Try a little bit lower temperature
Try reducing the first layers extrusion multiplier
Try increasing the retraction a little bit

For the problem of not extruding plastic at the beginning, you should print a purge line (as Ender 3 does) or print a skirt (instead of a raft, that you might not need). This problem is very normal and is easily fixed.
The bed temperature is correct for PLA (60 °C).
Maybe, only maybe, your nozzle is a little bit high. It should squash the plastic on over extrusion, which I think is not happening in your setup. My advice for this is to use a paper sheet and fold it once.

In Cura, you can indeed set the height of the first layer separate from the subsequent layers. So if the first layer is printing nicely, that's a good sign. That's usually the place prints fail. There are a few settings, but here are a few things to just double check:

Is your nozzle set to the right size
Is your raft layer height and regular layer height wildly different? Try setting them to the same, or if same, try making them different. There may be a 'raft top thickness' that's wrong for the nozzle size, (try 0.2 for a 0.4 mm nozzle)
Layer height of your regular layers should be no greater than 80% of the nozzle width
Print cooling (on), but initial fan speed (0)
Supports: try printing with, or without. Look at Enable Support Interface (or disable it)
Try just disabling your raft and see if it gets past the danger point. that will indicate if there's something misaligned with your Z.
Check your axis rollers too! from this question, First 3 mm prints poorly, then fine after that

edit: check your axis rollers too! from here

You can make additions or changes to your answer by using the [edit] link below your post. Comments may be deleted over time so making edits to the post is preferred. I have taken the liberty to do this for you, if this is not to your liking you can "rollback" the edit.


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Printed line is thinning near the end before it proceeds to the next "loop"

I'm coming back to printing after almost a year of hiatus. Sliced a new model with the latest Cura 5.
I noticed my brim lines are thinning out or under extruding or Z height lowering near the starting point of the print.

It is only happening at this side which is where it finishes a wall/line and proceeds to the next inner wall/line.
At first I thought my bed was massively warped there but I noticed that the first line of the actual body print (outer wall) is totally fine as shown in the picture. I also tried shifting the print to the right but the issue presents itself again.
Does anyone know why this is happening? The Cura flow preview doesn't show any change in flow at this side. And looking at the G-code (labelled as skirt) section.
Edit with more info:
Here are two images to help explain the issue further. The Cura slicer images represent the same print status as the previous images. This is the first layer and the outer wall has just started printing. From the real pictures, I was trying to point out that the outer wall prints fine while the brim lines are fading as it approaches the bottom right corner (where the brim started printing). The real pictures show the height difference clearly. I'm not sure why the brim lines are fading as it approaches the corner.

Is your photo showing only the first layer of the print, or a subsequent one? With photos like this it's always hard to tell what is what, what is expected, etc. so writing that out clearly, and/or showing the model and slicing preview, might help.

@R..GitHubSTOPHELPINGICE Sorry for the poor explanation. I've edited my post with more info and all the pictures are showing the first layer of the print, no further than the first outer wall being printed.


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Disparity between Sketchup STL and Slicer
I've created a little enclosure for a project in sketchup

I then exported the .STL
When I open it in Creality slicer 4.8 or Cura 5.0 It looks like this

I thought that the red was "overhang that needs support" (but can also mean a shell?)
Hoever, that's not the irritating part. That would be the grey in the middle where the "hole" should be.
When I slice it, it looks like this:

I didn't notice this before I started printing and 4 hours into the print I noticed that it was just completely ignoring the window and was considering it as a part of the base.
Why is it doing this and how can I fix it?
I've tried editing the original sketchup model a number of times, but I keep getting the same result.
I read the question and answer at Empty space in model is getting filled but I'm not 100% sure that this is the solution I'm looking for.
The slicer, knows enough to see that the hole should be there, as it is rendering in a shaded area. It feels like there is a setting or some such that is "print the shaded area" with a checkbox (on or off) - and if that setting is there, someone please tell me where to find it!
I've also tried importing the STL into other programs (like fusion 360) and RE-exporting the STL, but the issue persists.

Please note that  this question seems to be similar to mine, however, there isn't an accepted answer. The one provided below is actually a much better answer.

The main problem with sketchup is when by itself creates surfaces above the main surface, this happens when we try to make a surface and the supposed wall is not at the same height, so the surface created is not flat. Also the walls with inverted side may provoke the slicer to have a wrong interpretation.

Does this answer your question? Sketchup designed "Block with hole" printed solid in Cura

Also: https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/13667/sketchup-free-stl-import-in-freecad-not-working-with-fasteners-workbench https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/14084/eliminating-unwanted-internal-surfaces/14086#14086 and https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/11013/slicer-is-adding-additional-floor-bed/14309#14309

@FernandoBaltazar - Please post your comment as an answer.

The question you mean to link to has no self answer.

Use Solid Inspector to fix problems
Before exporting your Sketchup model to STL use Solid Inspector. It is available for free from the Sketchup extensions page and will detect reversed faces, stray edges, surface borders. The "main problems" mentioned above are then eliminated.

Sketchup is known for creating print-preventing problems of this nature.
Consider to run your STL file through a checker that will determine if the model is manifold or has self-intersecting faces. One can use Meshmixer feature, Analysis, Inspector, or also Windows 3DBuilder, which will perform a repair if desired. It is possible that the repair will result in a filled space, however, which would require editing in the original program.

The online version of Sketchup has this capability built in, just not in the free tier. It is called the 'Solid Inspector'.
This inspector would have caught the issue in the original post, as I believe the inner edge of the hole to have reversed faces - like another commenter on this thread mentioned.

Thanks buddy, was looking for the "free option" though. I think @astPace got it though, It IS free as an extension in the extension warehouse.

The main issues with Sketchup are making sure the inner and outer direction of the surfaces are correct and deleting internal surfaces made by Sketchup, that shouldn't be there. My guess is the filled in hole in the middle is due to a setting in the slicer to fill in inner surfaces.


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Why are these concentric parts fusing together at seam lines?
The print is a collapsible sword I'm using as a test. Everything seems fine on the outside, but inside it seems the segment parts of the sword inside the hilt are fusing together at the seam lines causing them to stick together.
Model: https://thangs.com/designer/3dprintingworld/3d-model/Collapsing%20Katana-22696
Finished Print (looks fine)

Concentric blade pieces (fuse marks that I sheared off and broke to get out)

Seams on exterior of hilt look great

Print settings/info
Printer: Prusa MK3S+
Slicer: PrusaSlicer 2.5.0a3
Settings preset: 0.15 mm QUALITY
Filament: Prusa PLA
Nozzle temp: 205 °C (default is 215 °C, but lower eases stringing and has never been a problem for many past prints)
Nozzle size: 0.4 mm
Full config: https://pastebin.com/ECa6KkYK

Just to make sure, did you print the whole sword as a print-in-place? If I follow the link to the print files it shows that the prints are printed apart from each other.

After some trial and error I found that the issue was stringing due to excess moisture in the filament from being stored outside of a sealed low-humidity container for long periods.
After placing it in a heated dehydrator for 2 days, my next print had low stringing and did not bond interlaced parts together significantly.

You did well to decrease the temperature. You could go even lower to 200°C
As you noticed, You really have a little bit of stringing between the elements. That's what binds the parts together. Many times when you print only a single part this will be no problem. With many nested parts, you retraction really has to be set to optimal values.
Try increasing the retraction distance in the slicer.

I did try that before the post, but thank you for posting. I believe I found the reason for it which was excess moisture in the filament because after doing a "baking" session I was able to reduce the stringing that was causing this.


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Why is my nozzle routinely clogging and no longer extruding mid otherwise successful print with several different previously successful filaments?
I’ve a Flashforge Adventurer 3 which I’ve found to be a fantastic out of the box ready to go printer. I’ve clocked up 500 hours on it.
I’ve had issues where the nozzle was too close to the print bed, making it impossible for the extruder wheel to force filament down the bowden tube. With harder filaments that results in clicking as it’s cog is skipping. With softer, usually matte PLA it’s just wearing a groove and no longer pushing. I have to take the then baked filament and manually push it out of the nozzle, then bed recalibration.
I have a filament dryer, and use it every time I’m printing as it’s a perfect dispenser with it’s roller bearings.
I recently keep getting prints where they start out perfect, but then after about layer 10, the extrusion simply stops. The printer obviously carries on like all is ok, but there’s not even spaghetti.
What could this be? Do I just need a new nozzle? I don’t understand how a metal nozzle printing plastic can deteriorate it. It’s not the same as pitting you get in a soldering iron tip surely…

Did you replace anything in the extruder path during the last 500 hours? E.g. the nozzle assembly is sold separately. Could be, depending on the filament you printed, that the feeder gear has worn.

Ah, I think you’re onto something. I had a few weeks ago a filament which at it’s recommended temperatures was unprintable. You’d hear the feeder gear clicking as it’s skipping trying to force the filament through. I remedied that by printing at 240C by trial and error and have had successful prints with that filament since, but maybe that skipping on this really hard filament worn it before I noticed and stopped it. I’ll see if I can dismantle the feeder assembly and check.

You may not have worn the hobbed gear so much as loaded the teeth with the debris from the previous problematic filament. That's an easier fix, as well.

@fred_dot_u Thanks, I’ll look out for that. The problems did seem to start when printing with a really soft filament, and also I had the nozzle too close to the print bed so it couldn’t extrude and the gear worn a U shape into the filament as it couldn’t move it along, so your suggestion could be the answer. I’m going to investigate in a few minutes. Thanks.

@fred_dot_u I’ve updated the post with a photo of the hobbed gear. Does this look worn to you? I never saw it new so I’ve no idea. When I withdrew the filament to do this, it was very chewed up though, as if the gear had been chatting against it trying to force it through. I’ll update again in a minute with a photo of the failed print.

The teeth appear to be in good shape. It also does not appear clogged or otherwise restricted. At least you can tick off one possibility.

Nozzles do degrade with use. That is why they're made to be easily replaceable.
Your problem may be a worn nozzle or incomplete cleaning or something with the bowden tube etc,. but an easy troubleshooting step is just to replace the nozzle.

Like the Ultimaker designs, this nozzle features a core concept, I don't think you can easily replace the nozzle itself, you can change the assembly quite easily though!

@Oscar looks pretty easy to me, they just call the whole assembly 'nozzle', no point confusing the OP with other definitions https://www.flashforge.com/faq-detail/20

More confusingly, some websites call it the extruder...

@Kilisi Forgive my ignorance, but I don’t understand how a nozzle can wear out. It still gets to the requested temperature, and it’s made of metal. None of my filaments has any abrasive additives like glitter. If it was to wear wouldn’t that mean the 0.4mm hole would increase in size? That’d make it less likely to clog surely? :/

As said above, I think the filament pushing cog could be worn, I’ll check that and come back. Thanks.

@Kilisi Additional info, If I remove the bowden tube from the print head, with the nozzle up to filament change temperature, I can fairly easily push through some filament and extrude it with my fingers. I’ve also got some of that really soft strange “cleaner” filament. I’m not sure what it does, but I’ll run some of that through too with the manual feed option in settings.

I don't know how they wear out, perhaps pitting catching stuff on the inside? No real idea, I just know that changing a perfectly good looking nozzle solved my problems once.

I have had this happen at times. I finally got it to go away once I fixed my bed adhesion.
By chance is your print curling up near the edges? If it's popping up and exerting backpressure on the extruder, that can be enough to cause an internal jam and the extruder "clicking" (which is itself just a sign that the plastic isn't feeding).
There might be additional problems or other causes, but this was what fixed my issue.


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Nozzle scratching on second layer
I've been searching for hours for the reason why my Ender 3 Pro, after a perfect first layer, is scratching on the second layer and so on the next few, after that it normalizes and then prints normally.
I reduced the first layer height, but this gives other issues, changed bad and nozzle temperature.
Is there any possibility in PrusaSlicer to command the Z-stepper to go a little bit higher after the first layer?

What do you mean by scratching on the second layer?

This is an issue that can be caused by a nozzle that is too close to the bed or you are over-extruding in the first layer. Basically, there is too much material in the space that is appointed for it, after a few layers this usually levels out.
The initial distance between the nozzle and the bed usually is calibrated with the paper sheet method. If the gap is too small, the paper drags considerable, you should change the bed screws to give a little more space that the paper drags less. Alternatively use feeler gauges.
If the nozzle is too close (if it touches the bed the filament flow will be hindered and you will hear a thumping noise) the filament flow may be too big so that the filament is thrusted upwards beside the nozzle (structure on the build late looks like a ploughed field). Filament is always over-extruded by the firmware in most slicers (Slic3r, on which PrusaSlicer is based, and e,g Cura do that), there are settings to reduce that, but these shouldn't be changed. You can look into increasing the first layer height a little, lift the whole print up (e.g. in Cura there is a plugin called Z Offset Setting by developer fieldOfView available in the marketplace), or redefine the height of the first layer in your start G-code.

Hey, thanks for your answer. Yes, I do normally do the paper sheet method to level. After this I print the test with big circles, so I can see where the filaments stick enough. With this method I make the z offset as war away as possible. I will also test the z offset by software, but I think there is no difference. Maybe my filament has a bad quality, it was cheap, but higher layers print fine.


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MKS Gen L v1.0 smoking when I heat up the build plate
When I boot the Flsun Cube F5 with an MKS Gen L v1.0 controller board, it boots fine; it beeps, and all the LEDs come on. When I heat the hotend it works beautifully, and once up to temperature, the extruder motor feeds just like it should.
However, when I turn on the heater of the build plate, it starts heating and after about 10-12 seconds the board, specifically the MOSFET at the heat bed connection quickly begins to get hot and starts to smoke. I feel if I let it continue, either the board would catch on fire or at least burn out the board.
Does anybody have any suggestions as to how to fix this?  I still haven't tried the X, Y, and Z steppers yet, but that will be coming soon.

Dear Brian, if you are referring to this previous question, please add an answer or delete the question (preferably answer your question and accept the answer after 48 hours). It might be beneficial to other with similar problems! Thanks.

The MOSFET is either dead, or can't handle the high current the bed requires. You can try using an external MOSFET which is quite easy to wire, or alternatively soldering a new MOSFET one which is quite difficult.
Example of an external MOSFET (module):


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Are there any major safety risks of PLA plastic?
Are there any safety risks inherent to PLA plastics used for 3D printing?
The material safety data sheet of some PLA plastics indicates low risks at a toxicological level, but I'd like to make sure some other factor isn't overlooked.
(1, 2, 3)

SECTION 11:  TOXICOLOGICAL INFORMATION

PRINCIPLE ROUTES OF EXPOSURE: Eye contact, Skin contact, Inhalation, Ingestion.
ACUTE TOXICITY: None noted during use.
LOCAL EFFECTS: Product dust may be irritating to eyes, skin and
respiratory system. Particles, like other inert materials, are
mechanically irritating to eyes. Ingestion may cause gastrointestinal
irritation, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
SPECIFIC EFFECTS: May cause skin irritation and/or dermatitis.
Ingestion may cause gastrointestinal irritation, nausea, vomiting and
diarrhea. Inhalation of dust may cause shortness of breath, tightness
of the chest, a sore throat and cough. Burning produces irritant
fumes.
CHRNOIC TOXICITY: None noted during use.
REPRODUCTIVE TOXICITY: No data is available on the product itself.
CARCINOGENIC EFFECTS: None of the components of this product are
listed as carcinogens by IARC, NTP, or OSHA.

It's hard to prove a negative, but the polymer itself is even used medically inside the human body. So it seems very reasonable to believe the major risks are just mechanical in nature (abrasion, particulates, etc.) not chemical/biological processes.

I wouldn't worry about health risks for PLA. There are no proven cases of dangers to printing in a populate area/room. Although smoothed PLA could be fine for touching your food or mouth, I wouldn't inject or burn PLA.

Extrusion of PLA through a nozzle can cause microparticles to be generated (referenced as "dust" in your document) which can be temporarily airborne.  If ingested through breathing for an extended period of time, this can cause respiratory distress.  Your document claims "no acute toxicity" from this.
My personal experience is that:

Different plastics at different temperatures emit a variable amount of this dust.
A cloth mask effectively blocks it.
The dust settles very quickly, in both time and distance.
The effects (for me at least) are irritation only (well described in your document), and disappear completely in a time proportional to the length of exposure, but not more than a day or so.
PLA is not near as bad as other plastics like ABS.  But either of these burns is much worse.

The paper "Review on particle emissions during fused deposition modeling of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene and polylactic acid polymers" goes into this in greater detail.
There are probably others.

Without intending any offense at all, most of this answer is just the experience of a single person, on which no scientific conclusions can be drawn (n=1).  There are some cases of people smoking cigarettes and having only minimal health problems, yet millions of smokers (and many non-smokers in their vicinity) have died from cigarettes. I'm not saying that using PLA is better or worse than smoking, I'm just saying reporting about the effects on a single person is actually worse than meaningless... it can be downright misleading.

The point is that the data saftey sheet is correct, but not very explicit.  I was trying to expand a bit on what it means.  I wish I knew where the paper was that I read about this, but I didn't find it in my document library.

oooh, searched harder and found it.  Link added.

If you are concerned about inhalation (and I think you should be), you should use a hierarchy of controls to mitigate the risk.
NIOSH (part of the CDC) have a good document outlining how to mitigate the risks of 3D printing particulate emissions.
Note that the smell you experience may be VOCs, not particles. Both are important to block. To do so, use a respirator with both particulate and organic vapour filters, in addition to an air purification/local exhaust ventilation system. The ‘carbon filters’ often seen in 3D printers do almost nothing for particulates, only nuisance levels of vapours.

Welcome to 3D Printing! and thank you for your contribution. When you get a chance, please take the [tour] to understand how the site works and how it is different than others.

Sounds like good advice for almost all the plastics (except PLA which is fairly non-toxic).


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Uneven mesh after perfect auto tramming?
BLTouch enabled Ender 3 w/4.2.2 board running mriscoc's Professional firmware.
How is it that the auto tramming can report the corners of the bed to be level, and then immediately afterwards it produces this mesh?
What am I missing?

Still, other than a bug in the firmware, why would it do this? Am I misunderstanding tramming vs leveling?

Leveling is making the print bed parallel with the earth. Tramming is adjusting the print bed to be parallel with the XY-axis. (hope I got that right)

Have you asked on the Github's discussion page about this issue? Since this is their area of expertise they may have a better idea about what the problem is.

@agarza Leveling or tramming is explained in How do you level (or tram) your build surface correctly?.


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Flashforge Adventurer 3 - how to replace X-axis endstop
I found a similar question in the forum but now need assistance on how to replace the X-axis endstop. I have been scouring for videos and haven't found one yet.  Can anyone help me?
The printer turns on, preheats but as soon as I choose a print, it goes to the right and just continues to run. It only stops when I turn it off.
I did a factory reset and no luck. I ordered the new parts but really don't know where to start. It looks like the wires for the endstop run into the body of the machine so it looks like I will be taking the whole thing apart. I am quite nervous about this.

Hi Samantha, welcome to 3DPrinting.SE! Please link to the question you found.

I can't find a video that shows how to replace it on my specific type of 3D printer - Flashforge Adventurer 3.  I have not removed it yet b/c I don't know how to get to it.

I've added an answer, please look at the video I linked, I think it is clear how you need to proceed to replace the part. Disclaimer; I don't own the printer, please be sensible, I'm not responsible for damages. ;-)

This is not a "how to" to replace the X end stop; this post is meant as a description of the location of the X-axis end stop.
End stops are generally located on the minimum of the axis, but there are exceptions, e.g. Ultimaker has the Z-axis end stop at the bottom, this is the maximum. For the X-axis, end stops can be located on the print head, but more commonly found on the minimum value of the X-axis. The Flashforge Adventurer 3 has the X-axis end stop mounted in the print head.
The image below shows the overview of the X gantry:

Note the flag on the right (encircled in red):

The flag enters (on homing) the rectangular slot on the top rigt, see below:

So, this is where the X-axis end stop is located. This implies that the print head needs to be disassembled.
The X-axis end stop module can be found online as a replacement part, the back looks like this

and the front like this:

It appears that you can take off the top of the printhead cover:

You will instantly see that the end stop module can be found there! It takes 2 screws to replace it (and some connectors!).


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Are resonances of belt driven carriage strongly direction dependent? Mitigations?
So, backstory: I setup a tuning print for Klipper input shaper that makes use of matched speed projected onto the opposite axis at junctions, and high instantaneous junction velocity (scv), to allow them to be taken in a way that only one axis experiences an impulse. The idea here was to get measurement noise from the other axis's resonances out of the measured ringing. And that seems to have worked fine. But I also found something very interesting:
The magnitude of ringing, and even whether it appears at all, is dependent on the direction of the acceleration/deceleration impulse. When the motion of the axis is away from the motor and abruptly stops, there is essentially no measurable ringing. But when the motion of the axis is towards the motor and abruptly stops, there is strong ringing.
Is this normal? It seems plausible via one or more mechanisms:

Belt run all the way around the idler and back to the motor, which is doing the pulling in this direction, is far longer and has more elasticity
Idler is untoothed, so maybe the teeth compress against the smooth idler and act as a spring
... ?

The printer is an Ender 3 original with lots of modifications, but none of them to the motion system. The observations above apply to both the X and Y axis, but the X axis is so light that it requires extreme levels of acceleration to see the issue anyway, so I'm not concerned about it. The Y axis is where the problem is.
Seeing how good I have this in one direction (towards the motor) makes me really want to find a solution that gets equally good results in both directions, as it would allow me to up my outer wall print acceleration for high quality up from 500-2000 to 5000+ and max acceleration up to 30000+ - the limiting factor is the bad ringing from one direction on this axis.
What approaches should I try to mitigate this (and confirm it's the issue)? I'm thinking of:

Going dual-Y-motor with the second Y motor mounted at the front of the printer, so both directions are "motor pulling on short segment of belt".
Replacing belt. It's the original Creality supplied one and some folks have suggested a genuine Gates belt would not have this issue.

Here is a photo of the test print:

The extrusion path was clockwise around the part (right to left on the side facing the camera and front of the printer/bed). Acceleration, scv, and input shaper settings were adjusted manually during the print to give different views of the ringing. The important detail is that there's almost no ringing in the middle flat section, except at the very top where input shaper was turned off completely.

how thick is the part? Have you tried the latest prusa slicer with Arachnae enabled?

@Trish: It's a single-wall test piece. Latest Cura with Arachne, but Arachne vs legacy isn't relevant because the wall path is exactly the inset outer profile I designed the model to yield.

You could probably replace the smooth idler with a toothed pulley as a temporary measure to see if your second bullet point is a contributor.  A 3D printed bushing might be needed in the pulley bore to adapt it to the idler mounting. As a temporary test setup it might at least eliminate one potential cause.

No, at least not to the extent the above result suggests. I had the idea to try rotating the piece 180° around the Z axis, and got nearly the same effect: low ringing in the middle segment, strong ringing on the final segment. So what is the explanation?
The impulse intended to start the ringing for the middle segment is exactly opposite the impulse that ended the first segment, and generates a time-shifted ringing of opposite sign, cancelling out with the tail of the ringing from the previous impulse.
Overall, the ringing does seem to be somewhat stronger in this rotation, so I think my original hypothesis that there's an effect related to belt length or the idler is still plausible, but it's nowhere near as dominant as I thought.
Further investigation of this seems to call for a better-designed test piece without cancelling impulse responses.

I'm actually starting to doubt this explanation somewhat because there should be cancelling impulses on the last segment too. But hopefully a new test model will shed some light on this.

Print speed seems like an important variable that I don't see mentioned. Consider running the test with the print speed increased and/or decreased by a small amount, maybe 5 or 10%.


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BLTouch fix for heated enclosure
I print using a heated chamber but need to use a BLTouch to level my print bed.
I followed the pictures in the Reddit post "Bltouch working temperature and fail" and moved the brains of my BLTouch outside the enclosure.
The BLTouch now does not have any failures in the 60 °C chamber, however, it now probes the bed distance in a range of about .075 mm, all the time, not affected by temperature. I found that by running M48, the max and min of the sample of probes are still extremely consistent.
I would like to be able to run M48 and take a sample of probes, then average the max and min of that output and use that for my homing location in replace of G28.
This would let me get precise homing in my heated chamber using the BLTouch. Here is the output from running M48 with 14 probes each time:
>>> M48 P14
SENDING:M48 P14
M48Z-Probe Repeatability Test
Finished!
Mean: -0.040536 Min: -0.069 Max: 0.006 Range: 0.075
Standard Deviation: 0.030517
>>> M48 P14
SENDING:M48 P14
M48Z-Probe Repeatability Test
Finished!
Mean: -0.025357 Min: -0.068 Max: 0.007 Range: 0.076
Standard Deviation: 0.030524
>>> M48 P14
SENDING:M48 P14
M48Z-Probe Repeatability Test
Finished!
Mean: -0.026027 Min: -0.069 Max: 0.012 Range: 0.081
Standard Deviation: 0.034820
»>› M48 P14
SENDING:M48 P14
M48Z-Probe Repeatability Test
Finished!
Mean: -0.015313 Min: -0.065 Max: 0.009 Range: 0.074
Standard Deviation: 0.028993
>>› M48 P14
SENDING:M48 P14
M48Z-Probe Repeatability Test
Finished!
Mean: -0.026429 Min: -0.066 Max: 0.012 Range: 0.078
Standard Deviation: 0.032845
»›› M48 P14
SENDING:M48 P14
M48Z-Probe Repeatability Test
Finished!
Mean: -0.019286 Min: -0.059 Max: 0.009 Range: 0.069
Standard Deviation: 0.028283
33› M48 P14
I SENDING:M48 P14
M48Z-Probe Repeatability Test
Finished!
Mean: -0.006696 Min: -0.062 Max: 0.011 Range: 0.072
Standard Deviation: 0.022003
»>› M48 P14
SENDING:M48 P14
M48Z-Probe Repeatability Test
Finished!
Mean: -0.022500 Min: -0.061 Max: 0.011 Range: 0.072
Standard Deviation: 0.031366
ass M19 D1A
SENDING:M48 P14
M48Z-Probe Repeatability Test
Finished!
Mean: -0.026339 Min: -0.063 Max: 0.012 Range: 0.076
Standard Deviation: 0.032574
»>› M48 P14
SENDING:M48 P14
M48Z-Probe Repeatability Test
Finished!
Mean: -0.025089 Min: -0.064 Max: 0.014 Range: 0.078
Standard Deviation: 0.032170

Min and max data typed out:
-.076       .001
-.069       .006
-.068        .007
-.069        .012
-.065        .009
-.066        .012
-.059        .009
-.062        .011
-.061        .011
-.063        .012
-.064        .014
I am relatively experienced in post-processing G-code and have done some editing of firmware for my printer (Ender 3 v2), however, I am not close to being an expert in either.


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BLTouch probes off the print bed
I have just upgraded my mobo to a Duet 3 WiFi clone (FLY-RRF-E3) and installed a BLTouch. When I try to run true bed leveling the Touch probes off of the bed like in the Reddit post "Ender 3 bltouch probes off the bed. Anyone know what to change in the firmware to fix this?" I have tried to change the X and Y offsets with M851 as described in the link, but the RepRap firmware does not respect the changes. Then, I read in the Duet3D Documentation:

Innn   Parameter - X-offset in arc move (Not yet implemented in RepRapFirmware); integral (Ki) in PID Tuning; signal inversion
Jnnn   Parameter - Y-offset in arc move (Not yet implemented in RepRapFirmware)

Finally, I read that there is a G31 command which is similar to the M851 command, so I tried that. Still, no dice. Here is what I currently have in the Z-probe section of my config.h file.
;M558 P0 H6 F120 T8000                ; disable Z probe but set dive height, probe speed and travel speed
;G31 X0 Y0 Z0                         ; no probe offsets
;BL Touch Z-Probe settings
M558 P9 H6 F250:30 T8000 C"^probe"    ; set Z probe type to bltouch and the dive height + speeds
G31 X-41.0 Y-5.0 Z0                   ; no probe offsets
M950 S0 C"Servo0"                     ; Setup Servo0 as servo port on Fly-E3
;bltouch offset
;M851 X-41 Y-5

Firmware: RepRapFirmware for STM32F4 based Boards 3.4.0_1 (2022-03-17)
Note: Initially, I installed my BLTouch incorrectly because it has different wire colors.
P.S. My glass bed is true, so if a possible solution is too costly then it wouldn't be worthwhile. Thanks for reading.


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Y-stepper very hot on 4.2.2 board?
Is there a known issue where the Y-stepper gets extremely hot (like 70-80 °C) on the Creality 4.2.2 board while the Y stepper stays around 40 °C on the 4.2.7 board? (two different printers)
Set both of them to run a custom G-code file where it just moves the bed back and forth from 20 to 200 at F1500 (took that from the printer startup code in Cura).
It's not the motor. I had another Ender to borrow one from.
The strangest thing is it happens even when idle. (I did the aforementioned test with the X stepper, which did not get hot at all, but the Y stepper did while the bed was not moving at all).

Before you shell out for the expense of a new motor only to discover it's not a motor problem, check your stepper driver current settings. I'm not familiar with the specific driver, but you should be able to find a reference online. Also, it may be less expensive to stick a heat sink to the motor surface. I did that for my printer's extruder stepper motors. Dropped the temperature 20 °C.

Actually I just swapped it out with a motor from another ender. (Same motor part number. ) And its still doing it. So it is not the motor. Oddly the X/Z steppers do not have the same issue. I'll measure the current. I can build a custom JST extension that I can run through an ammeter.

The Creality 4.2.2 board uses A4988 stepper drivers which set the current through the steppers via a potentiometer on the driver itself. The Creality 4.2.7 board used 2208 (Trinamic) stepper drivers, of which the current through the steppers is defined in the advanced configuration.
If the motor runs hotter on the first (4.2.2 board) you need to adjust the potentiometer to the correct Vref (reference voltage).
From All3D.com:

Vref is calculated with a simple formula:
Vref = I x 8 x Rsense
Where I is the driver current to the motors and Rsense is the current sense resistor. While I is primarily defined by the motor’s rated current, Rsense is a fixed value that can be verified by checking the stepstick board.
Sense resistors vary from vendor to vendor, ranging from 0.05 up to 0.2 Ω. Look for two equal resistors in the A4988, as shown in the image above. In this example, R100 is 100 mΩ, or 0.1 Ω.
Although the stepper motor we’ll use here is rated for 0.9 A, we should never set it to its maximum current capacity. It’s strongly recommended to reduce the amount of current to the motor by at least 10%, which in our case would translate to approximately 0.8 A.

If you want the second to use more current, and thus run hotter, the current specification needs to be increased. You can alter this in the configuration or use M906 G-code.


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Is it possible to build a sponge-like surface using 3D printing?
I am new to 3D printing. I own jewelry stores and want to 3D print my jewelry packaging for rings, necklaces, and bangles as in the picture below:

I have two main problems:

Is 3D printing capable of building this package?

I know I can build boxes for jewelry with the outside being made of plastic. But I want the inside to be like a sponge. Is there a filament or a way to print a filament to make it look like cloth or a sponge?

Are there printers on the market which are able to print several copies without the need to set up each time it finishes a single box?

With the right materials
With the right material, you can get flexible surfaces and prints. Just two random examples:

TPU is a flexible material, which can be used to print something like "Lips" that flex and take the jewelry or even strings that suspend the piece in the center.
Foaming TPU is a variant of normal TPU that expands during printing. This makes it somewhat spongey.

However, those have downsides: they don't make good rigid shells, so you will need two different materials: one hard for the shell, and something flexible for the holder.
Luckily, any direct drive filament printer can work with flexible filaments, and there are some flexible filaments that work with a Bowden setup. Due to dissimilar materials though, you need to either assemble the part or buy a somewhat specialized printer: one with two nozzles. These are available but are way out of hobby-grade pricing.
Also, you will never get the "smooth" silky look of a fabric insert cover, but always a clearly industrial printed surface.

A dual extruder printer isn't necessary here, you can design the inner flexible part slotting in place in the hard shell. That way a you can print each part separately, swapping the filament between prints.

I would advise against this, as you will get layer lines which isn't visible in normal form, and the fit wont be as smooth etc, resulting in a cheaper look & feel. You will spend a lot of effort modifiying the parameters to get a foamy look, but still end up with a worse product.
Instead the best option is probably to buy EVA foam, and cut it with hot hire, or even a blade/knife.
I understand the jewelry is (probably) expensive, and thus you will want to give it a premium feel. One advice I would give is for the plastic box, consider SLA / Resin printing, and you will get almost injection moulding quality. However the chemicals involved with this are not as user friendly, and you will need to wear PPE and ensure a large amount of ventilation (as resin fumes can be toxic), however the quality will be much better


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How to take in account tolerances when coupling
I'm quite new to 3D CAD and printing.
I own a Dremel 3D45 and I use FreeCad / Ultimaker Cura as softwares.
My question is pretty simple.
Say you have to make one object with a pin and another with a hole. They should be coupled together. Of course if you set the diameters of the pin and the hole equal the won't fit!
Right now I'm setting the hole larger of 0.2 mm and the pin smaller of 0.2 mm. This allow a quite good coupling (not so hard but with some resistance).
I guess this tolerance (0.4 mm in my example) depends on a lot of variables: 3D printer settings, material, etc... so it may change using different setup.
How to correctly handle this?
Should I add a variable in my CAD spreadsheet and use it to change the nominal diameter of the coupling items?
I don't think so, but anyway: is there a settings in Ultimaker Cura that allow to compensate an hole or a pin by a specified amount?
Any other suggestion is gladly accepted.

I guess this tolerance (0.4 mm in my example) depends on a lot of variables: 3D printer settings, material, etc... so it may change using different setup.

Tolerances required depend on the geometry you're printing. A hole that is horizontal, vertical, or diagonal will need different tolerance (as I found out in a project that used the same steel dowel pins in three different orientations). And, vertical holes and pins are different from flat-sided shapes: the plastic will be pulled toward the center of a curve, so diameters come out small (and more so for holes since there's no material further inward to resist the movement).
That said, I think you can expect that the distortions of printing are fairly consistent, if your printer is functioning well. I have a Prusa i3 MK3S, and I have printed many parts other people have designed, and when those parts have been designed carefully, I almost always get very good fits between parts. So, my experience suggests that models do not necessarily need tuning for specific printers.

Should I add a variable in my CAD spreadsheet and use it to change the nominal diameter of the coupling items?

Yes. If nothing else, this allows you to define how the two parts should fit together separately for the printing error. Use separate numbers for different shapes/fits, so that you can adjust one without messing up another.

It may also help to design a calibration part with either a tapered hole or a tapered pin, and then fit check, and measure where it gets stuck.  Then you have some clue what your actual tolerances are.

Once you understand how the parts will need to fit together to meet their purpose, you will need to define allowances on your parts in order to create clearance between them.
You will need to understand your printer's capabilities and accuracy by printing some test parts and measuring them. Tolerance is the amount of variation from the specified dimension that is acceptable on a part.
If your printer isn't accurate enough to achieve the tolerances specified on the part, you'll have to find some way to improve the parts so that they are within tolerance.  Often this is done as a finishing step: filing, sanding, or grinding an oversized printed part; drilling out an undersized hole; etc.  You should also consider other options: buy a more accurate resin printer, redesign the part to make the pin out of a commercially available metal rod or tube, pay someone else to make the parts for you, etc.
Armed with this information you can "design for manufacturing". That means you alter the design of your parts enough so they can be successfully produced with the tooling available to you.
I just posted a little Q&A that discusses this very topic of the difference between allowances and tolerances, and ways to achieve that.

I guess this tolerance (0.4 mm in my example) depends on a lot of variables: 3D printer settings, material, etc... so it may change using different setup.

Yes, this is true, you need to find out for yourself on your rig. Fine tune the printer. Note that filament also shrinks, although some less than others.
Once you figured it out, you can address the tolerance in the CAD design. E.g. I used to print with a material that has a lot of shrinkage, once you established the level of shrinkage, I scaled the complete model accordingly.


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How to fix these issues with Nylon?
I'm using Ultimaker Cura and a Dremel 3D45S with an eSun Nylon filament.
As starting point I'm using the default settings of the printer, 260 °C for the hotend and 80 °C for the bed.
These are the results:

In addition to the poor print quality, the resulting dimensions are wrong. For example, the cylinder is supposed to have a wall thickness of 5 mm, with an inner diameter of 35 mm and the outer diameter of 45 mm. With ABS they are quite good (just a 0.2 mm difference). With nylon they are off by 1 mm! The wall has a thickness of 6 mm.
For both materials the flow is set to 100 %
Any ideas on what I should change to improve the printing?
Here my current settings for Nylon:

Looks like slight over extrution, and also use the newer slicer engine for better Z seam alignment, going a little slower may also help with this

If you look up the hardness of Nylon with respect to ABS you will find that ABS is generally much harder. The effect of softer filament is that the teeth of the extruder feeder dig in more into the filament (so for every rotation of the gear, less material is extruded than in hard filament), if you do not correct for this (lower the extrusion flow modifier) you are under-extruding material.
This is clearly not happening in your case!
The effects you see are caused by over-extrusion. This can cause the effects you see on the outside of your print and also result in dimensional inaccuracies. You need to tune the printer for different materials. Try to extrude 100 mm of filament and see how much is being extruded (mark some filament from a reference point and redo the measurement after extrusion).
Also make sure the filament is dry, Nylon tends to take up moisture which can bubbling (boiling the moisture) during extrusion.

While there appears to be other issues.  The first thought I had looking at the print is a problem with moisture.


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My printer unloads the filament, after I finished the print
I have an Artillery Hornet printer that I am very satisfied with. I make my models in Blender, export them as STL files, and import them into Cura slicer. Everything works great with no problems, mostly. But yesterday, I made a model that I used a reference image in Blender (deleted it before exporting then). And when I printed it, direct afterward, the printer unloads the filament. I tried to print it multiple times and every time it did the same. No big problem then, but a bit annoying.
Does anyone have any idea what could cause this, and how to prevent it? Other models I make in Blender have not given me that result then. I still have not tried making other models with a reference image to compare the result. So I found this place first and try to ask if someone knows about that problem.
This is the end G-code:
G1 E-6 F9000
M104 S0 T0 ; turn off temperature
M140 S0 ; turn off bed
G1 X110 Y220 F10000
M84 ; disable motors

Can you share a link to the G-code, e.g. posted on PasteBin.com?

Can you clarify what you mean by "unloads"? Does it just back out slightly, or eject the filament entirely so it's hanging loose?

The problem was solved by the answer from Peter K. I just disabled the part of end code. It rejected the filament entirely after printing. Not all models, but 1 i made. So i still wonder if disable that part of code, got any negative impact on printing other models. So far it works perfect then.

@mathias Nice that the answer solved it for you, please accept the answer by selecting the tick mark. Our community is built on reputation, please acknowledge the time and effort that is taken to produce the answer. Voting is key! Thanks! P.S. please add the final lines of G-code from the file into your question.

Thanks. Just edited it and added the original end G-code

I haven't used your printer type, but this link suggests:

If your printer unloads the filament after each printing session
automatically, you might want to check the end code of your machine
and disable the retraction (;G1 E-6 F9000).

Thanks allot for that info, i will try it. Even though it not unload filament for other models i made. I just wonder if i disable it, will it have any negative impact on something? what is the purpose with that code line?

I bet the problem is that this was supposed to be a relative move of -6 mm (retract just enough to prevent oozing while cooling down) but the extruder was in absolute mode and it went back to a position of -6 relative to where it was at the start of the print. Instead of removing that line, put M83 on a line before it and M82 on a line after it so it's a relative move.

Thanks allot for that info. Me totaly new to gcode, but i will try this. It worked fine then with just disable that line, but might effect other things i guess then? will try your advice. Thanks!

@R..GitHubSTOPHELPINGICE I've asked the OP to paste some lines of G-code in the question, I hope that the relative/absolute option is evident from the G-code. It remains a mystery why that only is happening for that specific model.

@0scar: Cura (and other slicers?) in absolute extrusion mode tend to use G92 E0 periodically so that the E-axis position values don't get too large in magnitude and hit floating point precision issues with firmware using single-precision. If the file ends shortly after such a reset, the move to position -6 would not produce a long ejection. But if it ends midway between them, it would.

@R..GitHubSTOPHELPINGICE As seen from  the updated question, it still is in absolute mode, good spot! Depending on when the last reset was, -6 can take you far. It is worth to add an additional answer pointing to the absolute/relative extrusion as the end G-code is incorrect, disabling the retraction in the end code is just a quick fix.

Oscar. Maybe add M83 before first line, and M82 after first line, as R.Github wrote in a comment? i did not try it myself then though it works great without that first line.


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Assembled my first 3D-printer: Lead screw problem?
A couple of days ago I got my first 3D printer: Creality 3D Ender 3 Pro. I finished assembling it last night. I booted it up, but ran into problems (which I guess is not a common thing for a beginner in 3D printing). After booting and running the motors, it seemed that the lead screw got stuck about halfway down the Z-axis. I heard a rattling sound. So I turned the 3D-printer off. I disassembled the lead screw and applied some Lithium lubricant on it. But the problem persisted. Looking more closely at it, I noticed some notches on the lead screw:
I tried to spin the Creality Z-axis stepper motor, and it felt smooth and did not have any resistance. The bolts on the rod holder were slighly loose so that the lead screw had a bit of play inside.
Im wondering if the lead screw may have been defect during manufacturing process? Are lead screws supposed to have notches like these, or are these manufacturing defects? Here's two photos of the lead screw:

Im guessing the notches are too deep for the z-axis to actually work the way it is supposed to.

The threads of the screw are very damaged, this causes your brass nut to be damaged as well.
This is hardly accountable by misusage, this is a production or handling error in the factory.
You need to contact the vendor for a new screw and new threaded brass nut.
Although the nut is softer and may run in on the damaged threads, there will always be a rough part of the screw, so it will always affect print quality, please replace the damaged parts.

The supplier provide me an entirely new 3D printer. They could not give me just one part. Im waiting for, it will take a few days

The notches are certainly abnormal. The screw appears to have taken an impact from a narrow cylindrical object. It's normal for rods and screws to be packaged independently, frequently wrapped in paper for shipping. The notches seem to be just a bit too small to have taken an impact from one of the guide rods, but it's difficult to determine from the image.
It could have been dropped, but that doesn't explain the notch shape. A fall would have flattened faces, not notched them.
It's time to contact the seller about replacement parts.

Both of the above answers are likely correct but also, I own an Ender 3 and it's kinda/sorta tricky to get it set up right.  I had a similar problem and I was certain it was the lead screw -- and mine indeed does not have the marks that yours has -- but in the end the issue was that I had assembled the printer ever-so-slightly out of true, and I had to do a lot of adjusting and wobbling to get things lined up right. So just be prepared for that.
Yes I think the rod is damaged and send back for a replacement, but when it comes back be sure and triple-check that everything is adjusted properly following videos like this.  You might also need to spend a little bit more money to replace some of the stock parts to really get it dialed in but once you do you won't be disappointed!

Not sure about this particular design, but if the lead screw is anchored solidly at both ends, it has to be really really square to avoid binding; some designs leave one end free/loose to avoid that problem.

The Ender 3 has one end free.

I tried to wind the screw with and without it being anchored. Same problem. Seems most likely to be an production failure


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Can "ABS Glue" damage the PEI sheet when used frequently?
I heard about how people dissolve ABS filament in Acetone, resulting in a glue-like solution which then they rub it on the bed and start printing. Apparently, this helps with warping. But I saw it being used only on glass beds, and the printer I have has a PEI bed, and it's an open-frame printer. So, if anyone has used the "ABS glue" on a PEI bed, did the bed degrade over time?

ABS releases a lot of VOC's proceed with extreme caution, in a well ventilated room. PLA releases almost no VOC's, and PETG releases a tiny bit so still open the window a little. Acetone vapour is also really bad for you, avoid at all costs, and even if you do vapour smoothing, only do it outside where it is well ventilated. I would avoid this at all costs.

@F.Ahmed this is not helping answering the question

@FarO In simple terms it is dangerous and releases toxic fumes, so it's a bad idea. Both ABS and Acetone release toxic vapours

@F.Ahmed are then going to write in all questions on this website mentioning ABS that VOC are dangerous and so on? good luck, it will take quite some time. Also, the issue with VOC is overblown, it's not nearly dangerous as many people think ( https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/a/16724/2338 ), so in fact 1) it doesn't make sense to scare people as you are doing and 2) it's still not related to the question asked.

@FarO "Breathing VOCs can irritate the eyes, nose and throat, can cause difficulty breathing and nausea, and can damage the central nervous system and other organs. Some VOCs can cause cancer." - Lung.org
You are wrong about the VOC levels emitted, it is not as bad as SLA Resin printing but still bad. Videos on YouTube where they have been tested will confirm this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shxid-Z_xo0
ABS also releases carciogenic vapours


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Crealtity Ender 3 extruder
I had a very similar experience as another member. I have Ender 3 with BLTouch which had been working amazing until a while ago. It was running a print overnight and when I got up in the morning the print had failed and the BLTouch had completely broken off.
Since then, we had our friend print a new hinge for it and we've managed to get it kinda working until recently. All one a sudden it prints about an inch and then just stops pushing filament through it also seems to stretch it.
I'm a newbie and am not all up on the lingo but I do know a bit. Apologies, I'm very new to this and also sight impaired. So whatever I try to print will stop actually printing when the item gets to around an inch in height although the printer continues behaving as though it's still printing but no more filament comes through the nozzle. I hope this is making some sense. I will try and get another print going but today we can't even get filament going through at all.

You mention the extruder in your title then in the body of your post the BLTouch. Could you please [edit] clarify what exactly you need help with?

This sounds as if there is a problem with the extruder, please check if the extruder lever is broken. Another reason can be heat creep since it happens after a while. Please update by [edit] to include printing parameters like temperatures, cooling and speeds.

I would agree with Oscar.  Chep at Filament Friday posted a video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXe7bftyMFU .  I would also check the nozzle.  A partial clog can cause similar issues.


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Heating Failed: E1 after upgrade to 4.2.7 motherboard - Ender 3 Pro
I upgraded my Ender 3 Pro from the stock 8-bit motherboard to a new 32-bit 4.2.7 motherboard. No problems were encountered with the swap, flashing of the new firmware, or calibration.
When I went to start the first test print, the firmware throws the E1 Error: "Heating Failed: E1; PRINTER HALTED; Please Reset".
When the print started, the bed heated up to the requested 60 °C, and then started warming the print head to 210 °C. Once the print head reached 205 °C, the temperature started to drop. It dropped back down to 200 °C, then up to 202 °C then down to 198 °C and so on. It kept doing the up and down heating until it dropped to 190 °C at which point the E1 error was displayed. I have run through the cycle several times with different prints, and through the menu options; and it always fails in the same up and down way.
Printer Specs:

Ender 3 Pro
Upgraded motherboard 4.2.7 (silent stepper drivers)
Matching upgrade of Marlin to version 2.0.6 (downloaded from Creality)
BLTouch
PEI print bed
Replacement bed springs
everything else is stock

Prior to the upgrade, everything worked fine. I printed several small prints the day before without a problem. After the upgrade the E1 error.
Thoughts? Suggestions?

Sounds like thermal runaway protection kicked in, and the PID needs to be tuned. This guide will help you do the PID autotuning https://teachingtechyt.github.io/calibration.html#pid

Yes, it turned out to need PID Calibration.  I am composing an answer with the details.

Problem Solved
After checking in with the Ender 3 group on Facebook and doing quite a bit more research I tracked the problem down to PID calibration. The default settings for the board were not heating the print head properly. Because it was coming in short, the thermal runaway logic on the new board cut in and shut everything down.
To fix the problem, the printer needs to run a PID autotune. This is a good idea when you replace any part between the nozzle and the logic board. To accomplish the autotune you need to access the printers console through an app such as Pronterface. You should also take care when hooking in a USB cable to the printer. The 4.2.7 board runs power to the USB port. To get the printer connected to your computer, you will need to mask off the power pin on the USB cable (with the possibility of blowing the chip on the board if you skip this step)
The Marlin command for PID autotune is M303. Follow this up with an M301 to set the results from the autotune. And don't forget to finish up with an M500 to save the settings to the EEPROM.
I would suggest this video from Teaching Tech for an example of the process, and this video from 3D Print General to conduct the same autotune on the build plate.
Post Script
Important Safety Tip - The 4.2.7 board draws more power than the old 8 bit board. During my first test print after the PID calibration, the connector between the power supply and the motherboard melted down. It seems that the wires were crimped rather than soldered. This was fine with the old board, but it was too much with the added power draw. The poor connection caused the wires in the connection to over heat. This is a fire hazard.
Check the power connector. remove the shrink wrap and take a close look.  If you don't see solder on the joint, replace it. It is worth the slight expense and hassle to avoid ruining your printer and potentially starting a fire.
The issues is discussed in this Makers Muse video.


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Layer separation before Z seam on VoxeLab Aquila
I purchased new PLA, and from the first print, the wall layers will have little gaps in them but only "just before" (depending on the size this can be half an inch to a couple of inches) the Z seam. I thought it was a new PLA problem, nope, did a temperature tower and different shape prints, flawless.
It seems to be only my models that I make in Fusion 360 (I haven't tried downloading other people's models to see what happens) and slice in Cura that mess up. I even printed my piece, with the Cura cylinder preset shapes. My piece had defects, the shape came out perfect. I put a picture of the Cone that was messed up.
I have a VoxeLab Aquila which I use together with Ultimaker Cura. I print in PLA at 210 °C. Bed temperature is 60 °C. I use a print cooling fan at 100 %. The layer height I set to 0.3 mm, the line width 0.4 from the 0.4 mm nozzle. The Printing Speed is set to 30 mm/s for walls and 50 mm/s for infill. My retraction is 4 mm/off at 35 mm/s.

Check that you do not have "coasting" enabled in your Cura configuration. I'm not sure where you got the profile for your printer, but at least a few of the printer profiles that ship with Cura have this (very harmful) misfeature enabled by default.

Two things:

Check the STL file once you have exported from fusion360, sometimes stl files from fusion360 needs to be watertight one. In this case, yes, some models might leave a gap.
Check if nozzle is clean, sometimes partial clog can cause this issue too.


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What slicers have support for belt printers, or could have support added via a plugin?
What slicers have support for belt printers like the CR-30?  Or what slicers can have an add-on, plugin, or extension added to them to support it (from a user level, not a dev level).
I found more total slicers than I expected, since I was only expecting 3 (Cura, PrusaSlicer, Simplify3d).  Surely that means I'm missing out on more, if there are already so many different slicers.

Creality Slicer - Comes from the OEM of the printer
Blackbelt Cura - Everyone who mentions it says don't use it because it's old
Raise3d Ideamaker - Seems to be based on Flashforge's slicer, has some interesting features too.  Not as configurable as Slic3r or PrusaSlicer though.

Somewhat Related due to the explanation of the odd coordinate system in the Opener.

It seems Creality provides a modified version of Cura 4.8.2 for the CR30: Creality Download ; BlackBelt does the same, another modified version of Cura 3.6.2: Blackbelt Download.
The current version of Cura (5.x) does not limit the area in size, but it seems very difficult to use it like that for belt printers (eg printing the same object many times), so you have to use a dedicated slicer.
Some possible tricks: printing the same object many times could require a simple edit/processing of the gcode, plz ask for this because it's another question.

@Trish: thank you for editing with more accurate infos.

I think most slicers don't distinguish printers based on if they have belts or delta configuration, etc.  The slicer generates gcode, and the firmware on the printer translates the gcode into actuator motions specific to that printer to perform the gcode.
The difference slicers generally care about is if it is a FFF printer that extrudes a bead or a resin printer that solidifies liquid.   Many other 3d printing methods exist, but those to are the most common ones supported by most of the open slicers.

Modern belt printers are all at weird angles (15, 30, 45, etc) for the belt, necessitating special slicer support.


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Cura uses lines instead of concentric infill
I'm printing a ring that's a replacement for the non-slip base of a mixing bowl. The ring is about 130mm in diameter, with a rectangular cross section, like this:

I'm using Cura as the slicer, and I've set the infill to 100% and concentric, but after slicing it looks like Cura used lines instead; the ring is filled with parallel straight lines:

Is this a problem with Cura? Is there something I can do to encourage it to use concentric infill? I don't really care what the infill pattern is, but I think concentric would print a lot faster since the head wouldn't have to switch directions all the time.

This is a known issue. Cura's profile variable logic sets the number of bottom layers to 999999 if infill is set to 100%, overriding infill by replacing it with additional bottom layers. If you go find the setting for number of bottom layers and set it back to the number you actually want, overriding this, infill should work as expected.
Alternatively, setting top/bottom pattern to concentric should also fix it, and you probably want that anyway so that you don't have distinct bottom layers that are printed as lines.

Is this a problem with Cura?

I don't know if the good folks at Ultimaker consider this a bug or a feature, but it appears that Cura uses the Lines option regardless of the Infill Pattern setting when Infill Density is set to 100%. There may well be some reason for that; for example, the fact that the Lines option alternates the direction of the lines from one layer to the next probably makes for stronger parts.

Is there something I can do to encourage it to use concentric infill?

Yes! It turns out that setting Infill Density to anything less than 100% gives the expected concentric infill (provided Infill Pattern is set to Concentric, of course). When I changed the setting to 99.99% and re-sliced, I got concentric infill in the Preview panel. I haven't tried printing yet, but I have no doubt that I'll get the same thing in the actual print.

I don't really care what the infill pattern is, but I think concentric would print a lot faster

With Infill Density set to 99.99% and Infill Pattern set to Concentric, the estimated time to print my part drops from 4 hours 50 minutes to 2 hours 44 minutes, a 44% time savings compared to 100% infill. That's probably a lot more savings than you'd get on a part that wasn't so narrow, but it's worth knowing that at least some parts can print much faster with concentric infill.