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Sliced object losing all detail in Cura
I'm pretty new to 3D printing. I am using Repetier Host 2.6 with Slic3r (printer Geeetech i3 Pro B).
When I slice detailed models I get issues like this as the slice result:

This is the model in the example, Army Men flames of war single version.
I can slice simple objects fine, walls, cubes 2D logos etc.
Why is this doing this?
When I used Cura the slice is fine.

This is a very small model, and you are going to need a very fine nozzle and a very small layer height in order to print it successfully with an FDM printer. Even then, you may not be able to realise all the details. Ideally, it should be printed with a resin printer.

This is not "loosing details". What is is is this:
You can not print on air. So, certain things (like the backpack) require SUPPORTS that are removed after printing. Another example is the gun.
Your support setting force the slicer to set up quite a lot of supports and that is what you see - start removing them.
There ALSO is a problem with possibly you using too large a nozzle. Depending on that one you may loose details, but there is not even the basic form visible on your picuture because all I see are supports.
https://all3dp.com/1/3d-printing-support-structures/#:~:text=3D%20printing%20support%20structures%20are,added%20cost%20to%20the%20model. exokauns supports.

Oh, as addendum: thisis a 15mm model - you may, once you sort out the support issue, consider printing it with a 0.1mm or 0.2mm nozzle. THAT SAID: check the details first ONCE YOU HAVE DETAILS. Not a picture full of support material.


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Bed wobbling on Ender 3
I have an Ender 3 3d printer. It has a bed that wobbles because it came with only 1 bed support beam.

Every model I print, I must print vertically, because the closer it gets to the edges of the build plate, the less adhesion it has.
Is there anything I can to to fix this problem?

It the bed actually wobbling or is it just not flat or not level. If it's wobbling the cause is not the single beam but something loose, probably the eccentric nuts on the Y axis rollers.

The bed is level, the problem is that the wheels on the rail are a bit too far apart. How do i fix this?

Two of the wheels have an adjustable eccentric nut between the bed carriage and the wheels. They are hexagonal, so you can use the spanner included with the printer to turn them - tighten them just enough to stop the wobble; none of the wheels should be able to turn freely without moving the bed. You may need to re-level the bed afterwards.

If the V roller wheels aren't tight on the Y axis beam, it means the eccentric nuts are not adjusted correctly. Two of the rollers are mounted centered on the holes in the carriage frame, but the other two are on eccentric nuts which displace them from center slightly depending on the orientation the nut is turned to, to allow tightening and loosening of the grip on the beam. Since the Y axis ones are hard to see under the bed, look at the X or Z ones to get an idea what to expect.
Note that the bolt through the whole roller assembly can loosen when adjusting the eccentric nut. You can probably avoid this by figuring out the right direction to turn it and only going that direction (continuing around just under 360 degrees if you go too far). If you do loosen the bolt then the eccentric nut will move on its own under vibration, so you need to re-tighten it. For the Y axis this might require taking off the bed or taking the carriage off the beam (by removing the belt and tensioner).

source: Stack Exchange

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Which kinematic system has the highest quality?
I am going to design and build a 3D printer. I want the highest quality and accuracy so nothing except that is important for me. Which cartesian design has the highest quality and accuracy? CoreXY, Prusa, or Gantry (Ultimaker)?
Also, is it better to have a nozzle that moves in just direction "X", directions "X and Y", or "X, Y and Z"?

Every kinematic system can reach any quality, provided you spend enough money. You should define what are the constraints: cost? size of the mechanism? speed?

Just to clarify: Examples of kinematic systems would be Cartesian (which includes CoreXY), Delta, Scara, and Six-Axis. The quality of the system has less to do with the system and more to do with the implementation.
Furthermore, there are 2 main types of desktop/benchtop 3d printers that are commonly available: Fused Deposition Modelling (or fused filament fabrication depending on who you ask) and stereolithography; of which the latter, stereolithography, has better accuracy and quality.
In terms of FDM however, it can be easily argued that CoreXY cartesian printers offer the best quality and accuracy (both of which are subjective btw) than either delta or gantry designs (e.g. gantry would be the Prusa i3). The reason is that in order to get the CoreXY to work at all, the overall engineering and frame rigidity must be at a certain minimum. Once this minimum has been achieved, the quality of the prints typically meets or exceeds the quality/accuracy of even a well-tuned gantry printer; and you are going to see it in the cost of a CoreXY printer.

Direct Ink Writing or Robocasting is also available in desktop units.

Gantry is the Ultimaker style, not the Prusa.

@MahanLameie An Ultimaker is also a Cartesian printer! :-)

I know but if Prusa i3 is gantry, what is Ultimaker system called?

Ok, I have alternative names for the styles based on how the bed moves, perhaps I should introduce them: I call the Prusa i3 style travelling beds because it travels back and forth. I call the Ultimaker style and all CoreXYs for that matter floating beds because they move up and down. Lastly, there is the static bed type which doesn't move at all.

The tradeoffs in these systems are all about quality achievable at particular speed and acceleration profiles. If you really don't care about speed at all and want maximum accuracy, you probably want some type of Cartesian setup with no belts, only rigid lead screws which you can take to as fine a pitch as you like, and you can make all the parts as rigid as you like because mass doesn't matter (since acceleration doesn't).
Note however that extrusion accuracy is the limiting factor to quality and dimensional accuracy in even a half-decent printer. Rather than trying to design something with "perfect" spatial kinematics for quality from the outset, I think you should look at existing printers, figure out what about them isn't meeting your quality needs, and start from there to improve. You should also figure out what your speed constraints will be, even if they're only minimal.

So you mean that if I use belts, there is no quality difference between corexy and cartesian. right?

If you go slow enough, there should be little if any difference. Cartesian (with moving bed) has more momentum to deal with in the axis the bed moves on. I guess in theory corexy has more belt length for belt to stretch along. It's definitely better at high speed/acceleration though.

As I said is it good for the nozzle to also move in z-axis in addition to x and y in corexy? Does it increase or decrease print quality?

I don't think it matters which part moves relative to the other in Z. There's only one Z motion per layer, and you just want it to be rigid and reproducible. With corexy, making the bed move in Z is easier to do well.

@MahanLameie Please note, a CoreXY is also a Cartesian printer!

I think terminology usage differs. To me Cartesian means each of the X, Y, and Z motors directly controls an orthogonal axis. This excludes corexy.

@0scar I mean Prusa by cartesian. The style that bed moves in the y-axis, the nozzle moves in x and z-axis. Like Prusa i3 mk3.

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CoreXY with 8 bit board problems
I know that CoreXY kinematics is very complex and hard to calculate for the firmware making it better to use a 32-bit board. For some reason, I can't use any 32-bit board. What problems will occur if I use an 8-bit board like Arduino Mega with a CoreXY 3D printer?
Everything that I wrote in this question about hard kinematic calculations was referenced from this video, HyperCube 3D Printer 8-Bit Speed Wall, by Tech2c (the designer and builder of hypercube). After watching the video I doubted using an 8-bit board.

How is corexy hard to calculate? Motor motions should just be sum/difference. Delta on the other hand has nontrivial math.

@R..GitHubSTOPHELPINGICE Tech2c (designer of hypercube) says in his video

I'm not convinced at his explanation for the problem. There are a lot of print quality problems in that video.

Just my 2 cents; that 8-bit board is a dead-end for you. Find a 32-bit solution you like, and keep pushing those boundaries.

You can use an 8-bit controller board for a CoreXY kinematics 3D printer. The calculations are not so complicated opposed to those for a Delta.

My Hypercube Evolution uses a RUMBA controller board that hasn't failed me past years.

I also want to build a modified hypercube but after watching this video by Tech2c (inventor of hypercube), I doubted using an 8-bit board.

CoreXY should not require calculations which can slow down a board. Also, a normal Marlin becomes CPU limited often before 100 mm/s on 8 bit boards due to arc interpolation and other processing.
However, if you use Klipper which runs on a Raspberry Pi, 8 bit boards are rarely a limiting factor. I could print at 100 mm/s on mine with only 30% CPU utilisation and without slowdowns of any kind.
See

and

what about marlin 2?

@MahanLameie I doubt it will be more cpu efficient than Marlin 1. I don't remember "speed" being one of the improvements.


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Can't manage to force my print to standby while I insert a nut - Prusa Slicer and Tronxy XY2 pro
I use the Prusa Slicer on a Tronxy XY-2 pro which I believe uses RepRap firmware. I believe it uses RepRap firmware because I had to input it into the Prusa Slicer initialization questions, but I'm not certain that it is correct.
I tried three ways, none of them work.

M117 L0 E0 from Embedding a Nut into your 3D Print and nothing happens, it chains the G1 movement steps flawlessly.

M600 nothing happens either. From Embedded Magnets Thanks to Flipping Normals!

Using this code
 G1 X10.000 Y200.000 E0
 M1
 M105

and the nozzle does a micro stab into the plastic, get stuck, struggles for a few seconds, then continue the printing.  Also from Embedded Magnets Thanks to Flipping Normals!.

They produce no feedback at all on the printer GUI asking me somehow to resume the print. It keeps displaying real time temperature and estimated time remaining as if there was no pause in the process.
Here is the G-code of the file I trying to print test_inserting_nuts_on_the_fly.gcode. You guys can visualize it at least with the slicer Simplify3D but it's not useful to this problem I guess. The pause has to happen before drawing the 50th layer, which corresponds to Z height of 10.15 mm on my piece.
What G-code instructions should I insert? Does this type of method work with your machines? It's a tiny test piece about 15x15x15 mm

The XY-2's firmware (Chitu) is proprietary. The following article may be helpful: http://www.customize-3d.com/chitu-g-code-explained.html

Another (later) article: http://www.customize-3d.net/comments/chitu-g-code-explained.html?start=20

You can also put Marlin on the board since a few weeks ago, a much, much better firmware, which will also support things like M600.

Have you tried G4 or M0?

Thanks for editing my post, and for the tronxy commands @ Mick, I'll test the go home M8029 I3 in the next hour. @towe do you have tutorial references for flashing the board ? Will it change the user GUI ? @Davo not yet, but can you tell me to which of the table firmware the tronxys belong in here please ? https://reprap.org/wiki/G-code#M4:Spindle_On.2C_Counter-Clockwise.28CNC_specific.29

This is the best one I've found yet, maybe Google Translate can help:
https://drucktipps3d.de/forum/topic/tutorial-tronxy-x5sa-von-chitu-auf-marlin/
Yes it'll change to GUI to the standard Marlin LCD GUI.

@noutozo Sorry, I'm not familiar with the Tronxy in particular, but most G- and M-codes below 100 are pretty common across platforms.

The command did not work, so I flashed it to Marlin as in here https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/14269/roll-back-from-marlin-2-0-to-manufacturer-closed-source-firmware, but now the color/classical marlin2.0 UI is far worse than the closed-source (e.g no Z offset manual setting, nor STL thumbnails on the LCD screen, cutted filenames, etc.) and can't manage to get the LVGL version working. I'm trying to get back to the initial firmware for non-exotic printings...

authors: Авет Исаханян


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MINTEMP BED Fixed error when running consecutive print
I am using "Pretty PETG" along with PrusaSlicer's consecutive print mode.
What I am noticing is that upon finishing the first print, the printer hits MINTEMP BED Fixed. I'm not sure if it's immediate because I let the prints run overnight but I assume the bed cools down and then the error is hit.
I'm just starting to learn G-code and my initial thought was there's an errant bed temperature instruction but the only M140 S0 instructions I see are in the end_gcode and near the bottom of the file. Maybe there a goto in G-code which may be running after M140 S0 which then causes the MINTEMP BED issue? Perhaps there's something else going on?

Maybe you could add the "end G-code"? Note that goto is not a G-code command.

The bed minimum temperature is defined in your configuration file, e.g.:
#define BED_MINTEMP        5

If the error is displayed, it means that the measured temperature drops below this level.

What I am noticing is that upon finishing the first print

This could hint to a faulty heatbed connector where the connection is lost because the bed moves to the end positions (hard to say without seeing the end G-code).
Basically, you could have a connection to bed thermistor that is intermittently failing, or a bad bed thermistor. If connection is lost the temperature defaults to 0 °C or a lower setting.

yes, the issue turned out to be hardware and not gcode. there was a defect with the bed thermistor cable which only faults at the far back corner. my consecutive prints occur at these corners which is why I incorrectly suspected enabling consecutive printing as the cause.

This is most likely a hardware problem, namely the heat bed thermistor cable.
To confirm this as the root cause, here's what you can try

Reboot the printer
Move the y axis around to make sure there is freedom of movement at both ends
Jigger the thermistor cable around in multiple directions at multiple points on the cable

If you hit BED MINTEMP or BED_MINTEMP fixed then you have found a cable angle/position that causes the issue. You may need to replace the cable.
The issue could also happen at the connection with Einsey. If the wrapped cable going into Einsey is moved, the connection may be faulty.

Ground yourself
Open Einsy
Ground yourself
Reboot the printer
Jigger the connection to Einsey

If you hit BED MINTEMP or BED_MINTEMP fixed then the connection is bad. Try unplugging and replugging the cable. Look at the connectors on both sides to try to determine if the source is the cable or Einsey. You may need to replace the cable or repair the Einsey connector.


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Creality CR-10 board upgrade from V1.0 to V2.0 questions
I have a base Creality CR-10 that I have had for 10 months. Since then I have added Z-axis braces and a Z-axis dual lead screw. I have a Filament runout sensor that I want to add and I want to add a BLTouch bed leveling. I know I can probably squeeze those last two upgrades in using the V1.0 board that came with the CR10, but I really want to upgrade boards to the V2.0 that use the TMC2208 drivers.
My questions are:

Any issues compatibility wise or firmware wise that I might run into while upgrading

Also I know that the V2.5 board uses Marlin firmware, is that the same firmware that the V1.0 uses

Is it worth it to upgrade to BLTouch. I have viewed several youtube videos and read several websites/posts on using it but I am not that clear on whether you would have to ever use the manual bed leveling adjustments or does BLTouch take care of that forever?

Any insights, comments or links to useful posts/websites very much appreciated!

Both boards are pretty terrible. I'd just go with a SKR Mini E3 v2.0

Should be fine
Yes, same firmware
Depends. I'd prefer flat beds and synced Z leadscrews any day.

Thanks for that mention of BTT. I looked at that since you mentioned it and it looks like what I am going to buy. TIA..

Any issues compatibility wise or firmware wise that I might run into while upgrading

These boards are 8-bit boards with limited storage capacity for your firmware, if you would need an update, as an alternative solution, a 32-bit board may be a much better solution.

Also I know that the V2.5 board uses Marlin firmware, is that the same firmware that the V1.0 uses

I do not own this board so I can't say for sure, a generic remark would be that the Marlin 2.x branch works fine on 8-bit boards (from experience with some of my own boards), but you frequently see (does not have be the case for this board!) that these OEMs use the latest from the 1.1.9 branch. The only drawback is that you sometimes need to be creative to fit the firmware on the board, the more options, the more memory is used.

Is it worth it to upgrade to BLTouch

That depends on the state of your heated bed/build platform. If the build platform is not flat, but is somewhat curved, you may see improvements in bed adhesion when you correctly add a sensor that maps the surface and adjusts for it during printing. If it is flat, manual leveling works fine.

I am not that clear on whether you would have to ever use the manual bed leveling adjustments or does BLTouch take care of that forever?

Even when using a sensor that maps the surface of the build platform, you should always try to deliver a bed that is as level as possible. In videos you often see the bed tilted (very much exaggerated); you need to remember that the printer will print in a plain level after about 10 mm (or to a different height, determined in your firmware or set by G-code), a skew platform will give you a skew print.

Thanks for the clarification. I am going to go with a BTT SKR Mini as mentioned by @towe. Also as far as Bed Leveling, I have a glass bed that is flat and level. When I added the second Z screw I made sure to level the bed using a bubble level since I know the machine and the cabinet/floor are also level, I then used a micrometer to set the X-axis level across the X-axis plane so I know the Z screws are well aligned. However, I have that sickness where I can't leave well enough alone so I am going to add the BLTouch.

your bed doesn't need to be absolutely level, that's a misnomer. It needs to be perpendicular to the extruder, which is what "bed leveling" does.

@dandavis For that reason I added the link in my answer! But, good to repeat! Automatic leveling takes care of the bed surface when printing the first few mm's of your print to make it level after a few mm's. A printer itself can be inaccurately built/manufactured, hence the bubble level would not make sense, being perpendicular to the Z axis and parallel to the X-axis is all you want.

@dandavis I understand your point. The only reason I leveled my bed as I described in my comment was to ensure that when I adjusted the second lead screw I had just added to the Z-axis I knew I was measuring the distance from the Bed to the X-axis gantry on a level surface. If the surface you're measuring from is level then everything you adjust from there on will be equidistant to that point. Once I had set the Z-axis lead screw correctly I then re-leveled the bed using the conventional process using sheet of paper and the leveling wheel just to make the print head had the correct spacing.


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Will I still be able to export my Fusion 360 models to other CAD packages after Autodesk's recent license changes come into effect?
On 16 September 2020, Autodesk announced changes in the way that Fusion 360 can be used for non-commercial use with their Personal license. As a hobbyist, most of these changes will not affect me very much, since I do not use Fusion 360's advanced features. The most irksome will be only being allowed to have up to ten "documents" active at any one time, the rest having to be archived.
However, Autodesk are also restricting the number of file formats that you can export to. For example, the STEP file format will no longer be available with the Personal license. Will this mean that I will not be able to move my models to another CAD package, such as FreeCAD, once the changes come into effect (without first buying a commercial license)?
Autodesk: Changes to Fusion 360 for personal use
Edit: Good news. Autodesk have announced, on 25 September 2020,  that the facility to export models to STEP files will be retained for the free-to-use, personal license.

As I understand it, you're correct, but I'll wait for people who know the situation better and who can provide more detail to post a real answer.

I also noticed the loss of STEP format export and that's the only change I really regret, since it was a very good way to get platform independent (and editable) models. OBJ and similar are trinagle-based, unsuited to further modification.

If I cannot export editable models, I may consider switching to other packages, but FreeCAD is way behind in UI so it would be a blood bath

@FarO you might consider swapping to either educator or startup licenses

@Trish I have to check, but I think I don't fulfil the requirements. Even startups need to prove they are such.

@Trish I found out that there are clubs and organisations which, as part of the yearly subscription, offer yearly licenses for Solidworks - Education version to the members, and the yearly subscription is even lower than the education price. Still, too late, I'm checking what FreeCAD has to offer before discarding it

Most of my answer is based off of what Autodesk has said and this video from Maker's Muse, which explains this topic in much more detail.
In summary, Autodesk is planning on restricting your ability to export any parametric file formats like .STEP or .IGES, leaving no useful CAD-specific files available for users with personal licenses.
I would recommend exporting everything you want to keep as .STEP right now just in case you do decide to switch programs later on, because you won't be able to switch after the changes go into effect.
I hope that helps.
EDIT: As Oscar has pointed out, .STEP exporting is now also part of the general consumer's license, and you can export to other CAD packages at any time. As far as I can tell, other parametric formats, notably .IGES, is still not available for consumers. This shouldn't pose too much of a problem.
I'm going to leave my original post intact for now.

This answer is s̶l̶i̶g̶h̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶o̶r̶r̶e̶c̶t̶ now corrected. As of 25th September 2020, STEP export will remain available for Fusion 360 for personal use..

If you use the private license: there was supposed to be a cutoff date.
As long as you use the "private" license, you will get some restrictions. Originally, including the lock off of .step and similar files as well as limiting you to 10 active projects. This means, that you will need to deactivate some to make room for new ones, but unless you have many interlocking parts, 10 can be quite a lot for a hobbyist.
They also lock off features that are pretty much only useful for small companies - and if you are in the shoes missing those features, you are on the wrong free license anyway.
In late (25th.) September 2020, the lock of .step was reversed, but other formats will still no longer be available.
This does not apply to all free licenses
Note that this does not apply to the free education license for teachers and students or the free business license for sub 100,000 \$ companies. You might want to consider swapping to either of these two plans if you qualify.
Last words
I agree with Thomas Sanladerer: Autodesk is under no obligation to offer a free version at all and even a somewhat restricted, locked into the Autodesk-world version is much better than nothing. I will keep using it, but I am also in the education space and thus not directly affected.

They're under no obligation to offer a free version, but it is arguably unethical to retroactively break a free version that users have already obtained and locked their data into.


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Home-brew alcohol to clean resin prints
I took the plunge and bought a resin printer. I was wondering if I could use full strength home-brew vodka at 90 % instead of using isopropyl alcohol before anything is added to clean prints with?
I cannot seem to find anywhere or anyone that has tried this.

You can cheaply and easily turn 70% IPA into 99.99% IPA by adding table salt to the bottle and shaking it up, then inverting the bottle, unscrewing the cap slightly, and squeezing out the brine layer on the bottom until pure IPA comes out. Or baste/siphon the top layer. Only works with IPA. Science FTW.

@dandavis nice thing! You happen to have a resin printer and can do an experiment? Use that on contaminated IPA and see if it cleans up the IPA!

@Trish  i don't have a resin printer...

@dandavis Too bad, too bad, but if I ever get one, I'll try it...

Isopropyl-Alcohol - Propan-2-ol - and Ethyl alcohol - Ethan-1-ol - are different chemically. As a secondary alcohol, Propan-2-ol has quite different solubility of different materials than ethyl-alcohol.
Now, let's look at home made alcoholic destillate. That stuff is, if done in one refraction and without tossing the first low temperature part, some percentages Metanol, Ethyl alcohol and maybe some water. That has not the same solvent properties as Propan-2-ol.
While it might work, nobody will sign a guarantee that it doesn't negatively impact your print.

Some manufacturers do recommend ethanol and not isopropanol. The problem would be getting relatively pure ethanol through distillation. When distilling you will get different fractions which may be full of methanol or water. You will probably need to do multiple runs. You could just buy some 95% ethanol and distill it once it gets dirty or leave it in the sun to cure the resin and filter it out.

There are also some potential legal issues with distilling alcohol -- in the USA, it's Federally permitted only for use as motor fuel (gasoline additive or replacement).  Beyond that, there are safety issues -- ethanol is flammable, and ignites more easily than isopropanol; it burns with a nearly invisible flame.

Answer taken from Apesa's highly upvoted, and now deleted, comments (1 and 2). If Apesa posts their own answer, then this wiki answer can be deleted.
Note: Please don't post answers in comments - that is not how SE works.

Isopropyl Alcohol is the more common choice for cleaning surfaces because it evaporates more rapidly than ethanol and also because it does not leave any traces of oils upon evaporation.
To add one more caveat. Homemade alcohol no matter the proof / % will have many fusile alcohols that will deposit themselves on your semi cured resin. 90% alcohol dosen't equate to clean solvent.


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Wiring heatbed into Main using ATX
I had my 3D printer powered by dual 24 V PSUs wired in parallel and my heatbed was wired into the main using a SSR to help power it. I replaced the two PSUs with a single Corsair 750 W ATX. My printer runs smoother and there's much less wiring clutter to deal with but now no matter what the heatbed will not heat up.
The main connection of the ATX I purchased is an 8 pin connection so I tried using all 4 wires to power my printer and it didn't make a difference, I tried using the SSR again using 2 connections from the ATX leaving the other 2 to run the motherboard but that didn't work either. I even tried MOSFET and that also failed. I don't see why the Heatbed no longer heats up yet the thermistor is more accurate and working properly since my switch to the ATX, do I need to go up to a 1000 W ATX instead? I can't imagine what more I could do.

i don't see how the ATX would connect to a main-powered heater, at all. You should be connecting the bed heater signal wire or the post-mosfet wire to the SSR; it only needs 5v and 0.02A to fully turn on. It's unclear how you have everything wired, a schematic or diagram would sure help. Keep in mind that an SSR that switches AC will not work with DC.

The bed isn't connected to the GND in your sketch. The bed needs to be in the loop with the ATX PSU, it is not now.

There is no ground on my board just positive and negative terminals. How/ where would I ground the connection

So I tried using one of the grounds on the ATX and grounding the power supply to the SSR but that didn't work either. Nothing makes this heatbed heat up but it worked before with the SSR when it was connected to 24V 360 W standard PSU. I don't see the difference it should work if I'm feeding more wattage through now.

First of all, make sure SSR is controlled. Unplug all the bed wires and test it first. Test the wiring. 1000% I give you, you made a mistake while wiring.

@LDF The negative is the GND. If you wired this according to the sketch it is wired incorrectly.

You indicated that you were using 24 volts, implying you have a 24 volt bed. ATX power supplies do not have 24 volt outputs. The highest is 12 volts which would heat up the bed, but not fast or probably to full temperature.

So if I to use a 12 V to 24 V step up converter for the bed could work as a solution that would allow me to keep the ATX in place

@LDF, If you need to step it up, ensure that the mosfet is on the output side of the boost convertor. Flicking one of those on and off is going to produce some "explosive" results.

@user77232: actually the mosfet is likely just in front of ground, not the output; n-chan fets run cooler and work better.

voltage = current x resistance
An ATX PSU is designed to only allow approximately 16 amps per pair of YELLOW and BLACK wires. The yellow is 12 V and the black is GND. If your bed were rated at 24 V then its resistance would be higher than that of the 12 V bed. The best solution for you would be to get a 12 V heated bed, as opposed to using a boost converter. Reason being is that you would need to get a boost converter that can tolerate over 200 W of power! It's just cheaper to replace the bed.
Finally, you need to consider the heat bed, the extruders and the steper motor's power needs before you purchase a PSU. If you had a multimeter with a current measurement, then you could accurately determine how much power each one uses and then purchase to size.
Based on your bed size (600 mm) I think that 500 W should be enough.


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Thermal runaway
I have a bit of a headache with my Anycubic i3 Mega which originally had a Trigorila 32-bit board.
I decided to swap it because of loud A4988 drivers and got myself an MKS Robin Nano 1.2.
This printer is heavily modded. All the hot-end is swapped to MT2.
Now, MT2 mod was done with Trigorilla, so no problems back then. Also, I know that Anycubic locks their max fan speed at ~80 %, so with that in mind done tests with 100/80/50/30 % cooling fan and the result is the same; temperature drops, and I get "Thermal Runaway".
Now, the strangest part is:
If I set manually 200 °C, wait for it to climb, and then blast 255 °C on the cooling fan, it drops to 199 °C and then back to 200 °C.
I have added a picture below, it has been like this already for about 15-20 min, no probs.
PID autotune was performed numerous times, with values saved, PID repeated, new values stored, etc.

Anycubic i3 Mega
MKS Robin Nano 1.2
E3D V6 original.
Marlin 2.0.5.3

And snippets from Marlin cfg:
#define TEMP_SENSOR_0 5

// Comment the following line to disable PID and enable bang-bang.
#define PIDTEMP
#define BANG_MAX 255     // Limits current to nozzle while in bang-bang mode; 255=full current
#define PID_MAX BANG_MAX // Limits current to nozzle while PID is active (see PID_FUNCTIONAL_RANGE below); 255=full current
#define PID_K1 0.95      // Smoothing factor within any PID loop

// Ai3 mega
  #define DEFAULT_Kp 27.69
  #define DEFAULT_Ki 2.02
  #define DEFAULT_Kd 94.89

Additional information (1):
I have XYZ cube and fan on from layer 3 G-code. It always seems to fail on layer 3, so turned manually fan from layer one, was printing fine till layer 3 and then thermal runaway.
Done a test, sent G-code to see if M106 is an issue.
M104 S210 T0
M109 S210 T0
M106 S204

But no, printer kept temperature steady... Makes me crazy, please help

Additional information (2):
I updated all the images:

Thank you for updating the pictures (twice) and giving us the info to work with!

At the moment I see two things:

First, the printhead doesn't reach the 210 °C set into it in the last timeframe. After some time of printing, this forces TRP (Thermal runaway protection) as the board thinks: "HEY! my thermistor might be loose, I try to HEAT here!"
Second, your graph shows that in the first area, your printhead actually is able to reach the temperature. But something does change which prevents it from holding the temperature.

Then, there's the Anecdotal note:

running same print without cooling fan and its going steady

Those three together tell us exactly what is going on: The airstream from the part cooling fan must somehow brush over the hotend, cooling the heater block and throwing off the measurements.
Fixing in
There are basically 2 things how you can deal with that:

isolate the printhead from the airstream. There are a lot of solutions for that:

Silicone sock to keep away the airstream
Kepton Tape/Tinfoil to try to imitate a silicone sock
different position or geometry of the fan duct to not hit the heater block

turn off/tune down the fan

Thanks Trish for reply. The graph is full cycle of 7min+. The snippet of excel is just when it drifts down. 208.97C is after it started drifting

It doesnt make sense anyway. If I just set to heat nozzle to 200 and manually turn fan on 100% temp doesnt drop. Only happens when printing

https://1drv.ms/x/s!Ap2i4YgMBI90gtV4yzQa7sHOlGixWw?e=B5K7PT this is a link to one drive full excel sheet. Checked thermistor again and heaters, all tight as should be

when printin, the filament takes away thermal energy by melting and getting extruded. You overload what your heater cartridge can do against the airflow.

ahh, really good point! will load some cheaper PLA then? and let it extrude and hit the fan 100%

@Martynas uh... do you have a silicone sock for your heater block? Otherwise, try some Kepton tape or tinfoil wrapped around the sides to try to help to keep the airstream away from the heater block.

of course, I do have few socks. bought couple e3dv6... but moved to a new house and they are somewhere in a boxes... need to dig in the boxes


text:
12864 LCD image not centered?
Just flashed my Ender 5 Plus with the TH3D firmware so I could add an 12864... started a print and then a few minutes later I notice this on the LCD!
How would I fix this?

Does it change when you peel off the plastic film?

Don't know- but it didn't change when I held my soldering gun to its head and threatened it... I'm guessing its a problem with the firmware, as opposed to it being mad about its film not being removed –

There seems to be an issue with these cheap controllers with the timing.
With reference to the next reported issues:
https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Marlin/issues/5703
https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Marlin/issues/5720
Add these 3 lines after the #define ENDER5_PLUS in the firmware files:
#define ST7920_DELAY_1 DELAY_NS(250)
#define ST7920_DELAY_2 DELAY_NS(250)
#define ST7920_DELAY_3 DELAY_NS(250)


text:
While heating, BLTouch mesh data gets worse and worse the more times you probe
The title pretty much sums up the issue. It was happening before moving to an SKR Mini E3 V1.2 and is still happening with the new board.
If I run A G28, then a G29 - while not heated - I will get some mesh data (poor mesh data because I haven't levelled the bed but that's not the main issue).
If I then repeatedly run G29 (lets say 5 times) there will be variation between the measurement but only and expected amount and nothing more.
Bilinear Leveling Grid:
      0      1      2
 0 +0.592 +0.270 +0.010
 1 +0.082 +0.010 -0.062
 2 +0.215 +0.078 -0.065
Bilinear Leveling Grid:
      0      1      2
 0 +0.597 +0.267 +0.002
 1 +0.085 +0.007 -0.065
 2 +0.215 +0.078 -0.065
Bilinear Leveling Grid:
      0      1      2
 0 +0.607 +0.267 -0.002
 1 +0.085 +0.010 -0.065
 2 +0.212 +0.075 -0.060

Although it does continue to climb a bit, it's a BLTouch they're not the most accurate things so I'm not worrying about it.
However, if I heat the nozzle (200 °C) and bed (60 °C):
Bilinear Leveling Grid:
      0      1      2
 0 +0.537 +0.252 +0.022
 1 +0.057 -0.002 -0.050
 2 +0.200 +0.075 -0.087
Bilinear Leveling Grid:
      0      1      2
 0 +0.495 +0.203 -0.030
 1 +0.020 -0.027 -0.097
 2 +0.150 +0.027 -0.127
Bilinear Leveling Grid:
      0      1      2
 0 +0.462 +0.180 -0.067
 1 -0.002 -0.072 -0.150
 2 +0.122 -0.010 -0.170
Bilinear Leveling Grid:
      0      1      2
 0 +0.422 +0.132 -0.105
 1 -0.057 -0.140 -0.192
 2 +0.075 -0.043 -0.215
Bilinear Leveling Grid:
      0      1      2
 0 +0.367 +0.082 -0.165
 1 -0.110 -0.155 -0.233
 2 +0.030 -0.102 -0.255
Bilinear Leveling Grid:
      0      1      2
 0 +0.347 +0.045 -0.190
 1 -0.135 -0.180 -0.250
 2 +0.002 -0.127 -0.280
Bilinear Leveling Grid:
      0      1      2
 0 +0.322 +0.032 -0.215
 1 -0.155 -0.230 -0.280
 2 -0.020 -0.142 -0.315

As you can see the variations in the measurements are very high.
This must be a known issue because Marlin does have a PROBING_HEATERS_OFF option but this would take even more time and I'm just curious if there is a reason for this or another fix to it.
I don't believe it would be a current issue since the power supply used can deliver many amps so it's probably something like electrical noise. I think it's fine to leave it because you only home and probe once during a print so the measurements would be 'accurate' but it would be reassuring to find out a reason and a possible fix.
I measured the rail with my oscilloscope and it actually isn't very noisy, whether I was heating or not. However, Vmax was 4.6 and Vmin was 4.4 and I'm wondering if that is too low. These voltages didn't change while heating so I think they are always that low.
Edit
For completeness, here an image of the printer:

and here graphs about the BLtouch data over time:

sometimes i have to re-level once the bed heats up, i assumed it was the metal expanding.

It looks like the changes are always going in the same direction for a given probe point (each point increases steadily or decreases steadily, there is no oscillation).
This means that the bed is not warm yet and you should wait longer.
In theory the heating of the BLtouch itself may affect the readings, and the air surely gets progressively warmer around it, but since some values increase and other ones decrease, that's not the cause.
The values change because the bed is still adapting to the temperature increase.
For a more systematic and scientific approach, do the following.
With the bed cold, heating off, probe a single point 10 times without any delay, then put the data in a spreadsheet and calculate the standard deviation, to know how accurate the sensor is.
After that probe the whole bed every 5 minutes during heating for half an hour and then plot the values on a graph (each point separately). At a certain point you will see that the values will oscillate about as much as they did when the bed was cold. That is the time you need to wait for proper bee heating. Different parts of the bed may reach the temperature in different times, that's why each probed point has to be graphed separately over time.
If you use an enclosure, as you do, the continuous change of BLtouch output can also be dependent on the overall heating of the printer frame and structure: instead of heating only the bed, in an environment which stays the same, you are heating the whole environment through the bed. It becomes more complex. The BLtouch may be fine, but you may need to keep heating it until the readings stabilise.

I can see that being the case. Probing itself takes adds a fair bit of time and I have to wait for it to fully heat up (with a thicker glass bed as well) it's gonna take a while. is there anything wrong with just probing anyway, even if they change slightly?

Well I'm confused... do you use BLtouch to get an accurate bed calibration or for the fun of it? if you want an accurate bed calibration "just probing anyway, even if they change slightly" seems pointless.

No, of course not but I also don't want to wait 20 minutes for everything to fully heat up and probe. I'm pretty certain I'd already left it for quite a while because I do other things while it heats and usually get distracted. I can speed it up a bit by heating both nozzle and bed at the same time but it's not anything groundbreaking.

Just probe every 5 minutes and see when it stops changing. Then you'll know for the future.

I haven't yet done that (will right now) but I have left the bed to heat up for at least half an hour. In the probes I get a variation of about +-0.010 to +-0.040 but it doesn't just keep increasing which is good.

I probed every 5 minutes and from the start there was no change at all. I did leave it to heat up for a little bit but no where near as long as before so to be honest I'm not really sure. I'll just have to roll with it and see how it goes.

See my updated answer

I'll give that a go. Also, do you know how to probe just 1 point? I haven't been able to figure it out yet.

G30, check Marlin GCodes

All done! image
The info is written in the description of the image.

@DreamingInsanity you never mentioned how long it takes for the bed temperature sensor to reach the desired value. Anyway it looks like that your bed does not stabilise for a long time, or that there are further issues which I cannot identify. At this point, two options can be tried: 1) borrow a thermal camera to check that the upper surface of the bed reaches the temperature the sensor tells you; 2) heat the bed for another hour, and see if it stabilises! Can you post in the question (together with the graphs you made) also a picture of the whole printer? maybe there is something we miss!

There's a picture of the printer, main board and also the raw data for the graphs here. I times the heating and it takes roughly 1:50 for the nozzle to heat up and 2:22 for the bed to heat up. Oh and don't mind the mess the printer is in ;).

Answer updated, I think there's not much more to say...

Because of thermal expansion, you will not get an accurate mesh result test after test for at least 30-60 minutes or longer, depending on the thickness of the bed plate.
I have 1/4 inch MIC6 plates on both my printers and I have to heat my beds for at least 60 minutes before the thermal expansion stops and I can get an accurate mesh and start printing. The funny thing is, no one tells you this when you buy an Antclab BLTouch. I bought 3 at once and thought they were all defective and garbage until I figured out it was thermal expansion. I couldn't get an accurate mesh twice in a row if my life depended on it. I still can't find this information anywhere to this day.
So for anyone reading this, if you want a perfect first layer using a BLTouch, keep doing a mesh test again and again until they are accurate one after another. Then you will know how long you have to wait before you can get a perfect first layer.
Oh and one more thing, different temps will mean different wait times. It takes longer for thermal expansion to settle at 70 °C or 100 °C than it does at 60 °C, depending on which type of filament you want to print. Happy Printing !!


text:
Ender 5 (Plus) - Gantry not square to frame, how to fix?
How would one go about squaring the gantry relative to the frame?
Referring to the image below, distance A and distance B are not equal.
Also would this account for the reason why when I attempt to print a circle it is not perfectly circular, and when I try to print a square, it is tilted?

I had exactly the same issue and I was surprised with the lack of the information about this topic on the Internet. So, here is how I managed to make the gantry absolutely parallel.

Make sure your frame is square:

If it's not square, try to loosen all the screws (don't forget about those holding the motherboard) and tighten everything again. Use a level and a carpenter's square.
Loosen the shaft couplings on the Y axis. Those:

Loosen these four screws:

Loosen these eccentric nuts:

Now your gantry should be completely relieved and allow you to make the adjustments
Move the gantry to the front side of the printer so that the wheels touch these corners:

If your frame is square, it would mean that X and Y axes would be perpendicular to each other.

Don't push the gantry to hard to prevent wheels damage!
Now tighten the screws from the second step, trying to still hold the gantry touching the corners at both sides:

Then, tighten the shaft coupling from the first step, while still ensuring everything is perpendicular and parallel.

Finally, adjust the eccentric nuts from the fourth step. Make sure they all touch the profile and that they all have the same rolling friction.

Check everything one more time and you're done. Now your gantry is completely squared. Enjoy your skew-less prints!

Ender-5 Pro 3D model: https://grabcad.com/library/creality-ender-5-pro-1

Thanks for this! Really clearly presented with the red/green and graphics.

This fixed my first layer being skewed, but now my z-axis is scewed when it was not before this. Specifically the z-axis skews on the left side of the print, but is correct on the right, so it is like my print twists as it grows on the z-axis, but only on the left side. I am ready to take a hammer to the thing. I have had the ender 5 for a month, and have only stopped tinkering to sleep and I still cannot get useful prints.

Strange. There is no such thing as "Z-skew". Simply use the knobs under your bed to make you bed parallel to the gantry.

How would one go about squaring the gantry relative to the frame?

You first need to make sure that the cube/box frame is square. Once this is done, you need to check whether the gantry is still not perpendicular/parallel to the top frame. If not, you need to loosen the couplers at the front that control the Y movement of the printer. See if you can reposition the gantry to be square to the frame. If that doesn't work, you need to fiddle with the bolts that hold the wheels of the X-Y carriages so that the gantry will become aligned with the top of the frame.

Also would this account for the reason why when I attempt to print a circle it is not perfectly circular, and when I try to print a square, it is tilted?

Yes, a skew gantry causes skew prints, i.e. squares become parallelograms, and circles become oval. There is another solution to fix this in firmware, but, the preferred method is to mechanically fix the issue.


text:
PLA does not stick to center of the bed anymore
I have used my printer (Flying Bear Ghost 4) for the last year and a few days ago I noticed that the center of the heat bed does not stick like it used to.
I think it can be caused by the fact that I always print at the center of the bed (glass) and the center is now too much used.
Is there a way to fix it or will I need another bed?

A photo might be very useful too! Are you sure the center is not greasy?

Actually I washed my heat-bed with some dishes soap and dried it very well, releveled it and now all is fine. I guess it was greasy even if i cleaned it as usual.


text:
Anet A8 board USB broken?
I'm trying to connect my PC to my Anet A8 through Pronterface on Ubuntu.
But when I'm clicking on the "connect" button in Pronterface, all I see is "Connecting ...".
What I did so far

added my user to the dialout group
tried to run it as root
tried different baudrates
switch to different USB cables
tried to install and run it on a different machine and different OS (Windows) with nearly the same result (additionally I see repeated lines with M105, but no response)

The printer itself works - I want to connect to it, to "PID tune" it, because I added a different fan duct.
How can I make sure the board isn't somewhat damaged, and its just my setup?

What version of Ubuntu are you using?

I have this printer and used this board many times over USB.
The genuine Arduino boards use the FTDI FT232RL to convert USB signals to UART signals.
The problem with these Arduino based clone boards is that they do not use the FTDI chips as these are too expensive. These boards use a CH340G chip which is a Chinese clone which requires a specific driver to be installed before you can communicate with the board:

Image shows a close-up of the CH340G chipset on the Anet A8 controller board.
When you bought the printer, the SD-card contained the driver that you need to install on your OS. I remember that this driver was for the Windows OS. However, you can download the driver for many platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux) directly from the manufacturer.

Please execuse me for my late reply and thank you for taking the time. The drivers from the manufacturer do not compile on Ubuntu 20.04. But I was able to find, compile and load https://github.com/skyrocknroll/CH341SER_LINUX. I also tried it with https://github.com/juliagoda/CH341SER. Sadly both drivers did not help with my issue. The printer is not recognized. Connecting the printer does not show up in syslog or with dmsg.

You may need to install a device driver for the USB interface chip that your printer uses. I'm guessing that the Anet A8 uses a clone of the FTDI FT232RL chip (which was and may still be common with cheap Chinese printers).
If this is the case, you will need to install the appropriate driver from this site: FTDI Chip Virtual COM Port Drivers.
Edit: I can confirm that Pronterface will not work with my Tronxy X1 (which uses an FT232RL clone) on the latest version of Ubuntu.

Please excuse my late reply. Thank you for taking the time trying to help me. I think my Anet A8 does not have the FTDI FT232RL chip, but the CH340G @0scar mentioned in his answer


text:
CR-10 heating problem
I've been happily printing on my CR-10 for a couple of months but now there is an issue. As soon as I turn it on the hot-end begins heating. I have replaced the heater and the thermistor but the problem remains. The panel on the control box shows 0 for the commanded temperature,  but the actual temp just keeps rising.
Anyone know what could be wrong?

If you power the printer and it starts heating up the hotend, it most probably is caused by a faulty controller board. More specific, the MOSFET (as in an electronic switch component) controlling the current to the heater element is causing this. MOSFET devices usually fail short-circuit implying that when the MOSFET has failed, the current can freely run to the heater element without being controlled by the board.
If you are handy with electronics, you can replace the MOSFET, but it might be better to upgrade to a newer controller board as there may be other damage as well.

The description is spot-on and therefore I'm inclined to believe the diagnosis. I'm OK at basic electronics but I'd rather avoid soldering/desoldering MOSFET chips - I'm assuming it won't be socketed?
This might be a chance to get rid of the controller box - I find it clumsy.

As an older Brit I was brought up to mind my manners, so it grates on me when I forget - electronic versions are well and good, but this world needs a bit more civility methinks, so I'll continue my old-fashioned version  :-)


text:
Problems with the right Z axis
My 3D printer was working perfectly, but one day I put it inside an acrylic box and put it to work, that was not a good idea, because the Z axis grabbed the box, after that, the Z axis started to rotate strange, I even tried to change the wires between the motors and the drivers, but it didn't work.

I have a suspicion that the drive must have a safety criterion, so when something strange happens it stops sending the necessary current for the stepper to run, if it is possible. Does someone have any tips on how to make it work correctly again? Remembering that the motor that is working in a strange way is the motor on the right side of the Z axis, the motor on the left side looks normal. Below I will leave a video showing how the printer is working, like, if it moves just a little bit with the Z axis, it looks like it works normally, but if I move it a little more, then it starts to get weird.
On this printer, I used a AtMega Arduino, with RAMPS 1.4 shield, with A4988 drivers, "NEMA 17" steppers and  and I'm using the Repetier-host program to control the printer.
Video:

Is it possible that your right Z-Axis motor is now out of sync with the one on the left? Not sure what you mean "because the z axis grabbed the box" I assume somehow it got hung up or hit the box. When I added my second Z-Axis to my CR-10 it behaved similar to yours as it was not in sync with the opposite side stepper. Once I had successfully aligned/ sync'd both steppers it was fine.

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

Do you mean that I must unscrew the z axis and try to move the x axis manually to check the friction?

@RodrigoFranco Yes, it looks like the frame or rods are bent or some sort of binding occurs.


text:
How to identify what type of filament an unlabeled spool is
So I have some old filament that I originally got for a 3D pen. The problem is it's unlabeled and I haven't been able to find anything that might help me distinguish whether it's PLA or ABS. The bag it all came in says that wherever this filament came from only makes PLA and ABS so it's got to be on of those two.
I have a roll of PLA in my 3D printer right now, but I can't tell if it's the same as the filament I have for the 3D pen. It's been a while since I've used the 3D pen, but I do remember whenever you used it, it would produce a very very bad smell. I've also noticed that the filament seems to be more flexible that the PLA in my machine. This makes me think it could be ABS, because the PLA smells far better than what I remember the 3D pen smelling like, and it's more flexible.
I also don't really want to do any heat tests or anything on the filament, so if the smell and flexibility is enough to determine which filament it is, could anyone tell me?

Does it dissolve in acetone? If so, it is ABS.

some good advice in this previous post
https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/3728/identifying-the-plastic-type-of-an-unknown-spool-of-filament-or-recyclable-waste

Mick's suggestion is a good one. PLA may shed some color in acetone, but ABS will dissolve completely in a suitable amount of time. If you have dark filament, you can test by flexing the filament until it breaks. ABS will sometimes/often/usually fatigue with a white break line, while PLA does not exhibit this tendency as much.
PLA has a somewhat sweet smell, which may be the corn sugars burning off, while ABS has a much more chemical-like odor.
Not doing heat testing does limit your options.

PLA dissolves in chloroform. It's hard to get, but it's part of 3D gloop for PLA: https://www.3dgloop.com/

Just burn it and check flame color.
I know you mentioned that you would like to avoid heat test, but this method is much faster and easier then other techniques.

3D printing filament burn test
Do 3D Prints Catch Fire? ABS / PLA / PETG Burn Test - Episode 1


text:
Identifying and Replacing Capacitor
So during one of my initial experiments I accidentally blew up one of my capacitors. Everything else works on the board except the motor control with the blown capacitor so I'm going to replace it. Now I know it's an SMD and its capacitance is 47 µF, I'm going to assume that the "H" marks it as a 50 VDC on its voltage rating and it has a diameter of 6.3 mm as measured with my caliper. I can't find anything that read the exact same as what is on the capacitor shown, does that matter or does only the capacitance and voltage rating matter? [assuming my idea of the voltage rating being 50 VDC is correct]

Wouldn't this question attract more attention when posted on EE.SE?

What did you do to blow that cap? It seems likely that anything you could do to blow a cap would damage other components also.

Usually only the capacitance and voltage matter. And it has to actually fit on the circuit board of course.

I put 33 volts through my board like a dummy and it blew out the capacitor for the x controller and fried the motor control but that's an easy replacement as I have extra motor controllers. Only the x motor controller was affected by this overload. I checked all the other components with my voltmeter and everything else reads normal.

That capacitor is in parallel with all of the other motor capacitors. I think it is unlikely to be the culprit for that particular motor driver not working. Also, how do you blow up a 50V rated capacitor with 33V?


text:
Good lubricants for moving parts?
What materials work well for lubricating moving PLA, ABS, or PETG parts? I'm talking items like the
the Gear Bearings or Print in Place Engine.
I've played with a few lubricants on my own, including hand lotion, trumpet valve oil, and carmex/vaseline. Of these, the vaseline has worked best for me so far, but I'd like to hear what has worked well for others, or especially if there's anyone here who understands the chemistry involved and could explain what to look for in different situations.

When dealing with lubrication of plastics, any solvent or reactive substance is to be avoided. Petroleum is risky and Vaseline™ is a brand name for petroleum jelly.
I've had quite good results using inert lubrication such as PTFE and silicone based lubes. PTFE is the generic term for Teflon™ and is quite a good lubricant. There are both silicone and PTFE greases for higher viscosity applications.
From the Teflon™ link:

Teflon's amazing properties are down to its structure. Like most
polymers, Teflon has a carbon-based chain. However, instead of
reactive C-H bonds which occur in most polymers, Teflon has all its
hydrogens replaced by fluorines. These strong C-F bonds are extremely
resistant to attack by any other reagents, making Teflon very inert.
This means that no other molecules will react with or stick to Teflon.
The exception is Teflon itself, which will stick to itself quite
readily, forming thick layers or solid blocks. With a friction
coefficient of <0.1, Teflon has the second lowest friction coefficient
(surpassed only by diamond-like carbon), which makes it perfect for
non-stick items e.g. pans. DuPont invented the non-stick pan coated
with Teflon in 1956 and have manufactured it ever since. Teflon
coatings are so slippery that they are the only material that a gecko
cannot stick to.

Who knew that gecko testing was a thing?
Wikipedia for silicone grease:

Although silicones are normally assumed to be chemically inert,
several historically significant compounds have resulted from
unintended reactions with silicones.

Powdered graphite is also a good lubricant if one can tolerate loose powder in some constructions.
I've read of others using lithium grease, but not for plastic lubrication.

After some testing, I can say that any oil is a bad option.
I've found that light oils tend to soak into and through any 3D printed FDM parts because of the small voids between lines and in turns and corners.
It is possible that resin-printed parts could be more oil-resistant, but I don't have any for testing.

Petroleum based lubricants are perfectly acceptable for use with PLA, as well as PETG and TPU, and will not attack the polymer. I use STP red high temp automotive grease in my printed gears with no problems. ABS and ASA on the other hand sould not be used with such lubricants.
If your print quality is poor and you have lots of extrusion gaps between layers or between walls, it seems plausible that any lubricant will work its way into these gaps and loosen any points where it's just friction between the extrusion lines, rather than actual fusing of the plastic, holding them together. But this should not happen in parts intended for serious mechanical usage, which need to be printed in a manner that's structurally sound.

Try aerosol silicone spray first. That's worked well for me in most situations.  It is reasonably innocuous and dries so is clean and doesn't attract or hold particulate contaminants.  If that proves insufficient then try other options.
Graphite powder is a good dry lubricant but has disadvantages; doesn't adhere so has limited "staying power", may be electrically conductive and is messy.
If grease is indicated consider an anti-seize compound, essentially grease with a large dose of graphite mixed in. It's messy but may be a good solution if dry compounds or oils don't do the job.


text:
Hotend moves up on HOME command
My Ender 3D with BlTouch And Marlin 2.0.1 firmware was working flawless for 3 months.
Yesterday, without any hardware or software change, it started acting weird: on Auto-Home command it first makes expected moves (home X and Y), then moves to the center of the bed and then instead of going down to bed, it rises all the way up and then writes a message about End Stop. This of course happens also on "start print", "level bed", etc.
Before the Auto Home command, I can operate the Z axis normally, after it, the printer does not allow movement down.
Do you have any ideas, what might have gone wrong?

Before homing the hotend cannot go down, it is default and safe to not go down. Regarding the issue please check your BLTouch cables and try replacing them.

The mystery is solved. The BlTouch probe was slightly blocked and reported (supposedly) being in touch with the plate. Just touching it released the probe from the stuck position and all works well now.
Due to direct sunlight, I overlooked the warning blinking red colour of the BlTouch.


text:
Ender 3 won't power up
I've had an Ender 3 for about a year and a half now and have been using it without issues.
Last week it turned off a few minutes into a print and wouldn't turn back on on power from the PSU. Connecting a laptop to the usb port does turn on the screen, which makes me think that the board should be fine.
Some investigation revealed that the glass fuse in the PSU power connection was blown.
I've replaced that and also ordered a replacement PSU, but the printer still won't turn on.
The PSU is outputting 24 V, I've tested that with a multimeter and attached a picture.

I'd be very grateful for any further hints as far as debugging this issue goes. I feel like the next step might be buying a new mainboard and testing with that, but I want to make sure I'm not missing anything obvious.

Hi welcome to 3DPrinting.SE! There must be a cause that spiked the PSU to cause the glass fuse to fail. It could be that you have more damage from that further down the line; i.e. the controller board. Replacing the board would be my preferred solution.

If you're going to get a new controller board, you might want to look at some reviews of the BigTreeTech boards. Just in case you feel like an upgrade at the same time, and that's half the fun of a 3-d printer for some people.

@0scar Thanks for the welcome.
I feel the same way that there must be some other problem that I'm missing, which is the only thing holding me back from just sticking a new board in.
I am looking at getting a BigTreeTech board to upgrade, but I was wondering if there's anywhere else to measure/ check for what might have caused the problem in the first place.


text:
Waves in my prints
Around about 2 weeks ago I upgraded my Ender 3 Pro with a micro Swiss direct drive and all metal hotend. I had some tuning with the PID and e-steps to do, but once that was done, it's been mostly good.
However over the past week I've been having problems where my prints appear to have waves in them and after I've levelled the bed and the print gets about ~5 layers in it sounds like the nozzle is grinding against the print and I drop the bed down which I've noticed is something I keep having to listen for and intermittently drop the bed down mid-print.
I thought maybe my bed level was a little high so I went through the bed levelling with my DTI and ran chep's bed level print and watched the print and the filament was being laid down perfectly, adhesion was good and not flat. However I've been trying to print a kitchen roll holder and this is the state of the first few layers:

The layering below is where I've had to manually drop the bed mid print. I was wondering if there's a problem with my Z axis but when I manually move up and down it's fine and I even did a similar check where I measure 100 mm from the top of the bearing and set it move 100 mm on the controller and it was spot on.

My print settings/configuration as follows:

Ender 3 Pro with magnetic build plate and Micro Swiss direct drive
Bed temp: 60 °C
Hotend temp: 210 °C
Slicer: Cura 4.7.1 ( recently upgraded from 4.5.1 - wondering if that's the problem? )
Filament type: PLA
No cooling fan

I'm honestly, very stuck at the moment at what to do for the best! I have a BLTouch to install but I don't want to install it until I understand what the cause/fix for this issue is. I prefer to know pre-upgrade everything's fine so if there are issues from upgrades I can rollback to a working configuration.
Any help / advise on diagnosing this issue would be appreciated! If there's any info I've missed, happy to update with it. I have only had my printer for about 6 months so still a bit of newbie.

I'm currently running a series of tests to check the temperature combinations and to see what gives me the best results. I'm starting at 210 °C and running through all bed temps 40-70 °C to check for waves with 0.5 mm height square, then running the best results through a height test with the XYZcube to see if the height issue goes away. Does anyone know if there's a way for me to batch these tests using Cura post processing similar to a temperature tower? I want to change the bed temperature per model.

Could this answer answer your question?

@0scar sadly, this has not resolved the issues of the waves. I have fan cooling disabled, however I have spent the past several hours trying different variants of bed / hotend temps to try and see if there's a sweet spot I can get to this to, but still no luck!

Did you try to increase the nozzle to bed distance?

Hi @0scar, would this mean modifying the z-axis offset?

Yes, level with a thicker piece of paper, or little less drag, alternatively use feeler gauges thicker than paper.

I want to change the bed temperature per model. -> Look for M140 or M190 in your G-code file and adjust accordingly.

Since you changed the hot end, I'd start at the material diameter setting, followed by the extruder, followed by then check the movements on the z axis.
What you described - a periodic stack up of layers causing distance to the nozzle to decrease can be caused by:

Outputting too much material - this is an extruder issue

most likely happens when  too much material is fed into the nozzle either because the motor steps per inch is off or material diameter in slicer is smaller than real material
can also happen due to over temperature when material just drips out the nozzle among other issues.

Expanding the gap too little per layer - this is a z motor issue.  Diagnosis can be simple - tell the motor to move and measure how far off the commanded and actual distances are.

likely happens when axis does not move smoothly - misalignment, junk jammed in places, current too low
can also happen when steps per inch are set wrong.

Hi Abel, thanks for replying! I checked the diameter of the material and it's 1.75mm exactly. I checked the Z-steps in my settings and they're set to 400/mm and I checked the z axis moves the right amount by measuring both from the top of the bearing and the rail and marking 100mm and instructed the printer to move 100mm and it hit the mark spot on.

That leaves checking your actual extruder feeding motor and your temperature.  You could check the diameter of what that motor is turning, or you could mark your filament some distance and see if more than expected is drawn in.


text:
left-over photopolymer resins
Not storing left-over photopolymer resin back with pristine resin in its original shipping can seems to be a common recommendation.
What is the best practice here? Store in a separate bottle and pour this "once around the block" resin first for the next print?

Safety first
I suggest the following handling of resins, some basic stuff first:

ALWAYS wear disposable, one-use gloves when handling resin.
Respirators are highly advised to be worn.
Work in a well-ventilated area.
Tools dedicated to resin handling are for resin only to prevent contamination of other tools.
Try to minimize the amount added to the vat, so you have as little rests as possible.

Re-cycling
Now, what to do to get the used resin back to the cycle? Any resin that has been exosed to air and light, such as having been in the vat is best considered to be B-Quality. You can use it to cast greeblies or bits (aka disposal by curing), as one would do with leftover casting (2-component) resin, but that is a waste.
Step 1: Re-botteling
So, let's look at some better ways: first of all re-botteling the resin. We need to take in mind, that the quality of our resin will further degrade the longer it stays exposed to light (and to a lesser degree: air), so we need to handle the resin in a way that allows us to eliminate exposition to either. For this, it would be best to keep an empty resin bottle at hand and label it as the leftover bottle. To fill this bottle, you should use a Jig to keep the vat in a position that it pours into the bottle. You might want to use a funnel in some cases!
Step 2: Re-conditioning
Now, we know how to get the stuff back into the (B-quality) bottle. But how to make sure it has the best quality we can? As you notice, many of the jigs involve a funnel. This funnel is used in conjunction with a filter to remove larger particles. The finer the filter, the better. Coffee filters manage to snatch particles down to about 10 to 15 micrometers. It is equivalent to about Grade 4 laboratory filter paper. However, laboratory filter paper of grades 1,2,3 or 602h would allow to catch particles of even lower size, as the mesh gets even smaller, but might clog faster. Tea filters on the other hand have worse filtration ability and should be avoided.
To get the best out of it, use a filtration stack, that starts with a metal mesh filter before going through a rough and a fine filter to get out any chunks and large particles that would clog the fine filter.
It would be best to have this process run in the dark, so mounting the dripping and filtration stack in a box might first sound like overkill, but if you go through a large amount of resin (for example by running several printers) it might be an investment that can save a considerable amount of resin in the long run. However, if you run so many printers, you also might run them continually with the same resin colors and just refill them as needed and only filter if there had been a print failure.
Step 3: Storage
Store your bottles in a closed cupboard. It would be best if this cupboard is ventilated through a filtration unit and then outside. It should also keep a steady temperature above about 10 °C to prevent clumping. Just follow the storage manual for the normal resin actually.
Step 4: Re-use
Now comes the tricky part: re-using the resin. While technically the filtered and re-bottled resin should be almost as good as new, it would be best to make sure that we mix it with some virgin resin to make sure we have enough photoinitiator in the resin. For this, I would suggest mixing the recycled resin with between a sixth and half of the fresh stuff. Mix the two well to make sure you get the best possible. Make sure it's the same type and color of the used resin, best even from the same original batch.
Use up the re-cycled resin first, as you should consider it's best before date much shorter than on the virgin bottle.

photo-chemistry bottles used to have bellows to minimize the amount of air allowed in... perhaps that may be worth looking into.

@0xF2 yes, those are just as good as the original resin bottles, as both materials are pretty much fighting the same problems (light and air)

Considerations for storing resin include using a light-tight bottle, preventing stray ultraviolet radiation from prematurely curing the resin.
You'll also note that users will filter the resin through a fine mesh filter. I've seen some videos in which the user pours through coffee filters to remove as many particulates as possible.
Left-over resin that has been carefully filtered is effectively the same as fresh-from-the-bottle material, from a purely technical view, but you can pick up contaminants that bypass the filter.


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Is there any 3D-printing software that supports Raspberry Pi?
My only functional computer at the moment is a raspberry pi, and I was wondering if there was any software that supported it. My printer is a Newmatter mod-t, but I might be able to modify other software to support it

Are you running a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system?

Also, what version of the Raspberry Pi do you have and how much memory does it have?

Also, what kind of software are you looking for. Your printer seems to have a built-in slicer and can be operated from a web browser. Are you looking for design software?

One thing worth remembering is TinkerCad runs entirely in the web browser; if you can open a web site, you can do basic 3d modeling.

@JoelCoehoorn tinkercad needs webGL, which is not 100% supported by every browser and platform, while HTML is.

The answer is "yes", but it depends on what hardware you have, what operating system you are using, and what software you want (or need) to use.
I have a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB of memory, and I am running a 32-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS. I have been able to install the following software from the Raspberry Pi OS repositories, but not everything is working "out of the box":

Blender 2.79 (starts, but not tested)
Cura 3.3.1 (crashes on startup)
FreeCAD 0.18 (crashes when opening a new document)
PrintRun (PronterFace) 1.6.0 (working)
PrusaSlicer (Slic3r PE) 1.39.2 (working)
Repetier-Host 0.85 (crashes on startup)
Slic3r 1.3.0 (working)

I have been able to download the 3DBenchy from Thingiverse, slice it using Slic3r, and PrintRun (PronterFace) is currently printing it on my Tronxy X1.
I will update this answer if I can get the other stuff working, since I would quite like to use a Raspberry Pi for 3D design and printing. If I can get FreeCAD working, I shall be happy, and OpenSCAD would be a welcome bonus, but I don't think that it has been ported.

Blender is a very powerful tool with a reputation to be horrible to use for newbies, but its UI gets better and better. However, UI changes between editions can be huge...

@Trish Understood. I'm not really interested in Blender for my own use (at least, not yet), but I will try to produce a simple STL file with it if I can. I expect that it has been pretty well tested on the RPi, so it should work.

Cura 3.3 is ancient and would not be a good idea even if it worked. You need to just get latest from source and build it yourself. I don't see any good reason it shouldn't run on arm, so I'd expect it to work fine. (In fact, I'm pretty sure lots of ppl already run at least the CuraEngine backend on arm/rpi through OctoPrint or other print managers - don't they let you do slicing in the pring manager?)

This is a case of Atwood's Law.
Remember that TinkerCAD runs entirely in your web browser. If your Raspberri Pi can browse the web, you can do basic 3D modeling.
Similarly, there is an online slicer available at cnc-apps.com — probably others, too. If you can browse the web, you can slice an STL to create gcode suitable for most printers. It's free to use (with limits) for guests. However, I haven't used it personally so I can't speak to the quality at this time. (If anyone wants to try this out, I'd love to hear your results).
The final step is getting the printer to run the generated g-code, and here we have our old friend OctoPrint. I'm currently running this on a Raspberry Pi of my own. However, I'd be hesitant to give the Pi over to running the printer if it's your only computer. In most cases I would instead copy the gcode file to an sd card, but as the particular printer here it seems to support wifi it's likely you can upload the gcode directly.

Octoprint can't detect my printer

I mentioned two other options for you to look at.


text:
What is SBS plastic
I want to print a part from Thingiverse. In the description, the creater writes that he used SBS to print it. I did some research because I never heard of SBS.
I found a description on Filaments.directory that describes it as:

Poly(styrene-butadiene-styrene) is a hard, durable rubber that is commonly used for shoe soles, tires and other products that experience high wear.

But if I search for SBS filaments to buy, there only shows ABS up. Did I misunderstood something and SBS  is the same as ABS.

It's probably just a typo, and the contributor meant ABS.

@Mick nope! It's a rather rare polymer.

A and S are right next to each other, the odds this wasn't a typo are slim considering SBS barely is a thing.

SBS is not really a rare polymer.  It's used in most shoe soles, your tires for durability increases.  It's used in Asphalt as well for the same reasons (Most of the modern Asphalt surfaces have a varying mix of 5-15% by volume of the polymer for dramatically increased durability.)
So it's not rare...save in 3D printing terms.  Only a few places seem to have made it even if it made a splash moderately recently.  I've a spool of it from Bestfilament that I've not used YET.  It's kind of hard to lay hands on for whatever reasons.

It seems that the main source of any of this is from two Russian companies.  Bestfilament (which seems to be more accessible other than IN Russia itself) and Filiamentarno (Which has sourcing concerns...)

As you found and according to this site, SBS is a Styryne-Butadiene polymer that only contains Styrene and Butadiene chains interlinked. This is similar to ABS, but not identical.
Some people have access to filament manufacturing machines or use pellet extruders, however, googling for "SBS" filament I was able to source at the moment two sites with information:

Craftbot.nl is a reseller who also explain why this stuff is such expensive with 40€ for 750 grams
the very site you had (apparently defunct, no waybackmachine grab), which tells us there is exactly one brand: Filamentarno from Russia, but the link to the amazon marketplace from there shows no availability of this product at all.

Now I want some of this stuff.

@R..GitHubSTOPHELPINGICE Filamentarno now has got a branch in Estonia, sends plastic to EU.

This response might be way late but no, SBS is not a typo.
Here are the info:

SBS (styrene-butadiene-styrene)
Poly (styrene-butadiene-styrene) or SBS, is a hard rubber that's used to modify asphalt, to make soles of shoes, tire treads, and other places where durability is important. It's a type of copolymer called a block copolymer. Its backbone chain is made up of three segments. The first is a long chain of polystyrene, the middle is a long chain of polybutadiene, and the last segment is another long section of polystyrene.
Polystyrene is a tough hard plastic, and this gives SBS its durability. Polybutadiene is rubbery, and this gives SBS its rubber-like properties. In addition, the polystyrene chains tend to clump together. When one styrene group of one SBS molecule joins one clump, and the other polystyrene chain of the same SBS molecule joins another clump, the different clumps become tied together with rubbery polybutadiene chains. This gives the material the ability to retain its shape after being stretched.


text:
How to move Z-axis to a specificic position (Z-max) after printing?
I have a Cartesian printer in a cubic format (the bed moves vertically) with Marlin 2.x
I am not finding a way to make it move to Z-max (23 cm) when finishing the printing.
The idea is to lower the bed all the way to the max, to make easy removal of the printed piece.

To move the bed down, you simply instruct the bed to do so after the print.
The best way to do that is add a G-code line to your "end G-code" script you find in your slicer you use.
Just add the line:
G1 Z230 F500

With this command you instruct the bed to lower to your maximum Z height at speed (feed rate) 500 mm per minute.


text:
Marlin 1.0 works: Marlin 2.0 destroys Z-axis motion
I have an FLSun 3D Cube, running off an MKS GEN V.1.4 main board. With Marlin 1.0, the Z-axis works great (and has been for three years). When I try to upgrade to Marlin 2.0, moving the Z-axis 10 mm results in extreme motion -50 mm at least, left motor then the right motor, three or four times, very fast. It's loud, it's jarring, and it's at the very least incorrect.
What setting am I missing?

Are you sure the steps/mm are indentical between your configurations?
Too high values for Z max speed or Z acceleration might also cause odd behaviour.

Are you using Marlin 2.0 correctly configured for your printer? If it's configured for a different printer, anything can happen. Where did you get the Marlin 2.0 image?

I believe (from reference) the default steps per mm for the FLSUN 3D Cube are:
                                          X,   Y,    Z, E0
#define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT   { 100, 100,  400, 150 }

Default marlin 2.0.x are:
                                          X,   Y,    Z, E0
#define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT   {  80,  80, 4000, 500 }

Such a setting would explain the excessive speeds; while the printer only needs 400 steps for advancing a single millimeter, the stepper receives 4000, this implies a tenfold, hence larger displacement and higher speeds.


text:
Has anybody successfully used Prusa Slicer with the FlashForge Adventurer 3?
I am trying to get rid of the FlashPrint slicer that comes with the Adventurer 3 due to its limited capabilities - to no success.
Cura works to some extent, Simplify3D lacks some bottom layer patterns that I would like to use. With my old cheap Monoprice Select Mini V2 PrusaSlicer or Slic3r were no problem. But for the replacement of the FlashPrint slicer for the Adventurer 3 I could not come to a solution. The Adventurer  3 starts heating up, and when the temperature has reached its value the print head directly marches to the home position - without any printing.
Does anybody have any clue?
My start and end g-codes in PrusaSlicer for the Adventurer 3 are
;Adventurer 3 start g-code
M118 X70.00 Y70.00 Z15.00 T0 ;echo message/serial print
M140 S[first_layer_bed_temperature] T0 ;bed temperature setting
M104 S[first_layer_temperature] T0 ;nozzle temperature setting
M104 S0 T1 ;no second nozzle
M107 ;disable cooling fan
G90 ;absolute positioning
G28 ;home
M132 X Y Z A B ;load current home position
G1 Z50.000 F420 ;linear move
;G161 X Y F3300 ;home axes to minimum
M7 T0 ;wait for bed
M6 T0 ;wait for nozzle
M651 ;chassis fan on
M907 X100 Y100 Z40 A100 B20
M108 T0 ;tool change
...
;Adventurer 3 end g-code
M107                   ;disable cooling fan
M104 S0 T0         ;nozzle temperature setting
M140 S0 T0 ;bed temperature setting
G162 Z F1800 ;home axes to maximum
G28 X Y ;home
M132 X Y A B ;load current home position
M652 ;chassis fan off
G91 ;relative positioning
M18 ;motor current stop
;end Adventurer 3

These start and end g-codes work (with minor modifications) also with Cura and are derived from analyzing the .g-files generated by FlashPrint slicer.
How can I add .g-code files of FlashPrint and PrusaSlicer here?

Going to home position may indicate that the bed is incorrectly configured in the slicer. I believe the bed is 150x150x150 mm with the origin in the center: (75, 75).

You can post a link to the G-code when you have posted it on e.g. PasteBin.com

@Perot Did you ever get this to work?  I would like to try prusa with my adventurer and curious how it worked out for you.


text:
Has anyone applied four 200 x 200 mm PEI sheets to a 400 x 400 mm bed?
Of course I'm referring to side by side and not stacking or overlapping.  200 x 200 mm PEI and Kapton sheets are more readily available than 400 x 400 sheets.  I'm wondering if anyone has tried this and if the edges of the sheets cause a problem.

Aligning build surfaces isn't the main issue with 1 mm thick surfaces when aligning four 200 x 200 mm surfaces to make one 400 x 400 surface.  The main issue is slight bucking at the seams from thermal mismatch.  Using this with PETG tends to tear up the build surface at the seams.  The image shows aligned surfaces.

The above was a poor design because prints tended to always print on the seams, which are more susceptible to damage when removing the print.
More reliable was to put one 200 x 200 mm surface in the center of the bed, cut the other three in half, and tile them along the sides.  Glue stice helps fill the seams.

The center of the surface tends to wear out first.  In that case only the center surface would need changing.

it also shows a mismatch of the edges on the lower corner and the top left one has a lifted corner in the center.

I haven't tried such a thing, but a speculative answer covering the constraints and expected failure modes may suffice here.
Unless the sheets have squared (rather than rounded) corners, the corners will almost certainly be a problem. In particular you'd end up with a hole right at the middle of the bed.
If the sides aren't entirely square (perpendicular) with each other then you'll have large gaps at one end or another.
As Trish noted in a comment, it's also possible that you may hit problems due to mismatch in thickness between the different sheets, although I'd expect these are fairly well-controlled in the manufacturing process; otherwise I'd expect bed leveling issues even with just a single sheet. If you do hit this kind of issue, it may be possible to avoid it with shimming of some sort.
Assuming you can avoid all of the above potential problems, I would expect what you've proposed to work reasonably well, especially if you're ok with very minor surface defects at the seams.

I expec tthe mismatch to be in the area of micrometers or lower, but it would stem from sheets coming from different batches.


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Why would my extruder remove the filament all the way out after prints? [Ender 3 v2]
Background
I bought an Ender 3 v2 printer, everything has been working fine, been experimenting with harder and higher temperature filaments like different variations of PLA and PETG.
Original extruder would bite the filament too hard sometimes and snap it, if it's loose it would grind it, filling its teeth with material that needs to be cleaned out.
I bought a BMG clone (TriangleLab) extruder and set it up according to BondTech instructions but without having to invert the stepper motor rotation and set E-Steps to 419, which seems to be printing fine.
It's still using the stock hotend but with 0.6 mm hardened steel nozzle. I do have BLTouch add-on and I'm using firmware compiled from tip of bugfix-2.0.x branch of Marlin with stock Creality v4.2.2 board. Firmware Configuration modifications were done to accommodate BLTouch alone.
Problem
I have to manually heat the nozzle and manually extrude about 200-250 mm from LCD menu, otherwise once print starts, no material will come out.
I checked the bowden tube with a torchlight since it's translucent using a black filament to print and noticed that after machine is stopped (from menu or after print ends), extruder will pull the filament almost all the way out while pulling up Z axis to clear some height, requiring me to manually extrude before next print so tube won't be empty. Previously with stock extruder I didn't have to do anything, the initial print on left hand side of bed or skirt print would take care of putting it back in location.
I've been googling and looking at Cura and Firmware (configuration.h) for a while now but I couldn't figure out why this is happening.
This is my End code in Cura. I do suspect 3rd line has something to do with it but I don't understand what that means.
G91 ;Relative positioning
G1 E-2 F2700 ;Retract a bit
G1 E-2 Z0.2 F2400 ;Retract and raise Z
G1 X5 Y5 F3000 ;Wipe out
G1 Z10 ;Raise Z more
G90 ;Absolute positioning

G1 X0 Y{machine_depth} ;Present print
M106 S0 ;Turn-off fan
M104 S0 ;Turn-off hotend
M140 S0 ;Turn-off bed

M84 X Y E ;Disable all steppers but Z

M300 S440 P200
M300 S660 P250
M300 S880 P300

Retraction settings are stock settings in Cura, haven't touched them.
The Configuration.h file is found here, the Configuration_adv.h file is found here.
Update: This happened again with Benchy print but about 4 cm unlike previously, half of the skirt print failed but actual print was OK. Below is last part of print Gcode. End code isn't different from Cura settings printer end code.
G1 X105.151 Y113.199 E313.92164
G0 F7200 X105.155 Y112.539
;TIME_ELAPSED:3369.503317
G1 F3000 E307.42164
M140 S0
M107
G91 ;Relative positioning
G1 E-2 F2700 ;Retract a bit
G1 E-2 Z0.2 F2400 ;Retract and raise Z
G1 X5 Y5 F3000 ;Wipe out
G1 Z10 ;Raise Z more
G90 ;Absolute positionning

G1 X0 Y220 ;Present print
M106 S0 ;Turn-off fan
M104 S0 ;Turn-off hotend
M140 S0 ;Turn-off bed

M84 X Y E ;Disable all steppers but Z

M300 S440 P200
M300 S660 P250
M300 S880 P300
M82 ;absolute extrusion mode
M104 S0
;End of Gcode
;SETTING_3 {"extruder_quality": ["[general]\\nversion = 4\\nname = Ideagen Nozzl
;SETTING_3 e-0.6 #3\\ndefinition = creality_ender3pro\\n\\n[metadata]\\ntype = q
;SETTING_3 uality_changes\\nquality_type = standard\\nposition = 0\\nsetting_ver
;SETTING_3 sion = 15\\nintent_category = default\\n\\n[values]\\nfill_outline_ga
;SETTING_3 ps = True\\ninfill_overlap = 10\\ninfill_sparse_density = 40\\ninitia
;SETTING_3 l_layer_line_width_factor = 120\\nironing_only_highest_layer = True\\
;SETTING_3 nmaterial_flow = 92.5\\nmaterial_print_temperature = 210\\nretraction
;SETTING_3 _count_max = 10\\nretraction_retract_speed = 50\\nspeed_print = 60\\n
;SETTING_3 speed_travel = 120.0\\nsupport_infill_rate = 5\\ntop_bottom_thickness
;SETTING_3  = 1.05\\ntop_thickness = 1.05\\nwall_thickness = 1.2\\nzig_zaggify_i
;SETTING_3 nfill = True\\n\\n"], "global_quality": "[general]\\nversion = 4\\nna
;SETTING_3 me = Ideagen Nozzle-0.6 #3\\ndefinition = creality_ender3pro\\n\\n[me
;SETTING_3 tadata]\\ntype = quality_changes\\nquality_type = standard\\nsetting_
;SETTING_3 version = 15\\n\\n[values]\\nlayer_height = 0.35\\nlayer_height_0 = 0
;SETTING_3 .4\\nretraction_combing = infill\\n\\n"}

If you use a hardened steel nozzle, you should increase temperatures of the hotend by approximately 10 °C, else the heat in the nozzle might be too low causing too much friction as a result of a too high viscosity which promotes grinding.

Line 2 and 3 from your end code cause the filament to retract 4 mm with respect to the last known position in the print. That doesn't explain the large retraction. Care to PasteBin a complete G-code file from a print that showed the large retraction, e.g. from a calibration cube?

Is your extruder having to pull against a lot of weight from the filament?  Is the filament spool hard to turn?

This could have been mechanical problem after all. I'm using 1KG spools, not that heavy. I noticed extruder stopped working altogether, I opened it and took out the gears, noticed that tiny allen head screws which serves as key in these gears have been loosened, both on e-stepper mount and extruder mount. One of them was turning freely, hence didn't work. Tiny ball bearing holding shaft also seems to have come out of its socket. I tightened them before but I didn't use anything like thread locker.

@0scar I think it answers for the very long retraction, I'm still not sure why my skirt print will start working only halfway through because it wasn't primed enough automatically.

Long story short I think I've done too much of the "modding" as a one week old newbie in 3D printers, my printer became unreliable, I'm rolling back my changes and calibrating and making one change at a time whenever possible.

As mentioned in the comments, extrusion stopped working altogether at some point halfway through a Benchy print. Once I had opened compressing lever of BMG clone extruder, I observed that gears were loose, after disassembling the extruder noticed that both extruder side and stepper motor side gears were also loosened at hex head screw keys which were keeping them in place. I ordered a thread locker to address that at another time, seems like vibrations due to constant retractions loosened them.
After tightening and reassembling, issue is not bad to the point prints would fail to start, however filament is not primed enough, so some of the skirt print will be blank.
I also added this with 608Z bearings for supporting the smooth movement of spool. Turns out 608 bearings are widely available almost everywhere, roller skates and skateboards use them, so there is a good chance your local sports shop will have it, too.
I installed Octoprint on my laptop to work around this issue as below:
G92 E0 ; Set Extruder position to 0
G1 E100 F200 ; Extrude 100 mm slowly. This is to make sure hotend is not empty and material flow is consistent, i.e. adjust temperature if necessary.

Only then I start my prints.
I learnt that using E<integer> to extrude and E-<integer> retract, I can replace filament too, by using big enough numbers like 350 mm, so I don't have to fiddle with compression lever or its adjustments anymore.
Update: I found more mechanical problems. This issue is not software related. Please see useful advice in comments regarding retraction/priming as an improvement if not solution to this problem.

100 mm is a lot to waste extruding to prime. I print a single priming line my my custom start gcode with just 18 mm of filament, and it works fine provided the filament is properly loaded to begin with and not left retracted at the end of the previous print (I unretract to just a net -1 mm in end gcode).

If you look closely at the G-code you see that you don't need 100 mm, the total retraction is 10.5 mm (313.92164 - 307.42164 + 2 + 2), that would be just enough to prevent printing half the skirt. You should address the retraction at the end, or load more in your start. You can also consider priming, e.g. Cura uses a blob & swipe on my Ultimaker 3E.

I found today that PTFE tube wasn't %100 in the hotend, so there was a gap between tube ending and where nozzle should be meeting, it was filled with material, until it was totally blocked. It was flowing previously but restricted unbeknownst to me. I'm thinking retraction to pull back material worked but it couldn't push it back due to blockage, not as much as needed, therefore pulling the filament back more than it pushed forward in total. PTFE tube was previously %100 in but why it was partially out now, I don't know. My problems are probably %100 mechanical.


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Constrain by surface area in Fusion 360
I'm trying to create a sketch that is constrained by surface area.
In my model I have a relatively irregular, flat area that I would like to constrain by area so that it never exceeds a certain number.
There are a lot of other constraints for angles, lengths, points, lines and the area of a surface is also always available in the properties. As a rather new person to Fusion 360, it feels logical a constraint by surface area should be possible.
Am I missing something or is there a good reason why this constraint doesn't exist?

Do you have Printer Settings where you can control the Printer Shape?  Does this do what you want?

Although this question is not off-topic according to our help section, you might get more response from the Fusion 360 community.

Fair enough. Does that mean we should close this one?

I am testing some things, but the question is good - even though I don't really see an application

After some testing, Fusion does have a category to put in an Area parameter [edit -> Parameters ->] for Area that takes measurements in acres and circular mil but no useful measurements such as square centimeters or square inch. One circular mil is defined as a circle with a radius of 1/1000 inch, or 0.0254 mm, for an area of $5.067×10^{−4}\text{ mm}^2$.
However, defining the area of an item isn't (currently) straightforwardly possible: areas are not defineable, and with the obvious lack of possible parameters (square metrics and anything but super tiny or super huge) it doesn't seem to be planned. The best you can do is for bodies that you know the formula for the area in the following fashion:

Here, the left measurement (d2) is 1 mm. The parameter area is 10000 circular mil. Since we know A=d1*d2, we can go A/d2=d1 for a rectangle.

Yeah, noticed that too and it's confusing as the area is a calculated property on any surface you select. While it's not really solving my issue I think it is the best answer I can expect. Thx :)