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During a print, why must I continually adjust the Z offset to a more neagative number to keep the nozzle from air printing?
The nozzle is not clogged.  After an adjustment, I get two to three good printed layers then the nozzle begins to lift away from the print.  If I do not adjust the Z offset more negatively, then the print begins to go airborne in very small increments while extruding filament. I must babysit the print to get it finished.
A 20 mm cube (XYZ calibration cube) turns out with Z measuring 4.3 mm and X and Y both measuring 20 mm.  I have tried printing a model which I have printed many times without problems in the past but now it fails to print.  I have downloaded the XYZ calibration stl from Thingiverse and it fails to print without going airborne.
I have an Ender3 V2 Neo w/ BLTouch.  The default Z steps is 400 mm.  For calibration, I set it to 403 mm.  No improvement.  Then I set the Z steps to 380, 420, and 1200 mm without any change in the failed print results.  The V2 Neo is only 4 months old.  It has the most recent firmware but I re-flashed it anyway.  No change.  Then I downloaded from GitHub the mriscoc/Ender3V2S1 firmware. This firmware is awesome but it did not solve my problem.  I have replaced the Z stepper motor, no change.  My next step is to upgrade the motherboard from v 4.2.2 to v 4.2.7.
What are your thoughts?

I don't understand that you print a cube of 20 mm in height, you adjust negatively to keep the layers being printed and end up with a 4.3 mm height object? This implies you should not adjust, you may have an extrusion problem; as in too less flow. You should first figure out it the Z-axis works correctly, create a G-code to home, level, move the nozzle to a Z height of 100 mm and measure the distance. This must be 100 mm; but if your story is correct you get a larger height. Because of baby-stepping the Z height your product becomes too short. Could you add some images?

I did a Z axis calibration, not by G Code.  I moved the gantry up 150 mm via the Move Z axis control.  The movement was 148.7 mm.  (150/148.7) X400 = 403, this is what I first set the Z steps to.  I have traditionally had to set the extrusion ratio to 90 to 93%.  I did set the ratio to 100% with no improvement.  The final 4.3 mm Z height is mostly likely the result of my over compensation of the Z offset.

So, your problem is extrusion!?

Thank you, I will try extrusion at 110% and see what happens.

You should check if extruding 100 mm of filament is indeed 100 mm, not randomly extrude more. You need to rule out possible causes.

Have you calibrated the extruder? See here for tips, I'll put the outcome of that in an answer to answer your question. We can then tidy up the comments.

What filament are you using? PLA?

It seems your Z-axis calibration is off. First, ensure your Z-axis steps/mm are set correctly in the firmware.
Second, ensure your BLTouch is functioning correctly. Incorrect bed leveling information might be the cause.
Third, inspect your 3D printer's mechanical parts. Loose screws or belts might cause the Z-axis to drift.
Lastly, it's possible you're experiencing an extrusion issue. Make sure your extruder is pushing out the correct amount of filament.
And if all else fails, if you ask me, I would say upgrading your controller board could be a potential solution.


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Inverted Y-axis on Modix BIG-120X V2
I'm almost done putting together this big behemoth, and I came to find out that the Y-axis is inverted. It goes away from the end stop. I've tried everything I could find but can't figure out why. It looks like it's just the Y-axis motor port on the board because I've swapped the X-axis and the Y-axis and it has the problem with the X-axis at that point.

Hi and welcome to 3DPrinting.SE! A little more informaion would be more than welcome (by [edit]), is this an existing branded printer or a a DIY, are you compiling the firmware yourself, if so what firmware. Please be a little more specific to better answer your question.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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SKR Mini E3 V2 - PWM on PC12 possible?
The SKR Mini E3 V2 uses the STM32F103RCF6 MCU based around ARM.
I want to control the pin PC12 with PWM. However, this pin is not working as the Laser PWM signal. It never gets triggered actually with G0/G1 S0-255, although I am absolutely sure, that this is not an issue with the laser configuration itself. When manually setting the pin state with G-code I can only set it to 0 V with S0 or to 3.3V with S1 to S255. It is not doing any kind of PWM at all. The same can be observed with PC6 vs PC7. PC6 is the parts cooling fan and it outputs PWM signals. PC7 is the controller fan and it does not output PWM. I have checked the 2 main Configs of Marlin and the Pins BTT... and BTT...common for any clues, however regarding the definition of these pins I see no difference.
After looking up the pins using the PDF of the manufacturer, I cannot see a difference between PC6 and PC7 - both are paper-wise supporting the same features and just have a different index - which is kind of obvious. So how is it possible, that one pin can be set to PWM states, while the other pins (without exception) only react digitally with a 0 or 1 state?
Please do not consider the version, which is 2.0.9.1, quite outdated. I have to stick to the version for like a dozen of reasons. It is a fork anyways, so what gives? I do not actually want to ask about firmware version things, but how it is possible, that there is a difference on this level at all? If I set the pin state whilst disabling firmware protection of this pin I would expect the pin to react as PWM, if I ask it to. I mean, using the thermistor pins as output is possible, which works as expected. From the chip datasheet and the configuration files I cannot see a reason, why the pins would behave differently. The circuit between PC6 and PC7 is absolutely identical, so this is out of the question already.
Is there any function, that needs to be called or a setting that needs to be made for PWM to be even loaded/initialized at all? I see many people struggling to set PWM to any pin other than the parts cooling fan, so it is not a new issue. I never saw a real fix for this, only suggestions like Buck converter for manual adjustments.
I want to control a laser, so this is out of the question. Any idea?

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


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Anycubic Kobra freezing mid print
About 30 minutes into a print, the printer stopped printing. It froze in one place and when I realised that it had gone awry, there was a large blob of PETG stuck to the nozzle, which I have since removed. The screen was unresponsive at the print page, not responding to me clicking the "pause" and "stop" options. I have turned on and off, both the power outlet and the power switch on the printer. Now when booting up, there is the normal animation of the boot up, but it is stuck on a blank page with the Anycubic Kobra. I bought the printer late last year and I think the firmware is up to date. The numerous previous prints have gone mostly smoothly.
What should I do now? Thanks in advance for all your help.
(Apologies for the tag, as I could not find a more suitable tag)

No solution, but for what it's worth, I have the same issue. My prints have stalled after 30+ hours of printing. It's frustrating.

Looks like this is a bug when using Ultimaker Cura as your slicer. Try using PrusaSlicer instead.

How do you come to this conclusion considering the original question mentions nothing about a slicer?

It's an educated guess, since I have the same machine and experienced the same symptoms by using the slicer. I've read other people experience the same things on other forums as well.


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Why are the circular parts of this print not sticking to the raft properly
I’m fairly new to 3D printing but have managed about 10 parts successfully so far. On this print, there were some issues printing the raft, but by the final layer, it looked ok, so I let it continue. I was surprised to see that when trying to print the circular pattern, the filament seems to come unstuck from the raft and pull across.
Is this down to bed adhesion, or some post-processing setting? I’m running PLA at 50 mm/s. The bed temp is 50 °C and the nozzle temp is 210 °C.

Likely the extruder gear is slipping on the filament. The tension arm may be weak or broken. It's also possible that there's a partial clog.
Whenever you get curved paths not adhering in place but getting "pulled" straight across the curve, the forces pulling on the extruded material from the nozzle moving are exceeding those making it adhere to whatever it was supposed to adhere to below. This can especially happen on overhangs, where there's low contact with what's below, or in cases like over a raft or support where there's a gap and it's intended not to strongly adhere to anything below. However, if the right amount of material is being extruded, and if it's sufficiently melted before extrusion, there should be very little force trying to pull it out of place. This leads me to believe there's some extrusion problem going on.
If you can't find anything wrong, you can try just going slower on the first layer after the raft, or using a hotter nozzle temperature. In the big scheme of things, 50 mm/s is a really low print speed, but for someone new to 3D printing, using a stock Ender 3 that likely has lots of little problems you're going to have to find and fix, it's at least an "above average" speed for a first layer, and I'd try just reducing that.

I think the extruded gear is ok, as I checked yesterday when changing filament- I think your other suggestion about nozzle partial blockage is probably the cause! Thank you!


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How does my printer auto level based off the sensor I installed?
I'll start off with some info in case it's needed, but my questions are a bit lower. I have an Ender 3 Pro with the 4.2.2 motherboard. Grabbed a Marlin firmware bin from Shiny Upgrades and seems to work great (built my own once and wasn't a fan). Got my Z-offset sorted out with a combination of stealing other people's numbers and testing a few prints out. Tried auto homing, but got weird numbers and instead resorted to that other approach. Printer seems work well now and my Z-offset is around -0.8 mm.

Is the Z-offset I set in printer UI the distance between the sensor and the nozzle?If so, does that mean I can now swap beds and expect the printer to automatically adjust for that without having to adjust the Z-offset again? Maybe assume I'm swapping between two perfectly flat beds and one is 5 mm thick and one is 10 mm thick, so we don't have to account for a different bed level mesh or something.
Is my bed leveling kind of useless?I have 7x7 leveling, but the sensor is quite the distance away from the actual nozzle (mainly on the X-axis, but I assume also on the Y-axis), so any point it levels for won't actually be the point where the nozzle prints. I don't recall seeing any X or Y offsets in the printer UI either, just the Z offset. Why would the Z offset be an adjustable value in the UI, but not the other two? Barely anyone even mentions setting an X-offset and I'm not sure why.

Hi welcome to 3DPrinting.SE! Please remember to ask one question at a time, please take the [tour] and read our [help].

Is the Z-offset I set in printer UI the distance between the sensor and the nozzle?

From this answer on question "Z Offset on autoleveling sensor setup" we read that:

the offset between the nozzle and the sensor trigger point (to the bed)

If you replace the build surface for a different surface the offset doesn't have to be changed.

Is my bed leveling kind of useless?

No, automatic bed leveling can be very useful if the build surface isn't as flat as a sheet of glass, it will map the surface and ensures the first layer is deposited at the correct distance.

I don't recall seeing any X or Y offsets in the printer UI

These settings are in the firmware, that is where these are defined. Note that these shouldn't be in the UI, as this is a hardware change. Also note that Marlin is pretty well programmed and is aware of this sensor offset, and even will use these offsets to have the print head (nozzle to be exact) stay within the specified print area. This is a good thing, e.g. when the sensor offset is large, and it would probe to the edge of the bed, the head could potentially wreck one side of the printer. This is described in question "How to set Z-probe boundary limits in firmware when using automatic bed leveling?".


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Stringing across hollow shapes used for cutting
I am having this issue with stringing when printing these small clay cutters. The stringing is across any small cut out area. I have calibrated the temp, retraction distance, retraction speed, and E-Step. Maybe I need to calibrate flow as well for this issue?
Printer: Ender 3 S1 Pro
Filament: PLA
Settings:
Temp:195C
Retraction distance: 0.3mm
Retraction speed: 45mm/s
Retraction minimum travel: 0mm (so retraction can happen over the small areas)

Is there anyway to optimize the path of the hot end? The stringing perfectly follows how the hot end jumps over the different cutter areas.

And just for reference, 0.3mm for retraction distance seemed low from what I've been reading online, but this is the retraction tower I ran and how I got that number:

Just today I got my filament in a dryer and it has been running all day, so the filament should be dry.
I'm willing to try any calibration again or literally anything! Thank you


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G29 Sometimes fails - Defective probe?
I have the issue that G29 does work as expected but then fails a couple of times at different measuring points after taht it succeeds again.
So I decided to enable debugging for leveling by M111 S32:
Recv: <<< do_blocking_move_to  X291.1250 Y96.0000 Z1.1500
Recv:   current_position= X291.1250 Y96.0000 Z1.1499 : sync_plan_position
Recv: <<< Probe::probe_down_to_z  X291.1250 Y96.0000 Z1.1499
Recv:  Probe fail! - No trigger.
Recv: <<< Probe::run_z_probe  X291.1250 Y96.0000 Z1.1499
Recv:   current_position= X291.1250 Y96.0000 Z1.1499 : Probe::set_deployed
Recv: deploy=0 no_return=0
Recv: Raise Z to 5.0000
Recv: do_z_clearance(5.0000 [1.1499 to 7.1500], 0)
Recv: do_blocking_move_to_z(7.1500, 4.1667)
Recv: >>> do_blocking_move_to  X291.1250 Y96.0000 Z1.1499
Recv: >  X291.1250 Y96.0000 Z7.1500
[...]
Recv: <<< do_blocking_move_to  X291.1250 Y96.0000 Z7.1500
Recv: >>> Probe::probe_specific_action  X291.1250 Y96.0000 Z7.1500
Recv: BLTouch STOW requested
Recv: BLTouch from 10 to 90
Recv: bltouch.stow_proc() end
Recv: <<< Probe::probe_specific_action  X291.1250 Y96.0000 Z7.1500
Recv: >>> do_blocking_move_to  X291.1250 Y96.0000 Z7.1500
Recv: >  X291.1250 Y96.0000 Z7.1500
Recv: <<< do_blocking_move_to  X291.1250 Y96.0000 Z7.1500
Recv: //action:notification Probing Failed
Recv: Error:Probing Failed
WARNING! Received an error from the printer's firmware, ignoring that as configured but you might want to investigate what happened here! Error: Probing Failed

Does Probe fail! - No trigger. mean the probe has a defect so that it sometimes does not trigger?

Is this a genuine BLTouch? Or a Creality kind of clone? I've used various clones, but none match the original product, those never failed me. I've given up the clones, I had exactly similar issues.

I think it is. It came with the printer (ender 5 plus) and until recently it worked fine. I did change the pin though, maybe it's a bad one? I don't know...

I've changed the probe to a CR-10 model. The one with the metal pin. No Issues anymore. I didn't even change the wire. So either the probe or the pin was bad. ♂


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Is a lighter magnetic pad better?
I've had a magnetic sheet on my Ender 3 for some time. It came with a Creality 3D flexible bed. I've since got a couple of PEI coated steel plates and use it with that.
I noticed it had a lot of crud embedded in it, so since each of the coated steel beds came with a magnetic pad, I have a choice of pads to apply.
Since there seems little variation in the magnetism once the plate is fully over the pad. would I be better going for the lightest at around 120 g, or the heavier ones (at around 240 g) which do have a slightly stronger pull?
I'm intending to use a couple of ADXL345's to tune the resonance after I've reinstalled the bed.

If you want/intend to print fast (high acceleration), adding mass to the moving bed is a big problem. It both decreases the resonant frequencies of the system (making it harder for input shaping to suppress them without introducing significant errors into the toolpath) and increases the force needed to accelerate the bed (making it easier to skip steps). So, all other things equal, you want to pick the lighter magnetic plate.
With that said, if you really want performance, the lightest plate is no plate. Myself and at least several other people I know doing high performance printing on bedslingers have dropped (or skipped adopting) the magnetic plates and gone to clip-on plates or no plates at all. I'm running my Ender 3 with "blue tape"/"painter's tape" directly on the aluminum bed (no separate buildplate) and others are using various surface treatments (variants on the old "ABS slurry", hairspray, etc. concepts) to print directly on aluminum. This saves a lot of mass, but can be less convenient for popping prints off.

I hadn't thought of going that path. I have some "picture clips" I used to use with a glass plate and they weigh 1.4g each! I'm not sure I'm ready to go to no plate yet as I've never used tape.

@StarNamer: I got started using tape by using it on top of my buildtak-clone plate surface, as a way to avoid damaging the surface with lots of small test prints with materials that were hard on it. Then, once I found out I liked it, I decided to go without the plate. It got me a much flatter bed surface too, although this can go either way - if your aluminum isn't warped, it's flatter, but if it is warped, printing directly on it gives up the ability to shim out imperfections with shims between the bed and the plate.


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Is Marlin 2.0 actually needed for Automatic Bed Leveling using FreeABL?
I need Automatic Bed Leveling (ABL). I have seen this: FreeABL - the ultra cheap (free) ABL for Ender 3. However, after reading the description, I found out that I need to flash the firmware.
I had a lot of problems with this, so is it actually needed?

Are you trying to link to a particular comment in particular? I only ask, as your URL ends in "comments/", which is a little bit confusiing. If you wish to draw attention to a particular comment, then please [edit] and add the URL of the exact comment - you can get the comment's URL by right clicking on the date of the comment on that page. It would also be helpful to quote the comment in your question. However, if you are not referencing a comment in particular, but the description instead then maybe quote the relevant part of the description in your answer.

Just an accident sory

Ah OK, I thought it might be this comment by dipkid, as it is the only one that seems to be mentioning firmware: blah blah .... When I updated from marlin 1 to 2.0.x, ... blah blah

I was searching for answer in coments and forgot to go to the main page

Ok, cool, yes I see now, STEP 3 : FIRMWARE.  Hmmm...

I don't think that this firmware is needed. cuz all the used commands exsist in older marlin.

Oh, i know why it's needed. It says that we need to change configuration.h and configuration_adv/h

Yeah, if you change either of those then you'll need a recompile and then upload the new code to the board. It isn't terribly difficult to do, just follow the steps carefully...

Can you sugest some tutorial maybe?

If your question has just boiled down to "How to update the firmware?" then this question probably will help: Updating Marlin Firmware - Step by Step Guide. If it does help you, then maybe/probably, your question is a duplicate of that question. If there is something, that the linked question  does not help you with (i.e. something Ender-3 specific), then please [edit] your question to include details about what you need help with. Good luck! :-)

No, Marlin 2.x is not necessary you could use 1.1.9 as well, but, you do need to flash a newly configured firmware as this hardware change is not standardly supported by the current firmware on your printer.


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What galvo scanner does your SLS 3D printer use? Normally which ones should I prefer while buying one
I wanna buy an SLS 3D printer and I figured it uses Galvo scanners to sinter powder. The whole printing operation depends on this Galvo scanner thing. What Galvo Scanner does your printer use and what are the specs? I am talking f_theta and speed. I would greatly appreciate you taking a minute to answer this.

Have you checked with the manufacturer of the printer to see which scanners it uses?

They told me but I wanted to know what normally people use.


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Draw from the top or draw from the bottom?
From day one I've always had my spool so that filament comes off "the top", but recently I wondered if it mattered, or there were any advantages/disadvantages to which side of the spool the filament came from. I did find this, but it proved inconclusive. So, does it matter which side of the spool the filament comes from. Are their any pros/cons to either side? Or is this just a matter of personal preference?

This is completely setup-dependent. Post a photo.

It just depends on your set-up. Ideally, you don't want to have the filament entering the extruder at too great of an angle, so depending on where your extruder is and how filament is fed into it will determine which way your spool should go.

As Echo has said, it's not really that big of a deal. I usually just stick to having the filament coming over the spool and I've rarely seen it another way. It's what made sense to me with the fact I have a stand for the spools attached to the frame of the printer along the top. It's really just personal preference.


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Bed mesh registers different height when measured in different direction
Having recently got a new bed plate (PEI covered steel) I decided to run a bed mesh calibration with a higher than usual number of points (23,23) to see if there were any high spots or dips.
Klipper measures the bed by moving left to right along the x-axis nearest the front, probing at each point, then onto the next line where it moves right to left then left to right on the third line and so on.
The result showed ridges indicating the height was measured differently when moving in one direction or the other. Since I didn't believe the plate actually had ridges, I tried a couple of other sizes (19,19) and (15,15). In each case, I get a slightly higher measurement when the probe is moving right to left than left to right
My setup is an Ender 3 with a 3D Touch (BLTouch clone) mounted on a Hero Me 7.2 hotend fan assembly.
What would likely cause this effect? I'm not aware of anything being out of adjustment and the difference is probably about 0.1mm, but I feel it should be happening.

My first guess would be that your V wheels are slack on the gantry, causing the carriage to tilt slightly depending on which direction it was last pulled in. The further off-center your probe is, the more this will be amplified.

"Slack" is obviously a relative term. There didn't appear to be any play, but this possibility occurred to me shortly after posting so I've just tightened the eccentric nut slightly. I also wondered if there's a small play in the belt, so have also checked that's as tight as it can be. The extra movement of the end wheel was barely noticeable! However, I just ran a test and the effect is still there. The difference, at worst, is 0.15mm,

Definitely hardware. I modified klipper/klippy/extras/bed_mesh.py to always probe going left to right and the effect goes away.


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Can water or liquid nitrogen mist cooling be used in part cooling?
From what I know, the speed (X, Y) of the nozzle always be slowed down to 10 mm/s-100 mm/s when printing bridge or overhang structure because of insufficient cooling. The printing speed is less than 1/10 or even only 1/100 of the maximum speed (when > 1000 mm/s). I saw someone bring up the idea of mist cooling in another question. Can we just use water mist cooling to cool the part? If not can we use liquid nitrogen mist cooling and make use of its evaporation heat absorption properly (when evaporated, it will turn into gas)
Printing material: PLA

FYI: my edits are made to be in line with the site standards as seen in the Meta post Useful things to check for when cleaning up posts.

Liquid nitrogen cools surfaces in which contact between the liquid and the surface is achieved. Once the nitrogen becomes vapor, little to no cooling will be accomplished. One would not want to have liquid nitrogen in contact with a printing part, as the thermal shock will fracture the part as well as create thermal errors in the heater block and heated bed surface.
Water mist will deposit water on the part (if cooling is to be effected) and create similar thermal considerations, to a lesser degree compared to nitrogen.
If increased cooling is your goal, chilled dry air may be a solution with the smallest possibility of failure, although thermal errors on the heater block and heated bed should be expected.

Thanks, but the temperature difference between printed material and air will be increased slightly which will give a small contribution to cooling according to Newton's law of cooling, if we chilled the dry air. For example 125℃ PLA (weighted average) and 25℃ air has temperature difference of 100℃. 125℃ PLA (weighted average) and 0℃ has temperature difference of 125℃. The difference between them only increase 25% so the cooling rate will only increase 25%. My goal is to rapidly maximize its cooling rate so that the printer can print with no speed limit.

The status quo is the printing speed is greatly slowed down when the printed structure is overhanging or bridge.


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Can the total runtime of an ender 5 be determined from the printer itself?
You have 10 ender 5 printers in a college maker space environment, all vanilla hardware with stock firmware and no modifications. They are all the same age and visual have no noticeable differences in terms of wear and tear.
5 have basic colored pla filiment loaded, 5 have special material filiment loaded.which probably isn't relevant.
Paper logs are not kept of how long each machine is used for, only who is using the maker space on a given day.
Students may print from an SD card or connect a private laptop to print from, so no there are no server logs.
Is it possible to extract any information at all from the printer itself to determine how much it has been used. For example how many hour it has been powered on, how many hours it has been printing, or how much filiment it has passed?
It does not need to be granular, a simple life run total would do.
The aim is to help determine if someone has been running the printers overnight as a print farm without authorisation by seeing if they have more hours on them than could reasonable be accounted for through normal us inside maker space hours.

The stock firmware of the printers in question is an old version of Marlin.
Marlin supports a PRINTCOUNTER if activated in the configuration.h file.
This can be read with the M78 g-code command.
Apparently, this function is not activated by default in Creality's firmware.
You may choose to build your own, much more up-to-date version of Marlin from scratch and enable this feature for future tracking.
However, note that this can be reset with a M78 S78 g-code command.

So, I could track usage in the future, but not past usage as this feature wasn't active then.


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Can octoprint stream from an on if camera over https or rts
Can octoprint connect to a camera that uses the onvif streaming connection standard over https or rts, as opposed to a direct mjpeg stream over usb?
I have a bunch of onvif camera lying around that I could potentially repurpose to watch my printer.


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Error "echo:too long extrusion prevented" when printing a model I made in Blender
I am new to 3D printing but decided to follow the build-your-own-printer route. It’s a simple design running on Marlin with a RAMPS 1.4 board.
So far I have printed the 2 mm calibration cube and two other small objects from Thingiverse and they all turn out fine. However, for over three weeks, I have been unsuccessfully trying to print a model I made in Blender. I keep getting an echo: too long extrusion prevented error on Pronterface and then the printer briefly pauses before resuming and afterward, the filament snaps out of the extruder or jams the nozzle leading to a failed print.
I have searched the internet for solutions and these are what I have done so far:

I have reduced the voltage on the trim pot on the stepper driver (A4988) the heat sinks do seem to get pretty hot to the touch.
I have reduced the print speed to 60%
I have added a bed offset on the firmware to properly center the prints. (This seems to create other issues so I reversed it back to the way it was before)

Could someone please help me out here to understand what I am doing wrong? The part I am trying to print is actually meant to replace the wooden plate I used to carry one of the stepper motors.
I have attached a picture of my screen on Pronterface showing the model and the error message.

This error is nothing wrong with your printer, its electronics, print speed, or anything like that. It's erroneous gcode, produced by a buggy slicer, that emitted a command to extrude an inordinately large amount of filament at a time, in a way that could not possibly work. Your printer's firmware is protecting it from actually trying to do that.
To try to track down the problem, look at the gcode at the point where the error occurs. If you can't make sense of it, post the gcode file (or even better, just a block quote of the relevant part inline in your question) and someone should be able to explain what's going on and why it occurred.
Just upgrading your slicer might fix it, though.

Thank you for the help. Following your suggestion i downloaded prusa slicer and used it.  Unfortunately i still had the same "echo: too long extrusion prevented" followed by brief pause in filament extrusion and a subsequent snapping of the filament from the extruder. I am aware that stepper drivers can briefly pause motion of the stepper motors to cool off but in this case the pause only start to happen after pronterface shows "too long extrusion prevented " I dont know if these problems are related or not. I wanted to attach the gcode file but i am unable to figure out where to do that here

So I figured out why I am having the too long extrusion problem but I am yet to find a solution. It seems despite my best efforts the extruder pushes out filament  that turns into a kind of road-block along the extruder path so blocking its movement and triggering the “echo too long extrusion prevented” message. These road blocks  so to say occur at random places making it difficult to pinpoint the cause. I have checked the Z axis steps/mm it is fine. I am really at a loss as to what else I can do or check. Hoping someone will be able to help out

@belloalmu: Again, this error is nothing mechanical/physical with your printer. It would happen even if you ran the gcode on your controller board with all the motors unplugged. If it's not happening at exactly the same point in each print, but seemingly randomly, it's probably a communication error between Pronterface and your printer (data corruption on the serial line), flipping a bit in some of the gcode commands in a way that makes it request an enormous amount of extrusion.


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Water washable resin safety
I recently spilled waste water from my resin printing onto a fabric cooler. The water was in a container I was using to cure leftover resin from cleaning finished prints by leaving it in the sun for a while. So there was an unknown amount of uncured resin in it after I had left it out for a few hours.
Is it likely that the cooler is permanently contaminated or should I be able to wash it and use it again? It isn't a really expensive one but also not really something I wanted to replace yet.

"after I had left it out for a few hours" - Are we talking 3 hours or 5 hours? More? I know the basics of resin printing but I would imagine that the longer it was left out in the sun, the more resin would have cured.

we can say 5 hours but I don't really know exactly how long it was out at the time when I spilled it. I had brought it back in due to rain and wind incoming and left it to try to completely evaporate the water once the sun came back out.

I ended up calling the cooler a loss.  I don't know what that resin will do embedded in the fabric of the cooler and I don't really want to drink poison when I am out on the beach or develop some sort of sensitivity from it. Ended up getting a new cooler as a gift so it all evened out.


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CR-10S Pro direct drive upgrade
I am looking at getting a direct drive upgrade kit for my Creality CR-10s Pro printer  (e.g. on Amazon there is one with brand name Yeebyee). My question is about whether these kits support the autolevel sensor on my printer.  The pictures of the kit installed don't show the sensor. Is it possible to install the sensor with one of these kits?

The direct drive has nothing to do with the auto-level sensor. Once the sensor determines the mesh for the bed, the print starts and it doesn't get used again until the next print while the direct drive is in use during the print itself.

But on the OEM configuration, the auto-level sensor is mounted right next to the hotend. The direct drive upgrade replaces the bracket that holds the hotend. Can I mount the sensor right next to the hotend on the new bracket?


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Set Ultimaker Cura 5.1 default save name
I use SD cards to print on a Printrbot Simple Metal, and the Simple will automatically print the file named auto0.g. The issue here is that Cura, by default, saves files as something like PS-part.gcode. So, is there a way to make it save under the name auto0.g by default?
Cura Version: 5.1

Cura by default prefixes the saved g-code with the machine name, I take it yours is named Printrbot Simple Metal or something similar, so Cura assigns it the "PS-" prefix.
To disable this, you can click on 'Preferences' in Menu Bar on the top left of the Window, and go to Preferences > General > Opening and Saving Files and deselect the option "Add machine prefix to job name."
You can also save your 3D model files as auto0.g, and when Cura loads, slices, and then saves the G-Code file, it will be named auto0.g.
Beyond that, there's the little Pen/Paper icon in the bottom left, just above the perspective buttons (cubes) to rename the file before saving it. AFAIK, there is no way to save the G-Code automatically with a different name than the file/model you loaded into it.

The problem seems to be that there is no way to change the save extension, and it always saves with a .gcode extension, which I have to change.

I forgot about the extension itself, I don't think there's a way to save files as a .g from Cura. Sorry about that.


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Potential consequences of stringing within support structures?
Creality Slicer has a setting labeled "Limit Support Retractions"
It's description is as follows

Omit retractions when moving from support to support in a straight
line. Enabling this setting saves print time, but can lead to
excessive stringing within the support structure.

Presumably other slicing software has similar settings.
Could somebody please explain what the consequences of excessive stringing in the support structure could potentially be, and why you might want to avoid them, as the support structure is typically removed and discarded, so stringing wouldn't seem like a big problem.

At first guess, I would think the stringing between the support and the main model would make them more susceptible to fusing together.

Potential consequences include:

Structural problems from underextrusion (failure of support to hold up right) immediately after wherever the stringing happens. This is especially likely if you have lots of small supports for fine detail, where the problem will quickly accumulate.

Strings getting dragged into places where they bond with the actual model and mar its surface.

Support structures becoming brittle and breaking up/splittling at layers lines when you try to remove them, rather than coming off cleanly in chunks.

In a worse case (most likely when stringing accumulates after travel to several very small support regions), underextrusion in the actual model immediately following printing of the supports, until the nozzle pressure can build back up to match the flow.

If you have a direct drive printer with very little oozing during travel, and have your travel speed and acceleration set high, it's possible that none of this will matter. I always had very bad results with "limit support retractions" and just turned it off. It only saves any significant time on printers that need long/slow retractions, which are typically the ones where it harms print quality the most. If you find your retractions are taking up signifcant time on a direct drive printer, you're either trying to do a 5-minute Benchy or your retraction settings are just way too long/slow.


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Print detents for potentiometers
Problem: Detent potentiometers (think potentiometers with haptic feedback) are expensive and I need like 15 of them for my project (maybe 4-5 different detent levels, which means no bulk discounts :/ ).
Question: How would you guys 3D print haptic feedback for potentiometers?
Please consider:

My project would have a 3D-printed faceplate and caps for all potentiometers.

I have an idea in my mind but I think friction will wear it down quite quickly. I would print sunken dots on the faceplate and a raised dot on the potentiometer cap to fit into the sunken dots on the faceplate. Also, I am worried the cap would just raise itself away from the faceplate and render the sunken dots useless.

Maybe mess w/ this model: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:928841?

@TheTridentGuysupportsUkraine Looks like a great idea actually. It would seem that wear down will still be an issue but I'd imagine it will be slower cause there is just much more materials. Thank you!


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Ender 3 v2 Pro issue where nozzle has nearly fallen off
So, I was 3D printing a shark and a portal toy to sell for my company CCChoice overnight. I woke up in the morning to find the nozzle only hanging on by that one wire in the black mesh casing (images below). Every other place it was supposed to be attached it was detached from. The print didn't go too well either (image below). I don't know what attaches to what and where and am really confused. My backup printer is also out with a heating issue so I really have a problem. So, what caused this and how can I fix it, preferably without spending a bunch of money or taking a long time?
NOTE: I have an Ender 3 v2 Pro and use Ultimaker Cura with Polymaker's PLA 1 kg Orange filament and an 0.04 mm nozzle

In your first photo, you can see the heated insert still attached to the X carriage. Somehow, from vibration or some other means, it has disconnected itself from the hotend assembly. How old is this printer? still under warranty?

Its 1 year old and I dont know @agarza

This is definitely NOT about filament itself and not about the slicer, so don't tag them if not strictly related

That's not the nozzle that's falling off, but the hotend shroud/fan bracket.

What's your actual question?

So, I eventually managed to fix this, but it only works for a few hours before the problem repeats. A full solution is welcome. Here is an image below of a closeup

See that bottom black circle with 2 red circles inside of it? If you connect the 2 red circles then it will attach itself and the 2 red circles in the higher black circle will also latch together, reattaching the nozzle firmly. I still don’t know why this happened, but now it’s working.

As noted in my comment to your question, the heated insert has detached itself from the hotend assembly. How long your fix will last is dependent on your repair.

I told you my repari @agarza

Yep this fix failed after a few hours of printing @agarza

Are the screws in the back actually screwed in?


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Will active chamber heating with heating bed and PTC heater (forced convection by fan) be better than passive chamber heating with only bed?
1.Active chamber heating (fan forced convection +heating bed +PTC heater) vs 2.Passive chamber heating(natural convection+ heating bed)
In the book "3D Printing Failures_ 2020 Edition_ How to Diagnose and Repair ALL Desktop 3D Printing Issues" writen by Aranda, Sean, it is said less cooling rate could let polymer have more temperature and time to release stress. This is the reason why chamber heating is used. But

In the design 1 chamber above bed is already >50℃ with 120℃ heating bed.
In another design "120℃ bed with PTC supplyment which is cycled by a fan and the chamber can be up to >60℃". It forms forced convection, so the printed part may be cooled quickly even though the chamber has up to 60℃ temperature(the temperature difference between printed layer and ambient changes slightly).

So why we use chamber heating with fan forced convection design other than natural convection deign?

Printed material: ABS
Bed temperature: 120℃

Having forced convection allows to flow air on top of the heater so that more heat will be pushed into the chamber. Also, it makes the chamber uniform.
If you are barely heating the chamber (50 °C) the bed can already do it, while forced will cool down the part more quickly. Forced convection has almost only downsides, no advantages.
If you are heating the chamber to higher temperatures like 70-120 °C or more, the printed part has no problem about being cooled too much, and at the same time the bed set at 120 °C will not be able to heat up the chamber that much (or you need 2 cm thermal insulation around the chamber). Forced in this case has no downsides and only advantages.

My goal is heating the chamber to 60°C to get less ABS warping. I don't know if I need a fan to make chamber temperature more even. I don't know evenly cooling  or less cooling rate with which I will get less warping.

For 60 °C you can just insulate the chamber from the outside with styrofoam, cork, or similar insulators. You will need 1 cm thick insulation if it's good. No need to circulate the air inside.


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Why is PrusaSlicer squishing filament everywhere?
I've been using SuperSlicer for a while and I really like it, but it's unstable and crashes a lot. I want to get away from it, and PrusaSlicer looked great but every print I've done with it has this issue. It's like it lays down so much plastic that it builds up higher than the nozzle can reach, and the hot nozzle just smears it everywhere.
What should I do about this?
I'm using an Ender 5 with Creality PLA. My settings are default for both slicers, except setting the infill to 100% for the below prints. Left is from PrusaSlicer, right is from SuperSlicer.


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Add "Elephant's Foot" in Cura
Ok, I know this is quite weird since basically, we want to avoid elephant's foot.
But my case is: I want to print some thin/tall stuff which I don't want to lay them down and sometimes it gives me some warped outcomes.
I try some different things and find it if I manually add a thin but big first few layers. It will generate a pretty good result consistently. (And the "Manually Added Elephant Foot" is also easy to be removed)
I'm wondering if I can let the slicer help me add the "elephant foot" as a kind of "support"
Can someone help me to do that or tell me actually I cannot do that?

What slicer are you using? What printer?

@TheTridentGuysupportsUkraine I'm using cura + Flsun V400

Use a brim:
(I'll assume you're using Cura since you didn't provide FCI.)
Navigate to Print Settings > Build Plate Adhesion and select Brim on the Build Plate Adhesion Type dropdown.
You could also use a raft though it seems unwise in this case. For more on brims and rafts, see All3DP.com's article "Raft vs Brim vs Skirt: The Differences (incl. Cura settings)".

Long thin objects with a raft would not be wise.

Thx for informations, I will try that


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Prusa MK3s+, Prusa PETG 1.75mm filament
I encountered a case of pillowing throughout several layers that was very severe, however, I managed to fix it through adjusting the temperatures but I was wondering if anyone could tell me if there any any other cases of this and if they have found a trustworthy way to solve the problem if it occurs repeatedly as it has slowly started to re-appear in different prints after I have rectified the problem, and I haven't altered any of the previous settings I altered to fix it.

I am now encountering this problem again and I really don't know what can cause it, I'm unable to dehydrate my filament anyway due to a lack of means to do so and I used a brand new spool to print this piece that has had pillowing yesterday (July 6th)

Can you include a pic? "Pillowing" and "bubbling" are very different things the way I normally use the terms, so it would help to distinguish what you mean.

How many top layers do you use at what thickness per layer?

it was a 5 layer print as it would be taking some abuse, I'm using it as an insert for draws to keep tools tidy

Without an example photo, it's difficult to be certain, but moisture in a filament spool can cause undesired effects in a print. Even a new-in-the-box, vacuum-sealed-plastic-bag spool can present these effects.
Consider to perform a dehydration on your filament and create another test print.

The filament is in a controlled environment without possibility of hydration to occur but I do understand where you're coming from. I have now solved the issue and the same spool is printing fine. I appreciate the help

What was your solution?


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Lines next to each other separated; is this right?
I received a completely new Elegoo Neptune 3 pro a few days ago and it prints very well. But there is one thing that bothers me a little bit, the lines next to each other when looking from above are a little bit separated:

The photo is not really good but you can see it a little bit on the screw holes on the bottom. In reality, it is worse. I already tried adjusting the line width up by 0.05 but it didn't help.
Which other settings would make it better or do I just need to do much more width?
My settings:

Infill density: 15%
Quality: 0.2 mm
Temp: 200 °C
Build Plate Temp: 60 °C
Line width: 0.47 mm
Speed: 60 mm/s
Material: PLA

When gaps happen on the first layer of the print, this is caused by the first layer Z being too high, so that the extrusion is not being properly flattened between the build plate and the nozzle. (If the height is too low instead, then you will get ripples visible in large bottom infill areas.)
If they happen throughout the print then the extruder is under-extruding — less volume of plastic is being deposited than the slicer thinks will be. This means that one of these might be the case:

Something physical is causing the filament to slip as the extruder motor pushes it:

Drive gear teeth clogged (poor grip)
Nozzle clogged (increases back-pressure)
Temperature too low (increases back-pressure)

Your filament is narrower than your slicer expects. Measure it with calipers (at several rotations in case it is not entirely round) and enter the actual diameter into the slicer.
Your filament is soft or otherwise oddly behaved, and doesn't interact with the extruder gears like the extruder design assumed it would.
The printer's firmware is incorrectly configured for the extruder hardware; it is not sending the correct number of steps per requested length of filament.

As a “quick fix” or to compensate for properties of a particular filament, you can set an “extrusion multiplier” to scale up or down the amount of plastic extruded. However, if the problem is happening for many ordinary filaments, then there is more likely a printer problem.

Changing the slicer's line width will not help, because that will make the lines farther apart at the same time as it extrudes more volume per line.


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Prusa MK3s+ potential extrusion problem
I've recently tried printing something I've printed multiple times but this time it isn’t printing much at all. It seems to inly be printing a very small film of filament rather than a solid layer in places and even on the solid base layer the first time I tried printing it. I'm not sure whether it could be an under extrusion problem or I might even have to raise the z calibration. Has anyone seen this before and does anyone have any possible solutions? Would be much appreciated I need to set this print going ASAP

I figured out that it was due to the Z axis calibration on my Prusa MK3S+ so I started a "First Layer Calibration" and reset the variable previously used to get a more accurate calibration


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Stripped screw hole on 3D printer extruder motor
I have managed to strip the threads on the mounting holes of the motor.
The extruder motor doesn't stay in place of the Bowden mount. It kinks to the left-hand side when the motor is extruding.
I was wondering if could I repair the stripped hole or do I need a new motor?

Are you able to attach a photo of the stripped thread? it would make it easier to asses the damage on whether you should attempt repair or replace the motor housing.

Are we supposed to guess the printer, the extruder and the motor you have? post a photo or be specific, we cannot read minds.

Look up "threaded inserts". You drill and tap the holes to the outer dimension of the insert, and the insert provides the same thread dimension on the inside as original.

can you check if the motor has holes from the front all the way to the back? Ususlly the center piece is without threads and the back has threads again. If that is the case, you could maybe remove the screw from the back and use a much longer screw for the front that grips the thread from the back of the motor.

There are several different fixes for this if you have the materials on hand and a bit of experience with them:

You can try to remove the top plate and re-tap the holes to fit a slightly bigger screw. This may require re-drilling the holes on the top motor plate, as well as the holes in the mounting bracket. You'll need a bench-mounted vice to hold the motor plate in place, as well as a drill, small drill bits, the tapping tool (I suggest a hand tapper if this is your first time) some lubricant, and the larger screws. It may be more cost-effective to just buy a new motor. If you intend to go down this option, I suggest looking up several youtube videos on how to drill and tap holes before you begin and keep in mind that there are sensitive parts on the inside of the motor, so you really should remove the top plate before drilling/tapping.

If your printer is printing "good enough" you can try printing a plastic mount to hold the motor in place. Just a note, this is not going to be a permanent fix, as the plastic can and will break down over time and use.

If neither of the top two options sounds appealing, I highly suggest you take the advice from this answer and just buy a new motor. It will definitely be easier work for you to replace the motor than repair it, and it may end up being more cost-effective.

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

A note not worth separate answer: there are thread repair kits, but for m2 and m3, and just one thread,  they are not cost effective either, good ones at $100 or more.

By the sound of it however, I would replace the damaged part as if the motor doesn't stay on the extruder, and there is a kink in extruding, I suggest replacing the part rather then trying a quick fix and it doing either nothing or making things worse.


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Print in the first layers keeps failing on new Anycubic Kobra
I'm not new to 3D printing, but I have always used resin 3D printers. Now I have bought an Anycubic Kobra and I'm trying out ABS.
I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong, I have tried many different settings, but I am skeptic to move away too much from the recommended settings of Anycubic that can be found on their website.
As per picutres below, my prints keep failing in the initial layers, but I can't figure out what is wrong. Is it layer height?
The temperature I use is 100°C/250°C. All the rest is default settings of Anycubic because I'm not sure what I should try.

This looks like over-extrusion on the first layer. There are a number of reasons why this could be happening, but usually, it's because the nozzle is too close to the bed. The link posted is a huge resource for getting a decent first layer.
You'll need to tram or level the bed. (Tramming is the proper term, but the two are used interchangeably) To do this you can follow the guide in the link provided, though I'll also type my personal process out here if you want to read it twice.
You'll need:

A piece of regular printer paper
A way to interface with your printer, the normal control screen is fine
Your printer
I like to have a light shine behind the printer as I do this, it's not necessary
You can replace the piece of paper with a set of feeler gauges if you have them, we'll use the 0.2 mm one.

To properly tram the bed:

Home the X, Y, and Z axes
Move the print head/nozzle/hotend to the back-left corner.
Set the Z-axis height to 0.1 mm, this is the average width of a piece of printer paper. Or, if you're using the 0.2 mm feeler gauge, set it to 0.2 mm.
If your bed sits higher or lower than your printer expects (for example, if you've replaced the stock bed) you may have to set this higher or lower to compensate for the width of the new bed.
Slide the piece of paper under the nozzle, in between it and the bed, and slowly adjust the knob until you feel some resistance while sliding the paper. You don't want a lot of resistance, just a little scratchy feeling is what you'll want.
Repeat step 5 for the back right, front right, and front left corners (in that order).
Go back to the back left corner and re-do the paper process again for all of the corners a couple more times, just to make sure it's well within the range.
Validate your tramming with a bed level test. This will show you if your corners/center are within tolerance or not, so you know where to make adjustments.

Lastly, here's a resource for some of the more common problems FDM printers face. I hope this wasn't a massive info dump, all at once, and that this helps you resolve the issue you're having!


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Anet A6: known hotend problems?
I've got an Anet A6, modified with bed-leveling sensor etc., which has given me good service for several years. I'm not in a position to spend lots of money on anything fancier, since at present at least it's not immediately contributing to my business.
I almost always have problems extracting the filament after use, and I believe this is getting worse. It's inclined to clump at the bottom, and from the feel I'd say that it's binding at the bottom of the PTFE tube.
I'm not looking forward to stripping things down, since I've got the relative height of the sensor and head calibrated "just right".
Does anybody know of any issues relating to these heads as shipped, e.g. batches going out with liners made of something which isn't quite PTFE?
Alternatively, are there any specific points that I should be looking for? One particular thing that occurs to me as I type is a difference between the diameter of the holes in the nozzle and the PTFE liner resulting in a step at the bottom.


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AnkerMake M5 Z-axis homing fail
I recently had a big mess in my printer head in my AnkerMake M5 and had to replace the entire print head. When I replaced it, I went to test the axes to make sure they were still aligned, but now I'm getting a Z-axis homing error. I've noticed that while homing, it moves down, up, then down again, but the second time it goes down, only one side goes down (the left side). I'm not sure what to do about it and Anker's help pages aren't seeming to help me either.
I have a video showing the behavior.
I'm not quite sure how to diagnose this, any tips?

AnkerMake seems to be aware of this problem. Their support website has a section dedicated to correcting homing failures here.
Besides this, you'll want to make sure you didn't accidentally unplug or tug on other cables while replacing the printer head. Make sure all of the connections are snug, and the pins are pushed in all the way. Also make sure that the Z-axis lead screws aren't bent or sideways, as this can cause binding which could be stopping your right side from lowering properly.

I've spent plenty of time with this article today and honestly it was totally unhelpful. By lead screws, do you mean the big rods that go up either side? As far as I can tell, those are straight, but I can't actually tell. If you mean something else, I would appreciate further clarification. Their documentation just had me disassemble a bunch of stuff and put it back together but it doesn't clarify what exactly you're looking for.

When you're looking at the Lead screws, you want to make sure that they're as parallel to the profile, or frame, as possible. When the lead screws aren't parallel, it causes extra friction which can cause issues.
While disassembling, you want to look at the lead screws, as well as the wires, and where the plug into the main board as well as the motors. you want to make sure that they're pressed all the way into their plastic connectors, and look at the connections themselves. There's tiny metal pins inside the plastic connectors that can be pushed out on accident. Make sure those are snug

As far as I can tell, the screws are fine. Allegedly, there's a beta firmware update that fixes this. I've got a support ticket in with Anker right now, but someone on reddit mentioned that this firmware fixed it for them.


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What happens to Bambu printers if they loose wifi connectivity during a print and are unable to recover it?
For the current range of Bambu Printers (P1P\X1-Carbon). If you store your files in the cloud and initiate a print through the phone app to the printer using wifi, what happens to the print if the printer loses wifi connectivity for an extended period of time during the printing process and is unable to recover it?
For example, if you are 1 hour into a 5 hour print will it continue to print as normal until the print is complete using a cached copy of the file that it downloaded during that first hour, but without app connectivity.
Or will it simply stop and wait for the user to perform a corrective action.

While I don't know the answer to your question, the scenario that you pose would be a strong argument against using the cloud to print from.

If the printer simply downloads the entire file before it starts, and then prints it from it's local memory card, the only downside would be the loss of remote monitoring.

My Creality Cloud box required an SD card to print wirelessly. The box simply downloaded the file to its local memory and then printed it from there. If it lost wireless connectivity during a print it wouldn't even be aware of it and would just continue to print as normal.

While not answering your question, TeachingTech recently put out a video called The pros and cons of 3D printer cloud connectivity that you may be interested in.

Could we please limit things to the specific question, so as to avoid drift.


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What are the consequences of printing PLA at too high a temperature?
When printing with basic budget PLA, what are the consequences of having it slightly over temperature. For example 5-10 deg above the recommended temperature for the brand, or significantly over temperature such as 50 deg?
How will this be seen on the print, and what are the inherent risks - if any - to the printer?
Presuming that the print is allowed to complete, and there are no other external factors that might effect either the printer or the print.

If it is only a little higher, the properties of the plastic may not be ideal and it may reduce part quality.  For example, it may be less viscous and drool out the nozzle faster over empty spaces, causing stringing and bridges may sag more than they would at a lower temperature.  There may be some benefits though.  For instance, layer adhesion might be better.
If it is a lot higher, the plastic could burn instead of melting.  If it burns inside the nozzle, it may clog the nozzle.  It may also smoke and/or emit toxic fumes.  (Although the burning fumes are much worse for other plastics like ABS and nylon.)

Assuming you are not exceeding a safe temperature for your hotend, including a limit of around 245-260 °C if it's PFTE-lined and a limit around 300-330 if the block is aluminum, there are no significant risks to the print quality, printer, or user unless you get to extreme temperatures. PLA prints great up to 270 °C and in fact this is the sort of temperature you need to print at high speeds without a very long melt zone. Somewhere around 320-350 it will start to smoke. I've had this happen when purging PET (which I print at 350) with PLA and forgetting to drop the temperature first, but nothing bad comes of it.
If PLA sits in the hot zone at excessive temperature (especially over 240 or so) for an extended time, it will crystallize and become brittle, but the damaged material is easily purged as part of the purge line or skirt for the next print.


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Ender 3 v2 Print not consistent
I just got my first 3D printer (Ender 3 V2) 3 days ago and at first it was printing fine but yesterday it started painting dotted lines. I heard it could be a clog so I changed the Nozzle after trying to clean it (Didn't fix it). Then I replaced the Bowden tubes and made sure there was no filament jammed in the hot piece. After doing this the printer sometimes prints straight solid lines but most of the time either no filament comes out or it is dotted. What can this be and how can I fix it? I think it got clogged in the first place because the nozzle was too close to the plate so what would be a good Z index while printing? Thanks

Please add a photo and look into the extruder, does it have enough tension on the filament? (look at the spring loaded lever)


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One of my Ender 3 gantry POM wheels never touches z-axis aluminium beam

Red wheel does not touch aluminium beam
I was checking the POM wheels of my printer, since I have a minor banding issue with my prints.
I noticed that the wheel marked in red never touches the beam no matter how tight the eccentric nut on the right green wheel is tightened.
Things I have already tried:

Replacing all three POM wheels
Tightening eccentric nut on the right wheel
Check if the z-axis beams are square
Making sure the holes on the bracket and on the gantry are square/centered

Any ideas on what the root cause the problem could be? I am thinking the easiest solution would be to add a second eccentric nut to the offending wheel?

You'll want to loosen the screws between the bracket and the rail, then adjust the eccentric nut, then tighten it back up

@towe So I eventually figured that was the best approach. I noticed the most symmetrical load on the POM was achieved when the gantry was leveled relative to the top horizontal beam. However the bottom POM wheel always seem to have less grip on the beam relative to the top one. I guess this is by design?

I think that's just a result of gravity applying a torque to the bracket. If you want to alleviate that too, you can push the outer wheels against the frame with the X-rail loose and then tighten the nut. But it won't really matter in practice

@towe Good idea! If I keep having the banding issues after I exclude other factors I will revisit the z axis wheels and try that.

Your right (undriven) side Z carriage is out of square, and is deflecting the gantry.
Imagine the left side Z carriage wasn't attched to the gantry at all, just on its own. The only way one of the two wheels without the eccentric nut, on the outer side, could be loose, is if the wheel with the eccentric nut, on the inner side, were not tight.
So start by disassembling the system and attaching the gantry only on the driven-side carriage, i.e. in a cantilever configuration. Do this without the X carriage attached so gravity isn't fighting it, and ensure it's square to the frame and that the eccentric nut is tightened enough there's no play. You should be able to rotate any one of the wheels with manual force while holding another still, but if you don't hold one still, rotating any wheel by hand should move the carriage and cause all three wheels to turn.
It's possible that the bolts holding the gantry to the carriage don't have it aligned square; if it's off, you'll have to take it off the top to adjust. These bolts need to be really tight or they'll tend to self-loosen and throw everything out of wack again.
Once you have the driven-side carriage bolted to the gantry tightly square, it's time to do the undriven side. Start by adjusting the eccentric nut to get the carriage snug, and only then bolt it to the gantry.
Confirm that it moves all the way up and down the Z axis without binding. If the Z extrusions are not parallel or if either of them is bent, you'll have problems and you need to go back and fix that before connecting the undriven side to the gantry again.


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Anycubic Vyper autoleveling not starting
Strange problem: I start atoleveling process and see this message:

I touch nozzle and red lamp is on

But nothing happens. Since one or two minutes I get message

How to solve this issue? Anycubic support tells that is cable problem, but I need to wait about two months to get new cable. May be anyone can help?
Thank you.


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Ender 3 filament retracts on its own
While printing flat surfaces the filament would begin to retract by itself, even if the printer is actively extruding it. I've been remedying it by occasionally pushing the filament by hand, has anyone had this issue in the past or has any idea how to fix it?

Slicer: Cura v.5.4.0
Retraction: off
Flow rate: 75% (calibrated after installing new extruder)
Printer: Ender 3
Leveling done via BLTouch (Z offset calibrated to be 0.1 mm from print bed)
E steps calibrated properly
Hotend temp: 200 °C
Print bed temp: 50 °C
Filament type: PLA
Filament brand: Creality grey 1 kg

You have given us statements but have not asked a question or told us what settings you are using. Without additional information, this "question" could be closed.

Sorry about that, added details now and asked a proper question. If there are any details that I left out let me know and I'll update ASAP

Probably a typo, please clarify the version of Cura that you are using.

When properly calibrated, the flow modifier is about 100 %. It is better to adjust the steps per mm rather than editing the flow modifier.

This can happen if your nozzle is too close to the bed (too low Z-offset). Check your first layer thickness. It should be a slightly squished bead. Not a smeared line.
When the nozzle is too close to the bed, the filament can't come out and the extruder skips steps. When a bowden extruder skips steps, the filament is actually retracted a bit because of the tension built up in the tube.


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Switching power ON with RPi loses connection with MCU (Ender 3v2/Klipper/Mainsail)
TL;DR: When powered off (default state) the Pi powers the Ender's MCU through USB and all is well, but when I switch on the power through G-code I get

Lost communication with MCU 'mcu'

I'm quite certain I'm not the first one to have this happen, but searching hasn't gotten me the answer yet, probably due to the fact that searching for the error message only gives unrelated answers. My Ender 3v2 (4.2.2 mainboard) is set up such that my Raspberry Pi 3 B+ switches on the power supply through a relay controlled by GPIO.
Macro (which seems to run fine as it does the switching):
    # Turns on printer
    [output_pin printer_power]
    pin: rpi:gpio17

    # Printer power ON
    [gcode_macro POWER_ON]
    gcode:
        SET_PIN PIN=printer_power VALUE=1

    # Printer power OFF
    [gcode_macro POWER_OFF]
    gcode:
        SET_PIN PIN=printer_power VALUE=0

gpioinfo pin 17:

     line  17:     "GPIO17"    "klipper"  output  active-high [used]

I use the commands POWER_ON and POWER_OFF in the slicer G-code, where they are either first or last. (edit: don't power off the printer through the slicer if you want to see succesful prints in your overview - practically it works fine but it's much better to let the printer auto power off from idle, see https://github.com/jschuh/klipper-macros for example)
When I use my slicer to send a file to the printer it starts and runs for about three seconds as it starts homing axes, and then the error

Lost communication with MCU 'mcu'

appears and the printer hurts itself in its confusion, but when I use the commands through mainsail it works just fine.
I hope someone knows how to avoid this, might just be an electrical issue (immediate instructions/power draw on startup?) that I need to circumvent somehow.

Fixed it.
As expected and completely reasonable, the MCU needed some time to wake up, clocked it at 6-7 seconds so gave it a total 10 seconds in code. Found the most graceful way of doing it was in the same macro, also included a nice little beep to let me know the game is afoot. I also added an ATX power supply to the rig in the mean time so that is switched first, and I only turn on the 24V PSU after the MCU woke up because control before power.
# Switches 24V PSU through physical relay gate 1
[output_pin 24V_power]
pin: rpi:gpio17

# Switches 12V PSU through physical relay gate 2
[output_pin 12V_power]
pin: rpi:gpio27

# Switches power ON
[gcode_macro POWER_ON]
gcode:
    SET_PIN PIN=12V_power VALUE=1
    G4 P9000 # Give MCU time to wake up
    SET_PIN PIN=24V_power VALUE=1
    G4 P1000 # Give 24V PSU time to wake up
    BEEP_STARTUP

# Switches power OFF
[gcode_macro POWER_OFF]
gcode:
    BEEP_POWEROFF
    SET_PIN PIN=24V_power VALUE=0
    SET_PIN PIN=12V_power VALUE=0

Included the extra bit because it might help a stranger, as the original question is simply answered by adding:
G4 P10000 # Give MCU time to wake up

directly after the power supply turns on, either after the macro in the slicer or in the macro as I did, and before any action from the MCU is requested. Note that this time can vary based on your MCU, and I refrained from tuning this further to prevent errors down the line.


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Hotend moves to rear of build plate and extrudes
I have an Ender 3 and have a similar problem as mentioned in I have an Ender-3 Pro, the platform goes to the right rear every time I try to start a print job.
My hotend and build plate reach temp, BLTouch homes centre of build plate, plate moves forward then "grinding noise" hotend moves to right at the rear of plate and starts to extrude filament then I have to reboot, reheat bed and hotend, select model and print this enables it to print. I have replaced the mother board, flashed with latest Marlin firmware: but this made no difference!
The fact that it prints after reboot suggest to me it can't be a firmware issue.

This is very hard to answer. You should create some basic G-code files manually to sort this out. E.g. to rule out slicing problems. Try, and update the answer by [edit].

This is very hard to answer as there is not much information to solve this, read this answer as an advice to troubleshoot the problem. You should create some basic G-code files manually to sort this out to e.g. rule out slicing problems (this is where the question is not clear about).
Basically, the printer knows the coordinate system once it has homed all axes when properly configured in firmware. So, creating a basic file containing homing G28, leveling G29. Now, the print head should be at the last probed position. You now could add G0 X0 Y0 F400 to slowly advance to the origin. You can add another line to move to the max X, Y position, G0 X200 Y200 F400 (200 x 200 mm bed assumed). If the head positions correctly, your firmware is okay, you then need to find the solution in the slicing, else you need to fix the firmware settings.


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How do I calculate the theoretical max speed of a motor?
I'd like to know how to estimate the maximum speed of a stepper motor before the torque drop-off. There are several existing calculators of varying degrees of complexity for that:

RepRap calculator
Alex Kenis provides a spreadsheet (see also links therein)
Many thanks to Ryan Carlyle for his answer to "Real life stepper speed" here on 3D Printing.SE
Zalophus Dokdo's Stepper Motors Calculator
CNC.xyz's Stepper Motor Calculations

However, some of them simply don't explain all the math behind the numbers, there are differences see issue #38 between real-life measurements and theoretical predictions, and all the notation is a bit inconsistent.
It is possible to do the calculations using full ODEs and all that sort of jazz, but it's too much for a single motor. I prefer to see it as a black box with some exposed parameters, nothing more.
What I've got so far boils down to EMF:
$A = 1.8^\circ$, angle per full step
$U = 24\ V$, voltage
$P = 2\ mm$, pitch
$N_t = 20$, teeth per gear
$N_{ms} = 16$, microsteps per full step
$v = 200\ mm/s$, desired speed
$T_h = 0.4, Nm$, holding torque
$I_r = 1.5\ A$, rated current
$R = 5.75\ Ohm$, phase resistance
$e = 75%$, stepper current
$L = 8.4\ mH$, motor inductance
$f = 200\ kHz$, max step rate, see Klipper docs
Derived variables:
$N_s = 360^\circ / A = 200\ step/rev$, full steps per revolution
$d = P * N_t = 40\ mm/rev$, distance per revolution
$d_s = d / N_s = 0.2\ mm$, distance per full step
$d_{ms} = 1000 * d_s / N_{ms} = 12.5\ \mu m$, distance per microstep
$I_e = I_r * e / 100 = 1.125\ A$, effective max current
$RD = N_s * N_{ms} / d = 80\ step/mm$, rotational distance (is it supposed to be microsteps/mm?)
$v_{max} = f * 1000 / RD = 2500\ mm / s$, max theoretical speed at this rate
$RPM_m = 60 * (v / d) = 300\ rev/min$, revolutions per minute at speed $v$; Alex also multiplies by $N_s$ and divides by a magic number 200, both really make no sense to me
$RPS_m = RPM_m / 60 = 5\ rev/sec$, revolutions per second
$\xi_r = \sqrt 2 * \pi * T_h * (RPS_m/I_r) \approx 5.9\ V$, rotation EMF. This is the point where questions start to arise though. I found another source ("Back emf due to rotation of stepper moto") where the rated current is used as well. To me, it looks like should be $I_e$ even for peak EMF values since the current is limited by the corresponding driver. There is also an argument in issue #38 regarding the coefficients that should be used in practice
$\xi_i = RPS_m * \pi *I_e * (L/1000) * (N_s/2) \approx 14.8\ V$, Alex uses magic numbers again, I also failed to find the actual source for this formula
Now, since I'm not sure these values/formulas are valid I can't move to the next part that's calculations of the maximum achievable speed. Even more so, there are two formulas that introduce even more confusion.
I'd be happy to see some solid advice or potential sources to read.


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In the last layer, the nozzle should be at 210 °C of temperature configured in the Prusa Slicer profile
I would like to create a profile, in the Prusa Slicer software, that could be preset so that in the last layer the nozzle is at 210 °C of temperature so that the printer ensures that the inner and outer walls are well together and do not become loose in the layer higher. I have very thin 0.7 mm walls and I usually have problems with the walls opening every now and then...

"The beak" - It would be beneficial if you could explain (even better if there was a picture) of what you are referring to.

I think beak is nozzle? Correct? Furthermore, if walls not stick together you probably have different issues. You could lower the extrusion width to 0.35 mm on a 0.4 mm nozzle. Also look into this answer.

In the printer settings custom G-code you could add a custom G-code there
{if layer_num == (total_layer_count-1) } M104 S210 {endif}

But that does not sound right why not start with 210 °C in the first place? It is perfectly OK to print PLA at 210 °C.


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Issues printing with colorFabb wood PLA on Ender 5 Pro
I've been trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong with printing using colorFabb wood PLA. I designed a square test object to print that's fairly simple, it has concentric squares with the height increasing for each square moving inward. I set up a print job using the Creality slicer (v4.8.2) to print three of these, side by side, at the back side of the print bed.
Here are the print settings I have tested with (some have been a range):

Speed: 60 - 80 mm/s
Nozzle temp: 200 °C - 210 °C
Bed temp: 60 °C
Layer height: 0.2 mm
Nozzle: 0.6 mm, hardened steel
Raft: no
Brim: no
Bed: course texture PEI
Supports: none, not required for model

I have also replaced the Bowden tube because the original seemed to have deformed at the hot end and was causing a filament restriction. It may have deformed while I was printing a few things with ABS, based on what I recently learned about the PTFE used. I have also leveled the bed after every few prints just to be safe.
What seems to consistently happen when I print is that I see some issues with the first layer with the object printing near the home coordinates (almost looks like the nozzle is dragging through the layer, but typically only in the second quarter of the layer being printed), the middle object has a mostly decent first layer, and then with the third object, which is printing opposite the middle object along the X-axis, it never finishes the first layer. Sometimes it's able to finish the walls, but it always fails while filling in the first layer. When I try a single object near the center it seems to do OK, but there can be some issues with the first few layers.
I've been specifically printing in these spots because I had tried some larger objects that had weird issues when not printing near the center and I was trying to understand what may be behind the problems I was seeing.
The best I can figure is that maybe when printing closer to the edges of the print bed, the wood PLA is binding within the Bowden tube, even with a new one. The tension placed on everything to reach the ends of the print head range might be preventing the smooth flow of filament.
Supposing my thoughts on this are correct, what would be my best option(s) for being able to utilize the entire print bed with the wood PLA? The only things I can think of would be to either convert to direct-drive extrusion or to use a longer Bowden tube and not keep it secured to the wiring harness for the hot end (which I would think could allow the filament to move where it needs to in order to minimize stress). Would either of these help? Are there any settings I should change? If there are any other settings I can share that would be helpful, let me know.

This sounds as an adhesion or leveling, bed straightness issue. Please try with plain PLA.

As I have mentioned, I've been keeping the bed as level as I can to rule that out. And I don't appear to having any issues with adhesion. I only have these issues in these spots when printing with the colorFabb wood filled PLA. Regular PLA prints just fine.


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Automatic support removal and depowdering
We are working with 3D-printed metals.
The printed models have to be manually post-processed. The supports need to be removed and depowdering (grinding the metal so it's smooth) has to be done.
This post process takes a long time. I did search for solutions that automate that procedure. I could not find any examples.
Do you maybe know about example projects in which the post process was fully or partially automated?

Two-step machining
The only way that automatically can depowder and smooth a metal print after its creation that I can think of is deliberately printing the item solid and oversized and including a holding stem. Then the holding stem is chucked into a 5-axis CNC mill, the item indicated in, and milled to shape.
However, this process is not faster than traditional machining but in fact slower.


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Small parts de-adhere halfway through print
I have a Creality Ender 3 S1 Pro that I'm trying to figure out.
I was able to make 3 solid prints using white Creality-branded PLA without issue and with just an initial auto-level pass, but after that, I had problems with small parts de-adhering halfway through my prints; the first 5 or 6 layers will print fine, and then small bits of the first layer will just slide off the print bed while the extruder is moving.
I think my first layer is maybe not going down well enough, though the pieces that do stick seem to be down pretty well (they require a decent amount of force to get them off of the PEI bed) - the image below is pretty close to the sort of thing I'm seeing with normal prints.
If it matters, my extruder temp is 200 °C and my bed temp is 60 °C. I left everything as the default settings and tried using both the latest Cura and Creality settings.
I think the issue is the globbing that's happening when the extruder changes directions when it hits a cold raised blob it just has too much torque and flicks it off. My leveling procedure is going through the manual leveling UX with the bed heated, sticking a piece of paper under the center and 4 corners (one at a time), and adjusting the wheels as best as I can until it slightly drags; once I'm satisfied with that I do an auto-level pass.
Below is an image of my first layer test grid; any ideas for what I can try? Is there anything I can do with the flow rate or first layer width to get better adhesion, or do I need to monkey with the Z-offset and leveling more? My gut is saying that the Z-offset is too low but when I raise it I have issues with even the outer nozzle-wiping passes not sticking (the straight lines that the default Cura profile prints usually stick fine, but the initial skirt around the part do not).
Is this just too small of a piece to print maybe? I printed two of these Articulated Shark initially and they did not have any issues with de-adhesion, and they have similarly-sized first-layer parts.

Looking at the squares pattern I'd say your nozzle is too far, not too close. If not, you might be extruding too less.

I've found a brim works for this. Where it might be frustrating to remove a brim, I've suspended the part a little with tree-like supports. I've even had to go for extra wide brims for a part with a small footprint but a little tall.
This part is a little bigger, but also slid off a lot without that nice big brim.

As recently as yesterday, I've had results like yours.  My advice would be to:

For extra bed adhesion: Set the heated bed to 75 °C (from 60 °C). Make sure you are using some of the Purple Elmer's glue stick on the bed before printing! I'm assuming you already tried this or have gotten other prints to work very well.
Set the "extrusion multiplier" to 0.95. Your goal should be to extrude 93-95 % of the rate of what you were doing previously. You don't want excess filament that was extruded to "catch" the nozzle and be pulled by it.
Raise the nozzle up about 0.6 mm from where it is currently. If the nozzle is "clearly" too high, lower by 0.1 mm until it's okay. The nozzle could be too low, pushing the filament out wide when it leaves the nozzle, causing stringing. Don't overlook this. I thought I had my nozzle perfect because the layers were sticking. I didn't think a low nozzle could cause that kind of stringing. But it only worked when I took all these steps, including this one. Also, the low nozzle means that when it raises up for the next layer, it's actually still going to contact the filament that was "extruded out wide" from the previous layer. But I think this would be the problem more likely if it was happening around layer 2 or 3, not 5.
Print the first layer extremely slowly, at about 15 % speed of what you're used to / Slicer defaults if you aren't already. Once you reach the third layer, you can increase the speed again. The second layer might be questionable if there's still some stringing.
If those steps don't work, the problem may have something to do with your Z-axis motor driver not getting enough current, meaning your extruder doesn't actually consistently raise up after each layer consistently.


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Uselessly slow printing pattern for second-to-top layer of Swiss-cheese-like model (using SuperSlicer/PrusaSlicer)
I am printing a flat plate that has swiss-cheese like holes in the top layer ONLY, but the layer beneath the swiss-cheese one is uniformly flat.
Desired outcome: second-to-top layer prints clean back-and-forth plus ironing for holes.
Current outcome: second-to-top layer takes almost 10x longer (than the layer before it) to print because it cuts up the back-and-forth of the "Solid Infill" with "Top Solid Infill" circles.
Question: How do I make the second-to-top layer print like the third-to-top layer except with ironing?
Details:
Right now my slicer is seeing the parts of the exposed holes on the second-to-top layer as "Top Solid Infill" (according to the verbose gcode) which makes sense because it is the top-most for that part below the circle hole.
The slicer creates little "Internal Perimeter"s in a space below each hole...

and then fills them in with "Top Solid Infill"...

before sporadically filling the rest of the layer with "Solid Infill".

It then goes and adds all the ironing for the parts that will be exposed through the holes that will be printed in the layer above.

I'm wondering if I can do something like merge Top Solid Infill with Solid Infill, or maybe disabling Top Solid Infill altogether would work, but I can't find settings for either possibility. Again my question: How do I make the second-to-top layer print like the third-to-top layer except with ironing?

In Cura this is called Skin Edge Support. Maybe there's a similar thing in PS/SS?

I'm currently using a workaround but it requires editing the gcode. I do it by adding the part that is the filled holes to the model but putting it on a second extruded (just in the slicer, my printer doesn't actually have two extruders). Then I move the hole-fillers to the last thing to print and delete the last section of the gcode so the print just stops right before filling in the holes. That way in doesn't view the bottom of the holes as top layer and prints it all in the same moevements. It doesn't get ironing on each hole, but since it's imbedded anyway you can't really notice anyway.


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Printing stops at the middle of second to last layer
I just had a problem with my Ender 3 V2 Neo. It suddenly stopped printing in the middle of the second to last layer.
The head moved to the side (as if it finished printing) and the confirmation button on the screen appeared, also the progress bar was showing 100% completion but the remaining printing time was 16 minutes (of a 9-hour print). I checked and there were no clogs and no option to resume printing (at first I thought it was a power outage but it wasn't). The bed and nozzle temperature were kept at 60 °C and 200 °C as I was using PLA. I just checked the G-code and, at least to me, there are no evident problems. Also, there's no sign of over or under-extrusion on the print. I have no clue what happened.

It is great that you found a solution. However, please post your comment Just found the problem. It was the slicer software. I was using Creality slicer and for some reason it was missing the last lines of the G-code. I installed Cura and then tried again, everything went back to normal. I have no idea why this happened. But now it's fixed. Got the hint from a reddit user. (that you made under the, to be deleted, AI generated answer) as an actual answer, and not as a comment and then mark it as the accepted answer. Also, please include the link to the Reddit post (if applicable). Thanks.


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Speed change from a slicing layer
I did a slicing of a small piece that only has 22 layers. How can I configure the PrusaSlicer software to work at a speed of 60 mm/s up to the sixth layer and from the seventh layer onwards to assume a speed of 40 mm/s?


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print a model with an hole in it - Entina tina 2
What's the size of the smallest hole I can print?
I would like to print something similar to a paper with 1 mm (estimated size) hole/gap in it.
I think I will use an Entina Tina 2, but I don't know if it is possible to print with this one. If I can. Do you have a recommendation for the cheapest printer that I can print 1 mm hole (or smaller)?

Shopping recommendations are off-topic, but someone might be able to tell you the resolution of a printer.

Create a test project - a cube with a number of holes differing in size in increments of 0.1mm and find what CAD dimension corresponds to smallest hole that isn't completely sealed.

It is possible to print a hole of 1 mm with a 3D printer maybe even 0.5 mm but with a lot of trial and error. and the holes might not end-up to be super round
One of the main issues is the viscosity of the filament, you can imagine a 3D printer nozzle as a miniature version of your toothpaste tube. if you try to draw a circle with your toothpaste it will end up smaller than the movement you did due to the viscosity of the plastic dragging behind the nozzle.
So to have a 1 mm hole you will need to model a 1.1 mm or 1.2 mm hole and to do a 0.5 mm hole you will need to dial a 0.7 mm or 0.8 mm hole and try until you have the desired size. As you start to be close to the size of the nozzle diameter (0.4 mm on most printers) all the little imperfections stitching, etc will become relatively big and your shape will not be very round.
Except for very bad machines, all the machines shall be able to do this as it is a universal limitation of FDM printers.
If you are very patient you may consider installing a 0.2 mm nozzle but it is dreadfully slow and it likes to clog all the time.
SLA printers will give you a better hole but will have difficulty printing a large surface of paper-thin material
My feelings tell me that for paper-thin print with a small hole or many small holes, 3D printing does not sound like the most appropriate mean of fabrication what is it exactly that you want to do and what are your constraints?


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Does UV light from fluorescent neon tubes affect resin prints?
I recently replaced one of the fluorescent neon tubes in my garage and noticed a sticker on the packageing saying the neon tube in question was only giving off low amounts of UV light. I wasn't even sure, fluorescent neon tubes were emitting UV light at all, but now I am wondering if the light coming off these lamps affect the quality of the resin 3D prints?

It might but, as I understand it, the wavelength of the UV light is what causes the resin to cure. If the wavelength of the UV light and the resin is the same and if the intensity of the UV light is high enough to affect the resin, then you will have a problem. (As I am not that familiar with resin printing, I am posting this as a comment. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can confirm/correct my statements.)


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3D printer giving me “too long extrusion prevented” error message when ever I try to print a model made in Blender
I am able to print files from Thingiverse just fine but having trouble printing anything designed in Blender. I get the error message “too long extrusion prevented” following which the print fails. I have tried different things to address the issue including: re-calculating E-steps, changing the extruder, trying a different slicer, adding a bed offset, downloading the latest version of Blender, and re-modeling the object. Nothing seems to work. Could someone please help me out so I could know what I am doing wrong?

If this happens it's almost certainly a slicer configuration bug, either wrong start gcode or wrong retractiion settings. Can you clarify when it happens (immediately when starting print or later) and show the offending gcode?

Thanks, It seems to happen right about the fourth or fifth layer and i did use the same slicer to slice two files i downloaded from thingiverse and they printed fine. I have included a google drive link for the files. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WX24tydnv-WWFEU-TKXVji0Fvu6BjBqH?usp=drive_link

Can you be specific about a particular file and the exact Z height and ideally part of the print where the error occurs in it?

Every one of the files in the folder have refused to print. The .gcode are the sliced versions of the stl files. The problem seems to happen randomly after the second layer. In some attempts It has gone on to reach the fourth layer before failing. The issue mostly starts around the legs/wings.

It doesn't happen randomly but deterministically for a particular file. Rather than asking someone trying to help you to guess cominatorically which place it's failing in each file, pick a single file and report exactly where it fails in that file. Then myself or someone else can read the gcode at the exact point of failure and try to figure out what's going on for you.

It truly does occur randomly sir. But the important thing is I found the solution. And as you mentioned earlier it is indeed a slicer issue. So for anyone having challenges printing things made in blender try as many slicers as possible. Super slicer worked for me. Thanks for the help.

Sometimes 3D modeling software does not produce good-quality STL files outputs
You can clean those using the opensource software MeshLab
Then you open your file and go into Filters > Cleaning and Repairing; there you apply the merges, the duplicate removal, and the repair non-manifold.
When the file is not too damaged most of the slicers have mesh fixing options; in Cura, it is in the Mesh Fixes section. There are options for removing holes stitching, etc.
The symptom of long extrusion prevented is weird though as it means it is trying to make a line with more than 10 or 20 cm of filament which once extruded makes a few netters the first time I see that as a symptom of bad STL.
P.S. You might want to look at the arc segment setting (I do not know the proper name for Blender) in Blender for the cylinders as there are not a lot of segments and your holes are not rounds.


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3d model thickened but still hollow; problems printing it
I started fiddling with Blender this week as I bought a 3D model of a backpack that I wanted to 3D print. In order to get Lychee to print it, I had to use a back-and-forth combination of Blender and an stl repair service online. When Lychee was finally able to fill the holes and accept the geometry, I realized that the model that I originally thickened was still hollow inside. When printed, certain surfaces fail to print because it is too thin.  Right now I'm trying to use Tinkercad to import my stl file, make it hollow, put on solid over it to make a mold, make the mold hollow, and fill the mold with a solid to get a positive of my 3D model.
It doesn't seem to work, and I'd like to ask for some help to find a solution. Please see below what my 3D model looks like when sliced :

I used the displacement tool to thicken my model because the solidify tool was causing issues when importing the model in Lychee. Maybe I was doing something wrong?

Please refrain from posting updates/comments as answers. Instead edit your question and update that, or comment under the relevant answer. The answer section is only for solutions to your problem... Also, please take the [tour] to better understand how Stack Exchange works.

Could you share your STL file ?

If the thickness (Solidify) was added in Blender, you can try unchecking the only rim check box on the Solidify modifier.

I unchecked the box, to no avail. I have yet to find a way to make the whole thing thick and solid.


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Advice with material selection for compression applications
I am creating a punch and a base for an arbor press and because of the specific size need, I want to 3D print them. The most pressure that an area of the base and punch should endure is something between 30 to 60 MPa on a small 83mm2 area. Obviously the material shouldn't compress at this pressure. I know that steel is probably an obvious answer here, but I'm looking for the most cost effective solution and rather not overkill. I was wondering what material would you recommend that can endure that conditions.


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How to replace color A into B using Meshmixer
I have a .mix file with multicolored objects. Using Meshmixer, I would like to change the surface color A into color B without modifying the rest of the colors.
In theory, this could be done by first selecting only the surfaces matching the color A, and then use the Sculpt > Color tool to paint the selection into B color without changing the rest of the surfaces. Or there could be a dedicated tool that can more automatically paint only the surfaces matching the selected A color into B color leaving the other surfaces unmodified. However, to my surprise, I haven't found any good guidelines to do this simple task of turning color A into color B. I noticed the promising Select > Filters > Expand Mode > Vertex Color Similarity option but have no idea how it should work or is it suitable for the job at all. Additional information can be found in Autodesk's guide on Meshmixer's Filters Panel.
Any help? I also have FreeCAD if that could help, but it cannot open .mix files at least directly.
Update: I read the Vertex Color Similarity documentation more carefully and get a little bit further. I am using a Mac and instead of Ctrl I need to hold Cmd while right-clicking the pre-existing selection (within a surface matching the color A) and then drag to expand the selected area. However, the selection in the isolated color area (let's call this A1) does not expand into a separate color area (A2, as said in the documentation: "grows the selection to connected regions"). It would be a tedious task to click and select all the individual areas representing the color A (area A1, A2, A3, A4, and so on) and then do the expansion. How could I more easily select and modify all the surfaces matching the color A?