Laptop keycaps for Asus UX31A I broke 2 keys (i.e. left ctrl, enter) on my Asus UX31A laptop and it seems that this model is too old to find replacement keys.
Is there any way I can find a 3D model of the needed keys to have them 3D printed?
I do not have a printer nor I have any experience in this field.
What I need is either someone that has models for these or that can point me where I can find such models.

This is more off-topic as an answer, but serves as a possible solution.
Replacementlaptopkeys.com is a resource that appears to have keycaps for the model you've noted.
https://www.replacementlaptopkeys.com/asus-zenbook-ux31a-db71-laptop-keys-replacement-dark-brown-black/
At seven dollars a key, it's going to be less expensive than 3D printing to accomplish your objective.
If you owned a 3D printer, it would not be less expensive to purchase, but the work involved would increase your cost to have such keys commissioned. As a 3D printed object, the strength is going to be less than a keycap purchased from the linked site.


MakerBot JSON-RPC Command List I'm currently trying to implement a data collector on my Replicator+ by utilizing JSON-RPC. Is there an official reference for this? MakerBot used to host a wiki site, but that seems to be gone for their "troubleshooting" pages.

It took some digging, but I was able to start scripting a wrapper in C# for the RPC commands.

C# Wrapper (MTConnect Implementation)
Unofficial JSON-RPC Reference

I still don't understand what every method does to the machine or necessarily what the results are, so a number of the methods are marked as obsolete until I can test them.


How to avoid collisions with already printed objects? When printing several objects, I recently encountered a problem that arises when the structure in itself is relatively thin or the support towers have a small surface: the printhead would in motion tend to knock one or more over as it traveled or catch at them and create layer shift.

How can I avoid collisions with the already printed parts of a layer?

The problem was twofold:

Lack of bed adhesion due to the small contact surface
motion into the already printed objects.

The quick and dirty way was to change two settings:

Print with a small (3 mm) brim to stick the supports to the print and provide more surface. Other materials than PLA may need considerably more brim!
Activate Z-Hop to force the nozzle to lift over the print when traveling

These tricks don't solve issues with very thin structures or in all cases. In those cases, it can be mandatory to increase the structure's (support) thickness or change the alignment.


FlashForge Creator Pro Tool Failure! Temp limit reached After printing successfully for a while I received an error saying:

Tool 0 Failure!
Temp limit reached
Shutdown or restart.

The front panel is not responsive and doesn't allow the printer to print at all. If I quickly go to monitor mode it shows tool 0 temperature in the ~700°C range; which made me think it was the thermocouple.On the motherboard I unplugged the thermocouple and the same error occurred, I then swapped the other thermocouple and put it in its place and got the same error except the tool 1 temperature showed "NC".

I had recently taken apart the extruders to change out the nozzles and thought I had possibly smashed the wires when putting it together but now I don't think that's the case.

I'm on the phone with FlashForge's tech support but wanted to see if someone else has had the same experience for cross reference.

What's the underlying issue? Is there a quick solution to this that can get me printing right away (I'm under a deadline)? What's the end solution?

It sounds like a failed TC amp chip. But we need to rule out some other stuff.

Some important facts about the Creator Pro temp sensor:

If you smash and short the two thermocouple wires together, the printer will simply read room temp.
If you cut or disconnect the thermocouple wires, the printer will report NC for "not connected."
The thermocouple lookup table in the firmware only goes up to 300C.

Seeing a number over 300C means either a bad thermocouple amp chip, or excess voltage on the TC wires due to a short to something else in the hot block. (However, such a short will usually fry the entire controller board to smithereens.)

To rule out stray voltage entering the TC wires, completely detach both thermocouples from the hot blocks and lay them out not touching anything metal. Do you still get an unusually high reading on tool 0?

To rule out an issue with the specific thermocouple, swap thermocouples between tool 0 and tool 1 and see if the problem moves with the TCs.

If the TC is not touching anything, and the problem stays with the tool when you swap wires, and you STILL get >300C reads, the thermocouple amp chip has failed. It is possible to replace the chip if you have (or your friend has) a hot air rework station and some experience soldering. Or you can get a new mainboard from FlashForge.

The next question is why this problem happened. You don't want to fix the symptoms with new parts but have an underlying issue cause the same failure to re-occur after you swap out parts. With the printer on but the heaters off, use a multimeter to check for voltage between the hot block and the printer's ground. Certain types of heater cartridge failure can short the hot block to +24v. This is highly dangerous and needs to be fixed before you continue using the printer. So make sure you check it before trying to repair anything else.


Can closed loop steppers be used for extruders? I am relatively new to 3D printing, but have some background in industrial equipment and test machines.
An important part of printer setup is getting the extruder mm/step rate configured correctly.
I was wondering if anybody has done any research into closed loop drive of the filament where the feedback to close the loop comes from a knurled idler on the filament.
This would mean factors such as drive slippage and different material stiffness could be automatically compensated for.
Going one step further the feedback wheel could be placed at the hotend of Bowden extruder systems negating the need to tune in retract settings for different materials as the closed loop system can just pull back however much material is required to get 1-2 mm as measured at the hot end.
I have seen there are readily available steppers with drive boards built in for closed loop control, I would imagine it would be a relatively simple task to remove the hall effect sensor from one of these boards and mount it remotely to read off a measuring wheel instead of the drive shaft.
I had a bit of a search but couldn't find anything on this topic online, is this something that has already been looked into and if it hasn't are there any significant reasons why this shouldn't work to improve performance and/or reduce manual tweaking and calibration required.

Closed loop steppers like S42B are becoming popular for the spatial axes because compensating for skipped steps is the correct way to recover for those axes. For example, if the nozzle knocks into a warped corner of a print and skips, the right thing to do is compensate, commanding additional steps necessary to get to the commanded location.
This is less valuable for extruder, since displacement is not necessarily the target we want to recover, but nozzle pressure. Extruder skip usually occurs when nozzle pressure exceeds the motors ability to drive the filament. Correcting for the skipped steps may result in overcompensating, attempting to drive nozzle pressure up over a longer period of time, since the problem won't clear itself as quickly as it does for the spatial axes. Compensating for skipped steps doesn't recover E errors like they do for X,Y, or Z, since skipped E steps tend to be driven by persistent problems, like low nozzle temp or hotend restrictions, where spatial errors tend to be transient, e.g. hitting a 'speed bump' on the print.
An alternative is filament flow sensors like this BTT Smart Filament Sensor. It uses a similar feedback mechanism like you suggest. It uses a driven wheel and encoder to send pulses to mainboard. When mainboard stopped getting pulses during commanded moves, it pauses print. Instead of trying to correct in a closed loop fashion, its a human-in-the-loop solution


Show generated support structures in Cura In Cura, when you enable "Print support structure", is there a way to see what it will look like?

Select the View Modes Button in the upper right hand corner, and select Layers.


3D Print D&D Miniatures delicate supports Any hints or suggestions (filament type? suggested settings? model sources?) for 3D printing minis to use in Dungeons & Dragons?
I've done a couple where the support structures were difficult to break off without breaking off a hand or something.
I have a Lulzbot Mini (1), single-extruder if that makes any difference.

Buckle up, this is going to be rough:
FDM printers are not the best choice for printing figurines in the 25 to 40 mm scale that is typical for wargaming and D&D games. Resolution-wise, that's the area of resin printers.
But there are ways to get some partially decent prints made:

you might want a small nozzle. 0.2 is about the smallest you can do without specialty extruders, so there is our lower limit.
You need to make sure to have a minimum layer time set, especially as the crosssections of figures are often rather slim.
Overhangs can be a pain

You might be better-served printing "meeples" than actual figurines.


Are SLA prints also susceptible to say microbes like FFF prints are with the microscopic flaws? Say if one were to use foodsafe and or medical grade materials, would (m)SLA print be any less hazardous than one created with FFF printer, being eventually suscectible to bacteria buildup?

The best information I could find was this article from Formlabs about food safe 3d printing. It has a fairly detailed discussion of the different food safe requirements and the conclusion basically is that SLA prints are not food safe by default and can create conditions for mold and bacteria growth. SLA resins are toxic when uncured.

The article goes on to list a few options that can increase the food safety of printed objects.

Dipping in a food safe coating such as a food grade epoxy or polyurethane. But it does note that this may not make the object food safe as the coating may be compromised.
Making a mold from the 3d printed part and using the mold for food contact.
Electroplating the printed object with metal.
Printing with ceramic filled resins, burning out the resin in a kiln, and glazing the part with food safe glaze.


Laser 3D scanner is used in the movie to scan a key: technically possible? The Vault (2021) movie has a scene at around 42' in which a laser scanner with a rotating table is used to scan a key in a short time, maybe some minutes:

No calibration is done whatsoever. The scan quality must be high enough for the replicated key to be useful.
Is it technically possible? Is it exagerated? Is it fiction?

There have been instances where people have replicated a key from a photograph of a key. A multi-minute scan of a key seems like overkill, but that appears to be a very large key so maybe so.
Is it possible? Yes.
Is it exaggerated? Probably much simpler than is portrayed.
Is it fiction? As portrayed, yes. Practically, no.


Is this model feasible to print? I have a 3D model that I'd like to print. This is my first project, so I'm trying to decide if I'm getting in over my head. Here's the model rendered with Blender:

If I throw it at a commercial printing shoppe, is it going to be fairly straight forward? Or is it unlikely to be able to get the colours fitting together like this to work well?

Here is a set of options you can get:

print the object on multi color printer

Unfortunately we got some limitations here (on the market). Printers have limited set of heads which are in fact printing in one color at a time. So we usually have 2 colors, there are also 4 color heads. If there are more then they are rare, expensive or rare and expensive.

here are examples of such color printouts:

project
project

print object splitted

In this case you can have single color printer. You print parts in one color then you change filament and print other color and so on. The issue here is to have well formed object which is designed for such print method (it's connectable in some way) or you can stick printed parts with the glue.

here are examples of such puzzled printouts:

project
project

print and paint

here are examples of such painted printouts:

project
project

NOTE:

All above assumes that you are gonna print your object in FDM technology. You can also take a look on other technologies such as:

Stereolithography(SLA)
Digital Light Processing(DLP)
Selective Laser Sintering (SLS)
Selective laser melting (SLM)
Electronic Beam Melting (EBM)
Laminated object manufacturing (LOM)


Entwined fiber-filled filament stops extruding after a few layers I recently took my first shot at printing with specialty filament -- Entwined by 3-D Fuel -- on a Lulzbot TAZ having an 0.5mm nozzle. (Note that this is the original Entwined, not the mid-2018 "v2" with smaller fibers; Just purchased from MicroCenter this weekend, and saw a 2017 production date when reading the label).

While the filament in question can be reliably and consistently extruded at full speed (as with the "Continuous Load" button), I've repeatedly had it stop extruding partway through my prints. This is much worse with lower layer heights. Even when this has happened and several MM have been "printed" with no content, pausing the print, going to the load/unload menu, and telling it to extrude filament at full speed indicates that it's not by any means fully clogged, but only failing to extrude at the configured speed.

Where should I start in tuning to try to get a reliable print with this specialty material?

I'm using Cura LE 3.6.9 for slicing. The center item of the three below was printed at 210C, with the most successful at 0.25mm layer height (Cura's default of 0.1mm had far worse results -- not included in the below photo -- with the base layer almost not being there at all; 0.175 did somewhat better).

I'm using the bed heated to 45C, in line with the manufacturer's guidance (that a heated bed is optional, but should be set to 45-60C).

I've managed to get a successful print! The key was to keep the material moving quickly. The settings I've customized are as follows:

Print Speed: 70 mm/s
Layer Height: 0.4 mm
Default Printing Temperature: 215C

...and perhaps not as necessarily:

Shell Wall Thickness: 0.8 mm
Wall Line Count: 3
Alternate Extra Wall: True

Also, I've found it important to print a skirt (perhaps a double-walled one), and watch the first-layer closely and be willing to push more material through and restart: The material in the hotend can easily form a partial clog while the printer runs through its auto-leveling / head-cleaning routine, thus needing to have more material pushed through before the job starts in earnest.

By the way, the model is https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1993747, by Holodrio on Thingiverse.


Filament sticks to nozzle Normally, I'm all fine with my printer and filament. But today I changed the filament for another brand and no matter what, it sticks to the nozzle so nothing comes to the bed and soon my nozzle is full of PLA... I use a sheet of paper for printer to level the bed at 0.1 mm. While leveling, I get the nozzle close enough to feel a bit of resistance from the paper while moving that sheet. Please help me...

I believe the problem is not so much that the filament is sticking to the nozzle; it's that the filament is not sticking to the bed.
You've confirmed that you have correct clearance for the nozzle to bed distance. The next considerations are bed temperature and nozzle temperature. New brands often require new parameters.
Consider to raise the bed temperature 5 °C. If you're not using any adhesive medium, perhaps a bit of glue stick will help to have the filament stick better/properly.
It's unlikely that the nozzle temperature is incorrect, as too low would result in a nozzle clog, while too high would "drizzle out" and be everywhere, but don't reject too-high entirely.
If you can get the bed adhesion correct, your nozzle should remain clear.


My anet a2 auto-homes incorrectly I just made my anet a2, and when I hit auto-home it goes off the board makes a loud clacking sound going down a bit (under the heat bed but off to the side). Any suggestions?

Your limit switches are not working properly - they should always hit.

Do the following steps:

Move axis in all possible directions, both positive and negative;
Check limit switch wiring;
Limit switch output.


What is the "Detailed format classification" of the ISO 6983 (G-Code spec) For developing a CNC system, I am reading the "ISO 6983-1:2009".

In it, there are several references to what they call "Detailed format classification" which I struggle to understand:

  A classification of the data in a block shall be used to specify the programming detail for a system and machine configuration. This is called the detailed format classification and is described in Annex C.

...

  Zero omission shall be specified in the detailed format classification (see Annex C).

...

  The number of digits shall be designated by the detailed format classification ( see Annex C).

...

It seem this "Detailed format classification" is sort of a definition of the machine on which the program will run. But in this case, I do not understand why this is something part of the program and not some values of the control system.

My question is: What exactly is this "Detailed format classification"?

Is it part of the program?
What is it purpose?

This is simply the formalised definition of the syntax, so that a parser can be written to interpret any legal G-code. Without this, there is ambiguity - not in the general operation, but in the bounds of what is 'legal' and what should be rejected.

Taking the example X+053, this is not a position of 53 units, it is:

Address X
Sign is required (in this implementation)
Leading zeros can be ommitted
Up to 5 orders of magnitude before the decimal
Up to 3 digits of precision after the decimal

This means that X can range from +99999.999 to -99999.999 - an interpretation which matches the verbiage at the bottom of the page.

As hinted at in the text, it is possible to use various fixed precision number systems (think using integer milimetres rather than decimal metres), and also to anchor at the most significant bit, so 001 could represent 00100.000. It may help to remember that these specifications were designed in the days of dedicated hardware rather than general purpose computers, when the standard portable storage medium held ~600 kB, and relate to actual machines that had been developed long before that.


How to wire for AC mains voltage relay, when printer board is connected to AC-charging laptop computer? I know this will be a really obvious question to some people, but I have bricked about 3 boards doing this so I want to be certain before I brick a fourth. I don't have a lot of experience working with AC voltage, especially crimping / hacking it like what's going on here. Trust me it was my last resort to ask this.

Basically, as a chamber heater I'm using some 120V heat lamps (here in the U.S.). The problem seems to be that when I connect my laptop to the board (if the laptop is plugged in, which it has to be for long-term serial control), sometimes I:

Hear an electric shock sound -- the board is fried
Don't hear an electric shock sound -- the board is fried, though

What I interpret from this is that I'm stupidly wiring the 120V heat lamps incorrectly relative to my 3D printer board, such that when I connect it to my charging laptop via USB, the AC voltages are out of phase, causing my board to be fried. Alternatively, it's the 12V/24V power supply that's wired wrong relative to everything else, which also needs to be wired to the same polarity.

I was on the understanding that when crimping a three-wire male electrical cord:

White = Neutral
Black = Hot (or Load)
Green = Ground

... reinforced on the left side of the below image as well:

So, I know that much already. The question is, when I connect this AC outlet to a relay like this, I got NO, COM, NC on one side and IN, DC+, DC- on the other. Which wire goes to COM, and which goes to D-? The board uses COM to denote the voltage that is switched 'on' by the relay, and D- to denote whatever the shared ground is among, the 3D printer, heat lamp, printer board, etc... (For more info, see link to relay)

This 5V relay says it supports AC loads being managed by an arduino / 3D printer, so I was under the impression that I could connect the white wire to its D- pin (which also should receive the "GND" for my 3D printer board) and the black wire to its COM pin. However, what do I do about the green wire? Nothing? Also, was it wrong for me to assume it would support this function when the Arduino is connected to a charging laptop via USB?

Basically, I just need to be sure that my laptop (3-prong), power supply (3-prong), heat lamps (2 or 3 prong) and relay (only 2-prong) all have matching polarities and don't cause an electric shock or fry my board. But I am getting really conflicting results and frying a lot of boards, probably by overthinking this.

In effect, the ground (from mains) does not need to be connected to the relay, the relay interrupts the "hot" or "neutral" (preferably the "hot", but that is not possible for all plugs, e.g. some European plugs can be inserted 180° turned into the sockets). You connect one of the interrupted wires to the COM, the other interrupted wire (that goes to the lamps) to the NO (or the NC, depending on safety, the logic and/or preference). The ground wire from the mains power socket is not necessary at all (some lamp amratures require this to be connected though). See a schematic below, it uses an Arduino Uno, but you can think of it being the printer board. Note to never connect the ground from mains to the printer board directly!

Image based on source: osoyoo.com

The logic (low voltage side of the relay) needs to be wired as follows:

DC+ is the voltage power supply of the relay module, this is frequently +5 V, but some modules use +3.3 V (sometimes there is a jumper cap to select the voltage)
DC- is the ground from the printer board
IN is the trigger that needs to be connected to the port on the printer board that electronically switches the relay


How to convert png to stl? Is it possible to convert an image image to STL file format?

E.g. I don't need the coloring, I need the lines.

I suggest your objective can best be accomplished by converting the image to a single color vector file. You can do this with Inkscape (free, Linux, Windows, Mac) by combining the built-in bitmap tracing feature with some manual editing. I attempted to do so, but the coarseness of the image would result in excessive manual edit time. It may even be faster to reduce the opacity of the image and create a manual tracing on a second layer.

Once you have a vector file, you can use any number of 3D modeling programs to convert the file to a 3D STL. Fusion 360, Tinkercad and OpenSCAD allow import of SVG files to be extruded to user-specified thickness.


I want to print an image of a network in 3D — what's the best way to convert it? Suppose I have an image like this below that I want to print in 3D. What would be the best format to convert it in?

Unfortunately, with only a .PNG or other file format that is traditionally two dimensional, you are missing some critical information. Unless your objective is to print something "flat with thickness," you can't create a 3D model. If your objective is to print something flat with thickness, even a program such as Inkscape with the Path to OpenSCAD extension will accomplish your goal.

I believe that Tinkercad will import images and allow you to extrude them to create the thickness aspect. Another program which supports such activity is Fusion360 (free for hobbyists) which would convert your drawing to a sketch. You'd have to add some width to the lines in order to extrude them in any program you select. It will also be necessary to trace the drawing to convert it to a vector file type. Inkscape excels in this task.

Lastly, you can arbitrarily add a third dimension to the diagram by importing it with SolveSpace. It is another free program which allows one to import a DXF file. Note that DXF is a vector file not raster, excluding your existing PNG format. It might be easier to use Inkscape to create the vector file, add width to the lines, then save it in DXF form and load it to SolveSpace. At that point, it becomes extremely challenging due to the complexity of the drawing.

Perhaps a hint or two (image, sketch, drawing) of your final objective?


What can cause the center of the bed to be higher than the sides? I find it impossible to level the printer recently. I read a couple of articles on bed warping but that refers to having the center of bed lower than the sides (collapsing on its own weight warm up after warm?) but what I experience is the opposite: the center is higher than the sides. Did anyone face this situation and how did you solved it? I use an Anycubic Chiron so the bed is pretty big.

As the Anycubic Chiron has an automated bed leveling, you can just calibrate that differences in height in the printer's firmware. Here is the official tutorial made by Anycubic :)


Printer halted! Psu dead? My Anet A8 Plus worked normally, but after the weekend and changing for new bearings on the rods, it is not working anymore at all.
I experience random reboots, the nozzle can only heat to about 10 °C away from the target and then starts to drop, the printer gives the halted error.
Example: Target is 240 °C, the nozzle temperature goes to like 232 °C and then starts to drop pretty fast. The Bed heats good otherwise.
troubleshooting so far
The PSU gives 24 V and the supply voltage switch is 220 V like it should. No matter if I try print it through OctoPrint or Cura, the same thing happens.
How it can break this bad just from replacing a few bearings is not clear to me. Do these reboots mean the PSU is dead and not giving constant voltage? Reboots come even idle or just bed heating etc.

Reboots happen in 2 cases on a printer:

If the board power has been below a the operational threshold (~3 V) and the capacitors on the board are empty, the power dip can result in a reboot.
If a device connects to the serial-USB port, it reboots.

If you power up the printer not connected to any other device, it should run continuously. If it flickers and reboots, the power-lines to the board or the PSU are bad. Check those in reverse.
If it only reboots again and again when connected to a serial port (PC, Octoprint etc), your problem is the cable - it might be jiggling or be defective, or otherwise de- and re-connect again and again.


Flashforge Adventurer 3 Filament feeder loud thumping noise, not enough filament extruded My Flashforge Adventurer 3 is not printing properly.  Filament feeder makes repetitive loud thumping noise and not enough filament is extruded.  Resulting print (if completed) is not solid.

Results vary with filament. Flashforge brand (red) PLA works best.  Any other filament fails completely unless I print at High quality, with head temperature at 235 degrees.  Nozzle has been un-clogged repeatedly, but right from the start, when  feeding filament in, it does not flow through properly.

I had used the included tool to clear blockages in the extruder several times before now, but after posting this question I tried again. Ordinary use of the tool made no difference. So I applied more force, and, pushed filament through by hand directly into the extruder and used a pin to try to clear the extruder. It now appears to be working adequately Not perfectly. I am able to print with default settings. It still thumps -or ticks- a bit. I am alarmed at the amount of force I had to use to clear the extruder blockage.

Advice from another source suggested thoroughly cleaning the feed gear on the bowden extruder.  When I looked closely there were plastic flakes all over the mechanism.  I used compressed air and a brush to clean it.
I also discovered expert mode in the FlashPrint software, which enabled me to slow down the speed at which fill is laid down.
Now I have good printing results with any filament.

EDIT AND UPDATE::
I have continued to have problems with PLA.  For most of the last year I printed using ABS with no similar problems.  I guess that PLA is simply rougher, scratchier than ABS and catches in the tube.  I found a comment that putting olive oil on the filament fixes it.  I used Vaseline.  Things were fine for a while, but a retailer said this would lead to other problems.

So far, no permanent answer to this question.


Ender 3 print bed damage Just got an Ender 3 a week ago. This is my first 3D printer. On the 5th print the object ended up tearing away the surface of the print bed such that it's no longer usable. Trying to work out if this is something that I did wrong or if this is faulty material or a combination of the two?
To set the print head I watched a few tutorials and carefully followed the instructions checking the height with a piece of paper at each corner and in the center and repeated this until it was set.
I watched a couple more tutorials on how to remove the pieces from the bed. I have been removing the top sheet from the print bed by detaching the paper clips. Using the supplied putty knife I've worked around the edges tapping gently with a rubber mallet to get the putty knife under the piece and loosen it before it pops off.
Afterwards I've used the putty knife to scrape off any other residue to make sure that the surface is smooth.
The first 2 prints were with PLA and then the next 3 with PETG. The damage happened when removing a piece printed with PETG.
My specific questions: Is my approach to removing a print incorrect? If so, what would the correct approach be? Did this cause the damage?

your print surface is destroyed
So, you managed to rip off your print surface in the center. Happened to me too. the corners of my scraper were too sharp, cutting the surface. Another time I did pierce the surface with my nozzle. Damage happens. Replacement surfaces for the Ender3 start at about 5 bucks a piece. So get yourself some spares. Clean your bed before applying the new one.
Removal process
To properly remove a print from the bed, grab your srcaper blade and do the following:

sharpen the edge only on ONE side.
soften the corners, they should be slightly rouned.

Make sure the scraper is kept sharp.
When removing prints, be slow! Push the scraper against the bed with the bevel upwards. Apply careful pressure till the tip moves just a little. Move to a different spot till the blade slips under a little, then work the scraper left and right. You'll hear a sucking sound, that's the print coming free. It gets much easier if you let the bed cool down.
For very tall prints with a relatively small area, you might not need the scraper at all.
PETG has a tendency to stick too much with glass and fuse with PEI. We don't know if the Build-Tak clone Creality uses contains PEI. I suggest to grab  gluestick to add a safety layer for printing PETG.


What kind of filaments can I use? This is probably the most basic of questions. When I was shopping for a printer I saw models that would list a slew of certain plastics that the printer can print while other printers (different suppliers) would only list PLA/ABS. At the same time, the instruction manual that came with my printer only listed PLA and ABS.

What is actually used to determine the possible material (other than diameter)? I assume that if the nozzle can reach the required temperature to melt the plastic and the bed can reach the necessary temperature to maintain bed adhesion, then my printer can print that plastic. Am I correct?

For example, my nozzle can reach 250 °C, but the bed can barely reach 80 °C so I can print with ABS but not with ASA (since it needs at least 90 °C on the bed. However, if I switch out the heating element for something beefier then that opens up anything that needs a hotter bed. Right?

Let's assume that I have the means to change nozzles and extruder type to fit the need of the filament. The goal of this question is to limit to one or two limiting factors of the printer without major modification.

There are other factors besides temperature. Certain "soft" filaments won't go well through all extruders, and some other filaments with wood/metal particle additives don't go well through every extruder type and can cause clogging. Even people who do tend to print a lot of these materials will often use a specific nozzle just for those filaments.

That said, you still might be able to print even with something like ASA that seems unsupported. You can do this by taking additional measures for bed adhesion, or upgrading or swapping your nozzle or hot end.

If you can print PLA and ABS, you can probably also print so-called PLA+ and PETG, at a minimum.


How is heat creep characterized? I have a Delta printer with Bowden extruder and all-metal hotend. When I start printing, the hotend gets often jammed. It seems to be independent of the print I am currently doing. Retraction does not affect it either (it happened even with 0 mm retraction).

However, despite occurring mostly at the start of the print, it also occasionally happens mid-print.

I can resolve the issue by pulling the filament out and after few seconds putting it back in only for it to happen a couple lines afterwards.

At this point it seems to me that heat creep is most likely, in spite of having a 40x40 mm fan blowing across the fins of the heatsink.

Is this heat creep? If not, what could be the cause?

Constant jamming sounds like heat creep. It could be that:

The fan might not be powerful enough. Get a better fan
You're printing too slowly. Try increasing the print speed.
The temp might be too hot on the hot end. Lower printing temp.
The heater might be too close to the radiator. Adjust the hot end so that there is a max amount of space between them.
The firmware could be letting the hot end get too hot. With the cooling fan on, do a PID tune.
The filament might be getting stuck in the throat. Try lube, especially if you are using an all metal hot end.
Heat from the bed might be affecting the cooling fan's ability to cool the hot end. Try lowing the heated bed's temp.


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

I know what the individual parts are; it is a lead screw, a smooth rod ... but how do you call the mechanism that allows this linear motion?

Mechanism is defined as: an assembly of moving parts performing a complete functional motion, often being part of a large machine

So I guess, it has to have a name, doesn't? .. but I am unable to find it

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


Conversion of 3 mm ABS filament to 1.75 mm I have a few kg of 3 mm filament when I only have use for 1.75 mm.

How can I make 1.75 mm from 3 mm filament?

In theory, making filament is easy.  You take a 3 mm hotend with a 1.75 mm hole, and extrude the 3 mm (sometimes actually 2.85 mm) filament, let it cool, and then reel it up.

In reality there are a lot of pitfalls to making filament - if the pressure isn't even, the hole not perfect, the temperature uneven, you can end up with oval filament, filament with bubbles, or worse.  If you are over temperature you may damage the filament and it could look good, but not melt correctly when used.  If you reel it too fast you may thin it out more than the intended diameter, or too slow and you may thicken it. A lot of hotends use steppers, which may result in ripples in the filament, so you may end up building a nearly custom filament machine.

Resolving all these problems is probably not worth simply selling or giving away the filament to someone that can use it, and buying the right size for your machine.

If you are still interested, though, you might as well go all the way and build a full filament extruder that accepts raw plastic feedstock (usually pellets) as well as your filament, and convert it that way, then continue using it to create your own filament.


Prusa i3 improvement - cooling fan I wanted to add a cooling fan to my Prusa i3. The board used by this printer is an MKS GEN L v1.0, such as this one:

The cooling fan plug seems to be the white one on the top left corner, just below the step motor drivers. I plug a working 5 V DC fan, but it is not rotating. What could be the cause? The cooling fan has been enabled permanently using Slic3r to generate the G-code I am printing.

The board is powered by a 12 V power supply.

Are there some modifications to do on the embedded software side?

The MKS GEN L v1.0 is a board that according to the information found on the web operates to run on a voltage between 12 - 24 V, this means that all peripherals on the board should match this voltage. A 5 V fan should therefore not be connected.
First, you need to establish that you are using the correct fan port on the board.
Which port to use?
If you take a closer look at the board layout you will find that the top fan connector cannot be controlled, it is a fixed voltage power supply of 12 - 24 V (so basically depending on the power that is supplied to the board).
This can be seen from the board layout:

Or zoomed in on the top left corner:

Note that no pin number is given, this means that it is a constant power supply fan header. A 5 V fan attaching to this port does not seem to be a good solution, it can easily burn out the fan electronics. This fan should match the voltage of the power supply you use, so when powered by a 12 V power supply, attach a 12 V fan or a 24 V fan when the board is powered by 24 V.
As said, this fan port is not controlled by PWM and can therefore not be scheduled from within your slicer, however, it makes an excellent fan for cooling the cold end of the nozzle assembly.
To schedule a fan for print part cooling through the slicer you need to attach the fan to the other fan header below the X stepper driver on the left, if you look closely to the schematics, you see that that is a fan that can be scheduled using the digital pin D9.

Note that this fan also operates at the voltage specified by your power supply; a 5 V fan should not be connected to this port either!
The solution to your problem is to buy a fan of the correct voltage and connect it to the correct fan header.
As you have tried connecting a fan to the lower fan port, and conclude that the fan has never rotated but still rotates when supplied with a correct voltage, you need to ask yourself if this port is:

configured correctly in the firmware, or
not broken.

Now that you know where to connect the fan for print part cooling, connect a fan that matches the power supply voltage.
Why is the fan not working?
The microprocessor of the board schedules and reads various ports or pins based on the firmware it runs. This implies that the setup of the firmware is very important in the use of certain ports. It is therefore important to research if this port:

was meant to be used by the printer manufacturer (so enabled in the firmware)
or board is controlled by which firmware

Once you establish that it is enabled (e.g. the manufacturer describes that the printer has a print part cooling fan), you should try printing a part where you enable the print fan in the slicer software. If not, you need to change the firmware configuration to enable the fan. If this does not work, you should address your attention to why it is not working. A multimeter can be used to read the voltage of the fan MOSFET output or the D9 output. If either one of those doesn't record a voltage, your board or MOSFET are probably broken. To fix this, you could solder an unused pin to the fan MOSFET or a new MOSFET and change the firmware. Another option is to buy a new board and flash a new configuration of a printer firmware onto it.


Infill keeps "shoveling", but perimeters are fine While printing PET-G (@ 220 °C nozzle and over 58 °C bed temperature), the outlines always print fine but the infill keeps shoveling. Could I be printing too hot or too cold? I am using a 0.8 mm nozzle.

Shoveling is when the plastic is over extruding to the point at which it starts piling up in the path of the nozzle, usually resulting in an uneven surface. Visually, it manifests like a snow plow shoveling snow. I tried adding an image, but, the filament is black so that turned out to be a difficult task.

This reason why this is a problem is because the nozzle hits those peaks while printing, which seems to be causing the print to detach from the bed. I've also noticed the print curling up at the edges, but I think that's a separate problem.

I am printing at 3000 mm/min. The outline, and the infill is 80 % of that. The layer height is 0.6 mm

Normally, what you're calling shoveling is caused by having the bed too high - when you deposit enough material for a space that should be the nominal layer height high, but significantly less volume is available, it has nowhere to go but up around the edges of the nozzle.

However, in your case your temperatures are also seriously wrong for PETG. The normal recommended range of nozzle temperature for PETG is 230-250 °C, and in my experience, you need the full 250 °C to have any hope of printing fast. At 220 °C I'm really surprised you're not having problems with underextrusion instead.

The bed temperature is likely even more important. Minimum bed temperature for PETG is 80 °C. If the material is hitting a 58 °C bed as it comes out, it's likely to cool way too fast. This may lead to what you call shoveling (especially if you see both pits and ridges rather than just ridges), but even if not, it's going to prevent the material from bonding to previously laid down lines, so that your print will end up more brittle than PLA.

One additional detail I initially missed involves your 0.8 mm nozzle. It might be hard for the hotend to keep up with properly melting that much PETG at normal print speeds. As noted in the comments, a 50 mm/s linear extrusion rate with an 0.8 mm nozzle is equivalent, in volumetric extrusion rate, to a 200 mm/s linear extrusion rate with a typical 0.4 mm nozzle, which would be extremely fast for PETG. It's unlikely that any hotend except a "volcano" or similar (with extended melt zone length) could keep up with raising that much material to 250 °C that quickly.


Extruder skipping/clicking (brand new printer) I just got a GeeeTech Rostock 301 mixer head delta printer and am having trouble honing in on why the extruder is struggling with my first spool of ABS.

Being the main parts of the printer came assembled I am unsure of where to start taking things apart. I have a read a multitude of possible causes and am hoping for some direction on which is most likely so I can start there.

Symptoms:

Extruder clicking. The extruder makes a low grinding noise every time it tries to extrude more than 1mm of filament using the manual controls. Again I am working with ABS so I have the hotend heated to 250 degrees C. The extruder had no trouble when I was first putting the filament in and using the extruder to push it thorough the Bowden tube.

But when I tried using the manual controls to extrude a small amount of filament it seems to be fine, just a small time delay between the extruder moving and the plastic coming out of the hotend.

Things I have read to try

Again this a kit printer and the involved components came assembled (see below) so I am not sure what I should look at first. I assume that if it came pre-assembled then it is most likely done correctly.

Clean out the hotend, do a cold pull
Take apart the extruder and realign the driving cog, check for shaft slippage
Replace your Bowden Tubes
Tweak slicer settings

For the first 3 I think its new so it should be clean, in working order. And for number 4 I put what was in the manual except for the temperatures (because the settings shown in the manual were for PLA but it is a PLA or ABS printer)

Assembly:

The printer being a kit came with the print head completely assembled as shown in the picture.

Not shown in the picture it also had the Bowden tubes in place. It also came with the extruder assembled as shown in the picture.

So aside from wiring and mounting these pieces the only thing I did was cut a clean edge on the Bowden tube and connect that to the extruder.

First you have to see if nothing jams the filament (blocked nozzle or anything in its path, PTFE tube not good, etc).

Second, the temp for ABS is about 225°C to 230°C. At least that worked for me.

If none of the above, then go for the motor. The problem could be from bad settings, low power or a motor malfunction. Maybe the motor is no good to begin with.

Good luck !!!


Will my Duplicator i3 be able to print this hole in the vertical wall without infill? Will my Duplicator i3 be able to print this hole in the vertical wall without infill?
The wall is 7mm the diameter of the hole is 24mm, the shell thickness is 0.8mm.

The answer is yes. However I notice that some knowledge is missing due your comments.

The walls of the part is formed by 1 or several lines, this lines are called shell.

The Infill is the part that fills all within the walls or shell; you can set the infill by 5% to 100% depending in how strong you need the printed part or set 0 to get an empty shell.

The printer can be able to print any part, but some areas will need supports, this suports is a kind of outerfill to support areas that could overhang basically walls with 45 degrees or less, this support can be easily removed from the final part


Are there any ways to make a 3D print transparent? I am aware of several "clear" filaments for a ABS or PLA printer.  They, however, have a cloudy or frosted glass appearance. I do not believe this is possible to eliminate but I believe it can be reduced.

Are there effective ways to make a print have a more transparent appearance?

It depends on a lot of factors, type of plastic, whether the parts need to be strong, can you use a vase print, etc.  Here's a few thoughts.

PLA - The brand of PLA makes a big difference, some can be printed very clear, some can't.  Most of the transparent PLAs I've used print much more clear at around 240°C.

ABS - I've seen some pretty impressive clear parts printed as a single layer shell in ABS and then vapor smoothed. I tend to find ABS more translucent and less transparent though.

PETG - Again the specific PETG you use matters, but I haven't seen nearly as much variation as with PLA.  I'm not sure how much temperature matters, but if it's too hot you get bubbles which will decrease clarity.

Thin Wall Prints - I don't have much experience here, but the Smooth On XTC-3D or vapor smoothing seem to be effective.

Solid Prints
If I want transparency, I usually print it at 100% infill (should be a real 100%, too much overextrusion or underextrusion will decrease transparency).  Printing slower and with less cooling sometimes helps.  It's easier to get the infill solid with a direct drive extruder, I couldn't get decent results with a long bowden tube (a short bowden tube works fine).

Here's a page where I tested 10 transparent filaments, the printed samples are 2mm thick, 100% infill - http://thrinter.com/10-transparent-filaments.  Those samples are all overextruded a bit, you can get better results if you dial in the extrusion precisely, but that's hard to get right, and the optimal settings may change slightly depending on the part geometry.  Larger nozzles and thicker layers may help to, but I haven't experimented much with that as there are significant downsides to that approach.


What makes Pronterface wait for user? I'm using Cura with the Pronterface UI to slice/print and sometimes printing just stops - always in the first layer - when it happens the printing screen shows "Waiting for user", when I press the button on the printer printing resumes.

I don't know when this happens, it just happens about once every 5-10 prints, when this happens if I close the printing window and immediately click "print to usb" to reopen it the problem doesn't repeat.

This only happens with the Pronterface UI, it doesn't happen with Cura basic UI or when printing using an SD card.

Not using Pronterface isn't a good option because when I'm fine-tuning a model it much more convenient to send a test print from the computer and not copy the gcode to an SD card and print from the printer.

My printer is Robo3D R1+

That's the temperature problem that you've encountered.

The temperature of bed and hotend is reported every few seconds. Per default, first that sets is the bed temperature, then you need to wait for the bed to reach it, then warm up the hotend, and then start printing.


Wanhao duplicator i3 print bed support warped As you can see in the picture, my heated bed support is too low on the right side, even touching the Y-axis chassis end plate.

This is only the case on the front of the printer. The back is perfectly straight. Do you know how this can happen and what can be done?

okay, after ferociously dismantling the whole bed I found out that the bed and the bed support are perfectly straight!
So there is something  warping the bed and support. De Y-axis bars are perfectly flat too.

I found out that my table is not flat! This made the complete printer warped and even bent the print bed. put some cardboard under the frontleft foot and presto! As flat as it should be!


What would cause a SLA printer to print a solid block of resin? I’ve just brought my printer back out after a month and it’s first print created a solid block of resin about 1.5 cm deep and the full width and length of the print bed. What could cause this?

My only thought so far is that the FEP film / vat bed is looking a little cloudy even after cleaning. I wondered if this could have caused the light to diffuse across the whole bed?

Is the laser (or whatever light source it uses) visible? The cloudy film sounds like a good candidate for light diffusion and thus solidifying the entire resin, but if there are visible components to the light source it may help narrow it down.

If it uses a projector ("LCD") solutions, it may also be that the display that filters the light to certain regions of the resin to selectively solidify the print may be at fault, but that's rather unlikely.

The first thing that, in my opinion, you should do is to check that the object you are printing does not have a corrupt model file. Assuming that you have spare, fresh resin (if your resin is old, that's actually the most likely issue...) and it wasn't too hard to pry out that block, you could try printing something else that worked in the past.

While it's doing that, you may be able to see where/how it is printing. If the beam diffuses or lights up the whole area, you can tell if it's a printer issue (the film sounds like a good first thing to try replacing in that case). On the other hand, if the resin is old, it's probably just getting oversensitive and your printer is fine.

The resin is very touchy with these things, and has a shelf life of a few weeks to a few months, and less if it's ever opened.


Upgrading printer controller I purchased a (very) low tier printer a while back, and now I am looking to start upgrading. First on my list is to upgrade the controller1).

My initial plan was to upgrade to an Arduino Mega with a RAMPS 1.4 running Marlin, but as I started to try to find a RAMPS 1.4 board I started questioning my plan. Almost every source I could find for the board was either out of stock or very sketchy. Then I discovered that RAMPS 1.6 exists, but I can find even fewer places with it in stock.

Is the Mega + RAMPS combo still what people are using? I made a printer 4 years ago and that was what I used, but due to the scarcity of RAMPS boards for sale I am now unsure if it is still being used by the community.

If RAMPS still is the recommendation, what brands are reputable? (I'm trying to figure out if using RAMPS 1.4 with a Mega is an outdated solution and if there are better solutions these days.)

1) Upgrading is necessary for:
Temperature/humidity sensors for monitoring/feedback; enclosure heaters (plan on having enclosed build space, work in a relative cold space); larger display with plenty of tactile switches; light sensor so the LEDs illuminating the enclosure can be modulated to provide more constant light levels for a webcam; possibly some joy sticks to manually maneuver the extruder and bed; etc. Basically I want something that can feasibly handle any unnecessary sensor/input I may eventually want to add. I'm familiar with Arduino and know it has those capabilities, but have no clue about other controllers.

If you own a Raspberry Pi , you may first want to try Klipper firmware. This firmware does the heavy lifting on the RPi itself and sends commands to the printer board via USB.

My Ender 3 pro works much better with this firmware.


What is the functional difference between an e3D-Style nozzle, Makerbot MK8 and M6 Chinesium Nozzles? There is pretty much an ecosystem of two Nozzle designs out there that share the M6 thread on the coupler to the Heating block:

the e3D "snub nose" or "shouldered" design.
the "Chinesium" nozzle that is often claimed to be some "MK8" or "MK10" without naming what item of which manufacturer is actually iterated there.

They seem to be derived from the Makerbot MK8 Hotend which uses M6 threading and not the MK10, as that uses M7 threading.

What differentiates the two and can one swap one for the other?

Differentiation

The main differences between the e3D-Nozzle family and the "simple" Nozzle are the wrench size, body length and thread length of the nozzle. In fact, I have come across 2 different "Chinese" styles of nozzle, a "big" and a "small" one.

Comparison

For comparison, take a look at this photo, where I aligned the lower ends of the bodies to line up under the wrench needed to handle them.

In words, left to right:

Chinese Big M6 Nozzle

size 8 metric wrench, 4 mm thread length, 1 mm clearance, extends a minimum of 8 mm from the heater block

Chinese Small M6 Nozzle

size 7 metric wrench, 4 mm thread length, 1 mm clearance, extends a minimum of 8 mm from the heater block

e3D v6 normal (aka NOT volcano etc)

size 7 metric wrench, 6 mm thread length, 2 mm clearance, extends a minimum of 5 mm from the heater block

Replaceability

Chinese big to Chinese small nozzles in either hotend

Due to the dimensions, one can easily swap the big and small Chinese nozzles for one another. They are virtually interchangeable but differ in the wear patterns.

Chinese nozzles in e3D Hotend

The 3 mm shorter snout and deeper butting with the heatbreak of the e3D nozzle in its designed hotend make it hard to swap a Chinese nozzle into an e3D setup: neither does the thread allow to screw the nozzle in the right length sometimes, it also extends much further. To accommodate, the whole heater block has to be screwed about 3 mm more onto the heatbreak, then the nozzle gets screwed in. The result is equal in overall length.

e3D Nozzle in Chinese Hotend

However, the long thread of the e3D Nozzle allows it to be mounted in a hotend designed to hold a Chinese nozzle without trouble - the 3 mm of difference in the body are used for a longer thread and clearance between thread and body, resulting in the same overall length without changing the mounting position of the heater block on the heatbreak.

Internals

Stefan of CNC-Kitchen recently tortured a couple of nozzles for science and investigating wear and tear (video). He found out a couple of differences on the internals:

The Chinese nozzle had a non-straight pattern on the inside
The angle in the feeding cone is 60° in an e3D and 90° in the Chinese sample

Conclusion

The Chinese Style nozzles can be interchanged for one another. an e3D style nozzle with standard length (aka not-volcano) can be swapped in for any Chinese Style nozzle. A Chinese Style nozzle needs to have the heater block shifted if mounted into an e3D hotend.


Would a really short melt-zone be beneficial IANAE (I am not an engineer), but I've been wondering: wouldn't it make more sense to limit the length of the melt-zone and hot-end as much as possible? I've been having a lot of problems with nylon causing jams inside the heat-block, this being the region where the filament is no longer rigid, but becomes squishy then liquid as it is heated.

In my extruder (E3d v6) there is a cold section, then a heat-break then about 20mm of hot-end.

If the heating of the filament took place at the last possible moment, say the last couple of mm before the orifice, wouldn't this not only alleviate jamming problems caused by soft filament deforming, but also allow for much more precision with extrusion - less hysteresis due to the reduced volume of semi-liquid material.

I'd imagine that this would work by having a heated nozzle tip, say a nichrome ring around the nozzle orifice, and as the filament hits the inside of the bottom of the nozzle it melts and is forced out the hole.

There is a trade-off between the length of the melt zone and the speed at which you can print. The filament itself is somewhat of an insulator, so as the outside of the filament is heated up by being in contact with the melt zone, the inside stays cold. Therefore, the filament needs a certain amount of time inside the melt zone for the inside to fully melt. If you have a shorter melt zone, you need to print more slowly to give the filament enough time to melt. This is precisely the reason why the E3D volcano exists. It has a longer melt zone, so you can print more quickly.

You can partially compensate for a shorter melt zone by heating the nozzle up more, but there is an upper limit to how hot you can go (you don't want the outside of the filament to burn before the inside is melted).


What's smoother? Acetone treated PLA or ABS From my understanding, both PLA and ABS can be treated with acetone to make them smoother. So when they are treated with acetone, which is smother PLA or ABS or are they about the same?

When I search online, all I find is how to treat the objects.

ABS filaments will smooth well with using acetone, it's been used for a while now.

For PLA filaments it's a different story, pure PLA will not smooth out in acetone and it will likely only cause structural failure of the product.

However most PLA filaments aren't pure PLA, they contain additives including ABS that react differently when exposed to acetone and the reaction will really depend on the manufacturer of the filament, only a few PLA filaments are known to smooth like ABS when in an acetone vapor bath, it is the case for ColorFabb PLA filaments and it is absolutely not the case for bq PLA filaments that only soften and break when exposed to acetone.

You'll have to make small tests with different brands of filament to see which smooth well and which don't but if you want to go fast either go with ABS or use other smoothing techniques such as sanding + 3D print Smooth On epoxy.


Why are there so many print speed parameters in slicers? The expert mode of Slic3r PE has almost a dozen speed values:

I understand that ultimately print speed at a particular temperature correlates with bond strength, so things like bridges and the first layer having different speeds are reasonable.

What about the rest? Why does infill have 3 variations? How are the different categories listed impacted distinctly from any other form of layer/path bonding?

There are multiple parameters because of the trade-off at print speeds.
Slow printing will have less ghosting and a better overall quality, but it takes way more time.
Fast printing will be fast (oh thank you, Captain Obvious), but you will get stronger ghostings and poorer line quality overall. Maybe some strange artifacts.
But you don't need a good print quality in areas that are not visible at all, but you do need it for the outer shell. Also, is the travel mostly just something that you want done as fast as possible but maybe not so fast that that the whole printer starts shaking?
So, you want to set different parameters for different parts.
Next reason: most slicers are used for a large variation of printers, and every printer is a litte bit different—even the same printer type with different addons (like a vanilla Anet A8 vs. a beefed up Anet A8). For the slicer to be able to be used by all these printers, it is necessary to be able to set multiple parameters.
To get deeper into your question about the different infill speeds: if you print a solid infill you will also need to give the printed material more time to cool down, because it is packed tightly and there is not much surface area for heat to get away. If you print these areas too fast you will end up with a part that is too warm and warps and deforms all the time while the next layers were printed on already, inserting even more heat into the part and isolating the warm parts from the outside. You can observe similar behavior when printing overhanging areas with thick walls: there the part will stay in a semi-solid state, and deforms all the time.
But how fast you have to go depends on the cooling system you have on your printer.


Out of order operations on AnyCubic Prusa-I3 clone Another thing I'm seeing with my new build.
Late in a small print, the unit appears to perform operations "out of order" occasionally.  Here's a picture where it's running a layer across the model.

These "skips" can start in the middle of a line.  It always comes back and fills them in before starting the next layer - more or less accurately.  But from my very limited understanding of gcode, it doesn't seem like this should happen.

When watching the print closely, I'll occasionally see small glitches, where the head jogs very slightly as it runs a line across.

This was sliced with Cura - I'm going to try a different slicer and see if I get anything similar.
Thanks!

This is just your slicer doing this. If you inspect the G-code file, you will see that the printer is faithfully doing what the slicer told it to. Most slicers use a fairly simple heuristic for determining the order in which lines are processed, which sometimes comes up with sub-optimal solutions like these.


Makerbot Replicator 2X - restarts after heating Really need some help. Let me run you through as much as possible.
I have a Replicator 2x. I've owned this for around 2 weeks now (used). after some teething issues I've been printing really well all week.
I left a print for the first time to run on its own and when I returned it had stopped after approx 10 % was still on and on the main menu screen.
I removed the partial print and, since then, when I go to print or preheat it will reset near the maximum temperatures (230 °C extruder and 110 °C platform). Individually setting these, all achieve desired temperatures, and filament change still works.

I swapped the left-hand-side (LHS) extruder parts for the right-hand-side (RHS) and tried a reprint, same result.
I swapped the wiring at the board to use the LHS extruder wiring for the RHS. same.
Disconnected the stepper motors and same issue.
Reinstalled firmware; same result...

It was running the MM2X (dual extrusion) upgrade, and I was supplied with the original extruder and thermocouples, spent afternoon swapping and this has the same issue.
By reset, the whole unit goes dark (LCD and LED), beeps and back to main menu.
It works with the bed unplugged, or the extruder heater unplugged, but not with both plugged in. Heard this being called brown out.
I'm guessing its the Mightyboard or the power pack. All lights are green on the board during running. I have a multimeter and can test the board if known values or a guide location is available.
Any help would be great, pulling my hair out.

"Im guessing its the mightyboard or the power pack."

Right track there.
Usually this symptom suggests your heaters are overtaxing your power supplies.
Since you swapped extruders already, the heating elements and sensors in those are not likely to be an issue.  That leaves the bed heating element and power supply.

A resistance measurement can help rule out the bed heater but since it works without the extruder, its probably not a severe issue there.

If I had to guess, I'd say power supply.  If you can, rig up a meter to measure its output and cause the issue.  If the voltage drops drastically in tune with your screen going dark, try to replace with a beefier (higher amperage) one.


Show the time index in Cura Layer View playback Cura has a layer view feature that lets you watch a simulation of the extruder head as it lays down material at each layer. Is it possible to get Cura to show a time stamp as it does this? That would let me set reminders to check a print just at certain critical times.

These estimates tend to be very approximate, even if Cura has the accurate acceleration values for your firmware. An error of 100% is not unusual.

What you probably want is an alarm at a specific layer (a few before the critical ones). You might be able to add this to Octoprint fairly easily - it does support plugins which can provide (for example) pushbullet notifications.

I'm not sure that 'critical' points are much more likely to fail than other less predictable things (like bed adheesion failure, extruder jams, filament breaks) - unless you're testing features (and then hopefully you can print only a slice of the part).


Question about retraction distance and stringing/print quality with PETG I've tried printing the Basic Stringing Test on my CR-10S using PETG (250 °C nozzle, 80 °C bed) with different retraction distances leaving all the rest unchanged.

In the image below you can see 0 mm, 5 mm and 10 mm retractions (in order left-to-right).

The result stunned me because I would have imagined that raising retraction distance would have diminished the stringing.

Why is that?

You cannot endlessly increase the retraction distance, doing so leads to different problems as you encountered. As a rule of thumb, the retraction distance should not exceed the length of your nozzle. Depending on the type of extruder, many printers use a value between 2 and 7 mm (e.g. the Ultimaker Cura retraction length is 6.5 mm at 25 mm/s, this is for a Bowden style extruder).

In fighting stringing (in which PETG is very subjected to happening) retraction length is only one of the parameters that you need to adjust to optimize the printing process. Other important parameters (besides retraction length) for stringing are:

retraction speed
travel speed
minimum travel distance

Furthermore, the type of extruder (direct or Bowden) is also important and other parameters that may reduce the stringing are:

coasting (stop extruding before the end of the print line is reached using the residual pressure in the nozzle to extrude the last filament)
pre-loading/priming filament after a move

Usually it suffices to tune the first 4 parameters. As you see in your results, the retraction of 5 mm is close to the result you would expect, increasing it, may lead to clogs and in your case leads to a sort of stringing. This latter result is probably due to the fact that the filament does not reach the print in time (you definitely see under-extruded cylinder columns), while leftover pressure after printing the column layer oozes some of the filament creating strings.

Just play with the retraction length in steps of 0.25 mm (around the 5 mm) and you may try to change the speed with 5 mm/s increments if necessary.


What’s the best way of leveling the bed? Recently I’ve been having trouble leveling my bed on my Creality Ender 3 Pro.  It’s not that it’s hard to level or anything, it’s that it won’t stay level for more than a day or two.  I’ve been leveling it the same way as always with a piece of paper and I’ve been sure to disable steppers.  So if anyone knows what I can do about this, please let me know.

Generally, there is no best way, there are only the ways that work for you.
I use a feeler gauge, mounted on a detachable holder. I home to 0, lift the Z by 1 mm, and then level the bed to the same number on the screws and corners. Then I home back to Z=0 and perform an extrusion test, and if that is not satisfactory, use a different number for the leveling. The number on the plunger does not generally read 1 mm, as there is an offset between the 0 of the gauge and the printer.
When I don't level from 0 or am in a hurry, I usually only alter leveling by doing about 2-5° turns on all the screws to adjust the 0-height via the nuts, using the visual of the printed line as my aide. This only works because I have the experience how a good first layer should look like.
Another typical method that I stopped using once I had the feeler gauge is the paper, but I found it inconsistent.
Do not do these:

Leveling the bed with a level does not lead to good prints - your print bed needs to be parallel to the movement of the printhead, not to the earth!


How do I change Z safe homing coordinates in the G-code , not in Marlin I bought a Vivedino T-Rex 3 not realizing it doesn't have continue after power failure.  I am over it.  What I usually do is keep the part away from the home position so if it crashes I can continue without crashing the head during z home.  I measure the height of what printed open the G-code and remove the layers before the layer with that Z height, then run G28 X Y  to get away from the print.  Then run G28 Z.  But the T-Rex has a Bltouch and it goes to the middle of the bed to home the Z-axis. This is due to something called "Z safehoming is enabled".  I don't want to change the T-Rex Marlin firmware. Is there a way to tell it when I am doctoring up the G-code to home the Z at at y = 5 mm x = 200 mm?

Don’t home the Z. Rather measure the height of your print to continue at with calipers. Or with detective work in your G-code preview, finding the layer your print stopped at and finding the Z height of that layer. The direction of the infill can be a clue. Then carefully lower your Z-axis until your nozzle is at the right height for your next layer (so get the nozzle .2 mm above your printed layer if you’re doing .2 mm layers).
Edit your print G-code to change G28, to be G28 X0 Y0, so that it only homes X and Y, not Z. Erase any line with G29 (auto-leveling routine), or it will crash into your print. After the G28 X0 Y0 line, enter G92 Z[your starting Z layer height in mm] that spoofs the Z position to the 3D printer, and it shouldn’t need to home. Then edit the rest of the G-code to start at the next layer of your resumed print.
Leave all the beginning commands that do setup, temperature, and erase the lines beginning with the movement, lots of G1 commands. Find the G1 Z[your resumed layer height] command and begin there, that’s the beginning of the layer. Make sure there’s an existing G92 E0 that resets the extruder distance, and the layer starts from a reset extruder position, you don’t want it to frantically dump a bunch of plastic on your print at the first extrude command (that’s one danger of resuming in in the middle of a layer).
Get everything heated up before you hit print, home the X and Y, stay in that position, and prime the nozzle. You can even hold something flat under the nozzle to keep it primed while you start the print, and have some tweezers handy to catch the goober on the hot end, so it doesn’t wipe it on your print. It helps to have a retract move when you begin, many slicers have a retract move when it advances to the next layer, you may want to start your G-code on that line if it’s before the line with the G1 Z [your layer height].


Diagnosing why the left side of a print detaches from the board I have and Ender 3 Pro, which I'm enjoying except for an intractable problem. No matter how carefully I level the nozzle and tighten the X belt, using this great guide, the prints seem to be tilting to the right, particularly if they're tall. I realize this is a common problem, but I'm at a loss for what it's called and where the problem is most likely to be.

The first sign of trouble in paradise is that, after two layers of a simple rectangular base for a Galton Board I'm trying to build that uses sand, the right side is clearly thinner than the left:

This is with a translucent Overture PETG filament, 1.75 mm.

For the board itself, which is about 15 cm tall and looks MUCH better if printed vertically, I notice after about 3-4 cm that the bottom of the left side is becoming detached from the bed:

This gets progressively worse as the print goes on:

The entire Galton Box takes six hours to print using the default PETG settings in Cura for a default level of detail, so I'd really prefer to find a way to diagnose the problem sooner. I know this is not a new problem, but I'd be grateful for any guidance on what it's called or links to how to fix it -- and how to determine if it's a hardware problem or not.

Also, out of curiosity: If the machine isn't PERFECTLY level on the table -- my work desk appears to slant by about 2° -- could that be implicated?

The uneven level is explained by the unfortunate choice of the printer manufacturer to not have a second Z lead screw. It is pretty difficult to level these printers, it is all a combination of the correct X belt tension and roller tension. The uneven level in the first picture is what is causing your print to detach, As can be seen you've got a lot of "squish" on the right side, but less adhesion (seen by the less transparent color) on the left, therefore it would fail on the left.

You need to:

level better,
fix the skew XZ gantry or
use an adhesive (and/or a brim).

Please note that the level of the table top has nothing to do with the leveling of the printer, nor with the leaning of your prints. You're just having adhesion problems as a result of an uneven bed/gantry.


Not printing... wrong settings? My printer is not printing.

I already had my first print but now it won't print. I think it has something to do with the settings (it's not heating up).

I am using Cura.

I load up the program and then save the file to an SD card and then put it in the 3D Printer.

How can I setup the program so that the printer's heatbed heats up?

I wonder if there is a glitch in the firmware producing this unexpected result (which I think I also observed).

If you navigate to quick settings you should find preheat pla. Selecting this has little obvious effect (except for fan speed droop as the heater kicks in), but the target temps will now be 190C / 60C.

Print File seems to wait for the pre-heat to have reached a threshold before starting to run.


Printer doesn't lift Z between each probe I don't remember making a change to marlin but today when I tried to probe my bed my Z probe homed and slowly went downwards until the probe detected the first point. then without lifting it it just kept moving over the other points without lifting or even moving the z.

I canceled that and ran an M48, here's the output:

Recv: 1 of 5: z: -0.497
Recv: 2 of 5: z: -0.497
Recv: 3 of 5: z: -0.497
Recv: 4 of 5: z: -0.497
Recv: 5 of 5: z: -0.497
Recv: Finished!
Recv: Mean: -0.497500 Min: -0.497 Max: -0.497 Range: 0.000
Recv: Standard Deviation: 0.000000
Recv:
Recv: X:74.00 Y:191.00 Z:5.29 E:0.00 Count X:5920 Y:15280 Z:116
Recv: ok
Recv: echo:endstops hit:  Z:0.29

Any ideas on what's going on?

This is a link to my config files in a Dropbox folder.

I have an Anycubic i3 Mega-S with a graphical LCD screen.

In my Pins.h folder turns out I needed to put a x-max pin. I hadn't defined that so it was randomly reading it as high. my printer thinking it can't go higher was freaking out basically :) this explains the other strange behavior i was experiencing!


Heater cartridge with 7.2 ohms - 12 or 24 V? I have a heater cartridge here that measures 7.2 Ω.

At 12 V that would amount to 20 W
At 24 V that would amount to 80 W

The cartridge itself is 2 cm long

Could it handle both voltages or is this clearly an under-powered 12 V cartridge?

e3D Heater Cartridges are documented to be around 4.8 Ω for 12 V & 30 W, 3.6 Ω for 12 V & 40 W, 19.2 Ω for 24 V 30 W and 14.4 Ω for 24 V 40 W.

7.2 Ω is a value quite far away from these values - about double of what the 12 V versions are listed and about a third/half of a 24 V heater cartridge. So it is not a cartridge that is similar to those. I have contacted e3D about updating the specs of their High Precision Heater Cartridges to include the nominal resistances to get more references, but that information is pending.

However, we don't need that. A variant of Ohm's law can help us estimate what this cartridge could be: Power is the square of Voltage (U) divided by Resistance.

$P=\frac {U^2} R = \frac {144\ \text V^2}{7.2\ \Omega} = 20\ \text W$

$P=\frac {U^2} R = \frac {576\ \text V^2}{7.2\ \Omega} = 80\ \text W$

Mounted in a 12 V Machine this should act work at 20 W, in a 24 V it would work at 80 W. It does not say, however, if it is designed to get powered with 12 V or 24 V. It doesn't help, that both types exist: I was able to find 12 V 20 W heater cartridges just as well as 24 V 80 W heater cartridges. If it is an underpowered 20 W one and mounted in a 24 V machine, you risk burning it though, but not the other way round.

To differentiate what exactly you have, a photo of the heater cartridge would be needed - it should bear at least a marking of what it's nominal wattage or voltage is.


How to clean up my build plate for a new build surface? My ender3 came with a BuildTak-clone surface, and as I was a little too vigorous in getting the print off the bed (I had failed to level right and printed a bit too tight to the bed, resulting in SUPER strong adhesion), I needed to replace it.

Peeling off the black was easy. The plastic sheet that held the glue was easy too... but how to clean up the bed to get the residue glue off and prepare for the new 3M sticker?

In my experience, we deal with 3M™ Adhesive Transfer Tape 468MP; high-temperature glue residue. To remove the leftover glue from my Aluminium build plate I found that it works best if I apply paint thinner.

I ran out of acetone for one refurbishment so I tried thinner and white (cleaning) spirit; the latter option did not work well. However, thinner worked very well. I got a bottle of "thinner" at the hardware store's house brand and found it to be more aggressive stuff than turpentine or acetone. I had tried those latter 2 but found that "thinner" works best.

Putting the thinner fluid on paper cloth directly to clean the glue did not work well. I applied the thinner directly onto the glue (splash it on), waited for a while to let it soak in to weaken the bonds after which you can remove it with a spatula and kitchen paper towel.

The exact contents of paint thinners are not always available but they contain various hydrocarbons.


Line width changes depending on the direction the print head moves I just re-ran all basic calibration steps from the Original Prusa i3 MK2 Manual.

Now, when doing the first layer calibration, lines that are running in positive X direction are ok, while those running in negative X direction are severely squished.

(The "waviness" of my print bed is an artifact of the camera lens distortion of my smartphone)

I already did Bed level correction, so each line is exactly the same width over its entire distance and tried to raise the live-adjust Z, but that leads to the thin lines not adhering at all. My printer is 100% stock, I modified nothing about it.

What can I do to troubleshoot this further?

As pointed at by @Horitsu, the Nozzle was the problem. Its outflowing hole was not perfectly round anymore, leading to a higher extrusion rate in one direction than others.

I exchanged it, and now everything works great again!


Drift and stuttering on prints I stopped using my Monoprice Maker Ultimate (re-branded Wanahao Duplicator 6) for a couple of weeks and am getting a seemingly random drift with all my prints now when re-attempting printing.

I also noticed a weird stutter when the extruder moves. It is particularly bad in one specific direction on the X-axis but is noticeable for all movement in the XY plane.

I have read online that this could be caused by voltage issues.

I have also read that it could be caused by over-tightened XY bearings but, given that it is happening in all directions, I am leaning more towards voltage issues.

Not sure if the drift and stuttering are related (I'd imagine they must be, but have no way of confirming). Would anyone be able to help provide troubleshooting steps for this as I am still very new to 3d printing?

I have provided a photo of what the drift looks like for this test model. I can provide more information if necessary. Thank you

I shook off my laziness and disassembled the mounts holding the stepper motors and tightened the belts. After doing so the drift was resolved.


Print quality problem with M3D FDM printer My model looks like this, does anyone know what's going wrong?

I'm thinking that if the small object looks like that, it's probably because of the slicer? And how about the bottom part of the cube... ummmm... I really don't know
I'm using an M3D printer, its own slicer and PLA at 205°C
Settings:

Layer thickness: 0.200 mm
Extrusion width: 0.375 mm
Filament flow: 100% -->98%
Print speed: 30mm/s -->42 mm/s
Retraction amount: 2 mm
Retraction speed: 6 mm/s
Minimal travel before retraction: 1 mm
Retraction z-hop: 0.150 mm

Update:
The smaller object is using the same file but resized.

Here's the calibration cube. After I've changed the filament flow to 98%, it seems that the situation became better. But, it might also be the problem of the slicer as the two object isn't the same.

Update :
Here are the settings

STL Files

https://files.fm/f/tnu9yyaj
https://files.fm/u/p5f7k6ya

It appears that there are several issues with the prints.

First layer too far from bed
The picture showing the bottom of the print clearly shows the deposited lines and gaps in between the lines. Please re-level the bed to get the print nozzle closer to the bed (usually a sheet of paper should fit between nozzle and bed without too much friction when pulled). Edit after new information: Your initial layer is definitely incorrect, a 0.4 (assuming you have a 0.4 nozzle) is too high, a rule of thumb is to not exceed about 75% of the nozzle diameter, so this should be max 0.3; this is a strong indication that your bed level is indeed to far from the nozzle. Also 1.5 mm line width for the first layer is way too high for correctly leveled bed to nozzle distance; this should be close to 0.4.
Too much flow
Various pictures show zits and blobs that stick out of the print. The best solution is to calibrate your extruder.
Too high temperature possibly/too few cooling flow
The deposited filament is not sharp, it looks like the filament it pretty fluid during the deposition. Please lower the temperature to 195 and or increase the part cooling flow.
Z banding or wobble
The wavy walls show that the printer suffers from X-Y movement (eccentric movement) when the Z lead screws advance. This cannot be fixed easily as this involves the mechanics and the design of the printer.

To determine to improve the print quality you first should look at the bed leveling issue, second calibrate the extruder (see if you ask it to spit out 100 mm of filament it actually is 100 mm rather than randomly lowering the extrusion flow parameter) before you print some calibration cubes at reduced temperature and or increased part cooling flow.


What causes burnt corners? Today I was printing some parts and I got these burn marks at the corners:

This is the first time I see this on this printer (Anycubic I3 Mega). I was using more or less the same settings (in Cura) as always, although I was using a new roll of PLA from a brand I haven't used before.

I was printing several parts in one job:

Most of them are somewhat affected:

Printing temperature:    200 °C
Build Plate Temperature:  60 °C
Printing Speed:           60 mm/s
Travel speed:            200 mm/s

Looks like overheating and insufficient airflow at the same time.

Try to reduce the temperature of the nozzle by 5-10 °C and increase print part cooling.


Auto home issue on ender 3 I own a Comgrow Creality Ender 3 3D Printer Aluminum DIY with Resume Print 220x220x250mm

I am a newbie and last night finally got a halfway decent print, but tonight I went to Auto Home it and it just keeps trying to move down, down down even though it physically can't go any lower. The z-axis just keeps trying to spin down. The long threaded metal rod just keeps turning like it needs to keep moving down. Any ideas?

It sounds like your z-stop isn't engaging when it's supposed to. The z-axis end stop should be located at the left of the build plate on the z-axis column. When the gantry (with the printhead) comes down, it should contact that. If it doesn't contact it, or if the end stop isn't functioning (isn't sending the signal to stop), the z-axis will just continue to try and go down. Check to ensure it touches where  you want it to touch, and if it is, then check the operation of the end stop. You can do that with a multimeter set to ohms. Just detach the wiring from the main board, place your two multimeter leads on either wire end, then click the end stop. it should go from no continuity to full continuity when you hear the end stop click.

EDIT: The endstop should look something like this:


Can linear guide rails be joined? Take the standard Hiwin rail, as commonly used in 3D printers:

They come in a max length of 2500 mm. Let's say I need twice that. If I connect two rails together end to end (as a "butt joint") and just bolt them into place, will it work as though it was one 5000 mm rail? Or are we limited to whatever lengths the manufacturers put out.

The answer is yes; and it's a normal thing to do.

https://www.igus.com/info/linear-guides-butting-rails-together

Basically you should only do it with rails from the same manufacturer and you might have to file the mating surfaces, but butting them is altogether trivial. This method works with Drylin and UHMW-PE bearing surfaces as recirculating balls could get caught in the small gap that is left behind. This would cause the carriage to "jump" as it passes over the joint.


Extrusion test cube resulted in one wall being thicker I calibrated my extruder according to the mattshub tutorial and printed the extruder calibration test cube with 2 perimeters of 0.4 mm. So the walls should all be 0.8mm thick but only 3 are close to 0.8mm and one is about 0.93 mm thick. The pictures are one turn, walls following each other are side by side:

Update 1
I printed a solid, smooth calibration cube with 1 Perimeter of 0.45 mm, 0 top/bottom layers and 0 % infill, as suggested and got 0.56 mm,
0.65 mm, 0.79 mm and 0.54 mm

I believe that the thickest side is the one where the layer ends and retraction is done in the corner before layer change. Maybe retraction settings?
Update 2
After setting the Extrusion Multiplier to 70%, I got wall thicknesses of 0.89 mm,
0.86 mm, 0.81 mm and 0.96 mm on a 2 Perimeter print of the same object.
Update 3
Fudging with the steps per millimeter changed them from 428 to 306. The resulting one perimeter test was 0.59 mm, 0.46 mm, 0.42 mm and 0.39 mm, pretty much spot on safe for one wall being fat and one thin...
I print at 215 °C with 5 mm retraction to increase strength and get stringing in check.

Why not that test print?

You don't want a print constraining your walls to 0.8 mm, since you don't want to print with 1 nozzle diameter for better print quality. Atop that, slicing can induce errors that increase the thickness of walls without us noticing it in the slicer view. Two sources of error (once for each wall)
means an additional 10% error, which would bring the wall as you got perfectly into the expected area: $0.8\text{ mm}\times 1,1\times 1,1=0.968\text{ mm}$

Let's Troubleshoot!

You might not have calibrated the extrusion multiplier correctly, or the steps/mm might be off, or other print settings shoot us way off. Let's make sure to find the source.

Filament extrusion multiplier

use a solid cube as a base, for example, https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:38108
set line width to 0.45 mm to counteract errors from die swell and get a better print result in general1

$d_\text{line width}=0.45\text{ mm}$

set the number of walls/perimeters to 1

$p=1$

set infill to 0%
set top layers to 0
set the extrusion multiplier to 100 %
print the cube (or half of it, Z-height does not matter too much) with no top and infill and 1 perimeter
re-measure the walls

Done that? Math time to calculate the correct multiplier for the filament! The average wall is easy:$$d_\text {average}={\frac{\sum_{i=1}^4 d_i}{4}}$$ $$\frac{d_\text{line width}\times p}{d_\text {average}}=\text{Extrusion multiplier}$$
Remember, that the result is not in % but a float point number! 1 is 100%. So you fill in that value times 100 into the extrusion multiplier.

After this, repeat the whole process with 2 perimeters.

1 - further reading: Why is it conventional to set line width > nozzle diameter? & Slicer line width vs. extrusion multiplier for layer adhesion?

Steps/mm

Make sure to test the extruder against the heated extruder, then repeat the calibration as your tutorial explained.

For some tests, let's fudge to some degree: Trying a filament dependant value of steps per millimeter can help to try to find other sources of errors easier - it makes them at times more pronounced. So we just multiply our steps/mm with the extrusion multiplier that we calculate the way outlined below. For 428 steps/mm and the numbers from Update 3, this gives about 306 steps/mm. This is not a proper calibration, but a means for troubleshooting. After fudging with the parameters reset the extrusion multiplier to 100%, we just want to check what influences our thickness.

Other print settings

215 °C is way hot. Even if it can increase print strength in solid prints, it is usually better to print at 200 °C and less.
Reduce retraction, possibly to 4 mm or maybe even 3 mm.

Lower temperature and less retraction should get prints more consistent, as pressure changes in the nozzle are more consistent. Remember, we are playing with the settings here.

And now Properly

Back to Calibration!

After all the fudging and probably making everything worse, we got to make sure to properly calibrate, those settings will be WAY OFF, in fact, we might go back to the original steps/mm or higher:

Note the current steps/mm as $s$.
Mark the 150mm from the extruder intake. remember if you marked on the close or far side... or simply cut the filament as exact as you can.
Heat the hotend
send a G1 E100 F100
Measure the distance to the extruder intake afterwards as $d$ to get the actual extruded filament $e$. Make sure to measure the same side of the marking!
$(150-d)=e$
$\frac{s\times 100}{e}=s^*$ as the corrected steps/mm
send M92 E###.## with ###.## taking the $s^*$
send M500 to store the value to the EEPROM

Extrusion/Flow Calibration

Now, go back to print a single filament extrusion multiplier calibration, as above. It should be somewhat close(er) to 100% now.

Slicer Fault?

Note that not all Slicers are equal: some slicers are better and more consistent in the results than others with the stock settings, and even with the same settings results may varry. For example the line width for the same settings with Simplify3D and Cura or Slic3r Prusa Edition can differ. The reasons for this are hard to find exactly, but they are most likely rooted in the different slicing processes and optimisation. Sometimes it is some setting that might be overlooked that results in line width variations.

The Slicer world changed a lot betwene 2015 and 2019, and even if you got fed up with one slicer years ago, now it might be worth a shot to test it again. See if you might get better results with other slicers, as for whatever reason, your slicer might cause the issiues, whih allows you to hunt down setting dependant items.


Steps per mm of extruder are incorrect after rebuilding I have got a problem that after upgrading my printer to an aluminum frame my extruder went from around 400 steps per mm at 16 micro steps (which did match the manufacturer's recommendation perfectly) to a bit over 1000 steps per mm at 16 micro steps.
This is a problem for me, since the limited amount of steps per second lower my maximum retraction speed.
What I tried since the rebuild:

Replace and adjust the current of the stepper driver - no change, even with another type of driver on different micro steps, of course with other values, but also about 2.5 times too high;

Connecting another motor with another cable - the other motor with nothing attached to it drove the same angle as my extruder stepper.

Could it be that the ATmega2560 on my MKS gen 1.4 board got damaged? Or did I change something in the firmware, which does have this effect?
I am using Marlin 1.8.5 and a E3D Titan 1:3 geared extruder and I am using the same setup as before! E3D claims to have 437 steps per mm on a 200 steps/revolution Nema 17 stepper and 16 micro steps. This value was working perfectly fine before.
Update:
With an Arduino Nano I measured the amount of steps my board sends at 418.5 steps/mm (programmed in EEPROM and in firmware) on a specific amount of extrusion length
G92 E0 -> G1 F100 E30

and I got
5220 steps for 30mm extrusion (reproducible).

It should be
418.5 steps/mm*30mm = 12555 steps.

Where,
(12555/5220) * 418.5 steps/mm = 1007 steps/mm

to have the effect of 418.5 steps/mm
...which is, oddly, the exact number that I got by marking filament, extruding, measuring and calculating.

Ok, thanks everyone for at least taking time to read or thinking about this.

The Problem is an absolute mess and there are two possible reasons:

-> the octoprint eeprom editor is broken

-> the ATMega2560's eeprom is broken. as far as i know companies buy used atmegas to cheapen the price and the >100k writes on my chip has been reached

I will try to figure out the exact problem, if i find time in the next days.
My current setup is just deactivate eeprom and i'm good to go. Even wiping eeprom with a small arduino sketch will get the error to return.

Now i will be able to sleep again :D


How do you heat a large glass print bed? I have printed a MPCNC machine.  It has a print area of about 30" x 30" and up to 11" tall.  (yes, those numbers are correct).

I found a perfect piece of glass at a garage sale for $5.00 to use as my print bed.

My problem now is how to heat the glass?  I was wondering if there is some sort of tape that would perhaps mimic what is on the rear window of a car, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

Any ideas or links to something that can get me some progress on my search would be greatly appreciated.

It will be very difficult to heat such a large bed, simply because of the enormous power required. Thomas Sanladerer recommends at least 0.6 W/cm² but notes 0.4 W/cm² also works (but takes "forever" to reach the target temperature).

For a 30"x30" bed, 0.6 W/cm² would come out to 3.5 kW. At 110 V that would require 32 A and at 220 V, 16 A. These are extremely large currents, perhaps more than you can draw from a single circuit: both in the EU and US sockets tend to be fused at around 15-20 A (the standard EU Schuko plug itself is only rated for 16 A).

You will be forced to go with a lower amperage, for 0.5 W/cm² you "only" need 27 A@110 V or 14 A@220 V. 0.4 W/cm² is 21 A and 11 A respectively

As such, if you are in the US, then it will be impossible to heat such a bed from a standard wall outlet. In the EU it might just about be possible, but make sure that the wiring in your house is in good state and capable to carry the current required (and note that running electrical equipment at its maximum rating for an extended period of time is never a good idea).

If you are in the US, you should definitely look into getting 3-phase power installed. If you are in the EU, you might also consider this as an option. It is able to deliver more power, but you'd need a special type of heater.

There are some suppliers that make custom silicone heater mats. If you can get one in this size that would be a good option, though it would be considerably more expensive than your \$5 piece of glass.

In any case you should not attempt a DIY solution because this is extremely dangerous. The currents you are dealing with should not be underestimated. People have already set their printers on fire due to using high currents at 12/24 V; you do not want to make a similar mistake using even higher currents at 110 V.