Converting Injection Molded STLs to printable STLs I bought a 3D printer kit a few years ago, and it's been working pretty well, the kit was made with injection molded parts. -- It's similar to a Huxley, and through the years, it's started to turn into a repstrap as I've repaired it with non-printed parts.

The parts are all open source and the STLs are provided by the maker, but they're optimized for injection molding, so instead of having flat surfaces, the surfaces usually have a lot of extra support going on -- here's an example of what I'm talking about:

Mind you, this is one of the simpler parts. -- But mostly I just want to clean these parts up -- make the edges flat by "filling in" these gaps (because: 1. it will print easier, 2. I can let my slicer handle the infill for me, etc.)

Currently, I've been using mostly TinkerCad and trying to make little rectangles and other shapes and boolean union them together to fill these gaps.  But this is a lot of work, trying to get it just right without covering up important gaps or leaving pockets in the middle of the part is very time consuming and error prone.

Additionally, I'd like to be able to make minor beveled edges so that the parts are easy to peel up. -- I currently do this with boolean subtractions of a bevel shape I made (again, in TinkerCad).

Is there any software out there that makes these options easier? -- What's the easiest way to fill in these gaps and add beveled edges? -- I'm hoping to spend no more than 10 to 15 minutes per part.  (Right now, it's hours.)

Although the foundation of your question is aimed at getting an opinion, I find nothing wrong with that, as long as answers are provided with an equal foundation based on facts.

I'm a fan of Meshmixer (free) but it's not well suited for this project, in my belief (opinion) as it's primarily aimed at organic modeling. On the flip side of this point is the fact that you have a working STL from which to build. Meshmixer will enable you to extrude the portions that sit below the surface level and create a flat plane. You can also "bridge" the elevated portions into a plane, but only if you remove the lower panels first. Leaving them in place creates an unprintable model.

Of course, Meshmixer has its own learning curve.

Along the same train of thought, Blender (free) is suited for performing similar tasks, again aimed at organic models. Again, starting with your STL makes it less of a complication.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, Blender's learning curve is substantially steeper, as the program does many things unrelated to 3d printing. It has spectacular control over the model and if you are able to learn the necessary controls and sequences, there isn't anything you can't do with it.

Meshmixer is more intuitive than Blender and therefore easier to learn. You may also find it easier to find YouTube resources for Meshmixer actions than similarly for Blender, mostly because the phrasing of your search will be clearer with Meshmixer.

As an example, one would create face groups of your STL. Various segments would then turn colors. You select the depressed face group and say, "cheer up" then delete that group. Using the appropriate tool, which currently escapes my alleged mind, you'd then bridge those faces remaining after the delete. What was once a shallow pool becomes a flat contiguous surface.

I would recommend using Lynda.com tutorial material if you can find it. There is also a resource called Honeypoint which somewhat specializes in Meshmixer tutorials.

Not out of the question is to engage the free Fusion 360 program and use all those YouTube resources, among others, to import your STL and create extrusions and modifications you require. Our local library has an agreement with Lynda.com which provides free access to Lynda.com's tutorial library. Conveniently for me, it has a great collection for Fusion 360.

I've become so accustomed to manipulating models in the above software and other programs that I attempted to rotate your image to see the other side! If this is one of the simpler ones, you have quite a job ahead of you!

Be sure to use an STL printability checker program to ensure your resulting models are workable. Meshmixer has that feature built in and a couple online services will repair your model free. One service I attempted to use destroyed the model, while the Microsoft version did not, but created a .3MF format. That added one more step to get it reconverted to .STL, but the results justified the effort.

Good luck


Filament being pushed back out the filament hole I just got a Monoprice Maker Select v2 off eBay for $200 and I'm very happy with it (so far). I'm learning a lot, but I've run into this problem that I cannot solve:

When I put filament into the extruder (it's a direct drive extruder), it works well for a minute or two and then the extruder pushes it back out the entrance hole where it should be inserted.

I have no idea why it's doing this. The weird thing is when it's being pushed back out it curls up, maybe from being pushed back up and being hot? It is unclear to me why it curls.

What I have tried:

Multiple brands of filament but nothing is working (I'm not sure what type of nozzle is on the Maker Select v2 but I have printed a Benchy once before this with no problems);
Unclogging - I took the cold end off and nothing looks jammed in it;
Pushed a guitar string through the hot end and no jams.

I cannot figure out why it's doing this.

Change the retraction distance, maybe you have a too long distance, that pushes the filament the whole way out.


Help with my G-Code to change filament change mid-print I'm using Ultimaker Cura, and I want to change the filament for a print that I'm attempting at layer 15. The problem I'm having is that I also need to use G-code to load and unload the filament with my BMG extruder. This is the script that Ultimaker Cura created for the post-process to pause at layer 15.

;current layer: 15
M83
G1 F3000 E-25
G1 F300 Z4
G1 F9000 X100 Y100
G1 F300 Z15
M104 S25; standby temperature
M0;Do the actual pause
M109 S215; resume temperature
G1 F3000 E25
G1 F3000 E-25
G1 F300 Z4
G1 F9000 X101.7 Y137.3
G1 F3000 E25
G1 F9000
M82
G92 E763.80547
G4 P1

This is what I usually use to unload my filament:

G21 ;Metric Values
G90 ;Absolute Positioning
M109 S205.000 ;205 Unload
G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Positioning
G1 E10 F100 ;Extrude 10mm filament
G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Positioning
G1 E-600 F1500 ;Retract Filament completely
G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder
M400 ;Wait Command
M117 REMOVE FILAMENT NOW ;LCD Message
M400 ; Wait Command

And to load:

G21 ;Metric Values
G90 ;Set absolute positioning
M109 S205.000 ;Preheat PLA
M300 S440 P200 ; Tone
M300 S660 P250 ; Tone
M300 S880 P300 ; Tone
G4 S5 ; Wait 5 seconds
G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Position
G1 E380 F1500; Fast Feed of 380mm filament
G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Position
G1 E100 F200 ;Feed 100mm filament slowly
G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Position
M400; Finish Move

So this is what I came up with, will it work?

;current layer: 15
M83
G1 F3000 E-25
G1 F300 Z4
G1 F9000 X100 Y100
G1 F300 Z15
G92 E0; Reset extruder position
G92 E-600 F1500; Retract Filament Completely
M104 S25; standby temperature
M0;Do the actual pause
G92 E0; Reset Extruder Position
M109 S215 ;Preheat PLA+
G1 E380 F1500; Fast Feed of 380mm filament
G92 E0; Reset Extruder Position
G1 E100 F200; Slowly Feed 100mm
M104 S25; Standby Temperature
M0; Do the actual Pause
M109 S215; resume temperature
G1 F3000 E25
G1 F3000 E-25
G1 F300 Z4
G1 F9000 X101.7 Y137.3
G1 F3000 E25
G1 F9000
M82
G92 E763.80547
G4 P1

First things first imho: M0 to stop the stamp. I dunno which firmware are you using but it should wait you to press a button on the LCD (Marlin does it).  After that it run the gcode to unload and load the filament, resume temperature (M109 S215) and go ahead with the stamp.

This is my final version:

    M83
    G1 F3000 E-25
    G1 F300 Z4
    G1 F9000 X100 Y100
    G1 F300 Z15
    M0 ;Do the actual pause
    G21 ;Metric Values
    G90 ;Absolute Positioning
    M109 S205.000 ;205 Unload
    G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Positioning
    G1 E10 F100 ;Extrude 10mm filament
    G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Positioning
    G1 E-600 F1500 ;Retract Filament completely
    G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder
    M400 ;Wait Command
    M117 REMOVE FILAMENT NOW ;LCD Message
    M400 ; Wait Command
    G21 ;Metric Values
    G90 ;Set absolute positioning
    M109 S205.000 ;Preheat PLA
    M300 S440 P200 ; Tone
    M300 S660 P250 ; Tone
    M300 S880 P300 ; Tone
    G4 S5 ; Wait 5 seconds
    G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Position
    G1 E380 F1500; Fast Feed of 380mm filament
    G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Position
    G1 E100 F200 ;Feed 100mm filament slowly
    G92 E0 ;Reset Extruder Position
    M400; Finish Move
    M109 S215; resume temperature
    G1 F3000 E25
    G1 F3000 E-25
    G1 F300 Z4
    G1 F9000 X101.7 Y137.3
    G1 F3000 E25
    G1 F9000
    M82
    G92 E763.80547
    G4 P1


Can parts that have warped (after being printed) be un-warped? I have an on-going project to build a large lampshade in the shape of a geodesic dome. It's made of 3D printed frames that will be covered with rice paper. I printed the parts in PLA over a month or so, but then had to ship them from Europe to Japan due to moving house.
Unfortunately, when they arrived a lot of them had warped quite badly. In retrospect they weren't packed very well, and they probably got quite hot while travelling through the tropics in a shipping container.
I'm wondering if there is any reasonable way to un-warp parts that have warped in this way. Specifically, if I heat them up again, will they go back to their original shape, or will that just make it worse?
Here's a photo to show what the parts look like. The problem was a lot more obvious before I assembled it, but I didn't think to take a photo - here you can see that some of the edges aren't dead straight, but when they're not clipped to the other parts they're a lot worse. The edge of each triangle is a bit less than 20cm in length.

I'd really appreciate any tips. It'd be a shame if this project ended up not looking perfect after so much printing time.

PLA stays a thermoplastic in printed shape. And as you saw when unpacking your things, tropical heat and force are enough to get a lasting deformation. Other people had PLA prints ruined from having them sit in the car, I had seen deformation on a purple print I had let sit in the sun on an edge.
This also means that the reverse is true: under load to shape the part and some heat you can try to unbend parts. A hairdryer air of about 60-80 °C, which is more than enough to make PLA formable.


How can I determine whether my borosilicate glass is fake or not? Is there actually a way to determine whether the sheet of glass that one has received from a Chinese supplier on eBay is actually a sheet of Borosilicate glass, and not just a piece of normal glass intended for glazing purposes?

Are there any laminations, or markings/features, visible under a certain light or if the sheet is viewed at a particular angle?

I ask because most of the 200 x 300 mm sheets on eBay are priced at around £16 - £26, but there are a few priced at just £10, which still claim to be toughened glass, although they do not mention the word Borosilicate, such as this one, 300x200x3mm 3D Printer Heated Bed Toughened Glass Clear Build Plate UK STOCK.

To paraphrase, "Usually if things seem to good to be true, then they are probably fake." However, I wondered whether it was worth a punt as it is only £10, and then if I would be able to verify its veracity once it was in my hands.

Google turned up this thread: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=96214

There don't seem to be any easy, definitive tests. You have two main options, both of which seem to require a fairly high level of laboratory skill (but nothing fancy in terms of equipment).

The refractive index of Borosilicate glass is very similar to vegetable oil (implying no reflection from a boundary if you have a pool of oil on the glass).

The density of the glass can be measured too, using a water bath. This should also be able to give a fairly accurate answer.

Stress testing seems the most reliable way to determine if you have a 'good' sample, but may be more expensive.


Layer Separation Where A Previous Layer Ends I have a problem with my prints having a small separation gap between layers when I have a corner and the Z layer ends or starts for a partial distance. The gap reminds me of a gap between a print and its raft. Usually 1 layer just seems to be missing in places.

I've been printing about a year now and I've tried different temps, line width, layer thicknesses. The problem has even been a problem after installing new firmware. I use Cura V4.5.0 and an Ender 3 printer. The problem is rather difficult to describe so I've attached an image demonstrating the problem.

Almost certainly the material that was supposed to be deposited there was lost (oozed out) somewhere else during travel moves due to no retraction, insufficient retraction, or retraction being skipped due to combing. Make sure retraction is on, at least 6 mm, and try disabling combing or setting the max combing distance very low, around 2 mm or less.

If your new firmware is Marlin 2.0, you can try enabling linear advance too. If tuned correctly, it will largely correct for this along with improving lots of other things.


3D printer stepper motors only going one direction and skipping in the other I have built a couple of 3d printers now and I'm having a little trouble with one I'm currently on. I frankensteined this one with two of my other printers that I had built. I took the Arduino mega and ramps 1.4 out of the older one and wired it up to the newer one. When I plug the printer in and try to move the stepper motors they will go in the positive direction and skip and make loud noises when going the other direction. I have taken and separated out all the wires to make sure it wasn't a stray signal. I have also tried turning the voltage up and down on the drivers with no luck. I also swapped cables in case one might have been broken. The next step when I get home I'm going to try is connecting the old steppers and see if they work. After that I am pretty much at a loss. I already search Google and found a couple of things I could try, but figured maybe someone here might have an answer to why this might be happening. Steppers motors from the old printer are the same as the new one the only difference is manufactures.

Update:
The printers are:
HE3d Prusa XI3
Max Micron Foldbot

I'm just using the LCD, Ramps 1.4 and Arduino Mega 2560 R2 from the He3d and putting it on the Foldbot. With some other features but those shouldn't matter as they would work on both printers. The board from the Foldbot is the Arduino Mega 2560 built into the Ramps board MXP_PRO_V3.0. I'll try and get some pictures. Also switching steppers didn't work. Going to try to get X,Y,Z axis working separately see if i can find the problem that way.

Update: Ok so I attached the old axis up and did a test with the endstops. Basically I think the new endstops must be the opposite of what the other printer was cause when i hold the end stop down the motor rotates in both directions and when i let go then it rotates only in a positive direction. I will see if this is part of the issue. I also believe that one of the motors is bad and that's why it wasn't making any sense when i first diagnose it.

From an electrical standpoint, a two-phase stepper motors (what most 3D printers use) works the same backwards and forwards, the phase just reverses.  If you are stalling on only one direction, I would look to see if you have a mechanical bind in that direction.  Generally a wiring issue will cause the motor to either not run at all or to run in the wrong direction.

A few things you can check:

Decouple the motors from their mechanical load and confirm that they all run correctly when they aren't driving a load.  If you can't do that, disconnect them all then connect a spare motor to each cable one-at-a-time.
Turn each of the axis with your hand and make sure it turns smoothly throughout the entire range in both directions.  Note: Some times a binding issue is acceleration related - a loose frame or coupling can cause this.
Monitor the supply voltage to make sure that one of the motors is not pulling the supply down causing all the others to stall.


How can I charge an Android phone while it's controlling my 3D printer? I am writing a G-code sender for Android, but I have hit a snag.
How can I prevent the phone from discharging while it sending G-code to the printer?

I have several Android phones and tablets and they have a micro USB OTG connector, which I can connect to my 3D printer using an adapter.
But it looks like OTG has this limitation - it can either accept power when in Device mode, or it can provide power in Host mode.  So, while in Host mode the phone can't be charged, so I can't do long prints, which seems like an unreasonable limitation.

Any ideas on how to solve this?

See elsewhere on StackExchange:

Electronics:

Can an Android tablet serve as USB Host and be charged simultaneously through a single port?

Android Enthusiasts

Using an OTG cable while charging
USB charging in host mode [duplicate]

You certainly can charge whilst in host mode, but some re-wiring will be required.

From the SE.Electronics link

  Apparently it is possible to charge the Host-Device! -->
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go

  Under "OTG Micro Plugs" it says that a USB OTG cable with a 36.5 kΩ
  resistor between Pin 4 (I suppose its pin 4) and Pin 5 allows you to
  connect a B-Device (Slave) and (!) a Charger to the Smartphone/Tablet.
  The Phone and the B-Device can be supplied by the external power
  source.

  USB-Power Specifications:
  http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs/batt_charging_1_1.zip

and

  I just sifted through the docs because I didn't trust Wikipedia's implicit data on which of the three resistances I should use. Here you can find the official Battery Charging v1.2 Spec and Adopters Agreement: usb.org/developers/docs/devclass_docs In this case you want 124kΩ, because you want the OTG device (=tablet) to be the A device (=host).

Here are the schematics:


Software for adding supports to 3D printed miniatures in STL file My main application for my 3D printer (Zortrax M200 Plus) is making 28 mm scale miniatures for role-playing games. Basically people and animals at 1:60 scale, which means that things like arms, legs, or weapons are only a few millimeters thick. If I use the automatically generated supports of the Z-Suite software, the supports end up being thicker than the model parts, and are impossible to remove.

I had a bit more luck creating support structures with Meshmixer, but am not totally happy with those. So I am looking for other software to edit .STL files to add supports automatically, preferably with an option to edit those support structures easily afterwards. Any ideas?

Note that Zortrax printers only work with proprietary Z-Suite software, so the software that adds the support also needs to be able to export the model with the supports into an STL file, not just gcode.

I don't think you'll find automated software to create supports "the way I want them to look."  So...

It might be worth investigating the "Advanced Properties" of Cura to see how thin, and thinly spaced, you can set its support walls to be.  I know there are settings for reducing the thickness at the top of the support, as well as some sort of "top gap" setting, for just the kind of problem you're dealing with.


How to unload filament as cleanly as possible using the extruder motor? I usually unload filament using the extruder motor, with the nozzle around 30 °C below the filament's print temperature. Despite this, often a significant amount of filament is left in the nozzle, and the filament comes out with a long stringy tip.

Does this suggest that the procedure might be leaving deposits of melted filament outside of the melt zone (potentially leading to blockages)? and if so,
What sequence of temperature/movement controls would be most likely to remove or mitigate the risk of deposits?

I am familiar with the “cold pull” technique, but I am looking for the best strategy for a solution using the printer's controls.

I usually extrude a quantity of cleaning filament when changing filaments, though I'm not sure whether this would also clean any deposits outside the melt zone.

I have seen a procedure called “cooling moves” in the Prusa Slicer code. I understand this is intended to produce a cleaner filament tip upon unloading in a multi-material scenario, and I wonder whether a similar strategy should be employed for regular unloading, although I am unable to tell from the code what exactly is happening.

I am using a genuine E3D V6 hotend and a Bondtech BMG Extruder.

There's a bit of a compromise here:

Filament cohesion in the nozzle isn't strong enough to remove all residue at higher temperature

Extruder motors can't get sufficient grip / don't have sufficient torque for filament extraction at lower temperatures

That means you'll always have to purge some of the old filament when changing to a new filament.
To easily remove the old filament, you'd want to fill the nozzle, so that there's no large plug of filament that might get stuck in the Bowden tube (as suggested in a comment by Rosalie W), then pull the old filament out; and then purge the nozzle after inserting the new filament.
How much you'll need to purge depends a bit on the filament and its color, but I'd guess 50 mm should be sufficient in most cases.

As G-code, this might look something like that:

;Unloading
G91 ;relative movement
G1 E5 F300 ;fill nozzle
G1 E-300 F3000 ;unload filament, 300 = Bowden length + hotend length
G90 ;absolute movement

;Loading
G91 ;relative movement
G1 E295 F3000 ;load filament
G1 E55 F200 ; purge filament
G90 ;absolute movement


Extruder motor does spin - but not while printing I hope someone can poke me in the right direction, I´ve been failing to find a way around this problem and trying for about a week.
My setup is pretty custom, I am using a BTT SKR 1.4 Turbo with TMC2208 driver and a BTT TFT V3 display. At the beginning of this problem I´ve added a second Z-Axis to my printer and made the mistake to declare both axes in Marlin (as I am only using one driver, I should not have to alter Marlin for this, but I found that out too late). At this point, I updated Marlin to take my new steps/mm for the Z-axis, but no matter how often I did, the firmware didn´t seem to change anything. Later (out of pure hopelessness) I used the M502 Command, followed by M500 to save and somehow this made my axis work and set the correct steps/mm out of my firmware (at this point, I already found the mistake in Marlin mentioned above).
Relieved I started my first print... But the extruder motor (bowden setup) stopped turning and I don't know why. Now, I´ve been stuck with this strange behavior for a week:
When I freshly boot the printer, the extruder motor spins (correct length and correct direction). I can do this via M-Command, TFT35 and Pronterface (PC-USB direct to the mainboard). Whenever I start a print, the extruder just stops (motor engaged, but not trying to turn, no skipping steps). No matter how long I wait, even in a 2-hour print, the motor doesn´t spin a bit. After the print and if I cancel the print the motor won´t turn again (tried all the ways mentioned before). BUT when I kill the power to the printer and let it reboot I can use the extruder in all the mentioned ways without any problems.
I think this is a software problem, but I can´t find it. Looked through Marlin a few times, adjusted my Start G-code, looked at the existing G-code, I can not find the mistake. I´ll attach a few lines of G-code and my Start G-code (I use Cura 4.8). If someone knows a line in Marlin, I´ll look that up for you - it seems impossible to post the whole firmware somewhere.
Start G-code:
G21 ;metric values
G91 ;relative positioning
M107 ;start with the fan off
G28 X0 Y0 ;move X/Y to min endstops
G28 Z0 ;move Z to min endstops
M900 K0.22 ; set K-primus-factor
M117 K0.22 ; display K Value on display
G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length
G90 ; absolute positioning
M82 ;set extruder to absolute mode
G1 Z1 F500 ;move up slightly
G1 Y60.0 Z0 E9.0 F500.0;intro line
G1 Y100.0 E21.5 F500.0 ;continue line

G-Code:
G1 F600 Z0.3
G1 F1500 E0
G1 F1200 X99.215 Y92.699 E0.06147
G1 X99.708 Y92.391 E0.09734
G1 X100.377 Y92.083 E0.14279
G1 X100.743 Y91.958 E0.16666
G1 X101.484 Y91.803 E0.21337
G1 X102.187 Y91.748 E0.25689
G1 X103.552 Y91.72 E0.34114
G1 X118.764 Y91.72 E1.27986

If there are any ideas, please tell me. I am completely lost at this point!
Edit: a few mistakes are gone now, formatting and PS.: "blockage of the extruder-motor" after starting a print happens no matter how I start a print (SD TFT/Pronterface/SD Mainboard)

Extruder stops to spin
The problem you described seem to be reported elsewhere for TMC in relation to stealthChop mode (unsure, see below) and linear advance. For details look at this comment in Extruder stops during print (Bugfix-2.0.x) #17944. An advice from there is to supplement the G-code with (my interpretation):
M569 S0 E ; disable stealthChop for extruder (use spreadCycle)
M900 K0   ; disable linear advance

There is also another discussion TMC2208 extruder driver shuts itself off in spreadcycle mode with pressure advance enabled #1774 for Klipper. Above summary is just a result of my quick look through, I suggest to re-read these articles with more insight.
Also I propose to do following to doublecheck:

execute M503 (without parameters) before and after print, compare reports (especially: M92, M203, M204)
verify EXTRUDE_MINTEMP parameter in Configuration.h (I am not sure how does it behave during the print)
I also saw the remedy: "Then I changed the extruder stepper motor wires and the problem is now fixed", but it is the edge case.

Extrusion mode
I personally prefer to use extrusion in relative mode, because it allows to manipulate G-code or restart the print from any line. You would need to put M83 in starting G-code instead of current M82, together with enabling Cura setting (Special Modes > Relative Extrusion). I am not sure what happens currently with your filament between in your file's:
  M82 ;set extruder to absolute mode
  G1 Y60.0 Z0 E9.0 F500.0;intro line
  G1 Y100.0 E21.5 F500.0 ;continue line
  ...
  G1 F1500 E0

For me it looks like it's retreating 21 mm of filament just at the start of print? So it cannot really print for several consecutive G-code lines, does it?
Marlin settings vs EEPROM
When updating settings in Marlin like steps/mm you should be aware, that values stored in EEPROM take precedence. Reinstalling firmware will not clear the EEPROM settings. If you want to make persistent change, save to EEPROM and alter the firmware config, to have these values secured for future as "defaults".


Stepper Motor for Prusa i3 We have stepper motors with these specs:

1200 mA
4 V
3.2 kg • cm

Are these enough for building a Prusa i3 3D printer?

(I live in Turkey and these are the specs of the NEMA 17 they sell in here)

Awful answer, I know, but it depends... on where you are going to employ them:

are they are all, or just some, of the axes, or;
just for the extruder?

If they are for use in translating movement of the axes, then the weights of:

the y-axis plate;
the x-axis carriage, and;
the print head,

will all come into play - amongst many other things.
With a torque of just 32 N • cm1, they seem, at first glance, to be a little underpowered - a torque of 44 N • cm (4.5 kg·cm) is the recommended minimum. Also, the current, of 1.2 A, seems to be a tad on the low side, 1.5 - 1.8 A is recommended.
There are some great resources on the RepRapWiki. See:

NEMA 17 stepper motor, and;
Stepper motor

The minimum (recommended) specifications, for a Nema 17 stepper motor, are:

1.5 A to 1.8 A current per phase
1 to 4 V
3 to 8 mH inductance per phase
44 N·cm (62 oz·in, 4.5 kg·cm) or more holding torque
1.8° or 0.9° per step (200/400 steps/rev respectively)

You may be able to get yours to work, but is it worth the hassle, just to save a few quid? Best to get the recommended, and most popular steppers, which are:

Kysan 1124090/42BYGH4803;
Rattm 17HS8401, and;
Wantai 42BYGHW609

Obviously, you don't have to use one of these three motors - other stepper motors can be used. On the Nema 17 Stepper motor link, above, there is a table of a number of stepper motors, of various makes and models, that have been proven to work.

Further Reading
Motors, a thread on the RepRap forums - specifically for the Prusa Mendel v2, so not entirely related to the i3, as the steppers for the z-axis are less than those for the x and y axes, but it is a good informative read nevertheless.

1 I assume that you actually mean either 32 N • cm, or 3.2 kg • cm.


What type of plastic can be used to produce your own filament? I'm considering purchasing Filabot or some similar filament maker.

What kind of plastic can I use to produce my own filament? Can I use any type of plastic or just specific printable filaments? Can I also mix different types of filament together or only one type at a time?

Filament manufacturers (for example, Colorfabb) also sell pellets, price per kilo would be about 10 times less than the same plastic in filament form.

Out of household garbage only ABS can be easily extruded into filament with Filabot-grade machine. PET AKA plastic bottles looks promising as well.

You can also use certain products "off-label". For example, string trimmer string (line) is simply a nylon filament and can be used as-is in modern diameter-agnostic hot end.


Getting rid of hardware parts smell (GT2 timing belt) I ordered 10m of GT2 timing belt for a printer I want to build, however, the chemical smell from the belt is completely unbearable, in the sense of it gives me the feeling it is destroying something in my nose (and my nose isn't even particularly good). I tried to leave the belt outside in my garage for about three weeks now, but the smell has gone only so much. I naively assume it is the chemical to make the belt soft and bendable, would that even be a health risk having the belt around me for more extended intervals of time? Can I make the smell go away, and what would be the best way to do so?

It's a garbage-quality belt, and it will probably continue outgassing at a steadily-decreasing rate for a very long time.

The fact that it has a strong chemical smell is pretty good evidence that it would not comply with regulations in civilized countries (such as REACH). I would recommend returning it or throwing it away and buying from a more reputable vendor. A large fraction of all cheap 3d printer parts these days are ridiculously far out of compliance with US/EU regs and basic common sense for contamination.

If you're hell-bent on using a crappy knock-off belt to save a few bucks, you could put it under vacuum to try to suck out the residual chemical gas faster. Just apply the vacuum very slowly / in stages (say over 10 minutes) so you don't get decompression blisters in the rubber. You shouldn't need a hard vacuum, dropping to 0.5-1 psia or 0.05 bar absolute for a day or two should help significantly. No guarantees though.


3d printing for outdoor use: what types of filament are most weather resistant? I'd like to print modifications for my birdfeeder, both to patch over the hail damage from last summer and to try to deter the neighborhood squirrels.  I have an FDM printer (and experience with nylon, ABS, and PLA, though don't restrict answers to those if there's something else that's better), what kind of filament would stand up best to daily exposure to sun, rain, snow, etc?

PET(G) is a strong contender. It is very strong and water-resistant, and as such is often used to make pop bottles.

PLA has a reputation for being "biodegradable" and therefore it is often discouraged to use PLA outside and/or in contact with water. However, PLA only biodegrades under very specific conditions which it won't generally be exposed to so it can be used (though, as a harder and less flexible material it is more likely to be damaged by hail).

ABS and Nylon are good choices as well. Basically, any plastic you have on hand will last for years, even in an outside application.


Marlin customization; additional output after G0/G1 move This question concerns an Anet A8 with customized Marlin Firmware 1.1.9.

I need to generate an additional digital output to signal move complete to trigger some data acquisition process. The extruder is not connected and was planning to use those outputs.

Which section handles G-code processing and is there an already available option to get the job done?

Basically, I'm trying to use the Anet A8 as a computer-controlled positioning system. It involves some other elements which need to be triggered in a stationary state. The requirement is: G0 X10 Y10 after this is complete: set a pin high and low after a 10 ms delay. this after every move. Additionally if I could add my own G-code to preserve the original operation would be ideal.

Which section handles G-code processing?

In Marlin Firmware, G-code is processed by procedure void process_parsed_command() in file Marlin_main.cpp

  I need to generate an additional digital output

A G-code that is able to set a port value is M42.

You could write a procedure that schedules  certain port after a G0 or G1 move, recompile and upload the firmware.


Why do different drivers change the noise of steppers? I've upgraded my stepper drivers.

I'm looking to understand why my stepper motors made noise in the first place.

Stepper motors contain two distinct sets of coils. The current in these coils is governed by your stepper motor driver.

To move the motor in either direction, the coils are being driven one after another, and in different directions.
Imagine this being a normal 3-phase AC motor, but instead of three phases, only two are used.

A "full steps" (1/1 "microstepping") would mean switching one coil off and the other on - resulting in a jerky motion to the next position. Real stepper motors have multiple sets of those coils (rather than two like in the diagram) - usually 200 or 400, giving 1.8° or 0.9° of rotation per "full step".

Such motion is usually not desired, since the immediate movement of the motor creates noise and vibration.
If both coils are driven with less current (71% of the full current, the reciprocal of the square root of 2, so that the total force on the motor remains the same) during the switch from one current to the other, another position can be achieved - a "half step" between two full steps.

This can be repeated for higher number of "microsteps", with 16 being the usual compromise.

Optimal smoothness - and next to no noise - would be achieved by driving the stepper motor with pure sine waves. The closer a stepper driver can get to that pure sine wave, the lower the noise made by the stepper motor will be:

Some stepper motor drivers, most notably the TMC family of chips, can generate 256 microsteps internally, approximating a sine wave quite well.

Other stepper motor drivers (like the LV8729) can also handle 128 microsteps, but they require the printer control board to send an individual step signal for each of those steps - which may limit speed because of the additional load on the board's MCU.


Adding a custom printer to Cura I'm trying to enter the settings into Cura for the printer.

The manual has a screenshot of what they should be:

However, when I run Cura and try to enter the settings I'm presented with different options:

How do I translate the settings from teh screenshot into the settings I have available?
Should I be concerned about the settings that aren't available to enter?

Are they important?
Do I need to enter them somewhere else?

Your manual is in another Castle!
The manual you look at is for Cura (1) 15.04. You are however using Ultimaker Cura 3, most likely the most recent 3.6.
Quick references
The machine setup is for the physical settings of the machine - build volume, nozzle diameter, coordinate system and such.
The other settings you refer to are all set in the right bar, but you will have to switch from simple to advanced mode, and possibly activate the settings you need.


Why does infill percentage stop the print from sticking to the bed? I've recently purchased an Ender 3 and have had great success with some Cura settings found on a YouTube Tutorial at 0.2 mm resolution.
So then I noticed that there were default settings in Cura for the Ender 3. Except printing at 0.2 mm it selects a 20 % infill, and when choosing 0.1 mm it changed the infill to 10 %.
I changed infill to 20 % and attempted to print this but there were gaps in the bottom layer and it won't stick to the bed. Is there anything else I need to change in the process?
The shape is essentially a cube with a circular hole in the middle, sliced in half.

The more infill, the more material. The more material, the more stress is inside the part while it cools down from printing temperature to ambient temperature. Parts with higher infill density tend to warp more (the edges curl up).
But 20 % should be fine, you shouldn't have any issue at that percentage (unless you're printing with ABS/ASA).
I think it's a first layer issue, the 0.2 mm first layer gets more 'squished' onto the bed, thats why you get better adhesion. I'm using PrusaSlicer, every default print profile in PrusaSlicer uses a 0.2 mm first layer, maybe there is something like that in Cura too?
For example the 0.1 mm PrusaSlicer profile will squish a 0.2 mm first layer onto the bed and changes to 0.1 mm layers for the rest of the print.


Excessive filament powder/shavings near the extruder I'm printing a Tower of Pi on my Ender 3, and I woke up to find this near the extruder:

All my attempts to google this led to checking for either a clogged nozzle or the extruder itself stripping the filament, neither of which appears to be the case.
It looks like the upper edge of the filament might be grinding against the intake hole, so I looked into lubrication, but the consensus appears to be "don't".
Has anyone else had this problem? Is there a name for it, and how do I fix it?

The shavings come in part from the extruder design: there is no fillet on the pulling in side, the filament goes up in a sharp angle and is dragged over a rather sharp edge. It also brushes against the leadscrew.
To help with the shavings, you should alter the filament path to try and have a flatter angle than the 90°. A simple rod that pushes out the filament to come in at 80° might already reduce the number of shavings.
More might be reduced by opening the entry hole of the filament to have a 1-2 mm phase around it, altering the angle of the edge that the filament runs against to a much lower one and reducing the ability to shave off flakes. I did swap my extruder for an aluminium one, and it has this phase, and since then I have had little to no shavings at that spot anymore.


My MakerBot 2 jams after a couple hours of prints My MakerBot 2 jams after a couple hours of prints. It is a couple months old, and the tip stops extruding after a couple straight hours of prints. I am guessing that there is a design flaw and that the media is melting inside the extruder before the feeding teeth. Does anyone have experience with this?

As you stated, it could be a result of the material beginning to melt before the extruder. Here's a few things to look out for:

Is your extruder temperature appropriate for the material? Typical printing temperatures can range anywhere from 200 - 225 °C for PLA (depending on the supplier). Often, if the extruder is too hot, the material will bubble or over extrude.
Is the material of proper quality? There's a reason MakerBot Industries wants you to use their filament (besides putting their hands in your pocket book), and that is repeatability. They've tested their filament on their hardware and ensured that the material will extrude with regular print settings.
Is the material being stored properly? Sometimes people forget to store PLA in a dry place to avoid absorbing moisture in the filament. If moisture is absorbed, it can perform poorly in the print. Indications of moisture can include a slight steam from the extruder and/or bubbles in the extruded material (similar to overheating).
Are the fans operating correctly? If the fans aren't running or aren't running enough, the filament begins to heat further up the extrusion assembly (closer to the drive gear) which can inhibit extrusion. I know that MakerWare/MakerBot Desktop has been updated lately with more emphasis on controlling fans for active cooling, so make sure that your fan(s) are operating for duration of the print as necessary.

All and all, your filament is getting too hot. If you can't determine the sudden change, consider printing with a lower extruder temperature from now on. However, if you're using MakerBot filament (or similar quality) then I would definitely verify that your machine is calibrated, wires are fully connected, and settings are double checked. If all is as expected, then you should call MakerBot support (since they're closed source now, they technically have an obligation to help you) especially since the machine is so new.


reducing cross-sectional area Some filaments suggest "reducing cross-sectional area" of the print. Is this referring to the vertical plane or horizontal plane? In other words, if I were to print a rectangular prism, would I want the long side of it printed in the vertical direction or parallel to the print bed?

Based on your link in the comment, the cross-sectional area is the one on the X-Y axis (horizontal).  The least area, the least material there is "pulling up" (curling) the layer when the plastic cools down.

When it comes to your specific question:

  if I were to print a rectangular prism, would I want the long side of it printed in the vertical direction or parallel to the print bed?

...the answer is not as simple as "long side vertical", as you want both little warping and strong parts and the two may be better achieved by differen orientations.

Personally I would base my choice on the intended application: as the difference between the Z and the X+Y axis is their behaviour under load is substantial.  FDM artefacts are anisotropic: they resist very well to compression along the Z or tension along the X & Y axis, but are weak along the same axis if you invert the direction of the force applied. Again: this difference is not marginal but substantial.

Keep in mind that "area" is actually "printed area", so you could have a model with a large footprint but a small printed area (think to the bottom of a Tour Eiffel model, or to a pipe standing up).

Were I to experience warping or poor adhesion with a specific model, I would reduce the cross-sectional area in the model (by adding relief cuts and/or cavities) or in the slicer (by decreasing the density of the infill) or would tackle the issue fror another angle, for example by switching the bed  material (some specialised surface with good adhesion for the type of filament in use) or creating the object I wanted with an assembly rather than in a solid piece...  But again: it would be a second-order consideration for me, and I would worry about it only if the problem were actually manifesting for that specific model.

For example: say that I were to print the head of a hammer.  I would print it with the surface that hits the nail parallel to the printing bed so that the compression force resulting from hitting a nail would be along the Z axis.  The link of a chain?  Flat on the bed, so that the pulling forces from stretching the chain would be aligned with the X and Y axis.


Auto physical bed leveling? I've never used a printer with auto bed leveling, but my understanding is that most or all of them don't actually level anything, but rather compensate for the unlevel bed in firmware by transforming the coordinates. It seems to me this would necessarily introduce aliasing artifacts in all your prints by making it so that line widths are no longer a whole number of microsteps - I immediately observed such an effect on top/bottom skin when I tried to use steps-per-mm tweaking in firmware to compensate for a dimensional error rather than fixing the mechanical source of the error, and concluded that it was a dead-end approach.

If the auto-leveling firmware only makes adjustments with the Z motor as it moves, rather than transforming all three coordinates, it seems like that would be mostly or entirely mitigated, but with slight errors in dimensional accuracy dependent on how tilted the bed actually is.

Do any of the printers with (or add-on kits for) auto bed leveling actually level the bed mechanically, with servos attached to the adjustment knobs? Why isn't an approach like that more common?

Automatic bed levelling is not magic; it still requires you to level the bed properly (as level as possible). The upside of automatic bed levelling is that it compensates for small deviations like a slightly slanted surface or a (somewhat large) dent in the surface (as long it is probed and can be digitized by the firmware). It will keep the nozzle at a distance to the bed that it maintains proper distance to the bed for the filament to adhere properly (first layer adherence is key for successful prints). The slight imperfections are smeared out over about 10 mm (set in the firmware), this way you do not need transformations for the whole print (so if you deliberately make the bed very skew, the print will follow the Z axis, not the direction perpendicular to the bed).

While systems to level or align the bed exist, it is not very practical and expensive as it requires more parts, that is why it is not commonly used. Apart from the suggested printer in this answer, printers with e.g. 4 ball screw Z movement lead screws exist (mostly printers for companies, not for use at home); ball screws are way more expensive, but also way more accurate than trapezoidal lead screws. A low accuracy is preferable as such systems generally have no guiding linear rods (as that would mean that you fix the plane/alignment of the build platform!).


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

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

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

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

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

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


Print came out like a wafer I'm not sure how else to describe it. There's probably a name for this but I just don't know it. But the bottom few layers came out great, but the rest came out kind of like a triscuit. Below are pics of my print and settings. I am using a delta style printer. Can someone tell me what this issue is called and how to fix it?

The phenomenon you experience is called under-extrusion. Under-extrusion is the effect of extruding lesser filament than required for the print. The result of under-extrusion (depending on the amount of under-extrusion) can be described as spongy prints, gaps in prints/layers, failed prints, etc. As the amount of plastic flow is less than required for the print, the quality and print strength is much lower than that of a normal filament flow printed part.
Most severe under-extrusion is usually caused by incorrect filament diameter setting. E.g. Ultimaker Cura (to date, April 2019, the version is 4.0) is notorious for resetting the filament diameter to 2.85 mm after you upgraded to a newer version (because that is the diameter of the filament the Ultimaker machines use) while most people use 1.75 mm diameter filament.
From the settings if appears you have set the correct filament diameter (i.e. if you use 1.75 mm filament). Please measure the filament over a few meters and determine the average filament diameter to be sure.
In your case it must be something else!
A higher temperature causes filament to be more fluid (do check if the temperature you use fits the type of filament you use), so an increased temperature should help against under-extrusion (less friction for the extruder to push the filament through the nozzle). Please do check the extruder stepper; is it skipping?, is the tension the extruder gear exerts on the filament enough to prevent slipping?
Finally, blockage of the nozzle; partial blockage of the nozzle can prevent consistent flow from the nozzle. It is advised to rigorously clean the nozzle (e.g. using the atomic cleaning method where you heat up the nozzle insert filament and turn off the heat to pull the filament out when temperature is about 30 °C lower than the printing temperature of the filament) or replace the nozzle.

To complete the answer, another source for under extrusion that is seen from the beginning of 2020 of Marlin firmware operated 3D printers is that instead of normal extrusion (where E in the G-code file denotes extrusion of filament movement in units of length), the printer assumes it is volumetric displacement. From the Marlin menu of the graphical controller you can change volumetric displacement to length displacement by disabling volumetric flow.


Turn off OctoPrint server after starting print from SD card I have OctoPrint set up on a Raspberry Pi (OctoPi). I have loaded a number of G-code files to the SD card on the printer.
My question is: If I initiate a print from the SD card via OctoPrint, can I then turn off the RPi so I can use it for other things while the print continues?


How to cut OpenBeam/MakerBeam? I'm building a 3D printer and I've been looking around for materials suitable to make the frame.

I have occasional access to a laser cutter which I could use to manufacture a ply box-type (UltiMaker) enclosure, but I like the ease of adjustment provided by the T-slot beam kits.

I don't have any metal-cutting machine tools. Can aluminium beam be cut by hand with a hacksaw to a good degree of accuracy? How does one finish the cut end?

Aluminum of almost every grade is very easy to cut with a hacksaw. I would suggest to mark clearly the cut line and to wrap masking tape at the edge of the cut. Consider to allow for about 2-3 millimeters (1/16") extra material for final finishing. Cut across the line, rotate the part ninety degrees and cut again. Once you have the guide cuts in place, you should be able to manage a square cut by following those guides

You will want to have a clamping mechanism available, such as a vise or workbench type device.

After the cut is done, use a sharp file to make final adjustments to the length and appearance. Push the file, do not drag it backwards. Push forward, lift away from the work piece as you return, then push again. Pick up a file card, which is a fine metal-tooth brush used to clear the teeth of the file.

It is very easy to remove material with a hand file, perhaps three or four strokes to remove 1/16".

Your accuracy will depend on the measurement of the lines you create and how carefully you file to the edge of those lines.


Z axis Stepper motors not working correctly I have been searching around the internet for the last 3 days trying to figure this out. My Z axis motors for a pursa-i3 3d printer are not working correctly. I have marlin firmware and using repetier host. I send a command to move the z axis and I get it to move, however I if I send the same command again the motors will sometimes spin the other way. feel like They almost randomly choose which direction they turn.

As I said I have been trouble shooting this for a while now. What I am suspecting is the firmware feedrates and acceleration or some setting is not correct.

Here is my code:

//// MOVEMENT SETTINGS
#define NUM_AXIS 4 // The axis order in all axis related arrays is X, Y, Z, E
#define HOMING_FEEDRATE {50*60, 50*60, 2*60, 0}  // set the homing speeds (mm/min)

#define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT   {80,80,4000,590}
#define DEFAULT_MAX_FEEDRATE          {300, 300, 3, 45}    // (mm/sec)
#define DEFAULT_MAX_ACCELERATION      {1000,1000,50,500}    // X, Y, Z, E maximum start speed for accelerated moves. E default values are good for Skeinforge 40+, for older versions raise them a lot.

#define DEFAULT_ACCELERATION          1000    // X, Y, Z and E max acceleration in mm/s^2 for printing moves
#define DEFAULT_RETRACT_ACCELERATION  1000   // X, Y, Z and E max acceleration in mm/s^2 for retracts

#define DEFAULT_XYJERK                10   // (mm/sec)
#define DEFAULT_ZJERK                 0.3     // (mm/sec)
#define DEFAULT_EJERK                 5.0    // (mm/sec)

I tried swapping the drivers around and the motors will work perfectly on another axis so I don't suspect it to be a driver issue. I have been turning the pots ontop of the drivers to make them work but can't make them to go the same direction i want them to.

I've checked the wires and I almost sure they are wired up correctly. (could be wrong but have checked it over with a multimeter.)

I am new to this and it's my first time building one of these would appreciate any help I can get and and maybe I have over looked something I have tested.
Just really want the axis to move in the direction That I say it to move in.

More details about my setup is: A Robocraze 3D Printer Controller Board RAMPS 1.4 using A4988 stepper motors drivers and my motors are the nema 17 stepper motors. I currently have the two z axis motors wired in parallel but have tried before using series, however the problem of being unable to control the direction of the Z motors still arises (can easily switch back to series).

currently trying with no load just to get the motors turn in the correct direction when I send a G-code command. I am using Repetier host on ubuntu 14.04.5.

I have also check the endstops and they are working perfectly, so they ain't a problem (I don't think :p)

Thank you,
Bobby

So after 5 days of trouble shooting, Bob-the-Kuhn over on the marlin github forum solved it for, anyone else who faces the same issue can head over to github for my solutions.
https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Marlin/issues/9287#issuecomment-359428147
Conversation from link:

Bob-the-Kun:
Problem does not follow the driver. Problem does not follow the
steppers.
I'm thinking that the Z socket has a problem. Sounds like an open/poor
contact.
Try bending the DIRECTION lead on the Z driver a little and see if the
problem disappears. It's one of the corner pins. Sometimes it's called
DIR. If your driver's pins aren't labeled then bend all four corner
pins a little.
Another option is to move the Z function to the E1 socket. Replace
your pins_RAMPS.h file with this one. pins_RAMPS.zip
FYI - if this really is a hardware problem then it's the second RAMPS
hardware problem within a week. Most unusual.
Post reply:
Yes the socket I am now assuming is just broken (not sure what exactly
but possibly one of the connections), After using for pins_RAMPS file
and changed the motors back to series and connected to the E1 slot I
successful got the printer to work!!! Thank you very much Z axis is
working as I would expect! I am now calibrating the printer as it
definitely needs it.


Slicer software capable of working with large filaments I'm starting work on a very large 3d printer that uses very large filament. The idea is to house the entire thing in a shipping container and print things as large as cars.

Filament will be some type of epoxy that is to be extruded out of a large 25mm nozzle. A second smaller nozzle using the same material will be used to do finer edges. A third nozzle will be used to produce supports of a different material.

I know this is quite different than most 3d printing applications. I am wondering what slicers I should look into using that are adaptable enough to work with these constraints, or if such software exists.

After checking it up, Ultimaker Cura (and possibly most other slicers capable of multi-extruder setups) is able to handle multiple extruders of varying nozzle size and seems to be ok with 25 mm Nozzles or something ludicrous such as 200 mm filament. You should aid its slicing in some way:

Dedicate one nozzle to the support structure, that's easy.
Design your parts with 2 shells:

One is the main body with corners cut to the main nozzle's extrusion diameter.
The other is the corners and details.


Small structures are deformed after switching to Duet Wifi I just switched to the Duet Wifi board (used MKS Gen L 1.0 before) and now small structures look terrible. From my observations the hot end moves correctly, but almost no filament gets extruded. On the other hand larger structures look very good. With the MKS board the exact same G-code worked fine.
After that I gradually disabled many features like coasting, wiping and even retractions altogether, the quality only improved by a tiny margin.

Example print (the two towers should be cylinders):

Additional information:

Printer: JGAurora A5
Material: PETG
Slicer: Simplify3D

More info (edit):

Hot end temperature: 225 °C (for the affected layers)
Bed temperature: 60 °C (I corrected the thermistor data, it's equivalent to 70-75 °C on other JGAurora A5 printers)
Nozzle diameter: 0.4 mm
Part cooling fan: 100% (improved cooler duct by Da Hai Zhu)
Print speed: 50 mm/s (50% for outline)
The cylinder is printed hollow because of my infill settings
Lubricant is fresh, belts are tightened, so there should be no mechanical issues

The OP found the solution and shared this in comments but has not written a proper answer. The OP found:

  To complete this, the issue was related to the part cooling fan not spinning correctly. After replacing it the problem was gone.


Controlling a 3D printer with another Arduino device over serial If this is a silly question I apologize but I am trying to establish a serial connection between a 3D printer (Ender 3) and an Arduino Nano over the USB port.

I am able to connect the 3D printer to a serial monitor on my PC and send G-code to it and control the printer. I am also able to connect my Arduino to the serial monitor and also send and receive strings.

When I connect the Arduino directly to the 3D printer using a USB cable and separately powering the Arduino the 3D printer does not seem to respond to the G-code being sent over serial.

What am I missing?

This isn't really a 3D-printing issue as much as it is about Arduino, USB, and how serial connections over USB differ from a generic UART serial connection.

For a UART-based serial connection, there are only two devices, and both devices are peers - either can send data to the other with no real restrictions as long as the speeds are set correctly.

USB allows multiple devices to be connected, and is much more complicated. One device must be a "host", which manages everything. The other devices can be much simpler as they don't need to be a host. Typically, your PC is the host, and your keyboard, mouse, memory stick, Arduino, printer, etc. are all just attached devices.

If you've managed to connect your Arduino's USB port to your printer's USB port, the problem is most likely that neither device has hardware or software to be a host, so the USB connection won't work.

There was a "USB Host Shield" for Arduino, but is is no longer in production. Perhaps you can still find one somewhere, or somebody else makes an equivalent.

There is also an Arduino "USBHost" library, which is compatible with the Arduino Due only.


How to determine real printing speed (TEVO Tarantula/Cura)? Recently I noticed that Cura always is giving me less printing time than the print itself takes on my TEVO Tarantula with Marlin firmware.

The time difference is about 15 %, at requested 50 mm/s printing speed.

How could I verify real printing speed?

Printing speed is dependent by the firmware and physical properties of your printer.

Slicers typically compute the expected time by assuming the printer will execute exactly what it is instructed to do, but a printer is a real object, with mass and momentum, and stepper motors that have an upper limit for their power output and rotation speed.

So for example, the GCODE may say "extrude 200mm at 100mm/s" and the slicer will compute that operation as taking 2 seconds.  However the printer will need to accelerate and decelerate at the extremes of the movement, and it may even be incapable of reaching speeds over 70mm/s, so the actual operation will likely take 3 seconds or more.

Accelerations and decelerations account for most of the difference between ideal time and real one, and since the number and intensity of those is totally dependent by the GCODE/model being printed, it is not possible to simply multiply the computed time for a given factor (for example 1.15, as your question seems to imply).  A large cylinder printed in vase mode will have a printing time much more similar to the computed one that an intricate model with a very complex surface, for example.

In recent years, slicers that are maintained by a printer manufacturer (cura, slic3r PE) have become better at estimating printing times for their own printers, as the settings of the firmware are accounted for in the actual estimating algorithm.

If you use Octoprint, you may have noticed that the time estimate octoprint gives improves over time, as octoprint will analyse the GCODE and measure the elapsed time, and will be able to guesstimate the real time with an increasingly degree of accuracy.


Migbot extruder loading Has anyone seen a printed bottom extruder block with a cone added to get the filament into the hole which then feeds into the metal tube that connects to the heater?
We have a hard time getting coiled filament lined up, the filament curves and takes a lot of twists and tries to get into the hole in the bottom plastic block, and lately we've just taken to removing the fan/heatsink at the end of the servo to guide it in my hand, which is a pain in the butt and likely to wear out screw holes or something eventually.

Hopefully this drawing shows what I mean.

It would be the 10th picture here, with a cone added above the hole at the lower left.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:852591

If the question is "has anyone seen..." my answer is yes. It's not precisely what you show in the drawings, but close enough and for the same purpose.

In the case of a Robo3D R1+ printer, replacing the stock "hexagon" hot end with an E3Dv6 hot end provides for a piece of PTFE tubing inserted into the heat sink. The recommendation from the denizens of the 'net is to slice the top of the tubing in the shape you have in the drawing and to have the tubing extend sufficiently to reach the junction of the hob gear and pinch roller. This took some doing, but I was able to get an appropriate taper to the tubing end that does not contact the moving parts.

As the fed-in filament exits the assembly, the small gap between the wheels and the tubing gives the filament nowhere else to go but into the heat sink and hot end.

As your design reference indicates a 3D printed part, it might be practical to engineer into that segment a larger hole to take the PTFE tubing and then size the length after the wheels are in place.

The above image shows the added PTFE tubing surrounding the filament. Even though the slightly diagonal cut appears somewhat as a cone, it is not. The edges are parallel to the rollers/hob gear. The lower portion has been omitted for ease of drawing, but would extend into a hole drilled or printed in the block holding the assembly, based on the thingiverse link provided.


Is z-axis zero near the hotend? I'm in the process of building the D-Bot core XY printer, and I was hoping to know if the Z-axis 'zero' is near the hot end or near the bottom of the printer furthest away from the hotend? In this printer the Z-platform moves up and down and the nozzle stays at the same height.

Generally, Z-axis zero is when the hot end and the build plate are close to each other.  Some printers keep the hot end up at the top, and bring the build plate up to reach it.  Other printers keep the build plate at the bottom, and lower the hot end down to reach it.  As such, "Z axis zero" doesn't specify top or bottom of the physical printer, it just specifies that the hot end is right up against the build plate, ready to print its first layer.  In the printer you describe, where the hot end remains at the top, that's where Z zero is.

In terms of the model being printed, Z axis zero is always the bottom of the model, the first layer to be deposited on the build plate.  The numbers increase from there, either lifting the hot end up, or pushing the build plate down, depending on the design of the printer.


Should I consider health impact of ABS or PLA when printing cookie cutter? Should I consider health impact of ABS or PLA when printing cookie cutter similar to image below?

How safe it is to use ABS or PLA for kitchenware in general?

If it's one-time-use, both ABS and PLA are perfectly safe for use as a cookie cutter.

The "food safety" of 3D printed parts is fairly controversial. In fact, whether any particular material is approved by regulators (such as the US FDA) for food contact is much more complex than most people realize. Materials can be accepted for some uses and not others. But there are two major considerations:

Does the material leach into the food, or does the food leach into the material?
Can the material be adequately cleaned and sterilized between repeated food exposures?

Whether leaching is a concern will depend on the kind of contact. For example, nylon will absorb acids but is often used for potable water service. ABS is fine for cold foods but not hot foods. PLA (injection grade) is often used for disposable plastic forks and cold beverage cups, but rarely reusable containers.

There is some anecdotal evidence that lots of 3D printing filaments, particularly cheap Asian filaments, contain toxic chemicals in the pigments and additives. Heavy metals like lead, cadmium, strontium, and all sorts of nasty organic chemicals have been found. You probably WON'T get any meaningful leaching of these chemicals in the brief exposure with cookie dough, but to be safe I would only use reputable US and EU filament manufacturers for food contact. I would also stick to filament colors that use non-toxic pigments (eg plain white is almost always safe titanium dioxide) or no pigments at all ("natural" color).

When it comes to cleaning a cookie cutter for multiple uses, ABS is probably a much better choice than PLA, because ABS can withstand fairly hot water without losing shape. PLA probably won't survive a cycle through the dishwasher. PETG is perhaps a better choice than ABS for longer contact with wet foods, but may or may not survive the dishwasher.

However, the porous structure of 3D printed parts is a serious problem for cleanliness. The tiny grain structure and voids between extruded strands can act as a safe haven for bacteria between uses. This is particularly an issue with cookie dough containing raw egg. A porous surface for raw-food handling would not be acceptable in a commercial kitchen.

Now, the odds of actually transmitting salmonella via poorly-cleaned cookie cutter may be fairly low. Lots of people cut meat at home on wooden cutting boards (which are also porous) and never get sick. Properly cooking the food immediately after handling will go a long way towards reducing the odds of harmful cross-contamination. You'll have to decide for yourself whether the risk profile is worth it. One-time use is the conservative choice.


What is the best length of the melting zone in the hotend? There are many hot end designs out thee and one difference is the length of the melting zone.

The melting zone is that part of the hotend where the pushed in filament is heated up and therefore starts to melt. Is it better to have a short melting zone, or a long melting zone? What are advantages of each solution. And are there materials that benefit from a short/long melting one more than others?

Short melting zone melts material in small amount which is suitable for thin layers with small nozzles. In opposite long melting zone can heat big amount of filament which is needed for fast printing and thick layers.

short melting zone

less amount of melted material
thin layer heights
quality printing with details
give more precise volume control with less flow/pressure lag and better retraction performance (thx @Ryan-Carlyle)
nozzles: 0.25-0.8mm (available for E3Dv6)

long melting zone

more amount of melted material
thick layer heights
fast printing with less details
nozzles: 0.4-1.2mm (available for E3D Volcano)

Example

Example of those hotends are E3Dv6 and E3D Volcano

E3Dv6

E3D Volcano with much longer melt zone then v6

Speed comparison video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PQjwvWoGpk

Speed comparison graph:


Help preventing warping while 3d printing with polypropylene I am wondering if anyone can help me achieve a good 3d print using polypropylene. I am trying to print custom insoles for shoes and I'm getting some bad warping/lifting (see image).

Some details about the print and process:

I have a Prusa i3 Mk2S with a Flexion extruder
I am using what I believe is a good quality filament (Verbatim PP): https://www.verbatim.com.au/3d-printing/pp-filament/3d-pp-filament.html
I am coating my hotbead with clear packaging adhesive (OPP tape) as per the manufacturers instructions. This appears to help quite a bit.
Bed heated to 75 degrees. I tried 100 but got hit with the "Heatbed Thermal Runaway" error which I believe indicates that not enough voltage is getting to the bed heater.
I've tried printing at 220 degrees and 170 degrees.
I've tried enclosing the printer in a makeshift enclosure to reduce the speed that the material is cooling at.
Other settings: speed 40mm/s constant, 0.2mm layer height, 20% infill, 3 top bottom and side layers.

The print takes about 5 hours and seems to stay down for an hour or two before starting to warp.

Does anyone have any suggestions of things I should try?

You should enable the "brim" functionality of your slicer. This adds additional perimeters to the first layer, expanding the base of the model. The larger surface area gives more adhesion.


Anet A8 LCD shows garbage data after done printing I have an Anet A8, and recently updated the firmware to Marlin 1.1.8.
My only change was replacing the configuration files by the Anet A8 sample files built in with the firmware zip file.

Everything works fine but, sometimes, right after finishing a printing (while doing the "home all"), the LCD shows some weird data, like this:

The same happens when push the "confirm", after the mesh bed leveling.
I'd like to know why it happens. Is it a Marlin bug?

This is a known problem of the Anet A8 display, it is caused by electrical interference. Pressing the middle button will refresh the display.

This is prone to happen when doing long prints.

There are some reported successes of people inserting ferrite beads or toroidal rings.

No, this is not a firmware issue, this is a hardware issue.


How to choose an extrusion temperature? From what I've been able to find out, online sources recommend around 205ºC for PLA and around 240ºC for ABS. But these are only guidelines, of course. Optimal printing temperature can be different depending on the printer, the filament, the model and other slicer settings.

For example, I've had success printing black PLA at 190ºC, but silver PLA of the same brand is giving me trouble. I'm having a hard time figuring out the general rules. So I would like to see a general guide for this, based on (at least) the following questions:

Which known factors before a print can help determine the right extrusion temperature? Obvious example: ABS vs PLA
What can happen during or after a print when the temperature is too low?
What can happen during or after a print when the temperature is too high?

An answer to the first question could take the form of a lookup table, or similar. The second and third could help someone adjust their temperature based on the symptoms of a failed print.

I understand that the failure or success of a print can depend on many more factors than extrusion temperature, but I didn't want to make this question too general. I may later ask the same question for other settings (e.g., print speed). However, do let me know if this question should be expanded or improved to make it more useful.

Printing temperature basics
Manufacturers generally specify a somewhat wide range of printing temperatures, and what temperature you should actually need can only be determined by trial and error:

The thermistor in your hotend is not 100 % accurate and may have an offset of a few degrees compared to its actual temperature.

Your hotend has a small temperature gradient, the place where the plastic is melted may have a higher/lower temperature compared to the temperature of your thermistor.

2 is further exacerbated by

As you print faster, you need more heat. The cold filament rapidly moving through your hotend will cool it down locally, meaning that the temperature will be cooler than what the thermistor measures. Faster prints equal bumps in the temperature up to 10 °C, and for a really slow print you might turn it down 10 °C from where you normally are.

This is a minor issue, but different colors of the same brand and material might work better at different temperatures. The pigments used can affect the melting point somewhat. Different brands also might have different temperatures.

Some symptoms may give you a guide as to how to adjust your temperature:
Printing too hot

Small/slow prints may not solidify quickly enough, leaving you with an ugly blob.

Stringing/bad bridging.

Plastic in the heatbreak may soften, leading to clogging.

You might burn/degrade the material (but for this you would really need to go outside of the temperature range).

Printing too cool

Too much force required to extrude, leading so skipping/grinding of the filament drive.

Layer delamination: the plastic needs to be hot enough to partially melt the layer below it and stick to it. Objects printed at a colder temperature tend to be weaker at the layer boundaries.

Furthermore, hot prints can sometimes have a more glossy finish than colder prints.


Why can my printer display remaining time but OctoPrint can't? The Prusa i3 MK3 displays the remaining printing time right from the beginning.

  Image: 3:38 remaining after 0% printing

From about 8 prints until now, I would say that this time is quite reliable.

Octoprint, however, does not display the remaining time initially and is then far off.

  Image: Octoprint saying something like "too uncertain"

  Image: Octoprint says 8.5 hours remaining

Why doesn't Octoprint just take the remaining time from the printer and display that? Or can I change a setting so that it does?

Octoprint is a generic application that has to work with a rather wide variety of printers and printer firmwares. The time estimation that is shipped with Octoprint by default is a very basic method that doesn't rely on any specific printer features. This also makes it kind of useless in some cases, and not very accurate.

The estimate that the Prusa i3 Mk3 shows is not actually done by the printer, it is embedded in the GCode generated by Slic3r PE. There are M73 commands added that tell the printer how far along the print job is.

As for why Octoprint doesn't do this by default, the major reason is likely that this method only works for specific printers and slicers, and only works well if the slicer can actually do good estimates for a particular printer. This is the case for the Prusa because it supports this feature and the slicer is maintained by them and has enough information to make good estimates. But this is not the case for all printers.

The feature is also not entirely standardized as far as I understand, e.g. Prusa uses slightly different M73 commands to give estimates for normal and silent mode.

There are plugins that can read the M73 estimates, you could try that. I never tried them myself, this plugin seems to do what you want from a quick glance.


Any fix for PLA prints getting more brittle over time? I've been printing small quantities from a PLA filament spool on a Craftbot printer for about two months now.  Recently the printed objects have been coming out very brittle.  Some structures that printed fine two months ago are now difficult to re-print.  The print head gets clogged easily, and when the object does print, it's quite brittle and 1/4" to 1/8" rods will easily snap off if not handled gently.

I'll admit to not following the precautions for storage of PLA.  It's much easier to just leave the filament installed rather than trying to remove it after each print, so this one spool has just been sitting on the back of the printer for all these weeks now.  I'm sure it's been humid some of the days, we've had some rain here.

Has the spool of PLA been damaged just by leaving it exposed to room air for two months?  Could that be the sole cause of the brittle prints, or are there other possible causes?  Is there any way to fix the spool or future prints from this spool, or do I have to scrap it and get a new spool?

PLA absorbs moisture, so keeping the filament dry is a key factor. Aside from that, PLA is naturally more brittle than other plastics like ABS and Nylon Sorry, tried to find a graph to prove it, but couldn't find one.

There's a good Google Group discussion and many other resources that go over good storage habits, but as for fixing the existing filament.

Try the following:

Place PLA in an enclosure (plastic bin, Zip-loc bag, etc.)
If you have some, add some moisture absorber(s)
Place the tub in a warm environment (naturally or artificially) and make sure the area is dry as possible (not in the shed in the back, by the woods...). Possibly next to a heater vent or space heater in your house?

Essentially, you're trying to treat the material. When the material goes through a heat treatment (aka the heat block in the extruder), the mechanical properties are beginning to change. The brittleness can be set by how quickly the material cools. I'm speculating that the moisture does any of the following:

Keeps the filament from heating up to the desired extrusion temperature.
Burns the filament.
The moisture is evaporated, leaving gaps in the extruded filament (under microscope).

I looked into this a few years ago and have forgotten most of what I found out, but I'll keep looking and update my answer here.


Auto bed leveling offset issue I'm using an Ender 3 with a new upgraded board SKR 1.3 Marlin bugfix 2.0 auto bed leveling I use EZABL.

for the EZABL I followed their tutorial for Marlin 2.0 since I don't use the unified firmware.

Offset info :

#define NOZZLE_TO_PROBE_OFFSET { 50, -2, 0 }

#define MIN_PROBE_EDGE 20

I did try to follow this helpful guide

I don't know much about programming so when he said:

  "As this is the part that defines the array values, you first need to make an array (note that this is a simple solution that many people should be able to understand with limited programming skills, more elegant solutions use the XYZ struct to access the X, Y or Z properties):"

constexpr int nozzle_to_probe_offset[] = NOZZLE_TO_PROBE_OFFSET;

#define PROBE_X_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER nozzle_to_probe_offset[0]

#define PROBE_Y_OFFSET_FROM_EXTRUDER nozzle_to_probe_offset[1]

I don't understand where to put the lines above and what value to put.

update:
error message on compiling

Config.h : https://pastebin.com/w7CC5eaC
Config_adv.h : https://pastebin.com/qep34T1h

You do not need to adjust the area yourself for Marlin 2.0, please look into probe.h and into this answer.

You only need to enable the offsets:

#if PROBE_SELECTED && !IS_KINEMATIC
  #define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_LEFT MIN_PROBE_EDGE
  #define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_RIGHT MIN_PROBE_EDGE
  #define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_FRONT MIN_PROBE_EDGE
  #define MIN_PROBE_EDGE_BACK MIN_PROBE_EDGE
#endif


Are there white filaments, that are not so translucent? I find that white filaments are quite translucent and printing 5 layers of white filament onto 2 layers of black filament (at 0.2 mm layers, the white layers being 100% infilled and the underlying black layer covering about 85% of the whole area) produces a slightly grey color on the top.

Is that a limitation of the white colour (or the actual material used)?

Are there materials, that address this issue to some extent?

Adjusting layer thickness while keeping the overall height won't change things, right?

Most of the plastics used for filament are inherently transparent and largely colorless. Color is achieved by adding pigment. Translucent and transparent colors are easy, but opaque colors require large amounts of opaque pigments, and even then, their opacity has its limits - even with black filament!

You can probably find very opaque white filament, but beware - too much pigment will affect the raw properties of the filament itself, either in terms of print temperature or things like layer adhesion or stringing/clogging etc.


Using Kinect 360 as 3D Scanner I would like to use my old Xbox 360 Kinect as a scanner for 3D modeling and (hopefully) printing a few busts of friends/family members; however, my efforts have failed in each direction that I have taken. Has anyone had success with this,  and if so, how do I fix the issues that I am facing?

What I have done so far and the problems that I have had:

I have purchased a cable to supply 12V to the Kinect while also allowing USB to a PC.
I have installed the Kinect SDK as well as the Kinect Developers Toolkit on my Windows 10 Ultrabook.
I installed the Microsoft "3D Scan" app and the "Kinect Readiness" app (not the name, unsure of it at this point) provided by Microsoft.

**Issue: ** Neither Microsoft app detects the  Kinect when cable is plugged in. The Kinect's light slowly flashes green. Also, my cursor freezes when the Kinect is plugged in.

I checked the Hardware profiles and found a notification that I do  not have the drivers for the Kinect motor and that no suitable  drivers could be found. However, no other details about the Kinect showed up.
I uninstalled the SDK and developer toolkits and installed v1.7, ran them in compatibility mode (Windows 8) and same issues arose.
I then began looking into using a different program, found ReconstructMe. This too failed to detect the Kinect even when it was manually selected as the scanner.

Any ideas? I also have a Linux Mint laptop that I will happily use for these efforts if I knew what software to capture the 3D scan with. It seems that there are several driver options out there, just unsure of what to use besides that. It seems that Blender can be used for some motion capture with Kinect; however, I am unsure of how this relates to my goals.

I tried the same setting old kinect (but for PC - actually with power supply and usb-cable) plug to my surface windows10.

After some troubles, it works now ;-)

The mentioned MS 3D scan and kinect readiness wont work. It is supposed for the new kinect2 model, because of the new driver. Best you deinstall both. Even the drivers and SDKs.

You need Kinect for Windows v1.8 for the old kinect. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40278

RecFusion is a software for using a single or multiple depth cams for getting 3d models. It works quite good with my kinect. It costs 99euros.  http://recfusion.net/index.php/en/download


Extruder_2 Stepper Motor does not work I have a FlashForge Creator Pro. It is equipped with the board revision V SF7.7.

My Right extruder prints great, however, the left does not work at all. I have tried to diagnose the cause, but at this point, I feel all the mechanicals are working and it's coming down to logic boards. I don't know what and how to test these. The main problem is like this:

When I order to Load/Unload Filament the motor does not advance
When printing from the left extruder, filament does not come out.

I have done the following tests:

The hotend works and the nozzle is clear. I can push filament through when it is hot.
Teeth are in great shape, unclogged and perfectly aligned with the "V" on the guide wheel.
The Stepper motor is functional. I can perform the LED test on both pairs of leads and 3V LED lights are up when the motor is turned.
The Stepper cable is OK. I tested continuity on all 4 wires and they are fine.
The Connectors are fine and well-seated.
Voltage to Stepper Driver board: 5.0V when the machine is powered ON

I have however encountered these tests that seemed to show a fail:

When I set the left extruder to "Unload Filament" the voltage across both pairs of leads is 0V

How can I continue troubleshooting and fixing the machine?

The next logical step is to swap the working board with the one that powers the misbehaving motor. If this fixes the motor but makes the other one stop working, it hints that the stepper driver board might be broken. If it does not fix the motor but the right motor works again, while the left is not, then the motors or the board controlling the stepper drivers might be broken.

As changing the driver boards did (as OP said) swap the problem from the left to the right extruder, it is extremely likely that the board that was originally left is defective in some way.

Getting a replacement part might be in order, and until then, running with a single extruder.


What is a masterspool? Recently, I have heard people talking about masterspool, when talking about 3D printing filament.

What exactly is master spool?
Where did the idea come from and when?
Is it being widely adopted? Or to be specific, how many distributors/manufacturers have adopted this already, and is it gaining traction?
Is this something that I should get excited by?
If so, why is it such a good idea?

A masterspool is the practice of printing your own spool out of filament, which will then be used to support your filament you purchase without a spool attached. The main idea is to create a reusable spool and create less waste.

(NOTE: I'm in no way affiliated with MatterHackers.com, nor am I an endorser of their products. There is also a version which Village Plastics has created.)

On MatterHackers.com website, they state:

  Filament without a spool? Why are we making this? The short answer: because the community wants it. We had enough questions, comments and plenty of tweets asking if we had plans to pick up the Master Spool concept. Seeing the response and interest within the community made it clear to us: we needed to bring this idea to the States. With a joint effort between MatterHackers and Village Plastics, you can now purchase Master Spool refills from within the US.

They are tying to apply the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra to create a cleaner environment for the rest of the world. While they are not the first to create or use a printable spool, they are pretty happy to be pressing forward with the idea of having a reusable spool and selling filament without a spool attached.

MatterHackers go on to state:

  What are the benefits of the Master Spool? Not only is there the  benefit of reducing plastic waste, using a Master Spool will also reduces shipping costs for new spools, and limits the clutter from amassing of a huge collection of used or empty spools. Rather than throwing away, trying to recycle dozens of spools, or trying to come up with a way to reuse them in some (like the Spool Tool), using the Master Spool means you can use all those filament scraps you have laying around on something useful and have one spool for all of your filament.

As far as where it started, it appears to have originated with this print on Thiniverse created by Dingoboy71. A well known 3D printer named RichRap created the reusable spool which MatterHacker promotes, though they say there are several which will work with their product (Village Plastic says pretty much the same).

If you get excited about saving the planet, then you should be excited about this. If you are a robust printer, going through tons (hopefully not literally) of filament per year, this method will save a lot of waste in the long run.

Realize there are (as of this writ) only limited suppliers of spool-less filament, though I think the trend for this type of product will increase in the future as the idea catches on. I guess time will tell.


Strange banding on first layer/skin I've been printing for a while with a Creality CR-10S with Colorfabb black PETG economy and all was good.
Until today, where on a large, flat print (30x10cm - a small drawer) I can't manage to get a smooth first (or second) layer no matter how hard I try.
I tried so far:

calibrating the extruder
setting different temperatures (range 230-240 suggested by the manufacture is 235-250)
slowing down the print (I usually print skin at 80mm/s, I tried this one down to 40mm/s)
installing a brand new nozzle
levelling the bed

The print starts fine but then, randomly, some bands that look like under extrusion appear:

Here's a second example of the first layer - I've ripped it off the plate but as you can see the first 50% of it was fine. The problem appeared later in the process.

The extruder "clicks", the filament stalls and it's clear that the nozzle is not extruding plastic fast enough.
What can it be?

All other prints are fine, but I have to say this is the only one that has such a large horizontal surface.

i'd say your extruder driver and/or motor is overheated - really

according to your description - when you've printed other things it was fine but this is the first with such big "flat" area

usually extruder motor works for some time then stops and starts and so on and again so it has some time when driver cools down but here it runs constantly for relatively long time

this overheats the driver and/or motor then is starts to clicks as there is not enough current delivered to the motor

what can you do?

try to take the cover off
check the driver temperature (use electronic thermometer as it can be even 100C)
try to cool it with some kind of fan while running the same printout

if the diagnosis is fine - you are at home and now you know what to do ;)

the one described as E is the one to check and cool down


Heated Bed vs Heated enclosure for large scale printer I'm /relatively/ new to 3d printing (I'm getting pretty good prints from my Wanhao di3 plus, but haven't done any DIY kits or anything) and materials engineering is probably the furthest thing from my area of expertise so I thought I would pose this to more experienced makers:

If I'm building a large scale printer (probably a similar size to substation33 - sub33D's 1200x1200 printer) that I'm only going to print in PLA and MAYBE ABS occasionally, can I substitute the heated bed for simply heating the entire enclosure?
The idea would be to have a thermistor measuring the ambient air temp inside the enclosure with a heat gun or two to hear the entire enclosure as necessary. I want to do this to try and reduce the cost (significantly as far as I can tell) as it seems 400*400 silicone heat pads tend to go for about 80 bucks a pop.
An alternate idea I had was to use two or three heat pads and space them evenly under a glass bed, although I feel that this won't work as well because the heating won't be homogenous...

Any input is appreciated :)

I tend to agree with Davo, that you might want both. But I'd probably try the enclosure first. My printer is about 1200 by 400. I looked at options, and found some difficult trade-offs:

First, the big heatbed approach:

as you know, getting a single heatbed that big will be expensive (and if it ever breaks or fails, you have to replace it all).
a big heatbed also draws far more power than a RAMPS board can switch, so you'll have to use the on-board control to control a power relay (solid state or mechanical).
a big heatbed will also waste a great deal of power when you're doing small things.

Second, the heated enclosure approach:

more costly to heat up at the beginning, but if insulated it may be cheaper for long prints (with a bed that large, your prints might take really long, too) because it can retain the heat better.
if you keep the air circulating inside, you'll get much more uniform heat, rather than hot first layers and cooler higher layers.
consider the effect of the heat on all the other components: motors, electronics, pre-heating the fibers, thinning any lubricants,....
you could save some heating cost and time by providing a way to shrink the space to be heated: perhaps just a partition you can insert when doing smaller prints. It wouldn't have to be nearly airtight to make a big difference.

A third option is several small heatbeds:

this lets you turn on just the ones you need for any given print
still expensive, but cheaper than one big one, especially when any of them fails.
there will be uneven heat at the seams, but if you place the boards tight together I doubt it's enough to matter. You could also carefully trim the boards' edges to get the spacing closer to uniform.
temperature regulation will be tricky. If you want to support a temperature sensor for each board, you'll have to start hacking at the control software, because (as far as I can tell) there's no provision for multiple heaters. Probably easier to create a completely separate unit with a big power supply, and a simple thermostat for each of the beds, that you just set manually before starting a print.

Overall, I think the heated enclosure may be best. I like the hair dryer idea or heat gun idea, of course you'll need a little extra circuitry to switch it, but you can use the usual software for temperature regulation by installing thermistor or thermocouple in the case (just be careful about circulating the air well enough to avoid "hot spots").

You may want to add an extra cutoff to protect against runaway heating -- I had that happen once when a thermistor literally fell out of the mounting hole in the hotend. Something like https://www.grainger.com/product/SUPCO-Thermostat-407L11.

Let us know how it turns out.


Standby hotend and bed heating with inactivity timer after print? Is there any G-code command to turn off hotend/bed heating after a specified timeout? I'd like to edit my end G-code to leave them heated to a standby temperature, rather than immediately letting them cool down, to eliminate the delay of re-heating between prints, but obviously it's not a good thing to leave them heated indefinitely.

Pausing
You could set temperatures for hotend and bed (respectively M104 and M140 and after that introduce a pause/dwell time with G4. After the pause, you could lower temperatures and proceed the shutdown of the printer, as such the setting of the idle temperatures and dwell time need to be done in the beginning of your end G-code in your slicer.
Not powering down
Alternatively, you could just not power down the hotend and bed. A typical end G-code consists of de-powering the fans, steppers, temperatures and positioning the head in a parking position, e.g.:

 M106 S0              ; Turn fan off
 M104 S0              ; Turn extruder off
 M140 S0              ; Turn off bed
// G91                  ; Change to relative positioning
// G1 Z30 E-2 F3000     ; Raise Z 30mm (lowers the bed) NEVER DO THIS, IT WILL DESTROY YOUR PRINTER IF YOU PRINT LARGER THAN MAX-Z MINUS 30 MM
// G90                  ; Switch back to absolute mode
 G1 X0 Y0             ; Move X/Y to origin
 M84                  ; Disable steppers

You could easily change the temperatures to standby values:

 M106 S0              ; Turn fan off
 M104 S160            ; Turn extruder to standby
 M140 S40             ; Turn bed to standby
// G91                  ; Change to relative positioning
// G1 Z30 E-2 F3000     ; Raise Z 30mm (lowers the bed) NEVER DO THIS, IT WILL DESTROY YOUR PRINTER IF YOU PRINT LARGER THAN MAX-Z MINUS 30 MM
// G90                  ; Switch back to absolute mode
 G1 X0 Y0             ; Move X/Y to origin
 M84                  ; Disable steppers