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Difficulty getting good precision | It's a generally accepted fact that FDM/FFF printers will have deviations when it comes to holes and perimeters. Typically, holes print smaller than designed and external surfaces end up larger than designed.
In your case, it seems to be the opposite: the hole is too big. It could be that you're just printing too big overall. You might want to make sure that your printer is printing the 10mm X/Y dimension in you example correctly. If it's too big, part of it may be just the typical oversized perimeter, but some of it might be due to incorrect firmware X/Y 'steps/mm' or extrusion like you mentioned.
See also: "Are you printing undersized holes?" |
Prusa MK3S weird 'Blobs' on PLA print surface | After hours of trying to fix the problem by trial and error I found that getting the nozzle slightly higher by approximately 0.1 mm was the solution. I cleaned the rods from dust, tightened most of the screws again and calibrated the printer.
I don't encounter this problem anymore even while printing at 150 mm/s speeds. |
OctoPi (Octoprint) time lapse quality issues | That bitrate is pretty low, which might explain the blockiness (is that a word?).
From YouTube's upload guidelines, you are encoding at the minimum recommended bitrate for standard 720P video. Maybe you should boost to 7500K (7.5 Mbps) and see if that helps.
Also, it appears that Octopi is merely calling ffmpeg locally and returning the video. The encoding that is being used might be resulting in blockiness. If you have access to the raw photos, you could just dump them into a directory on another machine and generate a video using a less-lossy video codec. Of course, this would only work if the photos you are taking are high quality. Assuming that they are, here is a nice resource for producing videos from image sequences in ffmpeg.
Good luck!
P.S. Alternatively, if you prefer a lightweight video tool with a GUI, you could use ImageJ. |
What causes leaking between the heat break and the heat block? | A video I recently viewed (YouTube link) regarding installing a hot end assembly references the proper sequence of parts placement. Starting with the nozzle, thread it into the heater block until it is proud of the surface by a half of a millimeter, perhaps slightly more. The heat break is then threaded into the heater block until it contacts the nozzle. If not already in place, attach the heat sink.
The next step is to bring the assembly up to maximum temperature and re-tighten the nozzle assembly, obviously using great care due to the high temp.
The video specified that performing this sequence incorrectly would result in leakage from the assembly, which describes your troubles. |
Anet A6's filament not feeding through the nozzle | Many printers have a problem with inserting filament into the extruder. Cutting it at an angle is a huge help. It is also very possible that you have a cog or a bad extruder nozzle.
This link could be of some help: Extruder is not feeding. |
prusa i3 not extruding enough plastic | For your troubleshooting process, I would suggest to use a simple model, perhaps a small cylinder of 20-25 mm diameter, 5-6 mm height.
You've not indicated what material you are using, nor the extruder/nozzle temperatures, but the print appears to be suffering from low temperature problems. You would also include the slicer software name although I don't believe this matters.
The initial layer will print reasonably well, if your slicer performs a reduced speed layer one. The slower filament movement through the nozzle allows it time to heat up for an acceptable layer, while the faster later layers will prevent enough heat to be imparted to the filament.
Increase your temperature at least 10°C for the initial test, as your part is quite a bit below temperature, in my opinion. If the first test is not acceptable, increase by 5°C for each succeeding test.
Keep in mind that individual brands will have different optimum temperatures and within a specific brand, different colors will require temperature adjustment.
The "initially working fine" reference does not include information regarding filament change, color change or other useful information such as print speed, layer thickness, etc., but I'm aiming for a temperature adjustment as the most likely answer. |
Help understanding bridge settings | The engineering approach is that if 30mm/s is working best on your equipment (at least on that day), you should use it; at least until it doesn't work so well for you. You might also try more different speeds (closer to 30 than to 10 or the assumed 60) in case one works even better than 30mm/s - though you might also want to question the assumed 60 (or test a set 60) since assumptions can bite you.
There's not going to be a fixed speed that's always best independent of the printer - everything is dependent on the printer, and its environment - if the temperature of the room varies a lot, it could change the "best setting" on days of different room temperatures. Perhaps the "10mm/s" that you saw working well was using a more effective cooling fan while bridging, or had other differences from your particular unit - or had different settings (other than speed - nozzle temperature, for instance) which impacted the result.
(note that I have limited tolerance for videos, and have not actually looked at yours, so if you're going to come back with "but I don't have a cooling fan", please post a picture of the printer or results that does not involve needing to sit through a video. And perhaps add a cooling fan...)
As for "understanding how to best tune your slicer settings" - far more testing, and keep track of the results. So, do tests (without altering other parameters) at 20, 25, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55 mm/s.
Depending on the results of those tests, say you find the best results at 35-40mm/s, perhaps you try 47 and compare that. Perhaps there's no real difference between the 3, so it's in that range, but not picky.
Then alter one other thing (nozzle temperature comes to mind first, but perhaps it's "fan speed for bridging" or some other, single, item) and do more testing - likely the best speed will change, so you'll need to re-run a range of speeds at the new setting. And keep track of which results (test prints) go with which settings, so you can go back to the ones that work best. Then alter that parameter more, or alter another parameter.
For the most part, there comes a point where it's good enough, or at least where you're sick of testing for a while and results are good enough until you want to test / tune some more.
If you change many things at once, it's hard to isolate cause and effect. If you test many settings but lose track of which settings were used for what result, it can be hard to progess towards better results consistently. When you find a range that seems to make no difference (and it's as good as it gets), be happy that the parameter is not too sensitive, and tend towards the middle of it. |
Oven/Food safe Filament? | Don't try to bake cookies inside a plastic mold; the plastic will smoke even if not melt. If you need to bake cookies use a cookie cutter made of plastic (your own design or copy) obviously printed on your new printer then bake normally. here is a link from thingeverse to get a cookie cutter .stl file
:) enjoy cutting cookies these holidays
Here is another link from hacks from one person is making the same to show his idea. |
Analytic equations to make algorithm of 3D printer | As shown, the mechanics are under-constrained. You can't solve for theta because you have three degrees of freedom (X, Y, theta) and only two constraints (L1, L2). Gravity will tend to bias theta in a particular orientation, but the geometrical stiffness of this arrangement will be so low that it will not be possible to do 3D printing.
To calculate the free-hanging orientation of theta, you will need to know the center of gravity of the end-effector, and solve a system of equations to find the angles and tensions for each cable that produce force vectors which sum to equilibrium with the gravity force vector through the COG. Unfortunately, the tensions will be a function of the angles, so it's not trivial to solve. As a hint, the virtual intersection of the two cables will be coincident with or directly above the COG in all equilibrium positions, and the horizontal components of the tensions in the two cables will be equal. |
Printer thermistors read completely wrong after changing firmware | Okay, to anyone who is looking at this post, I am an idiot. I have spent the last 4 or more hours sifting through youtube videos and forum posts to figure out this problem. I have reinstalled firmware modifications dozens of times. All of this, to just now discover that I never had the bed or hotend cables connected. That's right, I never even considered the fact that I had yet to plug in those cables after transporting my printer to a new location.
Don't be like me. Check the simplest solutions first. |
Getting worse quality prints on 0.05 mm than on 0.10 mm layer height on Prusa i3 MK3 | When printing at small layer heights (high resolution), you probably need to do some test prints first to see if your normal settings work for the lower layer height. You are most probably experiencing an increased pressure build-up in the nozzle due to the nozzle being closer to the bed. A test that might be useful for you is spacing several objects at different distances to see if the retraction, which you already suspect, may be not working optimally or that the nozzle leaks/oozes an excess amount of filament due to pressure build-up. This shows an example of such a test where the nozzle shows oozing.
Tuning the extruder to alleviate the pressure could be:
an increased retraction length, and/or
retraction speed, or
looking into the option called coasting where you stop extruding before the printer reaches the end of the deposition path while it still prints material caused by the pressure build-up.
When printing at 0.05 mm on my home-build CoreXY I experience much smoother prints opposed to printing in higher layer heights (less resolution), but I also get some very fine stringing, noticeable when printing multiple objects or objects with voids. |
Which is the best 3D printer to print bodies scanned? | I do not think there exists a printer that meets your requirements. "Cheap"/hobbyist printers roughly fall into two categories:
FDM: does not meet your requirement for sufficient detail and smooth surfaces in the face (and can not print in color).
SLA: meets your requirement for detail in the face but can not print in color. If you are willing to drop the color requirement, this would be a good choice.
There are some hobbyist projects to do full color printing, but they are in a rather early stage. One option is colorpod that can be used to convert an FDM printer (such as the Ultimaker, but the principle works with any printer) however it is in a rather early stage of development and not very reliable yet. Another option is Plan B but that is a DIY project and not available for purchase (and is not very mature either).
That leaves you with the commercial color options. You've already ruled out the 3D systems/projet machines. Another (slightly cheaper) commercial option is MCOR IRIS but it also runs in the tens of thousands. While researching this question I stumbled upon 3D Pandoras but it seems a relatively new company so it may turn out to be a literal Pandora's box (they mention "most affordable filaments" as one of the advantages of their printer even though it doesn't use filament at all) - and prices are not listed on their website. |
Z axis OK during calibration, but WAY off on prints | This was a comment from the OP, which effectively answers their own question:
After:
Installing new Marlin 1.1.3;
Changing the Maximum Acceleration on Z down to 20, and;
Changing Acceleration and Retract Acceleration down to 1000.
I have now a printout that measures 24.65 mm (0.65 mm higher than it should) and good enough for me to say, this is OK. |
Ender 3 - Tiny strings in print | What you're seeing does not look like stringing, which I would characterize as material that exited the nozzle after extrusion was supposed to have stopped, usually due to missing or insufficient retraction, but like the extrusions along the concave contours failed to bond to the previous layer and got drawn across to a point on the other side of the contour where some degree of adhesion resumed. This happens when the lateral acceleration force of going around the curve overcomes the bonding of the new material to the existing material it's being laid down against, and in my experience it's always the result of moisture-contaminated filament. This matches your description of the problem has something that "suddenly" started happening.
To fix it, dry your filament. If your bed is big enough, the easiest way to do this is to lay the whole spool on the heated bed covered by a cardboard filament box with one side cut out to make a heat chamber, and running the bed heater at around 60-70°C (for PLA) for several hours, flipping the spool a few times during it. You can also use an oven but I would not trust the temperature control not to shoot up high enough to ruin the filament. If you want a less hackish solution, all sorts of specialized filament drying systems are available but I don't have experience with any to recommend. I just use my bed for PLA and oven for materials that can withstand higher temperatures. |
Upgrade firmware without Slic3r and USB connection? | No, you cannot update the firmware from an SD card.
Yes you can update from a Raspberry Pi (RPi). A RPi runs a Linux distribution, when you install the correct tools you should be able to update through USB using the RPi.
For simplicity and time it would be an idea to lend a laptop for a few minutes. |
Options for getting a really flat build surface | It all depends on what you mean by "flat".
Is the problem that the build plate isn't flat (perfectly planar), or is the problem that the distance to the build plate varies based on X and Y coordinates? They are very different problems.
"Bed Leveling" is the process of allowing the firmware to know the Z position of the build plate for every (X,Y) location. Some printers support measuring a mesh of points and interpolating the mesh. This compensates quite well both for warped build plate, and for bad positioning mechanisms which add some position dependent Z-axis offset.
If you really need a flat, planar, build surface, perhaps because you are printing mirrors or precision parts, glass should work well. It is still, and will not brook any inelastic bending. It will shatter before it takes on a curve. If possible, you could consider a Pyrex® bed, since it has a lower coefficient of thermal expansion and won't warp as much with a temperature gradient through the glass.
I tried to find a spec on how flat your glass might be. I'm assuming it is "float glass", which is made by floating molten glass on a pool of molten tin. I didn't find a spec, but I found this answer to a similar question:
I doubt you will find such a spec- float glass isn't manufactured for
that purpose and it isn't really in the manufacturer's interests to
maintain such a spec. that said, the stuff is surprisingly flat, just
as a side effect of how it's made. you don't say what your needs are
other than near optical tolerances . might just be good enough for
you. consider though that granite surface plates of certified flatness
can be had fairly inexpensively these days.
So, it is clearly flat. I can't tell you how flat. And the flatness depends on not applying stress to the glass that causes it to bed. Thicker is stiffer (probably at the third power of the thickness ratio). |
Are black filaments more brittle? | Not inherently.
There are two things at work that might cause one color to test weaker than others even as its properties otherwise are functionally identical:
A bad print among good ones.
A bad roll among good ones.
Let's take a look at both, then do a little excursus into plastics and color.
A bad print
There are probably thousands of reasons a print might fail, but bad layer bonding and squish-ability under torsion strongly hint to under extrusion. Now, under extrusion itself can be caused by a plethora of reasons: a clogged nozzle is equally as possible as too thinner diameter as is just a bad temperature. The last one is, in my opinion, the most likely culprit: filaments may look the same and feel the same and bond the same, but in different colors, they sometimes demand different print settings.
As an example, I print most of my Kaisertech PLAs at 200°C, as that offers a quite good result for all of them. Yet when I started I had a white China PLA and a crystal clear PLA from the same manufacturer, both came from the same warehouse in the same shipment. The clear one is quite more brittle on the roll, but their starting-to-print temperature differs by 5°C - the white started to extrude at 180°C decently and printed ok at 195°C-200°C, while the clear needed only 175°C to start to be extrudeable and was really printable at 190°C. Yet recently I tried the same roll again to achieve fully clear prints, and with 210°C and lots of overextrusion, I managed to go almost solid-clear. Because of such experience, I suggest tweaking the settings.
A Bad Filament
There are several reasons why one roll might resulting in bad prints, but the most prominent are that the roll has gone bad over bad storage. It might be stored too hot or too humid, making it brittle or bubble in the hotend. Aging under UV plays a role (it degrades PLA). And dimensional accuracy plays a role because it affects the whole roll of filament. This is why tests should always be performed with equally treated and measured samples to achieve comparability.
Excursus: Plastics and color
What gives a plastic its color? Pigments added to it. Now, pigments can be of varied kinds. Usually, they are embedded in the plastic (=not bonded to the carrier plastic), and the plastic polymer is often either inherently transparent(ish) or white. Let's take some examples to look at...
Yellow. Yellow can be made from a lot of stuff but many yellow pigments react to UV light by decay more than other colors, leading to yellow to fade quickly in comparison to other colors. It has varied chemical compositions, often they can become quite complex.
Black. Black pigment is typically the most simplistic coloration to achieve: pure powdered carbon is one of our most potent black pigments, and also one of the cheapest, making black plastic one of the most common plastics. In contrast to other colors, carbon can't fade. But the plastic around it decomposes and turns white, fading the color this way.
Now, most colorings are - in physical terms - sizeable. Some few to a couple dozen atoms, making them range in the Angström (~Atom diameter) to few nanometer area overall. However, even something as complex as $C_{22}H_{20}O_{13}$ (Carmine) is relatively small compared to the $(C_3H_4O_2)_n$ of PolyLacticAcid, aka PLA. Poly tells us that n is at least 100, because shorter chains are oligomers, not polymers. In comparison, our red carmine pigment is more dense, much more compact in fact. As a result, a 100-chain of PLA is not just in the Angstöm area but in the dozen nanometer to micrometer range - a magnitude of at least 2 larger. Unless we have a huge excess of pigment or a pigment that reacts with the plastic under heat, then the impact of it on the strength should be neglectible to the other fillers often used. |
Handling retraction when using a mixing extruder (2 in 1 out) | I found this post on the S3D Forums that seem to have some interesting information on custom scripting within Simplify3D. While this doesn't seem to SPECIFICALLY address the question you've got, it looks like there's a "Retraction Scripts" tab that you could probably leverage your T2 tool inside of, using "OLDTOOL" instead of "NEWTOOL".
For additional information on what variables are available, I found a different forum post here that seems to have some documentation on Simplify3D's built-in script variables. Additionally, from the GCode in the first link's example scripts, it appears that you should be able to actually address M-commands to individual extruders (such as T2 in your case) simply by adding "T(x)" as a parameter to the individual command. I just ran a quick test on my own Marlin-based printer with a 2in-1out hotend, and I was not able to get it to address G1 commands to specific E motors without switching tools.
All in all I think you should be able to use the custom scripts available in S3D to accomplish what you want by switching tools in the layer change script, but aside from that, I don't know what options you have available with that specific software chain. |
What hairspray brands are known to contain PVA / PolyVinylpyrrolidone | From an MSDS for AquaNet hairspray:
Water (Aqua), Dimethyl Ether, SD Alcohol 40-B (Alcohol Denat.),
VA/Crotonates/Vinyl Neodecanoate Copolymer, Acrylates Copolymer,
Aminomethyl Propanol, Sodium Benzoate, Cyclohexylamine, Triethyl
Citrate, Cyclopentasiloxane, Sodium PCA, Masking Fragrance (Parfum)
The MSDS doesn't mention polyvinylpyrrolidone.
I suspect that the "PVA" here is the VA/Crotonates/Vinyl Neodecanoate Copolymer. A little googling indicates that this is a common ingredient of hair sprays, and works by forming a thin coating over hair to prevent it from adsorbing moisture.
I stumbled upon three types of Loreal(R) hairspray that have these ingredients. It seems likely that there are more.
Disclosure: I use AquaNet on an aluminum bed as a PLA bonding agent, and on my Prusa PEI covered bed as a PET-G release agent. |
Ender 3 - extruder stepper skipping | I have a problem most likely very similar to some reported by other users: extruder stepper is visually skipping a step from time to time. It rapidly rotates in the direction opposite to the one it is supposed to rotate.
These two sentences are saying something totally different, and the latter is not what a skipped step looks like. It sounds like retraction, which is totally normal. |
G-code for 3-axis arc? GRBL | This should be possible in GRBL 1.1, see examples below.
Disclaimer: I have never used neither GRBL nor arcs (G2, G3) in practice.
Support for arcs in G-code
In general, in IJK variant where the arc is described by three points (starting, end, center) anything seems possible, including the rainbow-like moves. I imagine (I,J,K) coordinates as imaginary arrow's nock for bent bow. By moving it around, you will "reshape" the bow as needed. I actually found similar CNC Arc Programming Exercise, including:
G01 X40 Z-25
G03 X70 Z-75 I-3.335 K-29.25
and very interesting Quick G-Code Arc Tutorial on CNC Cookbook. It presents R variant example of helical moves (tread milling) with Z decreasing in steps (relative positioning):
G03 X0.0939 Y0.0939 Z0.0179 R0.0939
G03 X-0.1179 Y0.1179 Z0.0179 R0.1179
G03 X-0.1185 Y-0.1185 Z0.0179 R0.1185
Support for acrs in GRBL
I found similar question in Duet3d forum: Caution! - STL Resolution. There is a sentence:
On GRBL you get some planar support (pick any two axes, eg XZ, but not three). (...) Some controllers even implement a helix mode.. but no standards exist.
So the support in GRBL may be limited. However this comment seems to be in condtradiction to the official GRBL README.md, saying:
List of Supported G-Codes in Grbl v1.1:
(...)
Arc IJK Distance Modes: G91.1
I leave a practical proof to you now. |
For a larger build volume, what lengths of 2020 aluminium do I need? | Long story short: ratios can be ignored. You only need to let your firmware know actual size, if it needs so. However, using golden ratio seems quite reasonable.
When talking about rigidity, keeping it will become a real issue at some point and may not be always effectively resolved by merely changing 2020 to 3030. Using 4020 or double 2020 could be better solution to compensate the most common forces during printing. |
Slicing software and Sidewall | Just for the fun of it and perhaps to contribute to this question, I opened my recent task in Simplify3d slicing software. Setting the perimeter walls and top/bottom surfaces to zero did not generate an error as I expected.
The print preview, essentially a g-code viewer, presented the model as only the honeycomb infill for which it was configured. Having zero layer thickness for the top/bottom also prevented features from printing that were composed of only walls without infill. Small details that otherwise print well were lost completely.
I can see that properly designed models printed with certain infill patterns and percentages would be quite artistic.
With respect to the first question, one could create a program to accomplish the desired result if one were an experienced programmer. It would be a matter of converting a specific set of vectors into g-code for the printer. I'm familiar enough with g-code to know that a well defined curve is easy enough to create in g-code but only if the mechanicals support arcs. If not, it's not so easy. The conversion from a vector format file to g-code would require a talented programmer indeed.
I suspect there are talented programmers "out there," but one must be suitably skilled and equally suitably motivated, yes? |
Where to get smartphone shapes from, to create a case all by myself? | I'm not aware of a source for STL files or engineering diagrams, but you can do the measurements yourself fairly easily. I did this to make credit-card-slot cases for my Moto G4 and the fit turned out very good.
Start with a digital caliper and measure the maximum length, width, and depth of the phone, ignoring rounded corners. Next, trace the phone on a piece of paper and use a straightedge to extend the flat parts of the sides to a bounding rectangle, and measure how far from the corner the curved part extends in each direction before meeting the flat part. Finally, if the sides of the phone are rounded too, estimate how thick the phone would be if you extended the curved edge to a full semicircle.
At this point, you can approximate the shape of the phone as the convex hull of 4 spheres scaled appropriately in the x, y, and z directions, if the sides are curved, or the convex hull of 4 cylinders scaled in just the x and y directions, if the sides are flat. In the former (spheres) case, the approximation will be thicker than the phone, and you have to slice off the top and bottom to match the arc segment that's actually present on the sides of the phone. There are ways to do this exactly but I found it doesn't need to be precise and you can just eyeball it.
In order to make a usable case, you'll also need to measure the distances of camera lens, buttons you want to expose, etc. from reference points. This is straightforward with a caliper.
Here's my result, following this procedure: |
Infill pattern comparison | Hex grids are used for different reasons than triangular grids (such as you often see on bridges and roof systems). Triangles are especially good at being rigid, while hex grids are very material-efficient for a given strength. The second reason ($) is typically more important for 3D printing.
Triangles do have fewer vertices than squares, but it's not always true that "fewer vertices" means stronger. Vertices are one kind of weak point. But in a triangle, vertex "angle-holding" failures simply don't matter. You can fasten 3 bars together with hinges or other joints that have little resistance to changing angle, and the triangle is still rigid.
In contrast, rectangular grids can (and do -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t9MpNTSbYg) completely collapse if their vertices aren't rigid enough. That combines badly with the fact that vertices concentrate forces, so have to be much stronger than sides in comparable settings.
A triangle cannot change without changing multiple things -- at least 2 angles and a side, or all three sides. Intuitively, the sides and vertices of a triangle work together for strength. This advantage of triangles doesn't transfer to hexagons, but hexagons have two other advantages: First, if you want to fill a space with a repeating shape, hexagons use less material than other shapes. And second, hexagons keep all the individual "walls" shorter compared to others shapes, which makes them less prone to bend.
The material efficiency was proven by Thomas Hales in 1998, according to http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/hexagons_are_the_most_scientifically_efficient_packing_shape_as_bee_honeycomb.html. His paper "The Honeycomb Structure" is available at https://www.communitycommons.org/wp-content/uploads/bp-attachments/14268/honey.pdf |
Ender 3 Pro Filament extrusion problems | Based on the image and your report that the problem consistently appears at the same part of the print, this is clearly an (either absolute or net) underextrusion problem, but (mostly) localized to particular layers. I say absolute or net because it might be extruding too little total material, or extruding the right amount of material but losing some of it to unwanted extrusion (oozing/stringing) in the wrong places. Either of these could be related to geometry of the layers involved.
One factor here is probably coasting, which you mentioned in a comment you have enabled. The small amount of coasting probably means it's not a big factor, but coasting always underextrudes. That's fundamentally how it works. You should not need coasting unless you've disabled retraction for some reason; it's a hack that's a poor substitute for part of what linear advance does on printers that support it.
You also mentioned a 60 mm/s print speed setting. At 0.2 mm layer height and 0.4 mm nozzle diameter, that's 4.8 mm³/s volumetric extrusion rate, which is roughly the limit of what you can expect to achieve with your printer's hotend. If you try to print faster than the hotend can keep up with, the material won't melt sufficiently fast to pass through the nozzle orifice. This will naturally slow it down allowing further melting to take place, but in the mean time the extruder gear will either grind into the filament or (much less likely, I think) the motor will skip steps.
Note that print speed settings control maximum speed, which is why you won't necessarily hit problems from having them too high right away, but only at particular layers. In prints with small details, especially with sharp corners, the majority of the printer's time is spent accelerating and decelerating between speeds far lower than the nominal/max print speed, and if you only reach an excessive max speed momentarily now and then, it might not continue for long enough for the material to cool down, in which case everything just works out.
Part of why I mention this is that, if you're trying to keep print time under control, setting a higher max speed might not even help you. Usually acceleration/jerk is the limiting factor to how fast you can print. Max print speed should be set according to the extrusion rate the hotend/extruder can keep up with, and print acceleration/jerk should be set according to the dynamical properties of the printer's axes. If you increase them too much you might get rough surfaces, ringing, or even skipped steps/layer shifts, but you can go pretty high. 3000 mm²/s is probably the absolute max I'd try on an Ender 3. I did this and had some success, but some failures; I don't recall what jerk was and it might have been a factor too. The Y axis in particular can't handle acceleration as well as the X axis can, due to having to move the whole bed, not just the hotend assembly. Somewhere between 500 and 2000 is probably reasonable, but I'd experiment a good deal before trying it on a long-running print.
One additional method to increase speed might be reducing line widths to less than the nozzle width. This proportionally decreases the volumetric extrusion rate the hotend has to keep up with. But I'm not sure how well line widths less than nozzle width work for outer walls. This may adversely affect part strength too, which might not be a problem for your particular usage case. |
Second layer: gaps, poor adhesion - why? | I wouldn't describe that as an "OK" first layer. The nozzle is either too far from the bed, or you're underextruding. Underextrusion also looks like the cause of your second layer problems. |
Z axis: Stepper motor and lead screw torque calculation | This is a work in progress - I'm still plugging in the numbers
A couple of issues:
You appear to be mixing Force (effort) and Inertia and comparing them directly - this mistake seems to have come from the first link;
You used 8 mm diameter, instead of 4 mm radius, to calculate the torque
You haven't calculated the holding force, which would provide the holding torque required, which can be easily compared against the specification of the stepper motor;
I can't see where you obtained the value for axial force of 10 N, from the datasheet of the stepper motor.
Regardless of these issues, tackling each question separately:
Selection stepper motor to lift given weight?
First equation
Your first equation, for effort, is
$$F_{effort} = S_f+\frac{Load}{2*\pi*\left(\frac{R}{P}\right)*S_e}$$
where,
Starting Force, from linked article, worst case scenario, $S_f = 20$ N
Radius $R=4$ mm$=0.004$ m
Pitch $P=1.25$ mm$=0.0125$ m, and
Screw Efficiency, from linked article, worst case scenario 20 %, $S_e=20=0.2$
So filling in the numbers, for 25 N:
$$effort = 20+\frac{25}{2*\pi*\left(\frac{0.004}{0.00125}\right)*0.2}$$
$$effort = 26.22$$
It is worth noting that this running torque only comes to 6.22 N, much smaller than the worse case value of the starting force, of 20 N:
$$\frac{25}{2*\pi*\left(\frac{0.004}{0.00125}\right)*0.2}$$
$$ = 6.22$$
and plugging in the numbers, for 50 N:
$$effort = 20+\frac{50}{2*\pi*\left(\frac{0.004}{0.00125}\right)*0.2}$$
$$effort = 32.44$$
Again, it is worth noting that this running torque only comes to 12.44 N, much smaller than the worse case value of the starting force, of 20 N:
$$\frac{50}{2*\pi*\left(\frac{0.004}{0.00125}\right)*0.2}$$
$$ = 12.44$$
It should be noted that these values are for a force, in N, not torque, in N•m, and I can't see on the datasheet were you obtained an Axial force of 10 N. To convert these to a torque, you must multiply by the radius of the M8 x 1.25 spindle - M8 is 8 mm, therefore the radius is 4 mm, which is 0.004 m:
$$T_{raise} = F_{effort} \times 0.004$$
Thus reducing the values for the Torque (derived from the effort) even further, by a couple of orders of magnitude, to 0.104 and 0.12976 N•m, for loads of 25 N and 50 N respectively.
So, the estimated value of worst case starting force would appear to be the dominant factor in selecting the stepper motor.
Regardless of all this, if, as you say, that the holding torque, $T_H$, is higher than the running torque, $T_{raise}$, then the holding torque would be the deciding factor in selecting a stepper and the running torque can be discounted.
It is unclear whether the equation that you found is the appropriate equation for calculating the holding torque. This equation appears to be for moving the load, whereas you need it for merely holding the load. For completeness both the holding and lowering torque values should be calculated.
Second equation
Your second equation apparently from Wikipedia - Force, via Lead Screw Torque and Force Calculator,
$$Torque_{raise} = F*D_m/2*\frac{L+\mu*\pi*D_m}{\pi*D_m-\mu*L}$$
where,
Force, $F$
Diameter, $D_m$
Pitch distance of square thread, $L=\frac{1}{D_{Thread}}$, where $D_{Thread}$ is the thread density given in the table.
Coefficient of friction, $\mu$
Whilst I can not see that equation on Wikipedia's Force page, I did manage to find the equation for raising, and the equation for lowering, on the Wikipedia page for Leadscrews - Mechanics1:
$$T_R = \frac{Fd_m}{2}\left(\frac{l+\pi\mu{d_m}}{\pi{d_m}-\mu{l}}\right)$$
and
$$T_L = \frac{Fd_m}{2}\left(\frac{\pi\mu{d_m}-l}{\pi{d_m}+\mu{l}}\right)$$
Plugging in the numbers for 50 N of load:
$$T_R = \frac{50\times0.007375}{2}\left(\frac{0.00125+\pi\times 0.25\times0.007375}{\pi\times0.007375-0.25\times0.00125}\right)$$
$$T_R = 0.1848 \times 0.308$$
$$T_R = 0.0568$$
Plugging in the numbers for 50 N of load:
$$T_L = \frac{50\times0.007375}{2}\left(\frac{\pi\times 0.25\times0.007375- 0.00125}{\pi\times0.007375+0.25\times0.00125}\right)$$
$$T_L = 0.1848 \times 0.193$$
$$T_L = 0.0357$$
NOTE: As the link to the calculator states, there are two different torques - one to raise, $T_R$, and one to lower, $T_L$. As the lowering torque, $T_L$, is less than the raising torque, $T_R$, then it isn't really necessary to calculate it, or consider it when selecting the stepper, as the raising torque is the dominant factor.
Again, if, as you say, that the holding torque, $T_H$, is higher than the running torque i.e. $T_R$, then the holding torque would be the deciding factor in selecting a stepper and the running toque can be discounted.
Amount of load threaded rod can handle?
This would appear to be much simpler to answer, as a value is given in the specifications for the rod, depending upon what you actually mean. It could be:
The weight that the rod can support before slipping, or;
The weight that the rod can support before slipping before mechanical failure,
I would imagine that, the specification given is the weight supported before the threads give way and break.
Footnotes
1 These equations only account for the friction of the thread and the term for the collar appears to have been omitted.
From Torque Required to Raise Load (TR) Calculation, the full equation, for both thread and collar, is given by:
$$T_R = \frac{Fd_m}{2}\left(\frac{l+\pi\mu{d_m}}{\pi{d_m}-\mu{l}}\right)+\left(\frac{F\mu_cd_c}{2}\right)$$
where,
Torque required to raise load, $T_R$
Load, $F=50$ N
Mean diameter of square thread, $d_m = X?$ m
Mean diameter of collar, $d_c = X?$ m
Pitch distance of square thread, $l = 0.00125$ m
Coefficient of friction for thread, taken from the Solved Example, $\mu = 0.25$
Coefficient of friction of collar, taken from the Solved Example, $\mu_c = 0.25$
As the mean diameter, $d_m$ is not provided, it can be determined from the pitch, $l$, and nominal diameter, $d_n = 8$ mm, by
$$d_m = d_n-\frac{l}{2}$$
$$d_m = 0.008 -\frac{0.00125}{2}$$
$$d_m = 0.007375$$
The mean diameter of collar, $d_c$ is not given...
Plugging in the numbers for 50 N of load:
$$T_R = \frac{50\times0.007375}{2}\left(\frac{0.00125+\pi\times 0.25\times0.007375}{\pi\times0.007375-0.25\times0.00125}\right)+\left(\frac{50\times0.25\times{d_c}}{2}\right)$$
$$T_R = 0.1848 \times 0.308+\left(6.25\times{d_c}\right)$$
$$T_R = 0.0568+\left(6.25\times{d_c}\right)$$ |
Firmware Choice: Marlin vs Repetier vs Other | Given that this printer will have the Pi3 to control "higher functions", is it worth considering a compact firmware like Teacup?
A few days ago I came across klipper.
It seems to do exactly that functionality split you mention |
Taking a new hotend into operation (cleaning, forming, etc) | I haven't done anything special to set up mine. But it's probably worth doing a general cleaning. I'd swab it off with alcohol, including running a q-tip or similar inside the fiber feed path. Then blow out the nozzle with compressed air to make sure it's clear.
You could measure the nozzle diameter by fitting fine drill bits in to see which is the largest one the passes through freely. Be sure to measure how much fiber your extruder really takes in when you ask it to extrude a certain length -- but that's about the extruder, not the hotend per se.
Finally, I'd check the insulation, if any. I got a couple hot ends that had big gaps in/around the insulation. I've found that "high-temperature gasket maker" is great for improving insulation (depends, of course, on the shape and design of the specific hot end. |
Auto bed leveling: systematic slope | Did you check if your bed is parallel to the gantry?
It can happen that after leveling one side and moving to the other the adjustment there puts the first side out of alignment - I level my bed by doing some couple turns |
Retraction Jamming Problem! | I had problems with jamming PETG due to retraction. My model had many retraction moves, such that the amount of filament used during a printing move was less than the retraction distance. I found that several trips through the feed gear flattened the filament, which caused two problems.
The flattened (or ovaled) filament had trouble fitting through the round holes and tubes, and
Since it was thinner, the filament was not gripped as tightly so there was less force pushing it.
I reduced my feed gear pressure and the problem stopped.
PETG is not as stiff as PLA. The multiple trips through mangle flattened it. |
Handing OpenSCAD module parameters derived from other variables | This seems to be a limitation of the language. One workaround that's only moderately ugly is, in the body of the module:
mouth = is_undef(mouth) ? pin_radius * 0.9 : mouth;
etc. If you'll only be using the file via a use directive in other files, another approach is file-scope variables. These can be overridden when the module is called, just like module parameters, and they do not provide or take values for/from the calling file's file-scope variable namespace. |
Anet A8 not printing over heat bed | do you set the {speed_print} value correct? Otherwise the command G1 Z15.0 F {speed_print} is not executable imho... |
Unable to compile Marlin for Anet A8 | I'm almost back in business.
I reinstalled the bootloader.
I switched from Arduino IDE to Visual Studio Code to compile using Crosslink's Anet A8 (Plus) Marlin 2.0 Installation Upgrade YouTube tutorial.
1. Bootloader
I'm using a Chinese USBasp and there are some confusing tutorials on the web which require upgrading the USBasp firmware using another USBasp or Arduino. I avoided this as follows:
I used the Arduino IDE to open the Example | Blink.ino.
Tools | Board: "Anet V1.0 (Optiboot)". (Opti in optiboot means "optimised" so the bootloader will take up less space allowing you to use more options in your Marlin configuration.h.)
Tools | Programmer: "USBasp".
Tools | Burn Booloader. (This will generate the hex file to be transferred to the Anet board. Save it somewhere you will find it.)
Download and install AVRDUDESS if you haven't got it. I used Ver. 2.11. Connect the USBasp to the Anet board and your computer.
Start AVRDUDESS.
Port: usb.
Baud rate: 250000.
Hit the Detect button and it should identify your Anet board.
Hit the Flash [...] button and select the Blink.ino.with_bootloader.sanguino.hex file.
Hit the Program button. It should all work.
You now have an Anet board with the OptiBootLoader installed.
Now follow Crosslink's video tutorial above using the normal USB connection. |
How to add "skin" to a Voronoi shape? | I posted this to an Autodesk forum, and a fellow named "MagWeb" proposed the following solution. I have not tried it yet.
A possible workflow depends much on the overall shape of the voronoi
object:
If it's convex all over (like an egg) or convex and planar (like a
cylinder) e.g:
SelectAll (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A on MAC)
Run Edit/FitPrimitive and set its PrimitiveType to ConvexHull (CreateNewObjects checked)
Run MakeSolid on this hull object and set its SolidType to Accurate. Accurate enables the OffsetDistance slider. Pull it down a bit and hit
update. You want to get a result intersecting but showing the voronoi
object. If needed adjust the offset. Finally accept.
Now activate both the voronoi and the MakeSolid result and run BooleanUnion
Show the FitPrimitive object again (MakeSolid did hide it before) and run MakeSolid again in Accurate mode. Now set a slightly bigger
offset as you did before. The difference will determine the "lining's"
thickness. Accept
Activate the BoolleanUnion result first and the last MakeSolid result and run BooleanDifference to get a hollow object. You might use
another intersecting object to bool-off an opening the bottom.
Harder but doable with a different workflow on an voronoi object
owning concave regions...
edit
Having run some trials, I can confirm this works for simple convex objects. If there are concavities, most likely the source shape needs to be chopped into sections each of which can be treated as convex.
I played around with Meshmixer's "apply pattern" functions with limited success. I could get a form-fitting pattern shape but with a rather uneven surface. Some fine-tuning of the pattern parameters may help. Note that the new shape tends to be as thick as the original voronoi object, so it may well be better to do something like the following:
1) create a duplicate of the original
2) shrink the duplicate by a few percent
3) align the two objects to a common origin and take the boolean difference to create a thin-wall version of the original.
4) Build the pattern object based on that thinwall object.
edit number 2
I succeeded! For those who care, I took an open Voronoi glasses case and put a skin inside to protect your glasses. See this Thingiverse item |
After market bed heater for Intamsys Funmat HT 3D Printer | If you're a brave individual you might try insulating the bottom of your heated bed. You're going to want to get fiberglass or something that can actually withstand the temperatures you're trying to reach; anything past about 230 °C and you'll get organic things like cork and cotton starting to smoke. 200 °C is pretty absurd for a print bed temperature unless you're printing some pretty exotic materials.
Aside from insulating the bottom of the bed to aid in heat retention, you might also try getting an external FET chip for your heated bed, like is recommended for the RAMPS1.4 boards since their connectors don't handle high amperage loads well. External FET plus a 24 V PSU might give you the kind of temperature range you're apparently aiming for. Best of luck with that, and try not to set your entire setup on fire, 200 °C really is kind of absurd for an entire print plate.
TL;DR:
Insulate
External FET chip
24V PSU |
Do I have to buy all new components if I were to get a RAMPS 1.4 that supports 24 V power? | You need all components that are supplied voltage by the RAMPS board to be able to deal with a 24V input. Some of your parts are most likely compatible, as the stepper drivers. Others get the 5V from the Arduino, as the endstops. Some will most likely need replacement, as
the Hotend heater cartridge. It will need to be exchanged. You can easily buy those in 12V and 24V versions and a 12V version should not get 24V.
the fans. Chances here are about as close to 100% as it gets that they need to be replaced. They are directly connected to the 12V, some are PWM regulated but that doesn't change that they need to be replaced with proper 24V fans.
the heated bed. Since it gets direct power from the board you cannot use your old 12V bed. This is unless you had your old bed switched by a solid state relay (SSR) before. Then you'd have to check the SSR's switching signal tolerances.
anything else you might have hooked up to your power supply directly (lights for example) should be checked for input tolerance. |
How to use an Anet A8 control board with a damaged AVR IC? | This post was taken from Tooniis's comment.
I've been doing #2 for a week now. I swapped ports of the nozzle and hotbed. Now I have a functional nozzle but the bed cannot be heated. The new hardware should arrive soon though. As for #1, it would be very hard to do since the ATmega chip is an SMD package.
In sanguino.h there are two lines which define the pins for the hotbed thermistor and the nozzle thermistor. One of them is 6 and the other is 7, and I just swapped those two. The lines are next to each other. |
What are the advantages/disadvantages of using synchromesh cables instead of belts? | Looking at the specs for both the GT2 belt and the Synchromesh I'm very hesitant to recommend a Synchromesh over a belt.
The first thing that sticks out is that there are both error and cumulative error specifications for the Synchromesh. For a device like a 3D printer, I don't like the idea that of my axes can accumulate up to ±0.16 in. of error over 100 pitches (the pitch is between 0.12 in. and 0.25 in. so that is 12 to 25 in.).
Contrast this to a belt where the only way you have a cumulative error is if you skip a tooth and I think the winner is the GT2.
Looking at the non-cumulative pitch error both products are comparable but again the belt wins. For the Synchromesh we have an accuracy of ±0.002 in. versus ±0.0003(1) in. for a 2 mm GT2 belt and ±0.0012(1) in. for a 3 mm GT2 belt.
Note: I can't be certain about exact values for error since there are no numbers for the GT2 - only a stupid chart. I also have a hard time believing that error is not a function of total length for both the Synchromesh and the GT2 belt but I'm not the manufacturer. However, since both products are made by the same company I wouldn't be as concerned about them trying to oversell one product over the other.
In conclusion, I don't see of any reason to choose a Synchromesh over a belt if your physical layout is compatible with both. As pointed out in the marketing material for the Synchromesh, it can be routed along 3 axes whereas a belt works best along a single axis. The Synchromesh seems to be a product designed for a very specific application...
Sources
http://www.sdp-si.com/PDFS/Technical-Section-Timing.pdf
http://www.sdp-si.com/PDFS/Synchromesh-Cable-and-Attachment-Inch.pdf |
Unable to load new filament FlashForge Adventurer 3 | First thing I'd try is making sure the nozzle is hot enough and carefully try to feed the new filament where it will be pushed - sometimes there's melted filament that just isn't hot enough to flow out and the new filament is pushing on it, jamming and making your motor make that sound. Usually getting it hot to the point where the old filament is practically dripping out before attempting to insert the new filament will work.
If that doesn't work I might let the thing cool, disassemble the nozzle, and remove the jam mechanically (and reassemble it). |
Tronxy X5S losing steps during print | I had the same issue with my X5S when I first got it assembled. Because it's CoreXY, if one pulley slips, you'll skip steps in the diagonal. Check both set screws on your pulleys for the X and Y. |
Creality Ender 3 printer power consumption? | I'm currently measuring the power usage of my Ender 3. It used about 0.5 kWh for 4 hours of printing. With 2 heat ups (about 280 W each). So approximately 120 W average.
Or 0.12 kWh per hour.
Assumed your printing 12 h a day you're using 1.5 kWh a day. That translates into a cost of 0.43 € a day in electricity (0.3 €/kWh).
When you're using your printer every day for an average of 12 h. You'll be using about 525 kWh a year or 157 € in electricity at 0.3 €/kWh. |
Anet A8 won't print properly | because the extruder gear doesn't really push it. It doesn't seem like it's stuck, but it just won't move.
It looks like stepper issue.
Did you check stepper connections? Maybe there is a loose wire?
Maybe your extruder is assembled incorrectly? Please check google images to see how extruder should be assembled and/or give us some photos of your extruder.
Maybe your printer is setup wrong, there is small potentiometer on mainboard which sets stepper current, I had problems when it was rotated slightly too far. Try commanding your printer to extrude slowly for several seconds and in this time turn pot at least one time (it wraps around) until it starts to extrude (do not move printhead during this, turning this pot WILL make motors skip and crash into home/end). If you don't have problems with other motors, this may not be your issue but is worth checking.
Try homing your axes first, sometimes after startup motors won't work correctly until homing axes.
Try pressing reset once after starting printer.
How to find that pot? It's just to the side of capacitor which is near "Z-Motor2" connector. |
Why can't I use PLA with ABS in a dual extruding 3D printer? | First of all: PLA is not water soluable.
Second: You want the melting points of the plastics to be as close as possible. PLA is printed between 180 and 200 °C. ABS is printed at 220 to 240 °C.
PVA on the other hand is water soluable and is printed in the same temperature range as ABS.
The setup is dependant on your slicer: you need to select one extruder as being the support structure one, the other as the main body one. Then you assign the filaments to them. Without knowing your slicer, I can't asnwer this better. |
Building new Repetier firmware for a delta printer (D-force) | You, obviously, do actually have a Z-probe, but in case another user does not, or you decide not to use yours, I will cover both cases (with and without a Z-probe).
Z-probe not present
If not, then in configuration.h set the FEATURE_Z_PROBE to false, like this:
#define FEATURE_Z_PROBE false
or
#define FEATURE_Z_PROBE 0.
Then you also need to set
#define DISTORTION_CORRECTION 0
as this requires the FEATURE_Z_PROBE if otherwise set to 1 or true. However, thereafter, upon recompilation, I then get a lot of other errors... but these seem to be more to do with selecting the correct board, #define MOTHERBOARD, in pins.h, than the disabling of the Z-probe. This error:
fastio.h:29: error: 'DIOORIG_FAN2_PIN_WPORT' was not declared in this scope
is due to, from Can't compile firmware:
You are using ORIG_FAN2_PIN in your configuration but apparently your boards pin definition does not define that pin. In that case check board description and use the digital pin number instead for that function.
Actually that is not entirely true1.
NOTE: It might be easier to just define Z_PROBE_PIN to something other than -1, which is what it is defaulting to, as set in configuration.h:
#define Z_PROBE_PIN -1
Z-probe present
If you do have a Z-probe, then trace the wires to see where they go on the controller board, determine that pin number on the board and then enter that pin number into configuration.h. For example, if it is connected to pin 63, then:
#define Z_PROBE_PIN 63
and leave DISTORTION_CORRECTION untouched.
Where to plug the Z-probe in
If your Z-probe has become unplugged, then you need to choose a pin to connect it to. This is easy... you simply connect it to any free pin. Now, you probably only have three end stops, at the top of the delta frame. These are the MAX end stops. So, you can simply connect the Z-probe to any of the three MIN end stop pins, on the board. Obviously, you will leave the three #defines for the MIN end stop, in Configuration.h, un-configured, and then specify the pin, that you did use, in
#define Z_PROBE_PIN <your pin>
See Is there a complete step by step manual for building Z probe - comment 1950
Put the zprobe on any free pin you have but do NOT set it in endstops. It is not a endstop it is a zprobe.
Then set it in zprobe section with pullup enabled so it is drawn to high internally until you connect the pin with gnd. Then G31 should also be consistent. I guess you missed the pullup part making it a random result.
and Is there a complete step by step manual for building Z probe - Comment_1952
Not sure why this is a problem. You have 6 endstop pins and need 3 for
endstops + 1 for zprobe = 4 pins. Still 2 endstop pins free.
When I said not in endstops I meant not in the endstop configuration.
There you only put switches that work as endstop.
Highlighting the connections
The green PCB, for the fan and Z-probe, does not appear to have any logic on it (I can't see any), so it is just a collection of tracks (i.e. wires). As there are no logic chips on it, you can trace the circuit from the Z-probe to the controller (either visually, or using a multimeter set on continuity check). I assume that the PCB is connected to the controller board somewhere/somehow... Via the 10 wire grey ribbon cable that goes to the second green PCB next to the main board, next to LED3, as shown in the first photo? This ribbon cable transfers signals to/from the Z-probe/fan PCB to the secondary PCB, which appears to be a power related PCB (i.e. heaters). Somehow the secondary, power, PCB then connects to the main controller board.
One of the three unused MINIMUM end stop pins should be used for the Z-probe. This is assuming that:
you only have three physical end stops (at the top of the three axes) and;
they are connected to the MAXIMUM end stop pins.
If you have six end stops, (one at the top and one at the bottom), then that changes things drastically. Assuming that you only have three, then the three unused MINIMUM pins will be used for some other purposes (Z-probe, servo arm, something else?).
You need to confirm that you only have end stops at the top of the printer and not the bottom, i.e. only MAX_ENDSTOP (or X+, Y+ and Z+) pins. If so, then you should have three (sets of) (MIN_ENDSTOP) pins with nothing connected to them (in theory). So, one of those three MIN_ENDSTOP pins will have the Z-probe connected to it. If you are having trouble locating the MIN_ENDSTOP pins, trace where the 3 physical (MAX) end stops are connected to, those will be the MAX_ENDSTOP pins. Then from that, the MIN_ENDSTOP pins should be relatively easy to identify. Hopefully that makes sense.
Looking at the schema then it becomes obvious. You see X+, X-, Y+, Y-, Z+ and Z-. The physical endstops should be connected to the three + connectors. The three - connectors: two of them are hopefully not connected. The one that is should be the Z-probe. Looking at the photo, unfortunately, it seems as if all six (or just five?) are populated.
Personally, to save time, I would get a multimeter, unplug the X, Y, Z +/- connectors (actually only the - connectors) in turn and test each one, to see which is connected to the Z-probe.
To check the correct pin is used, you really only have two (sensible) options: either visually, or; multimeter. Multimeter would be best, and the most certain. However, there are two other options open to you (one risky, and one laborious):
As we have whittled it down to two connectors (X-min and Z-min, there are only two pins (for the Z-probe and servo) to worry about, you only have a 50-50 chance of getting it wrong, so you could guess, code it up and see if it works - if it doesn't, then change the pin defined, and recompile...
IMPORTANT: After a rethink, it is best not to just take the 50-50 chance, as the servo pin is probably configured as an output and the Z-probe pin will be an input. You could end up damaging the control board.
Finally, you could, in theory, test it programmatically, but that would require writing some test code for the controller, which (as we are having enough trouble as it is with the configuration.h file) would be a nightmare, to put it bluntly.
Schema
Photo of control board
It is probably a good idea to read this, lengthly, article: Repetier - Z-probing.
Footnotes
1 I have finally managed to get Repetier.ino to compile. The problem lay with the Configuration.h file that came with the googledrive download, that you provided. Trying to either manually configure Configuration.h, or pre-loading it into Repetier's configuration tool, always resulted in the same compilation error, see DIOORIG_FAN2_PIN_WPORT error. The simplest solution is to create a Configuration.h file from new, using the Configuration tool. When you do that, it will compile ok.
Or, if you really want to do it manually, either:
Set NUM_EXTRUDER to 1 and not 2 as the FAN2 compile error comes from the second extruder's set of #defines, or;
More precisely, if you do have two extruders, then change the line #define EXT1_EXTRUDER_COOLER_PIN ORIG_FAN2_PIN and specify a pin, i.e. 65, en lieu of using ORIG_FAN2_PIN. |
3D prints keep suffering from warping | For ABS it will warp unless you build a heat chamber.
That said the tricks to reduce warping come down to:
Material, i.e. PLA is less likely to warp;
Use a fan, it helps so much;
Make sure you have temps calibrated well - Too hot is more warp;
Use a raft. The Makerbot uses a raft and no heated bed;
Make sure the room is not drafty. Having it by the window will result in warping;
Adding a large brim also helps;
I find good ol' glue sticks work the best at keeping the print to the bed;
SMASH the first layer. This one is controversial. I personally do first layer at 130% and print speed of 30%. You get elephants foot sure, but it's on the bed real good.
Tom is right. It is very very hard to print that big of a piece without warping. That said I have done very large pieces on my Ultimaker, using a fan, glue stick, MatterHackers PRO PLA and no raft. But again that's on an Ultimaker.
Note you can build a heat chamber pretty easily. Specifically a passive heat chamber. |
What should I pay attention to after taking a 3d printer from extended storage | The main thing that might have changed is the bed level, so you should level the bed again. If your printer is sufficiently sturdy, this may not even be necessary (but this should become apparent during your first print). The remaining calibration parameters (steps per mm for all axes, PID tuning, etc...) should not have changed.
You should perhaps also check for any bolts/nuts/cables that might have come loose during transport. This is not particularly likely to have happened, unless something was loose to begin with. |
Sending G-code commands to Hyrel System 30M using python | If the one in your question is your complete code, a possibility is that your computer is just buffering the output for the serial port, withholding it in memory. Try to add
ser.flush()
after your last line. This command will... well... flush anything into the buffer through the actual connection. |
How can I test that my stepper motors for functionality and compliance? | For the AliExpress part, open a dispute and attach pictures to the dispute and ask for a partial, reasonable discount. It always worked for me.
As for how to test the motors themselves, it depends on what other hardware you have.
For example, you could wire the motors to your printer board, and try to issue a G6 command to that motor.
If you find issues while testing the motors, that could be evidence for an even bigger discount, or even full refund if the motor doesn't work. |
How to avoid collisions with already printed objects? | The problem was twofold:
Lack of bed adhesion due to the small contact surface
motion into the already printed objects.
The quick and dirty way was to change two settings:
Print with a small (3 mm) brim to stick the supports to the print and provide more surface. Other materials than PLA may need considerably more brim!
Activate Z-Hop to force the nozzle to lift over the print when traveling
These tricks don't solve issues with very thin structures or in all cases. In those cases, it can be mandatory to increase the structure's (support) thickness or change the alignment. |
Does anyone know how Slic3r determines its infill adjacent strand spacing, instead of using fill density? | This answer should have been a comment, except I have included the relevant code.
To answer question 2, at a guess, bridge is simply a boolean (bool) that specifies whether there is a bridge or not.
From Flow.hpp line 32
/// Represents material flow; provides methods to predict material spacing.
class Flow
{
public:
float width, height, nozzle_diameter;
bool bridge;
Flow(float _w, float _h, float _nd, bool _bridge = false)
: width(_w), height(_h), nozzle_diameter(_nd), bridge(_bridge) {};
Additionally lines 68-73, may also be of interest:
private:
static float _bridge_width(float nozzle_diameter, float bridge_flow_ratio);
/// Calculate a relatively sane extrusion width, based on height and nozzle diameter.
/// Algorithm used does not play nice with layer heights < 0.1mm.
static float _auto_width(FlowRole role, float nozzle_diameter, float height);
static float _width_from_spacing(float spacing, float nozzle_diameter, float height, bool bridge);
However, your best bet, to get an accurate answer to both of your questions, is to contact Alessandro Ranellucci - alexrj, and ask him - as he is is the designer of the Slic3r code. When you get a reply, maybe you would like to post the answer here... it may be useful for someone else. |
Parts printing out bigger after changing controller | A quick search for your specific controller brought up the following link:
hictop wiki page
in which a reference is made that some printers were shipped with incorrect firmware, specifically in error by a factor of six. If your prints are about six times larger, this may apply to you. The same page contains a link to the firmware.
You should also be able to "look inside" the firmware using any number of programs providing terminal access to the controller. Pronterface is one, Simplify3D (not free) is another. I'm fond of using OctoPrint, but it requires some "gymnastics" to install.
Once you've installed your selected software, open the terminal feature and type M503 to display the current settings. You may have to turn off some automatic terminal display features, as some controllers will repeatedly send data to the screen, causing inconvenient scrolling.
I attempted to locate the correct code sequence for your printer, with limited success. Consider to scan over the wiki page for the appropriate information and correlate it to your specific controller and printer:
Firmware reprap codes
You'd want to confirm a specific M-code to change the stepper figure to match that which is for your printer. I've done my extruder steppers recently, which is M92 for my controller. My quick scan of the codes in the above link shows M350 might be the one for you, but don't take my word on it, get a confirmation from another source specific to your printer. |
What is the simplest way to render an image of an obj exported from Tinkercad? | For your purposes, consider that Meshmixer (free) can open .OBJ files and display them in any position you desire.
I use Meshmixer quite a bit for model editing, but have not used it for .OBJ files with textures. I searched my drive and found quite a few .OBJ files, but was not able to present or add textures, due to my own ignorance, I'm sure.
I found a useful link to a support page on the 'net which indicates that there has to be a texture file as well as a definition file (.MTL) in order to display the textures in Meshmixer. Using that reference, I was able to add a randomly selected .PNG file and apply the texture to a test model.
If your creations do not include those support files, this may not be a good answer. There's little to lose, however, as the program is free and you may find use for it in the future, or you may find that it works as you require. |
Moving Extruder Gear Assembly | Hanging up the Bowden system won't fix the problems with printing flexible filament: the filament will still press into the bends of the tube and thus lead to under extrusion. Another issue is, that the flexible filament can compress - and the longer way it has to the melt-zone, the more filament it can "store" on the way to it. These bunched up zones will release suddenly, resulting in pulses of high output and between those under extrusion.
Direct drive (like in a Prusa i3) is pretty much the only way to reliably print flexible materials. You could, with some engineering, move your existing motor to the carriage and turn your Bowden into a direct drive. |
How to ease the process of removing support for miniatures | Let's look at the factors that can help us get support parts printed and removed:
access
dimensions/size
bonding
debonding
access
Support structure has to be accessed to be removed. Tree support could help in this. An alternative would be soluable support, which is still accessible if buried deep in a part - as the solvent would be all that needs to access the part.
dimensions/size
Support structure needs to have some crossection to be printed at all. if it gets too small, it will fail to print and fail in supporting. You might alter the support angle to support even 40° or 30° surfaces to the vertical to forcefully increase the supported area and thus dimension of the support structure.
bonding (to bed)
To make sure the part and its supports don't shift from one another, it is best to print with a brim that makes sure all support trees and the base of the model all share a combined first layer.
debonding
Debonding means, we need to remove the support structure from the printed part. Ultimaker Cura allows to define a gap from support structure to the part, usually 2 layers. With these settings removing supports can be as easy as removing the brim and careful cleanup.
Other things
No support?!
Some miniatures have lots of unsupported areas. For example this knight needs support at the hilt of the sword, the arm and the helmet overhang. This dwarf might need support at his dagger in the back and on the left arm (and was resin printed).
However, with the proper design, there is sometimes no support needed. For example this pirate has no areas that need support for overhangs or free hanging areas.
Printing speed
Printing miniatures and intricate parts is hard. I have set up an older, small TronXY with a 0.2 mm nozzle just to print small and detailed items, usually engineering models. I print them slower than normal (ca 40 mm/s, 20 mm for the outer shell). |
How can I insulate my thermistor? | You can use kapton tape, small PTFE tube, or silicone tape. I use PTFE on my delta printer (I do have a silicone tape wrapped around my heat block, but that's to help with keeping the heat in the block, not for eletrical insulation (although it would work for that)). These will all handle the temperatures of your heat block fairly well. |
Printing with Nylon 6,10 | Based on the information from a Quorra question about what the difference between Nylon 6,10 and Nylon 6,6 is and a ULprospector article, we can establish:
6,6 is a smaller molecule than 6,10.
Base materials are different - hexamethylene diamine and adipic acid (6,6) compared to hexamethylene diamine and sebacic acid (6,10)
6,6 has a stronger tensile and compressive strength as it is more densely interlocked, but it also has a higher melting point. This means also that 6,6 is more heat tolerant.
6,6 is also known to have the least degradation of strength under moisture, compared to other Polyamides.
HOWEVER, 6,6 has a lesser resistance to weak acids compared to 6,10, it is also the most sensitive to UV-light and degradation from air exposure.
6,10 also bests 6,6 in regards to absorbing less moisture (a large problem with 6,6), but is more expensive than it.
Recently 6,12 is replacing 6,10 for it has very similar or better properties while being cheaper.
While I see no problem with the technical ability to make a Nylon 6,10 or Nylon 6,12 filament and print with it (the lower hygroscopic of the larger molecules might make that even easier), you will make a compromise in other areas of the material, most liekly cost and availability - to my knowledge no filament that claims to be Nylon 6,10 or Nylon 6,12 is on the market at the time of this writing (April 2019), and as such there are no known benchmarks for print settings needed are available. I would expect the print temperature to be slightly lower than that of Nylon 6,6 though. |
Connect to 3D printer via internet without router | There are a few solutions, but each one needs to match same criteria: an open network socket visible outside the local network.
So from TCP/IP protocol theory, we don't even need to have an IP address to send a packet to another computer as we can use layer One which is just the MAC address to identify the receiver. But things become more complicated when we have to provide a link to two separate endpoints.
Basic requirements:
We need to know public accessible IP address and port that server is exposed (listening) on
We can have a DNS entry that will be translated to public IP, but that assume that public IP is same all the time (or we have a dynDNS service)
Solutions:
Have the RPi exposed with public IP address and routed properly;
Create a VPN bridge from RPi to your home/cloud network and connect Android to the same VPN;
Do a port forwarding to RPi from public IP and expose that in the firewall.
So at this point, if you don't have admin access to network devices then only solution '2' is viable, IMHO. |
Small Z axis step: Repetier-Firmware | I solved this problem by change EEPROM value to "2" in Configuration.h:
#define EEPROM_MODE 2
Now ZAXIS_STEPS_PER_MM value load from firmware, not EEPROM.
#define EEPROM_MODE 0
— does not result in my case. |
XYZ DaVinci 3D Printer constantly jamming | The clicking sound typically means the drive gears are slipping on the filament because there is a jam in the head/nozzle.
First thing to do is clear the nozzle. You can use a small drill bit to clear the chamber, but if the extrusion hole (at the tip) is clogged, you'll need to get a set of fine wires designed for extruder clearing. Then heat the head above melting point and slip the wire in (if possible).
In general, I find it easier and faster to replace clogged nozzles. They're cheap, and more often than not clearing the exit hole enlarges the diameter (bad thing). |
Strange leveling problem by PrusaI3 | The Prusha I3 design uses two rods to guide the Y axis, which moves along the rods on linear bearings. If the rods are not strictly planar, there will be movement of the bed as it moves to and fro. You would not be able to correct this with the leveling screws.
Be sure that the rods are planar, and that there is no torque on the bed from uneven rods. Even if the bed doesn't flex, the frame may flex if the rods are not planar. |
Does the Inverse-Square law apply with SLA Printing? | Yes, of course it does. The same amount of light is being spread across a wider area, so there's less light per area. Once you're past a few 10's of filament diameters, a point source is a highly accurate representation of most light bulbs. Even more so when there's a lens setup that causes the light to go through a point focus. |
What printer should I consider for printing microfluidic channels? | "What Printer?" Let's look at your options:
FDM is the cheapest route into 3D printing, and may be cheap enough to buy just as a learning tool, as many of the concepts of 3D printing are fairly universal. It will not however likely have high enough dimensional accuracy for consistent 200 µm holes, and parts are not usually considered water tight (They may be most of the time, but pinholes are somewhat common).
BinderJet binder jet is the cheaper of the options for printing with powder, where basically glue is deposited onto layers of powder to solidify a part. I have personally used one to create a sand mould to cast metal into without having to create a positive with which to make the mould (ie lost wax casting). It can also be used to print ceramics or metals that are then fired in an oven into a more solid part. In general the dimensional accuracy is going to depend on not only the precision of the glue deposition, but the input powder as well. It may be possible, but I've never seen a water tight part come out of a binder jet.
SLM (SLS, DMLS, generally any metal printer with a laser (even sometimes an electron beam)) Can print quite high quality parts, but a 200 µm hole is pushing into the realm of difficult to achieve. Metal printers produce parts with a fairly rough surface (compared to a machined part), which is dependent on a lot of things, but primarily the input powder size distribution. Typical SLM printers use powder anywhere from 20 - 60 µm in diameter. With very small holes, you'll have to begin wondering about the likelihood that a hole will be sealed at some point by the random surface roughness exceeding the diameter of the hole. This also translates into a path with a lot of resistance, so pushing a fluid through it will require a lot of pressure. Again, I'm not in any sort of biological field, but I'm aware Titanium is pretty bio-compatible, and that is a *fairly commonly printed alloy (the current list of alloys that are pretty easy / standard to print isn't terribly long). Finally price: you can't afford it. I work with a relatively small (though somewhat high end) SLM tool at work, and I believe the final cost went up somewhere in the neighborhood of 500k.
SLA will likely be your best option. I don't have any experience with bio-compatibility (I'm a metallurgist), but there are many uv curing resin systems out there that are made for SLA printing. This is also likely the only type of system that can meet your dimensional requirements (water tight, small features, clear material, etc.) as well as your price target. Nothing can replace doing the research on your own, but this would be my choice. As for which SLA... (Note I'm fairly biased in this opinion) I'd look into Formlabs and possibly in particular their clear dental resin.
*PolyJet I don't know much about this one. It seems like a cross between SLA and FDM, but it seems likely to be out due to cost. |
Stepper motor for my DIY 3D printer | The size of the stepper is usually determined by the forces it must overcome on the machine (i.e. inertia). Obtaining a powerful stepper motor and then using expensive linear guide rails with high tolerances great axial rigidity is wasteful unless you are trying to achieve something specific (which it seems you are not).
Find the cheapest NEMA17 motor you can from a reputable site and start there.
Most of the work has been done for machines of that size, so you don't need to calculate what's required, you can just look it up online. A 250W @ 24V supply is commonly used on printers of that size. The majority of that power is going into the heated bed. If, however, your environment is so cold that the bed never gets to temp, no matter how long you wait, then it will be time to upgrade that bed to an AC mains heated one. |
Delta Printer: After Calibration X and Y Axis are slightly different | I think that you probably need to adjust the following two parameters in the Marlin firmware, in configuration.h:
MANUAL_HOME_Z_POS, and;
DELTA_SMOOTH_ROD_OFFSET
See my answer to Delta printer nozzle not moving square with a perfectly level bed (as if the bed is bent... but it isn't). |
How to build this part using 3d printing | The photo is too small to be clear about the entire objective and there are no dimensions provided. A quick google search returns nothing 3d printer related to "black vera plastics" other than a reference to vera bradley, vera wang and an obscure reference to a woven black carpet with white spots of increasing size.
Even within those limitations, one can certainly print a strip of black with white dots. One method involves a dual extruder printer, enabling two colors to be printed, one layer at a time. The black layer would be extruded with suitable holes and the white layer would be place within those holes.
Another method involves printing the black layer with holes, swapping out the filament with white and creating white plugs of appropriate sizes for the necessary fit.
You've used the term calibration plate, which implies some level of precision. Is the precision related to spacing, dot size, dot color, or a combination of the above?
Such requirements may make the cost slightly higher, but not excessively. I can print up to to 290 mm long strip, possibly longer by going diagonal on my 290 mm print bed, with or without the two colors done simultaneously.
If you require crisp edges to the white/black transition, the holes-and-plugs method will give best results and require a bit of post processing. It may be necessary to ream the holes to correct diameter and sand the plugs to fit. Dual extrusion rarely provides sharp delineation from one color to the next. |
How does a 3D printer software/firmware work | You appear to be asking about rate-limiting the stream of G-code provided by the computer, but some more context in your question will help if this is not the case.
Printers tend to work in two ways.
Read G-code from local storage as a text file. Here, the parser/control engine is in full control.
Stream G-code over a serial port using an 'ack' handshake.
The reference for G-code used in 3D printing is the RepRap Wiki. Here you will find responses such as ok resend and fatal, these indicate when a previous command is processed and something else can be sent, if the previous message was identified as corrupt, or if recovery is impossible.
The basic rule for this style of handshake is that after every host to slave transaction, the host must wait for some response before sending another transaction. The slave could send either ACK responses, or other asynchronous transactions if you can design the system to avoid or not care about overrun in the slave to host direction.
When designing a handshake like this, you can consider all possible ways for something to go wrong (assume the interface is imperfect). How can you handle a request being missed and no ACK ever? When there is a timeout, can you make a 'benign' request to see if the printer is still connected, etc. |
Calibrating E steps for new filament | No that will not be necessary.
However, you could use calipers to measure the diameter of the filaments (e.g. at 5 positions over a few meters) and calculate the mean diameter, if there is a significant difference between the new and the currently used filament you could change the diameter in the slicer (or the flow modifier), you do not need to calibrate the steps per millimeter every time you change filament.
You only need to calibrate the steps per millimeter if you change something in the extruder hardware setup, e.g. different extruder, different stepper driver, a new gear, etc. As long as the hardware is not changed a calibrated extruder setup will move a certain amount of filament regardless of the diameter variation (per rotation of the extruder gear an amount of $2 \times \pi \times (gear\ radius)$ mm of filament. |
Free UARTs TX and RX pins on CR-10S motherboard | Not answering the question directly which pins you can use I would like to propose an alternative solution for your problem, to explain why you should not use RX/TX pins.
An alternative solution includes the use of a small single board computer like the Raspberry Pi (RPi) which is connected over USB with the printer board. E.g. the latest range of RPi (Raspberry Pi 3 Model B and B+) have onboard WiFi, or alternatively an older RPi (Raspberry Pi 2) could be used in conjunction with a USB Wifi dongle. On the RPi you could install a print server that talks directly with your printer over USB. One such an application that is frequently used is OctoPprint (the complete installation/image is referred to as OctoPi).
You can then interface with the print server application using a web browser on any mobile device in your network, and if configured as such you could do that potentially from over everywhere over the world. The major advantage is that you then are not communicating G-code over WiFi as you would if you used RX/TX pins. Knowing that WiFi connection adds issues with latency and the possibility of a disconnection during the print, your fail rate would increase over a single board computer approach.
With an RPi the print will continue regardless of the Wifi connection. |
Delta printer not responding to changes in DELTA_RADIUS | OK, so a little more poking around finds that it does seem to be loading values from EEPROM and ignoring the configuration files. So that's not Repetier-firmware-specific.
...and I found M665 in G-code which lets me just set a value for it, then M500 saves it to said EEPROM. And it's making a difference (so much of one that I may need to reset Zmax before I can actually adjust it all out as the endpoints on the bed are now off, but they are all 4 much closer to being off by the same amount!) |
Sliced object losing all detail in Cura | This is not "loosing details". What is is is this:
You can not print on air. So, certain things (like the backpack) require SUPPORTS that are removed after printing. Another example is the gun.
Your support setting force the slicer to set up quite a lot of supports and that is what you see - start removing them.
There ALSO is a problem with possibly you using too large a nozzle. Depending on that one you may loose details, but there is not even the basic form visible on your picuture because all I see are supports.
https://all3dp.com/1/3d-printing-support-structures/#:~:text=3D%20printing%20support%20structures%20are,added%20cost%20to%20the%20model. exokauns supports. |
Sunlight powered metal 3D printer | Let's start with the obvious: this printer would need to be really big. Not because of a large print volume, but because it needs to collect a lot of sunlight or needs a really big focussing array. The linked question states that the array there, about 0.6 m² large, has roundabout 600 W of power to focus on that one point.
Power draw needs
What powers are we dealing with?
A typical laser cutter uses a laser tube that at least 20 W for thin material and up to 300 W for thicker material. But we need to weld steel, so we need to be roughly equivalent to a cutting laser for the same material. We are not talking mere hundreds of watts, we are talking an industrial 2000 to 20000 W in a laser of less than a millimeter in diameter. Why do I say the later? Well, power need scales with the area, which scales with the square of the radius.
Let's use a ballpark, a nice round 10000 W Laser with a somewhat large 1 mm² crossection. We're talking about the ballpark of 100 Gigawatt per square meter.
$L=P/A=\frac{10000\ \text W}{0,001\times 0.001\ \text m^2}=10^{10}\frac{\text W}{\text m^2}$
Solar power harvester size
Luckily, we don't need to illuminate a whole square meter, so we only need some 10 Kilowatts of sunlight for our application. But we need this number to calculate how much sunlight we need to harvest in our smelting machine.
At the stratosphere, Earth gets about 1400 W/m², and on a sunny day, about 1 kW/m² makes it to the surface, we call this the solar constant $S$. Now, if we compare the ballparks, we get to quickly see the ballpark size of our machine:
$P/S=A=\frac{10 \text{ kW}}{1 \frac {\text{kW}} {\text m^2}} = 10\ \text m^2$
10 square meters of harvesting area gets us the same power. Incidentally, this scales linearly with the item discussed in the linked question, as that one already uses square meters.
Sizing down
But 10 square meters of mirrors into a focal point and then lenses to a focal point is huge, can we make it smaller? And to that I must say somewhat. First of all, we could get our focal point smaller: We need to get 10 Gigawatt per square meter for our $L$, but we can turn two screws here: what if we get from 1 mm² to only 0.1 mm²?
$P=L*A=10^{10}*(0.0001\times 0.0001)\ \text W=100 W$
100 Watts focussed on 0.1 mm² is a sixth of the power that array can deliver, so totally feasible in terms of power, as long as you can achieve such a small focal point.
Conclusion
Yes, with a focussing array good enough or a mirror array large enough you could achieve the powers needed to melt metals on a spot focus. Note though, that you need to have a really good focus setup that creates pretty much a solar-powered laser, which means that such a machine will be extremely expensive due to the high precision machinery needed for that - and that this focusing aperture will be most likely the largest part of your machine. We're talking building-size scale. I'd be cheaper and easier to just put lots of solar panels onto the roof of the building you run a conventional metal 3D printer in. |
Altering the print bed temperature at different layers | The actual problem you are facing is bed adhesion, the proposed solution (in your question) shouldn't be the preferred solution to get your parts to stick to the plate/glass as plastic shrinks as it cools down. Note that a 5 °C temperature drop after the first layer usually isn't a problem, but larger temperature differences or shutting off the heat completely will cause your parts to come off the glass.
Note that PLA requires a temperature of about 60 °C (for adhesion as this is close to the glass temperature where the plastic is soft; however, note that PLA can be printed on cold bed surfaces on suitable bed surfaces). The slate of glass is an insulator, so it is perfectly possible that you need to set the bed at a higher temperature to get 60 °C at the surface of the glass plate. When the lower layer deforms the bed temperature is too high.
As you are using Cura, there is a plugin available called TweakAtZ, nowadays this is a default plugin. How to use this is described in this anser (on question "How does one use a heat tower?"); instead of changing the hotend temperature you will need to modify the bed temperature instead (using M140).
To solve the actual problem, you need to prepare the glass by cleaning it properly, use a level bed with a correct initial nozzle to bed distance for Z=0 (usually thickness of a plain paper sheet A4/Letter) and an adhesive like hairspray, glue stick or a dedicated adhesion spray like 3DLAC or Dimafix. I'm using 3DLAC for several years (for PLA and PETG; Dimafix is supposed to be more sticky at higher temperatures, so for ABS for instance) and never had any problems with adhesion on properly levelled beds. See this answer for another user's experience.
An OctoPrint solution using event as you suggest is not recommended. This is the config.yaml, e.i. the configuration of the print server, not a print instance option file. Furthermore, there are yet no plugins that can handle additional code when the head reaches a certain (layer)height. This is pretty tricky if you use Z position detection when the head also can hop, such code should be inserted by the slicer instead.
Related to your question are the answers on question: "Why keep the bed heated after initial layer(s) with PLA (or PETG)?". |
Resources/methods to construct STL files using disparate parts using OpenSCAD | I'll offer up the following options, without waiting for an answer to my question.
One can import a specific STL file into OpenSCAD and perform rotation, translation and scale, but it would be "clunky" as you'd be making miniscule changes to the parameters for those actions. Each imported object would have to be manipulated individually via the changes in the code. If your imported objects have quantifiable dimensions, that is, if you know specific measurements, you would have an easier time of the project.
If you are not limiting yourself to OpenSCAD, I'd recommend the easy-to-use MeshMixer. I recently "assembled" the parts of a cosplay "weapon" for a friend. All the parts were individual STL files and were positioned in 3-space using MeshMixer to make the parts appear as if the project were printed and assembled.
The transform tool in Meshmixer is a graphic three-arrow/three-axis manipulator icon. Grab an arrow tip and the model moves in the direction of the drag. Grab an arc between two arrows and the model rotates. If you want five degree rotation increments, move the mouse outward after the grab and get a calibration circle. When the mouse is on the circle, you get snaps to five degrees. If you need smaller movement, move the mouse out even farther from the center.
The 3-space presented in Meshmixer gives you the ability to align pieces/parts in all three dimensions, to your satisfaction. There is a model hide and a model-ghost feature as well, to assist the placement.
I expect that one could use a program such as Blender, but the learning curve is more like a chasm or cliff-face.
One could use an engineering-focus program such as SolidWorks, Fusion 360 and so many others, but I think your head, arms, legs, torso reference means you aren't using orthogonal models more suited to those programs.
Meshmixer, like OpenSCAD is free. I use both and approve this message. |
Why aren't fixed build platform 3D printers popular? | Why is this so rare?
Such kind of printers usually harder to assembles, calibrate, and maintain because 3 axes machine is a bit more complex than 2 axes. For instance, it's can be tricky to move an entire extruder among all 3 axis and some of such printer's designs may require even dedicated exruder's design like Bowden Extruders.
Are there flaws in this design?
The key disadvantage of such kind designs is complexity with moving of an extruder among all 3 axes. Moving platform by at least one axis simplifies that.
Will print quality be affected by using this approach?
It depends on the exact printer's design, so, potentially you can have issues with ease of assembling and maintenance due to more complicated construction and as a consequence higher risk of low printing quality due design, assembly or configuration mistakes.
On the other hand, if you already have some device with precise enough 3 axis machine, like CNC milling machine, you can upgrade it to 3D printer by installing an extruder, however, it would also require update of software and, probably, electronics. |
How can I avoid that a small bit of filament sticks out of the nozzle during heating? | I normally print a skirt. This acts as a quality check for: flow rate; bed adhesion; bed level; and proper zero position in the Z. |
How to replace the nozzle in my hotend assembly? | The exact procedure depends on the design of the printer.
After unloading filament, remove and install the nozzle at the highest temperature you will run. Otherwise, you will not get a good seal between the nozzle and heat break if you depending on tightening at lower than operating temperature. A bad seal allows the filament to leak out (oozing). Tighten and untighten the nozzle with wrenches on the heat break and nozzle. The heat break is easily damaged if tightening too tight into the heat sink, but you need a tight connection between the nozzle and heat break. This means the nozzle must tighten against the heat break and not tighten against the heater block; thus space between the nozzle flange and heater block when tightened against the heat break.
Note: If you had oozing, it will glue the nozzle and heat break to the heater block. Heating the hot end will often allow you to remove the nozzle.
Note the electronics of some printer models can be damaged by shorting the nozzles to heater leads, thermistor leads, or even a metal bed. Check for your model.
Running the hot end at 250 °C or above requires an all metal hot end (a heat break without Teflon) or the Teflon will degrade. This also applies to Boden tubes that run all the way to your nozzle. Look for instructions related to your Boden tube. Go to max. temperature for operating with Boden tube, then you usually clamp the Boden tube in place so that it forms a good seal. |
3d printer drip problem | I have two theories to offer.
It is really dripping. If this is the case, the likely culprit is a loose part in the hot-end, namely the nozzle/heating block coupling, or the heating block/heat break one. If this is the case, you should be able to see it by visually inspecting the part. The solution in this case is to fully disassemble the parts, clean them thoroughly of any remaining plastic, and reassembling them while hot. This is essential, as parts that are assembled cold have the tendency to come loose when heated (due to thermal expansion).
It is overextruding, and the nozzle collect and drag around the excessive plastic, until the blob is big enogh to detach and remain on the bed. If this is the case, then you should calibrate your extruder, and the nozzle height. |
How to attach bowden tubing to other side of extruder? | There are several ways to mount a PTFE tubing to the extruder's feeding side.
Connector solution
You'll need a pair of PTFE tubing couplers, a length of PTFE tubing and tapping tools for the mounting, and the lever should be metal:
Disassemble the extruder
Take the intake side lever
open up the intake hole to your PTFE tube connector's inner diameter (that is the diameter, where you cut the thread from!)
tap the hole
screw in PTFE coupler
connect to intake tube
Repeat 3 to 6 for the drybox side, possibly add a nut from the inside
Feed filament through the tube
If you have a plastic side, it reads like this, and you will need an insert that fits your adapter's screw:
Disassemble the extruder
Take the intake side lever
open up the intake hole to a bit under your insert's outer diameter
use a soldering iron to melt the insert into the lever
screw in PTFE coupler
connect to intake tube
Repeat 3 to 6 for the drybox side
Feed filament through the tube
free "inner" side
Instead of using 2 connectors on either end of the tube, the one on the extruder can just be "slid" into the block and then fastened.
disassemble the extruder
take the intake side lever
drill open till the PTFE tube can slide in snugly into its rest position against an inner ledge.
For REALLY hygroscopic material, drill through
drill a side-hole and use a small screw to fasten the tube in place
alternatively, use hot glue on the outside and secure the tube. |
Metal sintering layer-by-layer with DLP | SLS uses a high powered laser to smelt the binder of a ceramic or the metal itself. We are talking about at least a 40 W laser which focuses its power on a circle of about 50 µm. How much power are we talking about with that lowest viable laser for plastic SLS?
$\frac{40\ \text{W}}{\pi \ 62.5\times 10^-9\ \text{m}^2}=640\times 10^6 \frac{\text{W}}{\text{m}²}$
A typical SLA/DLP machine like the Sparkmaker runs on 48 W in total. Assuming that's 40 W for their $55\text{ mm}\times98\text{ mm}=0,00539\text{ m}^2$, so the total projector power of the Sparkmaker is
$\frac{40\ \text{W}}{\pi \ 0,00539\ \text{m}^2}=7.421\times 10^3 \frac{\text{W}}{\text{m}²}$
That's about 5 orders of magnitude too little to smelt a layer in the same time. To get a DLP-like projector doing SLS work, you'd need a light source that runs at about a similar power per square meter - wich would just melt the moment it turns on. |
How to improve very poor quality prints on my Ender 3 | i would suggest to start with something simpler
there are many test objects to print and see the results
please take a look here
the idea is to recognise issues (one by one or at least the most basic) and point them and eliminate them directly
looking at your printout i could of course suggest many things
but it would be better to make this process more clear... for you
so you could manage it on your own
to be somehow constructive
i would say there are 3 main issues on the picture you've presented
HE temperature
printing speed
not-so-stiff printer construction (or belt tension)
print test cube and show your results so we can go further |
Setting up UBL for the first time on Marlin 2.x on a Prusa i3, how often should I level the bed using G29? | This is more of a personal preference type question rather than something with a hard and fast rule.
You should not need to relevel your bed very often unless you have some external force that regularly changes the bed level.
I regularly print objects that take 24+ hours to print, so a 10 minute process prior is not much so it might be worth it to set it up every time if your prints run very long. If you mostly print smaller or quicker to print objects, 10 minutes might matter to you.
I have noticed that my prints fail pretty quickly if I have a leveling issue, and it's not hard to stop the print, clean the plate and relevel at that time.
What should you do?
If 10 minutes doesn't matter that much, go ahead and relevel with every print. If it matters, wait until you start to have issues. See how long it takes for your bed to become unleveled and use that as a guide. E.g. if you can print 10 times before having issues, then try setting it for every 6 or 7 prints. |
Reinforce screw holes | You can test different print settings. Trying to visualize, but I believe you can increase the perimeter lines, since there is a hole, this will increase the resistance in that area. Or try to change the orientation with which the part will be printed |
Is it possible to print an object that has a "roof" without anything under it? | Sometimes a "roof" can be accomplished using the bridging feature of the printer. Depending on your slicer and on your printer's capabilities, the filament can extend from one edge of a structure to another without using support. The slicer will "recognize" the endpoints and the distance between and speed up the travel and possibly increase the fan cooling, allowing minimal sag between points. There are resources available on many model sites to print bridging test pieces to help determine the limits of your printer.
Expect some sag on the first layer, with a reduction for each successive layer. If you have, for example, five layers for the top faces, the last of the five may cover the sag of the previous ones.
Support is commonly used when there is no opposing endpoint to handle the bridging or when the distance exceeds the capabilities of the printer.
An example of a bridging test piece can be found on Thingiverse, although there are many to be found with a simple search. |
How do I remove a 3D print stuck to the glass build plate | It's useful to know what material you used for the print. Also, you've referenced the glass that broke in the vise, which implies a glass bed, but did you use any adhesive spray or other application?
Allowing for all of this unknown information, there may be a solution for your release. Our library makerspace has a small bottle of 50-50 water/denatured alcohol, although isopropyl alcohol should also work if your glass is not coated with a special film such as PEI. Heat up the surface of the glass to your usual temperature (50-60°C) and apply a few drops of the mixture to the edge of the print.
It will evaporate pretty quickly, but some of it will work under the glass/model interface. Apply a bit more while the glass is still warm. Continue to apply until the the evaporation is no longer accelerated.
Considering the difficulty you are experiencing, it may be necessary to repeat the heating sequence multiple times in order to get enough wicking of the liquid to effect a release. |
Cura grey large grey area, almost nothing fits… | I had mistakenly left the setting "one at a time" in print sequence. This meaning the printhead needs a lot of room since it will go back and forth in z.
Cura allocates this extra space even if there's only one object. |
Creality CR-10 Clogs and Underextrusion - Filament at fault? | Not all filaments are created equal. Even with the very same manufacturer, the addition of colorful pigments can change the needed printing temperature a lot! I have had a white china PLA that was giving ok quality at 200°C, but the same brand's clear PLA only took 195°C to print. My white Kaisertech prints better at the 200°C while orange needs a little more, something about 205°C - this is the same brand and manufacturer mind you. The matte "natural" PLA I have even needs some more heat, 210°C.
As a rule of thumb: Printing temerature is filament dependant. Test around (there are temperature tests - use them!) to find the ideal one for each brand and color combo you have.
It is also a goood idea to replace the claps on the Bowden tube, if the plugs appear more often. |
How do I compensate in cura for thinner filament? | In cura (if you are not in the quick print mode) you can dine the diameter of your filament. Setting the filament diameter to a smaller value will give you more plastic coming out of the nozzle. You can also set the flow percentage to more than 100%
You should also try to use a skirt. Some nozzles need some time until the flow is like it should be.
Another reason for this might be that the distance between bed and nozzle is too high. Try to level your bed so that the distance is less than before.
If all this doesn't work then it will at lest give you new ideas of where to look.
Best luck! |
Is a heated bed an essential component for printing (difference between Creality Ender 3 or Anycubic Mega Zero)? | I used to print PLA with my heated bed turned off, since it was deforming when heated.
It works perfectly fine, only detaching the print was terribly difficult.
I would not buy a printer without it, because even a weak bed reaching only 50°C gives you many more possibilities.
I mean, you could use it to keep your coffee warm while you work at the computer, or to warm up chemical solutions to make them react faster. You can also use the bed to shake the solution!
Go for a heated bed. |
Estimating printing time from Cura | If you properly define your own machine with a delta_wasp.def.json file you can fill in the acceleration and jerk settings of your printer, so that Cura will use the correct values for print time estimation.
For example, take a look at how the Ultimaker 2 is defined.
Exposing these settings to the Custom FDM Printer wizard hasn't been implemented (yet). |
Advice for 3D modeling peg for sprinkler dripper | I examined and sliced your STL file, and the profile of your threads looks very strange.
It's definitely possible to do very strong, perfectly-fitting threads down to small sizes (at least down to M4 or slightly smaller) using modern inexpensive 3D printers, and contrary to widespread belief (there's a well-known YouTube comparison with a major test fallacy claiming otherwise) they should usually be stronger than threaded inserts against being pulled out. But you need to get the thread profile exactly right.
Most real thread profiles are trapezoidal, but yours peak at points and have round bases. This is unlikely to match the external thread on the part you're trying to fit to it, and it's going to have major dimensional accuracy issues because of the sharp point which can't necessarily be represented in the layer resolution.
I'm not familiar with Fusion 360 so I don't know how to tell you exactly, but most CAD software has libraries for generating threads conforming to standard thread profiles. If you want to do 3D printed threads, you should look at those and figure out which one you're trying to match. Or, if you want to replace the pegs with your own design anyway, just pick a reasonable one for both.
Generally, most modern threads use the basic ISO metric thread profile, even if they're not standard metric diameter or pitch:
Your cross-sections should look roughly like the "internal thread" side of that. |
Stepper Motor for Prusa i3 | 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. |
"print" menu not loading on Monoprice MP Select Mini V2 | Too many files on SD card
I removed some files and now it works, it seems like the menu would not load if the SD card contained more files than the printer could display on the print menu (they didn't take up a lot of space in memory, though). |
Anet A8 hard to insert filament | I was having the same issue as you and know what you are talking about and there is a file that you should print that will help you (I have printed this).
While the file says for the Anet A6, I think the extrude are the same on the Anet A8. It goes under the gear and bearing and guides the filament to the hole. Should work well for you.
Other things that you can do is straighten out the filament. That is what I do, it helps that much more. You can also cut the end at a angle to sharpen the end with a pencil sharpener, also helps find the hole.
So try the file, I think it will help you would.
File --> https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2242903 |
How is a J-Head Extruder Head attached to the Prusa i3 rework? | It looks like the hotend may not be all the way in, are you sure it's not stuck?
If it's stuck and you can get it in further, those holes should go directly through the smaller ring on top of the J-Head. You just need to run a machine screw into each hole to secure the hotend. The screw will need to at least be flush with the other side to work correctly. |
Hotend is oozing out the sides and getting in the way of my print | Looking at the picture of your nozzle, it appears to seal against the heat break and not the Bowden tube. (A nozzle sealing against the heat break will have an entry hole of about 2 mm dia. for 1.75 mm filament. A nozzle will have an opening large enough for the Bowden tube to slip into if it seals against the Bowden tube.)
If your heat break is all metal, you have an all metal hot end that can extrude above 250 °C. If your heat break has a Teflon tube inside it, your hot has a highest temperature below 250 °C to avoid degrading the Teflon. Both follow the same procedure below, but you highest temperature for making the seal will be different.
To see if your nozzle is OK (not clogged), try pulling the filament out with the hot end at temperature (same procedure as unloading filament). Trim the irregularities off the filament while leaving a sharp end. Then, see if you can push the filament through the nozzle at extrusion temperature.
If still clogged, remove the nozzle (you will need to tighten it later anyway) and see if the filament will go through without the nozzle.
After camera piture: unless your hot end is all metal, the Bowden tube likely forms the seal to the nozzle. See if the length of the tube going into the hotend goes down to the nozzle. The end of the tube needs to be smooth to make the seal and the seal surface to the nozzle needs to be clean or the filament material soft enough to push out of the way. Pull up to release the tube. When you push down to lock the tube in, it should push the tube against the nozzle.
For an all metal hot end follow the procedure below.
Before camera picture:
Sounds like you lost the seal between the nozzle and the heat break. For most hotends (unless you have a plastic tube that pushes up against the nozzle) heat up to the maximum hotend temperature, then tighten the nozzle tight against the heat break in the heat block, to form a seal between the two.
If the nozzle tightens against the heat block before the heat break, you won't get a seal. You should see some threads of the nozzle exposed and not in the heat block.
Take care not to over tighten the heat break in the heat sink because the heat break is thin going into the heat sink to minimize heat conduction and will easily break.
If your seal to the nozzle is with a plastic tube, investigate why you don't have a seal.
Looking at picture:
Follow the above procedure while the heat break to the heat sink is of less consern since it appears that separate screws tighten it into the heat sink. |
Why do I have to lower my Z axis steps per mm? | Your leadscrew probably is a 2 mm pitch, 4-start leadscrew. This means that there are actually 4 separate grooves on the leadscrew, each with a pitch of 8 mm. Confusingly, this makes the total pitch 2 mm, since the distance from one groove to the next is 8mm divided by 4 grooves. However, one revolution of the leadscrew will still move the nut by 8 mm. Thus, in the Prusa calculator, you should enter a pitch of 8 mm/revolution. Since you entered a pitch of 2 mm, you ended up with a figure that is 4 times too large.
The reason leadscrews are made like this is that if you just had a single groove with an 8 mm pitch, the nut would need to be made very long to enable it to make contact with a sufficiently long portion of thread. By increasing the number of grooves, you can get away with a shorter nut. With lower pitch (lead-)screws you don't need multiple starts, since the lower pitch means the same length of nut is in contact with more thread.
For the relative advantages and disadvantages of the various leads (8/4/2 mm), as opposed to pitches, see also Would using a leadscrew with 1 or 2 mm lead, en lieu of 8 mm, result in a better printer? |
Not Heated Build Plate Glue Amount and Dry Duration | As a fellow Flux Delta owner, I can answer this question with certainty. Two layers is sufficient. Be sure to consider the size of the model being printed and the additional area covered if you are using skirts or rafts.
If you apply the glue stick at the moment you turn on the printer, it will be dry enough to work properly. The printer "uses time" to initialize and to calibrate which provides enough drying time. You will also "use time" to load the software and import the model.
It is not necessary to remove the glue from the plate after a print. For succeeding model printing, ensure that you've filled in the areas missing glue from removing the previous model.
You will want to remove the glue (hot water works good, but the build plate gets hot!) when you feel that the glue build-up changes the texture of the bottom layers.
You may have already learned from the forums that you print on the non-grid side of the build plate. |
How can I contact FLSUN support? | They have a webpage by now www.flsun3d.com |