Wardjr you said earlier you used a 6mm nozzle. is that with 3mm filament?

Nope 1.75

wardjr wrote:

Watch Ian's video in the WIKI.  Basically mark with a sharpie  100 mm's on the filament from a point on top of your extruder.  Then extrude a 100 mm's and see where the mark ends up.  That is going to get you your proper steps per mm.  Than adjust extrusion multiplier until you get a single wall thickness that is 120% of your nozzle diameter.  So if your nozzle is .40 then adjust the multiplier until the single wall perimeter is .48

Guess I have some things to try when I get home tonight. I'll keep you posted.. Thanks. With this machine it's like I am learning all over again.

Sometimes the learning is the fun part.

Watch Ian's video in the WIKI.  Basically mark with a sharpie  100 mm's on the filament from a point on top of your extruder.  Then extrude a 100 mm's and see where the mark ends up.  That is going to get you your proper steps per mm.  Than adjust extrusion multiplier until you get a single wall thickness that is 120% of your nozzle diameter.  So if your nozzle is .40 then adjust the multiplier until the single wall perimeter is .48

Guess I have some things to try when I get home tonight. I'll keep you posted.. Thanks. With this machine it's like I am learning all over again.

Question? My old printer was a Bowden so I could feed filament through while bypassing the hot end and set my e-steps that way. I would feed 100mm and measure what was feed on the tube side. If wrong I would adjust till it was right. With the Da Vinci there is no way to feed filament that I can see and by pass the head. Now the issue is that some say to measure the extrusion and other say to measure the feed before the hot end. On my old printer I measured before the hot end and got it perfect and my prints reflected it.

This Da Vinci has no way to measure pre-hot end so hot do you guys calibrate the e-steps on the extruder?

You're using an extrusion width of 0.48, and have calibrated it with a 20mm cube, right? What does the bottom layer of one of your calibration cubes look like? It looks like some serious over-extrusion to me.

Black piece from old printer for comparison.

This image is a close up of one side of the cube printed at 0.1.

This is another side of the same cube in different light.

Then lastly here is the current way the top layer is finishing. It is better but still not like my old printer with Cura.

I may look into buying another E3D. I just don't have a good printer to print the needed parts on now. I guess what I am getting right now would be fine since the top finish is not that important for a printer part.

Fyi you can release the feed tube. This is also in the instructions.

Well I gave you advice on where I think the troubles could be. Beyond all of that the hotend is probably just low quality and can't meet your expectations.

What's your extrusion width and nozzle diameter?

It is the stock full head that the Da Vinci come with. The nozzle is 0.4 and I print at .3, .2, .1, and .05. This cube was done at .2 and is a standard 20mm calibration cube. My printed dims. Are 20.1, 20.03, and 19.98. They are close enough for what I print. I will tweak the esteps one day to get it closer. But for now it is fine.

I have an E3d hot end, but I dont like them as they are near impossible  to change the nozzle on and yhen have it not leak. Cant change it when it is cold and it is hard to hold the heat block in place while trying  to remove the nozzle and not have the feed tube turn as well. Unless the nozzle base snugs against the feedtube inside the heat block it will leak around the feedtube then run over the side of the heat block onto your print.