Noob: First Print, Tips Ideas (Page 1 of 2)

Thx the more I read I agree

1: Clean the bed (still might have oil and fingerprints and level it too
To level the bed just use simple level from home depot right?

2: Peeling off appears is cooling as well and my printer is near airflow from AC/FAN and I notice during the build the temps do fluctuate on both head and and the bed trying to maintain steady state.
I can again just cuts some plexi at HD and print some hinges

3: what about extruder calibration and the extruder flow and flow multipliers? do I mess with those?

I agree normally do search, I found xyz thing see much specific post to noob stick/non stick thing I guess because so dam basic lol

I found the z axis wobble thing now I have seen several different version of the printed backlash nut. (no stl files though) I assume just google thingverse

thanks for the help

Well good news:

Calibrated my extruder (from 138 down to 106) And now within 1mm or less of 100m print
Leveled bed with paper gauge
cleaned bed
Adjusted the zstop until I had flat first layer
ran with stock .3mm settings in slic3r

And I got my heart to print
Then the zstop backlash nut as well.

They came out with no pulling the prints stuck very well.
I still need to adjust the print settings some of the infill curled slightly and turned white quickly put was covered by the next layers

The zstop fits the SD very well but the lip had heavy banding and layers were misaligned more then I expected. I guess that is teh Z wobble?

I will work on the calibration cube, play with settings some more
and I need to adjust my flowrate.

My diameter of the filament is 1.66 but I am using the stock settings I believe at 1.75

Here is my first real calibration cube. This is after adjusting the flowrate using a 1 wall cube print. My diameter was around 1.69 and flowrate was about 23% too much so I ran around .8 (.778) seemed super thing on reprint .8 worked better and I think it averaged out with the various diameter of 1.68-1.7

So my cube was printed with .3 layer, .3 first layer and  .2 infilll 3 perimeters and 2 top/bottom layers. at 40mm/s (up from 30) I think it was slightly too fast I noticed some curling on first few layer. I ran first layer at 20mm/s (up from 15)

It is almost 25mm exactly (25x25x25 cube) I measure around 25.01-25.03 mm using calipers and not measuring the first squished layer. So...

How does it look? Is this considered heavy banding or horrible or normal?

And If I understand the parameters correctly:
Perimeter#- This is the number of passes the extruder will take our outline the outer and inner walls in this case of the cube it is the outer and inner wall. it makes 3 passes outside and inside and anything in between gets the infill.

Solid layers#: Same for perimeters but for top/bottom. it started out by making the bottom layer complete solid with 2 layers then it laid on a 3rd infill later for some reason then stopped. If this was a solid cube it would have then done 2 layers, infill the whole middle at .2 then the top 2 layers would have been solid again?

I think this print went well and I fel happy with the results and accuracy. I see the temp as critical. I started both prints a little early before bed hit 95C (at 88c) and i think that was cause of some peeling.

I like to see if I can print at .2 or .1 to see if improves the banding. the print doesn't appear to walk as much side to side considering this small print?

Biggest thing I notice I need is a new spool holder. the spool has no tension and the filament gets unwound and then tangles and breaks off. i will print a new holder above the extruder with some bushing to keep a little tension on the roll.

Thanks that makes sense. Is my banding extreme ?

Also I think my flow is still a little too high. the multiplier seemed off by a lot but I wanted to take small adjustment steps at first.

what wall width should I use for a calibration measurement at .3,.2,.1? just use .42mm to measure flow rat at .3?

any good links to spring znut?

The banding looks pretty bad; you should be able to do much better.

This is the preload I use.  I use a fairly strong spring but cranked down the nut just enough that I can move the bed up and down and the laser comes back to the same spot:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:34397

For the calibration, you don't have to iterate, and should be able to get the correct extrusion multipier in one shot.  Mine was way off at first. I leave the slic3r profile set to the default width (.42mm) and print a solid cube with one perimeter and 0 infill, stopping it before it finishes (as wiki suggests).  Then I measure the wall width with calipers and divide .42 by this number.  You can just apply this number as a multiplier to your "extrusion multiplier" value in slic3r.  Don't just replace the extrusion mulitipier with this number (as wiki says) unless it was originally "1" when you sliced the cube.

For instance, if you, say, measured .63mm (instead of .42) then your flow rate would be high by 50% and your adjustment factor would be .42/.63 = .67.  You'd then multiply your current extrusion multiplier by .67 and should be done.  You can slice and print another cube to verify.

It was just one I had in my parts bin, so I don't know the exact specifics.  It was about 1/2" diameter overall and about the same in height after I cut it down.  The wire diameter about the size of a large paper clip, so pretty beefy, and stronger than the one I used initially.  The force has to be enough to seat the nut and overcome any lateral force from wobble in the z-axis rod (which has a tendency to make the nut rise up), but you also don't want to put any more load on the motor than necessary, which is why I recommend using some way (like a dial gauge or my laser pointer rocker mount) to measure how much backlash you still have.

The problem is that the loose drive nut sits lowest on the threaded rod only when it is centered.  When there is any lateral force (such as due to an imperfectly straight or centered rod) it causes the nut to rise up slightly.  When printing with .1mm layers, the amount is significant since each layer is only 1/14th the width of a single thread.  Here's a post I made with a diagram:

http://www.soliforum.com/post/10340/#p10340

The brace only functions to keep the top nut from rotating when the rod rotates so that the spring stays compressed.  It doesn't have to be precise because the exact force of the spring isn't important; only that it is sufficient to keep the primary bottom nut from rising up.

Well I printed the other one with a spring but the spring is too big. I went back to the other one and it seems on larger x runs and most y runs (x are better though) there is visible layers but the bands are fairly smooth at .3 IMHO some edges or corners you can see the bulged layers kick out but not too bad (on shorter z  models under 1" tall)

I tried again with and without the 2 z braces and the round one definitely improved things so I left on. Then I tried to tackle my flowrate and something seems way off.

left to right a .5" square cube at .42mmm wall 2 solid layers on bottom of cube no infill 1 perimeter .3 print .3 first layer 35mm/s all 1.7 diameter (after several averages) and .778 multiplier (original)

I did the first print on left. Came out solid (which I like) but the I could tell the first layer stuck well and flat. But he solid infill drags lines into the plastic and they turn bright white as the extruded pulls thru them in some cases pulling up or dragging a small blob.

I figure too much plastic makes sense and the wall thickness was .7mm vs .42! so that meant a .455 wall thickness so I tried that That was the print on the far right (not middle) It flowed even and very thin but as you can see the bottom solid layer had gaps of missing plastic, the strands didnt stick together almost cooled as they came out, and the model collapesed on itself as the extruder pushed down.

the wall measures at .405 so right on target but still seemed so low.

So the middle model I ran at .5 flow multiplier and it came out much better. the wall thickness around .5mm
but still banding was very bad, no rigidity and still gaps and wholes in the wall like not enough flow

Then I printed up at .7 just to see what happened.

I ran a 2nd backlash nut

see the 1st one i printed the bed was not level on that edges (in background and that was at .6 multiplier and still had gaps in fill so I said lets do original .778 multiplier)

I think it looks good? at edges you see the slight banding from the x-y combined error or too much flowrate?

.3-.3infill all 30mm/s and 18mm/s 1st layer

Happy with that one and I was playing with various fill patterns and speeds I determined this:

for solid walls 3 perimeters is good 2 is too thin and .2 fill feels too light and hollow for rigid parts (if needed 0.4 was good fill rate)

And the 1st layer I think I have a too slow of a speed from 12-18mm/s for the .3 and flowrate it globed up doing the solid layer passes and dragged over perimeters. so with the next model I went up to 22mm/s

This was my first real model and fairly large
I stuck with .3-.4 infill-honeycomb fill every 1 layer. I kept speeds at 35mm/s except for small infill (at 30mm/s) and external perimeters at 40mm/s 1.7mm diameter-.7 multiplier (backed down from znut to see if made a difference on 1st layer) it did less globing but wonder if upper layers delaminated because of this?

The first layers went down ok some very slight curling on these bigger models seem hard to dial out?
the first layer you can see the variation in layer colors? what is that too much flow? speed?
and the final product seems solid but you can see several layers look pulled apart and didnt stick?

I had perimeters to 3 (and generate more was unchecked) and had 3 solid layers top/bottom
was this too thin for this slight slope?
is this a heat issue?

again at .3 the banding layers is there but the model doesnt seem zig zag all things considered it looks fairly even edges and holes are square and tight no flashing just sticking together seems issue?

The banding is at least a factor in having too little flow. When I implemented gcode compensation for z-axis banding, I had to increase all of my filaments flow rates up by 10 to 15% to recalibrate back to a .42mm single thread wall. My banding was moderate (not horrendous) to begin with. I'd be interested in others' comments, as I'm not aware of other's experiences yet.

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