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Topic: Hello from NJ

My Solidoodle 3 arrived today, and my wife and kids have been sitting here watching it crank out designs.  This is our first foray into 3D printing.

After a few projects, the results haven't been very encouraging.  We know this is because of basic beginner problems, not the printer.  Is there a very basic "get started" project we should do?  Something that says exactly what temperatures to use and any other settings we might to assign?

Thanks for suggestions!

Bob

2 (edited by frozensoda 2013-07-12 01:50:04)

Re: Hello from NJ

I started by printing small calibration cubes and changing settings until everything looked right. There are a lot of things that you need to calibrate at first, but then it gets easier once you know what setting changes what in the end. #1 I would check the bottom of the print, if it looks like a bunch of beads on a string, your extruder tip is too close to the print bed, and if it looks stringy and keeps lifting off the bed or not sticking to the other threads on the same layer then your extruder tip is to far away, you can correct this by raising/lowering the screw on the back of the inside of the machine that presses the switch when you home it. Also if the first layer of a print with large surface area is thin in some spots and thick/not sticking in other spots then you should relevel you bed with a dial gauge or by slipping a piece of paper between the extruder tip and the bed in various spots. It is also important to measure the diameter of your filament with a micrometer in several spots and set that average as the setting in slic3r, from what everyone says it should be within .1mm. Lastly you should run the PID calibration. It is very simple just type into google "solidoodle 3 PID calibration" and the page on the wiki should come up.

I edit my posts a lot.

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Re: Hello from NJ

Well, another few hours and we've yet to get anything that looks like we expected.

I keep reading that ABS should be heated to 220-250 degrees, but as soon as our extruder gets to 220, it generates a whole lot of errors:

   < 7:07:50 PM: Printer stopped due to errors. Fix the error and use M999 to restart. (Temperature is reset. Set it after restarting)

Both heaters are then turned off again.

I'm trying to control the heat from the Print Panel; is there some temperature override someplace else that's not letting those settings take effect?

4 (edited by ronsii 2013-07-12 23:46:09)

Re: Hello from NJ

The solidoodle printer reads about 30 degrees LESS than what is actually in the hotend!!! SO if you want to melt at 220 degrees you have to minus 30 off that and set the software to 190.

The software in the printer is saving you from a meltdown by giving you this error, hopefully it hasn't overheated the peek insulator(black part of the hotend)

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Re: Hello from NJ

Okay, that makes sense, but I have a dumb software question...

I'm using Repetier-Host Mac.  I've run the PID calibration and turned on the extruder and bed, set them to 190 and 80.  After a minute or two they've both reached the proper temp.

When I click on the Run button to start my job, the temperature immediately goes up to 200+ and starts heating up the extruder, the printer generates the temperature error, and it shuts down again.

The Behavior tab on the Pinter Settings panel shows a default extruder temp of 190.  Where is it getting the 200+ value from?

Thanks for everyone's help!

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Re: Hello from NJ

Just found my own answer!  The G-Code has the temperature embedded, so I tweaked the ASCII version and will try again to print.  If this works, then I'll figure out where the slicer has the temp setting and fix it there too.

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Re: Hello from NJ

Slicer can be finicky about saving changes you make to the profile including temperature changes you usually have to change it in a couple of places.

One other thing if you have not seen it before is do not leave the extruder heated any more than is needed to accomplish the print as the plastic filament degrades very quickly at extruding temps and will burn and clog in the print head nozzle if the the heater is on and the filament isn't being extruded in a timely fashion.

The 200 value is just the default saved in the profile.