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[STEMO]

AMRC (Advanced manufacturing research centre) in Sheffield recommended a Colido compact for the wife's school, costing £180+VAT. Apparently the kids are making good quality objects, including a clock face with raised numerals, without much stringing or blobs.

[TheBoy]

Is that their baby one?  I can see why, as CoLiDo printers are fully enclosed, so harder for kids to sabotage .

a 4" print area though, limits it.

[TheBoy]

aaronjb - I'm just printing this Benchy (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3742491) using 0.2mm layer height.  I'll post up a photo when done (1hr25 according to Cura).

I have recently moved my printer so it needs full relevelling (bed and the Z axis on mine), but I CBA, plus I have new bits to go on that will need relevelling after, so would do all that together.

[TheBoy]

Lol, the bed is that pissed that its gonna need a raft.  Try again time

[TheBoy]

Lol, the bed is that pissed that its gonna need a raft.  Try again time

S'not my day - I've forgotten to turn off supports.  I'll let this one finish, then redo.  My supports setting was "Touching Buildplate", so only a thin one to support top of hull, so wont make much difference though.

[TheBoy]

And doing this, my printer has just recorded going over 3km of filament, and its approaching 30days of actual printing time.

[aaronjb]

Ah yes - I had supports turned on everywhere on my first Benchy .. he had no windows, or doors..  I've since fine-tuned the support settings so that I can actually get them out/off  except for one on my last print, which is annoying - I'll figure that out, though!

Re the temp tower and needing adjustment - the temperature tower was someone elses gcode (from the Chiron owners group) so no tweaking possible there; and nobody knows what slicer settings he used but my own prints are starting to look better now:



(You can see the non-removable support in the hole at the lower left corner where the rotary encoder should poke through)



There's some 'ringing' visible - I need to tighten the belts (which is why I'm currently printing new tensioners!) and add supports to the Z axis uprights.. though the support attachment blocks need 14hrs to print, so I'll do those bit-by-bit! If it's running overnight the noise will probably annoy the OH as my office is next-door to our bedroom (that was poorly planned, I should have bagsied one of the huge double bedrooms as my office )

Oh, and I think I could probably go lower with the temperature - I'm already at 180ºC, but others have found the thermistor reads ~20-30ºC low so I could still be at 200ºC right now. Must dig out the IR thermometer.

[TheBoy]

The ringing can sometimes be the infill coming through, rather than true ringing - I have an extreme example here somewhere, let me dig it out.

My Benchy came detached at about 90% - hardly surprising seeing how the printer has twisted since I moved it - one corner isn't touching the desk .



High Res pic at https://theboy.omegaowners.com/oofpics/odds/benchy-hires.JPG

[TheBoy]

Infill problem, not to be confuddled with true "ringing"

[aaronjb]

Re the ringing - on the Gotek bracket it's the sort of 'shadow' of the port logos that are sunk into the front that I mean, rather than the general surface finish.. they have a sort of 'ghost' of themselves beside them. Of course, I might be trying to fix something that is inherent to 3D printing, for all I know

I'll have another bash at Benchy tonight, see what it comes out like now I've tweaked things a lot .. just have to remember to disable supports 

My last two prints were these:



At the front is a Y axis belt tensioner and at the back is a front indicator relocation plate for the Cobra - that one is actually one I drew up myself in Fusion 360 a while back (like, months .. I've now forgotten how I did it all!), and then printed yesterday. Surprisingly sturdy with just 25% infill at only 5mm thick.



A little blobbing in the slots at the back, but not bad .. some small tweaks to go.

[TheBoy]

Gcode can be tweaked by hand in a text editor. Extruder temp will be near the very top, first few lines.

Make sure your extruder temp sensor is properly located in the block, else you will get strange results, and in extreme, a nasty smell as the extruder actually burns the PLA.  20-30C out seems way too far off.

Round holes should not need any supports, but check the overhang settings in Cura, as by default, they are conservative.

[TheBoy]

Getting there .

Re the Cobra piece, when designing stuff, remember that anything off a FDM printer is inherently weak along the layers.  So sometimes, you need to design in some strength, or print it in a different orientation to put the inherent weakness in a different plane.  I bet it won't be long before you can "see" that during the design stage

[TheBoy]

Cobra

Ignore that word, misread post

[aaronjb]

Round holes should not need any supports, but check the overhang settings in Cura, as by default, they are conservative.

Yeah, right now Cura is intent on sticking supports everywhere, including M3 sized holes Fortunately they do now poke-out easily (now that I've also changed it's default Z distance from 0.1mm to 0.25mm - I read somewhere that the general rule of thumb was "half the nozzle plus 0.05")!

The Cobra bit is mostly "bendy" but it just needs to move the front indicators up above the minimum height for IVA.. it's essentially non-structural unless the IVA examiner manages to snap it (although the build has stalled right now .. more on that in the build thread when I catch up to date!)

[TheBoy]

Not got Cura in front of me, but under supports, there is an angle of max overhang. 0 is horizontal (anything would get a support), 90 is vertical (nothing would be supported), so you can play with that.  There are also some Bridging settings, that can help not do supports unless needed.

Additionally, I tend to only use the Support option "Touching Buildplate", but it does depend on the model.  Sometimes, in the design, you will have to design in easily removed supports, rather than fight the slicer's options.  Again, the more you play, they more you understand your printer's capabilities.