Trouble getting started

[jimc]

Your z height is still just a touch too big. Bed needs to be raised just a hair. About 1/2 a flat on the adjustment bolt.

[jsc]

Sorry, didn't get a good look at the pictures on my phone, mistook raft for brim. On the plus side, with a raft the first layer height is not as critical, although you do want to ensure that the raft stays attached. The downside is that removal can be difficult.

Your print is creditable as it stands, but if you want to make incremental improvements to the quality, I have a few suggestions.

The outer perimeter is a bit rough. Taking a look at your earlier profile, your speed is set to 120 for infill and 70% for exterior perimeters (or 84). That is aggressive, although I know people print even faster. If you want better surface quality, I would slow that down. My own personal preference is for 80/60. There is always a trade off between speed and quality.

To reduce the waviness near sharp edges, try turning down the acceleration. You can do this on a global basis using M201, but Slic3r has acceleration control options to adjust it on a contextual basis, so you can turn it down to 800 or 1000 mm/s^2 for exteriors only.

Calibrating through measuring filament is good, but you can also adjust extruder multiplier by eye. Set all the multipliers to 100% and print a series of 100% infill layers, and use the runtime extrusion multiplier control in your host until the infill looks right to you. Yours looks about right to me, though it is hard to tell from your last print because it doesn't have a solid top layer. You can't judge entirely by the first layer because bed height also determines how that layer looks.

[Matt_Sharkey]

Thanks for all of the help everyone. I think at this point the printer and the workflow is suitable for the classroom and we can get the kids on Tinkercad. I will continue to fiddle with things and try to get the printer 100% so please send along your recommendations/spitballs.

Right now I'm doing our first multiprint of all of the helpful tools provided in Will's post http://www.forum.makergear.com/viewtopic.php?p=299#p299

i will get pictures up soon on how they came out!

[Matt_Sharkey]

hello I'm back!

Had some successful prints, No pics yet but we are going to finally start printing the students creations today, I will make sure to post some of their works of art :p

@JSC, Thanks for the info, but I'm a bit confused. here are my settings for now...

Screen Shot 2015-01-07 at 8.47.05 AM.png (90.86 KiB) Viewed 10827 times

and my perimeters are already quite slow at 50mm/s
the value that you quoted was the infill and the ex-perimeters doesn't reference the infill.

@everyone Overall are these speeds appropriate for an M2 or they more generic to any machine?

I set my Default acceleration to 1000mm/s^2 and the perimeters to 800mm/s^2, does this seem reasonable to everyone else.

[insta]

I'd be happy to share my slic3r config with you when I get home. I use it to print nearly everything on my M2 (still learning S3D). I think the breakdown is 90% slic3r, 8% Cura, 2% S3D.

[jsc]

I must have made a mistake, you are correct. You are printing at 120/50/35 (infill, exterior, interior)

[Matt_Sharkey]

No worries JSC, just had me scratching my head wondering what I was missing.

I would be glad to see your settings, Insta. Are you using the V3b extruder?

[nokianich]

Hello everyone! I have a small problem, when I start printing my bed with nozzle heating up and then nozzle moves to right side of the bed and extrudes filament right on the edge of the bed, it happens on the left side too. Is it normal or what should i do?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zw79sx45kla31 ... 9.jpg?dl=0

[Tim]

nozzle moves to right side of the bed and extrudes filament right on the edge of the bed

This is supposed to be a "purge" cycle that runs filament off the edge of the bed then wipes the nozzle on the edge of the glass.

Two things can make this go wrong:

(1) The extruder is not straight in the motor mount. If it's twisted a little bit clockwise, then the nozzle will be a few mm off and end up on the plate during the purge cycle.

(2) The gcode is wrong. Less likely, but I've run into this problem. The purge cycle can be found in the "starting G-code script", and (for me) looks like:

G1 X209 Z10 ; move off platform

I found some profiles used "X205", which being 4mm further to the left than the above X209 position, was purging directly onto the glass.

[nokianich]

(1) The extruder is not straight in the motor mount. If it's twisted a little bit clockwise, then the nozzle will be a few mm off and end up on the plate during the purge cycle.

Thanks for your answers. I just took a look and yes, it is twisted clockwise a little bit... is there any way to fix this?