Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

I don't usually get so "stuck" but my ability to print this damn part is getting worse with every try. ABS, PLA, anything all comes out like crap.

I mean it's not such a difficult object really. But I must be tired because thing get worse and worse with each attempt.

And I have attempted, like.....20 times now, arrrrg!

Going to take a quiet moment for a few and try to reset.

ANY suggestions, ALL suggestions, HINTS, outright laughter, finger pointing, stick figure assisted diagrams to help me, crayons, ANYTHING.

I HATE IT! HATE IT! HATE IT!

LOL

OK ya, the time out break, I need it. Perhaps a nice wooden printer fire would warm me up and make me feel better?

Pics of just a few of the slowly more fail with each attempt parts.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/g9FJNvA.jpg[/img]
White ABS - TransBlue PLA - BLACK ABS
BLK ABS - TRANS BLu PLA - Glow ABS
Nylon - RED PLA (best most solid print, but cut out at 1 hour mark grrr - trans blue PLA (finished but part is soft and weak and useless)


[img]http://i.imgur.com/H2HvxSY.jpg[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/MBCz4vO.jpg[/img]
Black ABS, weak part, bizzare holes, bad layer adhesion, loss of details. Loss of sanity.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/bJAj0Zd.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/yvAYWTO.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/FaCSXw4.jpg[/img]

Have I been staring at this problem for so long that I am missing something obvious? Have I wound myself up to the point of no longer able to see the forest for the trees here. Hotend, yup hot, ok check that one is down atleast, LOL.

I blame the cat. They're evil, and it's probably bumping your printer when you're not watching.

Phases of the moon man Everybody knows you can only get good prints when it's a waxing or waning gibbous!

Just curious, and you've probably said before, what slicing app do you use? There are so many variables with printing I sometimes think we need a finite element analysis to get a handle

yeah, which slicer are you using? Try a brim around the part 7-10mm wide. That should help the curling.

Do the mouse ears!!! All you have to do is shave them off when you're done. Get them at least 8mm in diameter. You might need eight of them - one at each corner and one in the middle of each side.

Every time I curl, I end up adding them. Almost like I just should add them in the beginning and increase my odds.

Must.resist.the.minimums for the sake of efficiency...

Maybe take off those dampers you bought

Sorry I can't be any help though. I don't own a printer yet but I'm getting closer!

Obviously you're using the wrong kind of air.

I am printing with a skirt, found on of my issues earlier today. I had a slightly loose/sloppy balljoint for the mag arms on one carriage. This was showing itself in different ways at various different print speeds.

The curl is less of an issue to me than overall print quality. I can correct for curl. However the inter layer adhesion, in particular with PLA is still stumping me.

I'm partially torn apart at the moment while I attempt to get everything tightened back up and nice and fresh.

Poor layer adhesion is most commonly a symptom of to low a extrusion temp and/or improper layer height/width ratio, but I'm not teaching you anything there. The space between your first layer rows suggests low infill width or low extrusion rate. IMHO, extrusion width is a big issue in these. With proper bottom/top infill settings the prints shouldn't snap apart like that when bent. I wonder if low extrusion temps could contribute to the poor cross print strength as well?

You were much closer to the truth than you know, but from a completely different source of issue.

Turns out the idler arm on my Greg's extruder had a nasty but small crack in it. The sort of put it at a small angle and didn't allow direct contact with the hobbed bolt in a flat way. So it would extrude filament, but not consistently and then sorta build up and spit it out then starve.

Fixed it today, I am finishing up the print and will post some pics in the morning of the before and after along with what the root cause of this was.

Wow, frustration, but then oh so satisfying when you finally beat the damn issue. I'd almost forgotten what a good print looks like, LOL.

Flateric,


Yeah, the best printing moments are after a long-hard fight with your machine, and you kick the problem's @ss! Soooo satisfying to see it work the way you tell everyone it can, you know, the ones that come over and want to see it do tricks, and then it just spits out garbage

As promised here are a few pics of the new prints.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/RxYRSCk.jpg[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/uP4LJyN.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/vvcazpo.jpg[/img]

They are exactly as the came off the printer without any touching up or cleanup.

I believe I could even improve on these now after a few other issues I have corrected. See my thread about friction here....

http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=2511

And too further expand on this part and my improvements to it I thought I would follow up. Not only can I print it way higher quality now, but way faster with no loss of quality.

My printer is really humming along now!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJd9Bw5wx5U[/youtube]

And here are some stills from the same print.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/Hanzjhi.jpg[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/A9N1w2J.jpg[/img]

So I am growing to love some of the configurability of Slic3r that Kiss does not allow you to do. For instance you can set a really fine detailed upper fill layer and a really rough thick infill and layer size so that only the outer shell of your print is spent doing fine detail work as opposed to ALL parts including the areas you never see being super fine detail. Takes a little fiddling but well worth the hours of print time you save from just hitting the whole works with super fine (slow) printing.

In the video you can see it laying down the low res underlay and in the photos it is the same print with the detail and fine extrusion width covering the fast not so nice stuff.

It really works well and you would never know my whole piece was not .25 layer height throughout.

The youtube video itself has all the Slic3r settings and values listed if you are interested in checking them out for yourself.

That's seriously cool. Though it always looks weird to me when someone phone cams a video with the phone not horizontal. What application are you using to cad out your housing? Also, what's with the aluminum tape on the build platform?