Got Simplify3D

That's something I've been meaning to do for a while, but that kept slipping my mind any time I was near my printer. My belts are pretty loose. Time to look into how to tighten them. Thanks for the tip!

 

Just caved and decided to throw Simplify 3D on the credit card since I paid all my bills early this month. So far the software is awesome, as I expected. However, when it comes to actually printing, I can't get it to work. The printer loads the gcode, and everything seems to move just fine with the exception of the hobbed bolt. The gears aren't spinning at all. I'm guessing this is just a setting I need to configure, but I'm not really sure where it is. Any ideas?

 

The only thing I can think of is that maybe I have the wrong Toolhead selected. It selected Toolhead 0 (Right Extruder) by default. It might be trying to move an extruder that's not there. I'll hook it up to my laptop in a second and see if changing that does anything.

 

It is working when I have it directly plugged into my computer. Once this print is done, I'll export gcode again and see if that works. When I plugged my computer in the first time, it worked, but the nozzle was WAY too close to the bed. Found some gcode that enabled auto leveling and now it's printing like a champ.

EDIT: Sent that message from my phone and was feeling too lazy to type out the gcode I found.

G28; home X,Y,Z axis
G1 Z5 F5000; will lift Z axis by 5 mm
M565 Z-1; sets the offset for the auto-leveling mechanism by 1 mm
G29; runs auto-level

Putting that in the start gcode of my process made it do the 9 point check and start printing correctly.

EDIT: Checked our processes against each others and while I didn't see anything too huge, it did get me thinking about some of the variables in there that I could tweak to improve. I think it must have just been some sort of glitch, because I didn't really change anything significant, but now it's working. I'd definitely recommend adding in the gcode if you've got an autoleveling printer. It seems to work really well for me.

 

How do you manually level it? Just take measurements at different spots and move the threaded rod until it's consistant?

For some reason, before I got my Smart LCD Controller XXL yesterday, my RoBo 3D kept running into issues with printing from an SD. I didn't do extensive testing though, so it was probably something simple I was messing up. Now that I've got it, I don't really plan on running it from my computer anymore, just slicing it in Simplify3D and having my Smart Controller XXL print it. That setup seems to be doing an amazing job so far.

 

No expert, but I think the reason Mattercontrol didn't print supports is because it doesn't need them. I don't think the arms are sticking out that much to need them. If the pieces were larger, maybe, but at that size, there isn't that much overhang. Do you have the extruder fan running? You're off to a good start, just getting it a week ago. You'll get it dialed in soon and when you look back at these prints, you'll know it was worth it.

 

I don't know whether it needed them or not. It sure seems like it did though. Simplify3D is printing the bulbasaur evolutionary chain with support material as I'm writing this, so we'll see how that turns out.

 

I'm at the 26 hour mark of a 36+ hour print of the Terminator head. I used MatterControl because I got the first layer dialed in and haven't been able to get Simplify to print right yet. The print is completely surrounded by supports even though I don't think it's necessary. In a You-Tube video of a guy who printed the head with Simplify, he used its support feature to do just the jaw. I don't know why MatterControl decided to surround the head with supports, but I'm going to have a lot of work cleaning it up. One of these days I'm going to devote the entire day figuring out Simplify.

 

It's pretty awesome software and it isn't THAT difficult to use. Definitely worth figuring out.

 

Ended up falling asleep before the print finished. Adding the support material helped a LOT. I don't have any pictures to upload right now, but the support that Simplify3D added helped a lot.

 

As we progress in our abilities to create successful prints, it's only natural that we would outgrow software like Mattercontrol. A lot of nubbies expected the printer to be plug n play. I feel like I've reached that point pretty much with MatterControl but as my expertise grows so does my desire to get to the next level. The Terminator head I just printed in Mattercontrol was buried in supports that I feel were unnecessary. It's going to take a lot of effort to remove them. With Simplify, I would be able to control the supports. That alone is reason enough to switch.

 

Mark, can you send me you current S3D fff file please. I'm still struggling with some finish quality issues with S3D. I love the supports but other than that I'm feeling much better quality with Slic3r.