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Hello from Virginia.

Discussion in 'United States of America' started by quazi78, Aug 6, 2015.

  1. quazi78

    quazi78 New Member

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    Let me start this post off by saying this community is awesome. I worked for a forum software/hosting provider and this community is head and shoulders above most of the others out there. I've been lurking for a couple weeks and got my printer on the 25th of last month. Since then it's been mostly an exercise in frustration. I ordered from Amazon and upon arrival both of the belt holders under the bed were broken. I used the (one) spare they provided and superglued the other together long enough to print the replacement off thingiverse. I was happy that seemed to go really well. I mean other than having to immediately repair a significantly expensive item, I was up and printing. Hooray!

    I knew updating the firmware from what I have read here was important. So I flashed to the newest factory firmware. I printed a couple small things ( a superman shield, a Mario 2D 1-UP mushroom). I hooked up and printed a case for a Sainsmart LCD with no issues. Then things started to go downhill.

    I have read that Cura is much better than Mattercontrol, so I downloaded 15.04 and followed the sticky post here. Cura hates me. I left the default temperature settings for PLA (should have done more research I guess) which are 220 and 70. The extruder clogged. Badly. Like take it apart and clean it with a torch badly.

    After reassembly I guess I didn't tighten the nozzle and the break tight enough because the printer started oozing PLA around the nozzle. I didn't notice this until it had truly made a horrific mess. PLA had covered the back side of the nozzle, leaked between the aluminum block and the black casing that holds the thermister. So, more disassembly and cleaning. After getting everything cleaned and back together (much more tightly this time) I started printing and saw no oozing. I dropped the temps to 210 and 70. I have attempted to print the same object approximately 8 times now. Cura does a very good job overall but the first layer didn't stick. It didn't stick to itself or to the second layer. When the print finished the bottom of the print looked like a box of spaghetti. You could pull the threads of PLA away or strum them like a little orange guitar if you wanted.

    The external dimensions on Cura seem correct, but this particular piece holds a circuit board and after printing the inside cavity is too small. The board won't fit. Mattercontrol does a great job on the first few layers everything is solid, sticks to the bed, fuses nicely, but then as the print goes on things go pear shaped. The last 10 layers or so were very broken up, the top didn't print solid. The cavity on the inside for the circuit board though, spot on. I know switching back and forth between software is the wrong thing to do, I've played with every setting in cura for the first layer that I can find trying to get it to print solid but I'm just not having any success. I've printed on painters tape without gluestick and with. I've also used just the bare glass (which resulted in almost immediate warping) and put gluestick on the glass (this seems to give the best results).

    Am I fundamentally failing at this? Is my experience different than other people? Did you guys just pop your printer out the box and start making awesome things?
     
    Mike Kelly likes this.
  2. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    2 months later, sure.

    :)

    As far as the extruder woes, this is often why people move to the E3D. With work you can get the hexagon working (as you found out).

    Can't help about the Cura questions, there are a number of others on here who can comment.
    At one point I bounced around all of the free slicers before I settled on repetier host as my default slicer and eventually my models got complex enough that I really need the extra horsepower from Simplify3D.
     
  3. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    (actually, it was probably more than 2 months for 'awesome'... 2 months just to get prints that essentially worked though)
     

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