Unanswered Z offset

Been a while since I have printed. I am back to it now. When I opened matter control, there was an update. Now it has offset buttons for z on the controls screen. The video shows 1.0 being default and from what I thought if I hit like 1.2 the print head would raise away from the table .2mm. Does not seem to be the case. My first layers are just not thick like they once were and if I use tape, the print head drags through the tape. It was not doing this before. Should I be going the other way with like .8? Or should I try a negative value?

 

what should I be using instead of matter control

 

Still waiting on a robo guy that uses mattercontrol to explain the correct process when hitting the offset buttons. Or how to make sure the part was sliced with that offset. Seems like even if I change the offset, save it, and then load the part it will not always take the offset. I have changed the offset everywhere I can find. One thing I do not understand, I had a negative offset that worked ONE time at -0.5. That was edited in as an offset button. But it only worked once. After that, no matter when I hit the button, the offset would not take. Now if I change the offset in the slice settings, the value that works is 0.5, not negative. So the M565 code that is put in the g-code is usually negative I think. If I change the offset in the slice setting, is that different and needs to be positive?

 

I like cura. Everything was easy and had me printing again. But when printing this spool holder, the robo would stop printing. Cura was still active but the printer would be stopped. @Mike Kelly suggested using a sd card to print, but was unable to tell me how to do it from cura. So I went back to mattercontrol for the sd printing. But turns out, the part prints really nice in mattercontrol without any stopping via usb. The gcode seems to be more fluent in matter control and the parts print with less Z banding. I think that is what it is called. For something that seems like it should be so easy, I am surely having trouble with getting the same z offset to repeat itself in mattercontrol.

 

Thanks for your replies Mark

 

in mc you can do the z-offset by going into "Advanced Controls" then the settings tab, after that, you click on "Printer", in the General view you should see Z Offset (youll need to do the advanced view)