Category: Configuration

It’s not secret that 3d printers rely on heat, and that they need to have a constant source of heat. So, what happens when the temperature outside gets colder?

If you live in a temperate climate where the winter temperatures aren’t that different than summer temperatures, lucky you. You probably don’t need to do much, if anything. For the rest of us, we’ll probably need to make some adjustments.

I live in Texas, you will need to experiment for yourself to see what works best for your own situation, but this is what I do in the winter.

Set up my enclosure. Summers here are hot and the enclosure holds in too much heat. In the winter, though, I need to keep all the heat in so I put my enclosure back on. Turn up my bed temperature by 5ish degrees to help adhesion. I also include a G4 (dwell) command in my Cura start script to give my bed a little more time to heat up. Usually, 5 minutes dwell time is sufficient to get the whole bed at a stable temperature.

When 3d printing, the filament actually is extruded when laying down a surface (obviously). But when the printer needs to skip across a hole or change layers, it actually retracts the filament into the nozzle for a short period of time. This is a good thing. If these settings are off or if the printer were to stop retracting, you would find a stringy mess of filament across every hole or void in your print.

There are two settings that I want to describe:

  • Retraction distance: this is the amount of filament that the printer pulls up into the nozzle. As you can imagine, timing, speed, and retraction distance are all related. If your retraction is set at 6mm, but your acceleration and speed are set so high that the printer only has enough time to extrude 3mm you are going to see some issues on your print, which brings us to the second point.
  • Retraction speed: this is the speed at which the printer retracts the filament. Set it too high and your extruder might strip your filament. Set it too low and you will have stringing.

One of the best ways to optimize your retraction is to print a retraction tower. However, printing a retraction tower requires you to update your retraction settings at certain intervals in Z. If you don’t have the ability to do this, trial and error is another alternative that gets you pretty close. Just update your retraction settings by a small interval and see if there is an improvement.

 

I had a mishap recently which required me to remove my bowden tube from my printer in order to clear out a clog. Upon reassembly, the tube kept popping out of the connector whenever I would try to print something.

As it turns out, there are tiny little “teeth” inside of the pneumatic connector that keep the bowden tube in place. When I removed it the first time, I smashed some of the teeth and prevented it from grabbing the tube properly.

In order to fix the situation, I replaced the tube itself (been meaning to do that for quite a while) and the pneumatic coupling.

There are a lot of ways to find interesting things to print using a 3d printer. Thingiverse, or other stl repositories are abundant with files to download and print on the printer. You can commission an artist to create something for you. Join a Patreon group that creates figurines for your tabletop game. But, sometimes you can’t find what you are looking for online or just want to create your own.

There are many available tools, with more being created all the time. But, there are two that I use consistently.

For functional parts, such as when I create 3d printed widgets to replace broken things around the home or when I create photo stands for my family, I use Fusion 360. It’s subscription based, but it still seems to provide the most tools and provide the ease of use that I’m looking for. In fact, it’s so easy to use that I often have my 10 and 12 year old boys make stuff instead of doing it myself. I look at this as a valuable learning experience for them, especially if they ever end up in some type of engineering role for their careers.

For more artistic parts, I use Blender. Blender has a pretty steep learning curve, but there are tons of online resources available to help with that, including many video tutorials. 

For those using Klipper, they just released a pretty major change in the way that they store files. When I updated to the latest version all of my config files disappeared. As I looked into it, there seemed to be a lot of other people experiencing the same issue. It turns out that my files did not disappear at all. They were still there, they just had the incorrect file permissions. Here is how I was able to fix it after some Googling.

First, ssh into your pi and take a look in ~/printer_data/configand ~/klipper_config.

If your files are in one of those places, then you should be fine. If neither of those folders has your config files, then that is a separate issue entirely and you should reinstall moonraker and klipper. If you were able to see the config files in your ssh session, but not from your web access, then run the following commands in ssh.

cd ~/moonraker
git pull
./scripts/data-path-fix.sh

Someone recently wondered why they were losing details on their prints that they were making with their FDM printer. To be fair, the best way to get really good details in 3d prints is to use a resin printer. They are just better at it. However, if your situation dictates that you use a FDM printer, there are a couple of things that you can do to get a little more detail from your prints. 

First of all, reduce the layer height. Many slicers have a default layer height of 0.2mm. This means that you will definitely be able to see the layer lines and lose a significant amount of detail. Each machine is different, I’ve found the best setting for mine to be 0.08mm, but you should experiment with different settings to see what yours is. Most FDM printers are more accurate in X and Y than they are in Z, so this will resolve a lot of your problems.

Another fix that you can try is to reorient the print. Lithopanes, for example, are usually printed vertically. Even though the structure is more stable laying flat, it’s difficult to obtain the detail needed for a lithopane in that orientation.

I recently stumbled across MobileRaker on the iPhone app store. If you are using Klipper, MobileRaker makes things so easy for you. I would encourage you to use it. And if you aren’t using Klipper, I would encourage you to check it out. I’ve noticed a significant improvement in both the quality of my prints and the speed at which they print. Usually, those two things work against one another, but Klipper has managed to accomplish both.

I saw a question from a new 3d printer who was asking about their filament not being pushed through, but they were definitely able to see the gears on the extruder turning. It is possible that the filament tensioner at the extruder end is not tight enough and not gripping the filament. The other possibility is a clogged nozzle. If you end up with this condition, an easy way to unclog your nozzle that works 75% of the time is to heat up the nozzle to 260 and then push the filament through by hand. Usually this removes the clog. If this doesn’t work, you will need to unclog it by following the steps in one of my previous posts: https://www.3dprinterrx.com/clogged-nozzle/

Winter is coming. If you are new to 3d printing make sure that your machine can hold temperatures properly. If you are in a warm area, you may not need to do anything, but if you are in a cold area you might want to consider getting an enclosure. Enclosures protect your 3d print from drafts, help you hold temperature better, and ensure that the temperature around your print is more consistent.