Sometimes, for whatever reason, I need to print an object off of the bed or print only half an object. Either way, the solution is to move the object vertically in Cura.
It’s pretty easy to do. In your settings menu, unselect “Drop to Bed” and then in your main screen you move the object in the appropriate direction.
If the sides of a calibration cube are a little bowed, there are a couple of things that I would look at.
The quick answer: Yes
When you first start out 3d printing, you most likely will not know whether that stringing issue is caused by poor retraction settings, temperature settings, or something else. I don’t do it anymore, but when I first started 3d printing I kept very detailed logs that included every parameter setting, as well as the ambient temperature, the type of filament used, and a description of the overall 3d print outcome.
I found these records to be very valuable in troubleshooting. They provide a lot of insight into what might be wrong when I change filament or what has gone out of whack if I don’t change anything on my printer but it just starts acting up.
After a while, two things will happen.
It’s not necessary to keep detailed logs indefinitely. When you are starting off though, I can’t think of any better way to build your knowledge base.
I notice that new users often post something similar to “I just got my first printer, what should I upgrade first?”
My answer is usually “nothing…for now.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to upgrades. But this post is more specific to new users. There is a lot to learn when you first start out 3d printing. Proper temperatures, speeds, loading your print correctly. There are slicers, different cad packages, and the list goes on. Don’t add more complexity to the situation by upgrading a bunch of items on your printer. Learn your printer. Once you feel like you have a good handle on the stock printing process, maybe try out a small upgrade and just work your way up from there.
I saw a user in a forum asking for help with bridging. They were trying to create a large print that had many bridging features that were intended to be straight across and ended up being droopy.
When someone asked what they had done already, they responded with “I slowed down my speed to help the bridging out.” In most cases, this is the opposite of what needs to happen. If my print has a lot of bridging features I typically speed it up. If you think about the mechanics of what is happening here, heat is being applied the entire time that your nozzle is extruding. So, the longer something takes with heat being applied to it, the more it will sag as a result.
I’ve printed parts in the past that end up looking like something was dragged across the surface while it was printing. In reality, something may have been dragging across the surface. The first thing that I check when this happens is to make sure that the nozzle is clear. This is a typical sign that the nozzle may be clogged.
If it does turn out to be clogged, I do a “cold pull.” Heat the nozzle up 20 – 25 degrees past what you use it at during printing. Then let it cool completely. The idea is that any debris will collect into the filament. Once it is cool, heat it up again but tug on it from the extruder end. It will break loose from the nozzle at a much lower temp than what you print at. Hopefully, any debris that was clogging the nozzle comes with it. Just cut the end of the filament off and feed it back in.
Sometimes I print parts that have a top surface that look like a riverbed. There are valleys and branches going all across the surface of the part. This is usually a result of the nozzle being too close to the bed. Mechanically, there is too much filament coming out of the nozzle for the amount of space between the bed and the nozzle. When this happens the filament flows into other areas of the print and creates these valleys.
In short, your nozzle is too close to the bed if you have this. Adjust the height or redo your bed level.
These issues are easiest to identify on square parts. If you have mysterious blobbing on organic shapes, maybe try a cube test print to see if your printer has one of these issues on the corners. If you do end up with issues on your corners, and your printer has no other problems with printing, pressure advance (Klipper firmware) or linear advance (Marlin firmware) may solve your issue. Although they accomplish the task in different ways, both solutions solve the problem of issues with corners in 3d printing.
As a side note, when I am attempting to determine how accurate my machine is or to calibrate it, I first print a cube that I designed that has very large corner radii so that corner issues won’t bias my calibration.
If you spend any time reading through 3d printer help forums, it won’t be long before you see someone post about a problem that they are experiencing, to which someone else replies “you need to level your bed better.” But how good is good enough?
When it comes to 3d printer beds, I typically run into two variations:
Here is my recommendation. Get your bed as physically flat as you possibly can. See if you can get it to 0.05mm flatness. In most cases, this is possible as long as you have decent springs holding the bed up. Then run a mesh bed level to compensate for the variance that still exists. For most materials, I’m able to run prints without any hairspray, glue, tape, or anything else to hold the print onto the bed by following this methodology.
Some 3d printers end up with rough top layers. One thing that you can check if this happens to you is the rate of filament flow. Filament flow is affected by a couple of things, the most common issues are:
