Ultimaker Cura 3D Printing Software

[agentkbl]

I second OnShape. it got me started in the world of CAD, and, while occasionally slow, Onshape has never failed me yet. which is good, because my only access to F360 is on the family iMac (I run linux on my personal laptop because it's so underpowered. my reason for using F360 is for my paid jobs, I like the workflow a bit better), and OnShape will run seamlessly on my laptop. Which was a $400.00 best buy special. In 2012. as in two windows of chromium max it's ram, and Youtube maxes it's cpu. the system requirements are just so low.

 

[jhitesma]

Oh, and the hovalin....

They went and changed the whole design on it. So I'm debating whether to finish printing what I started or switch to the new design. Trying to finish what I started because atomic retired the filament color I got which is an almost perfect "violin brown" and don't know if I'd have enough to start over.

But...printing the second half of the body has not gone nearly as well as the first half did. It keeps failing on me Gets a few inches up and then something goes wrong and causes the X axis to jump. And I still don't have a plan on how to print the neck since it won't fit on a 200x200 bed...though with the Y axis upgrade I did on my printer I can now get around 250mm which is plenty...but my heater is still only 200x200 so I'd have to do it without the heater and with a temporary elongated bed. So...keep putting it off. Thankfully my wife is patient and hardly ever bugs me about it. It's only when I start new projects for myself that get a gentle "Um...my violin?" reminder

 

[jhitesma]

Well, I spent most of my day dealing with fixing this:



Ick. No fun. 2 or 3 years ago the water pump in my truck went out...I usually do my own vehicle maintenance but at the time my daughter was too young to leave unattended and my wife was working weekends. So I paid a friend's neighbor to do it for me. His neighbor is a professional mechanic...but he's like a computer. He does exactly what you ask him to. So if you ask him to replace a water pump...that's what he'll do and nothing else. Having never done the pump on this truck before I had no idea that heater bypass hose was there since it's usually hidden under the AC Compressor and a big aluminum bracket. He didn't bother to remove those since I only asked him to do the water pump and didn't mention the hose. He didn't mention to me that the hose was iffy...maybe it wasn't back then. Bigger problem was even though I gave him fresh coolant apparently he only refills vehicles with straight water because he doesn't want to risk adding the wrong coolant since the old green stuff and new orange stuff don't play nice. He didn't mention that to me. I found out awhile later when I topped it up before summer and found brown rusty water instead of coolant So apparently it's been seeping from under the thermostat and that hose failed...and even though I've drained the radiator twice and refilled it the damage was done as it's still nasty as anything in there. (The truck is an 89 with over 230k miles on it...so lots of stuff is starting to fail just from age as well.)

Long story short I got to spend most of the day doing it all right. $200 in parts and most of my day gone...but no more leaks, flushed and filled with real coolant, and basically everything but the radiator replaced.

While I was doing that...I let the printer work on this:

https://www.myminifactory.com/object/mini-candy-machine-v2-51408

My first "all cura" project. I stumbled across the project earlier in the week and thought it looked like fun. Since I've been wanting to put cura through it's paces it seemed like a good subject. It's not done yet...I need to redo the "jar" with better settings but:



Other than the issues with the clear part not having good settings....I'm pretty happy with it.

One thing I did notice is that cura is really good at supports. I'm still not huge on cura overall but it's supports are WAY easier to remove than any I've done with slic3r. And this print needed supports on almost every piece. So that was nice.

(I will say supports in slic3r work great for me with ABS. But in PLA...I VERY seldom get supports that can be easily removed and even when they do come off they leave scars and other issues...so I try to avoid support like the plague.)

These were hands down the best PLA supports I've ever printed with my machine.

Now...time to unwind by testing some other settings for the jar part to see if I can get it to print more clear. Big problem is the best clear prints in my experience are all single wall vases....and this can't be printed in vase mode and requires at least two walls to support itself. So...going to take some experimenting.

 

[JimCR120]

So that's not a very realistic print of an engine? Is it too soon to joke about your pains? 230K?! You, sir, are certainly getting your money's worth.

Why not single wall vase mode? What's the mode good for otherwise? Also, do you like clear PLA prints for canopies? I just ordered more PLA including some clear. The FT store has 7 different .5kg spools which I think fits my wallet and storage concerns.

I've noticed in the Cura software through USB I can make adjustments on the fly. Have you ever started a print on something but away from the bed? It seems like it could be done and I was thinking if heat was an issue I could gently preheat with a hairdryer or very gently with a heat gun. Thoughts? I also saw on the printer control options to tune. Have you used these or something similar?

I printed a spool cradle but don't like it. I like the idea of a cradle big enough for 2 spools of 1kg filament but this one just didn't work. I think I'll mod it with some actual steel hardware (bearings). I chose not to put a holder on top the printer cross brace because though it would save on space and put it in a convenient spot, that high cg weight doesn't seem like a good idea for something that depends on a certain degree of stability.

I've been stretching my 3D wings a bit. With the threaded nut & bolt behind me I did a recorder that looks great though checks a bit sharp o my tuner app. Maybe I'll tune it but then again, I'm not very musically inclined or disciplined. Nevertheless it's there for my niece to practice at home. The print going right now and since last night and up to later tonight is the front dome part of a roman helmet. It took a while to get the print to start well. Flipping it to a flatter side has made all the difference as did a trip to Rite Aid for some genuine Aqua Net. It seems it's those first several layers that are the crucial point. If I get the first few mm then the rest usually goes very well (except that recorder, uff! Don't you just hate coming home to a mess of 3D scribble and a PLA caked nozzle?) We're doing an outdoor live nativity at our church and I'm going to be a roman centurion. Hopefully I'm successful with the helmet and insulating it. The snow finally started coming down last night and more is on the way. 13 hours done, about 1/2 way there. This print is my largest so far. There's a satisfactory feeling knowing this thing is working (and not scribbling) behind the scenes while I'm on something else.


Meanwhile, 4 days until my better half returns from across the pond. So needless to say I've got some cleanin' to do. And I'm feeling flu symptoms. Time to go lay down.

 

[jhitesma]

So that's not a very realistic print of an engine? Is it too soon to joke about your pains? 230K?! You, sir, are certainly getting your money's worth.

I'd say jokes are welcome...but...this morning running errands things got worse. Lost all my coolant somewhere between the engine and transmission. My best guess is a freeze plug rusted through And I don't have time to tackle that today so looks like I'm riding my bike to work all week.

Why not single wall vase mode? What's the mode good for otherwise? Also, do you like clear PLA prints for canopies? I just ordered more PLA including some clear. The FT store has 7 different .5kg spools which I think fits my wallet and storage concerns.

Only works on prints that can be done with a single perimeter the whole way...and this part has a base that's too complex to print in vase mode. The whole thing is fairly poorly designed though...it's one of those "art prints" not engineered. The jar prints with two walls...so it's hard to make it even remotely clear.

I've noticed in the Cura software through USB I can make adjustments on the fly. Have you ever started a print on something but away from the bed? It seems like it could be done and I was thinking if heat was an issue I could gently preheat with a hairdryer or very gently with a heat gun. Thoughts? I also saw on the printer control options to tune. Have you used these or something similar?

Never really felt a need to tune on the fly. Can think of a few ways to do it...but I'd rather just restart a print than have to adjust it part way through.

I printed a spool cradle but don't like it. I like the idea of a cradle big enough for 2 spools of 1kg filament but this one just didn't work. I think I'll mod it with some actual steel hardware (bearings). I chose not to put a holder on top the printer cross brace because though it would save on space and put it in a convenient spot, that high cg weight doesn't seem like a good idea for something that depends on a certain degree of stability.

Yeah, I have mine on top but my machine is a lot shorter, on the CR-10 I wouldn't want a spool up top.

 

[JimCR120]

Inconvenient and Puzzling Inconsistancies

I'm really liking this 3D Printing thing. I like being able to find things on Thingiverse and I like being able to draw up something in Sketchup. But I've come across this problem a couple times and I'm not sure what is going on. Any insight is appreciated.

A couple years ago I talked my boss into getting an Apple TV for the classroom so we could hook it up to our Eno Board (like a Smart Board) and do lessons right from our iPads. She went for it. I installed it. All is well. Well, I wanted to make things a bit more tidy so decided that it was time to employ my new 3D powers.

One of my first prints was this.

I printed on my eSun PLA which I haven't been particularly pleased with. Everytime I have print issues it's with this stuff. I accidentally bought two .5kg spools and now I'm finally working through the 2nd one. It would be nice to fix the issues and determine if I ever want to bother with this brand again but for now I just use it as my test print filament. In this print you can see some obvious irregularities on the flat(ish) surface. While printing the filament gradually layers away from the surface below it only really adhering to the trace before it. I need to play with some settings to find why this happens unless someone can clue me in.

Things were close enough that I thought I could do my last tweaks and then print it with my Hatchbox black PLA.

I thought the results looked quite a bit nicer for print quality but... what the heck, what happened to my overhand portion?

Looking back at my Cura slicer I looked at what I save and...

it looks like what I wanted but not what I got. You all see the overhang right there don't you? But then I went from Solid View to Layer View...

What the heck? Ok, this does reflect what came out of the printer but why do Solid and Layer look different?

I made a bullet case for 7 bullets and had the same thing happen. I was able to get it to do what I wanted by redrawing it a few times and have found that some Push/Pulls in Sketchup are less solid than others. That is to say it might look solid but as we've seen in Layer view and post-print, it's not always there.

I believe I can play with this to make it work right as before with the bullet holder but I really don't know the rules that I am breaking that make the software react as it is.

Thoughts? Anyone? Bueller?

 

[jhitesma]

The solid view only shows a rendering of the STL - not what will print. The layer view shows the actual code that will be sent to the printer so it more accurately reflects what you'll get.

So it appears some setting in cura is causing you to loose your overhangs. Not sure why it worked with the eSun filament but not the Hatchbox - I wouldn't think that would be a filament related setting. But I'm not a big Cura user so I can't say for sure what may be causing it.

It sounds like you may be having mesh issues. Sketchup is notorious for them. And those push/pulls can easily lead to them. The problem is CAD is a solid model while STL's are just a mesh. What can happen is you wind up with invalid geometry where you have a surface with zero or negative thickness - most CAD packages this is rare but with sketchup it's VERY easy to run into due to how their code works internally. Their STL exporter also doesn't catch and warn or correct for it and exports at lower resolution than other CAD packages. You can actually save in a different format from sketchup, open it in another CAD package and then export the STL and generally get a higher quality STL.

You can try loading the STL in meshmixer or netfabb and repairing it - but this is the kind of reason why I generally suggest not using sketchup for 3D printing designs as repairs can be hit or miss and fixing it in sketchup isn't very easy either most of the time.

As for the eSun...the absolute worst roll of filament I ever had was a roll of eSun. I ordered a roll of black Hatchbox off Amazon and they sent me eSun instead, I didn't want to hassle with sending it back and was curious how eSun would work so used it. But it was terrible. It would get brittle super fast, I'd have parts break just hours after being printed while they were just sitting on my desk without being touched! It didn't adhere to the bed well at all no matter what I tried. It warped while cooling worse than some ABS. It wouldn't stick to itself well so the layers would delaminate. After printing the 6 inches or so of filament above my extruder would get brittle and suddenly snap. Just complete and utter junk and I still regret not sending it back.

I found a date code on it and the stuff was almost a year old it turned out. Still sealed in a vacuum bag...and I wouldn't think one year would cause all of that. But it was a nightmare. I know a lot of people who like eSun but I've stayed away since.

Though - I've also had black filament from other mfg's and it always seems to give me more issues than other colors, I assume because it probably has more pigment. But none of the others were anywhere near as bad as the eSun junk.

 

[JimCR120]

Thanks for the insight Jason. To be clear, I did tweak the drawing between prints but not the Cura settings when changing filaments. I think what you are talking about with the surface problems is the key. I've found that when I can make simpler drawing changes I have less problems. I've also found that the offset tool in Sketchup seems to invite problems when it comes to going to print. With your tip I will have a better idea what to avoid. Thanks Jason.

I still don't understand why something can exist in the solid view but not in layer. If there is a problem I wish the problem would be evident more consistently. I'm not demanding an explanation but rather venting a frustration. If you programmed Cura then that would change of course.

I have one test I want to do regarding eSun. I will post those results and give the forum an opportunity to defend/explain the findings. I would like to see them do well as I prefer smaller spools and less cost. Hyperion has been working well for me but doesn't have as many color options.

Thanks again.

 

[jhitesma]

The way STL's are rendered for view and the way they're sliced isn't quite the same. It's fairly easy to generate a view of them even when they're invalid. But slicing them...that gets trickier.

The viewers don't really care if a mesh is valid - they can display it even if it's missing sections. But when slicing if there's a hole then it breaks the algorithm that determines how to create the layer.

I usually don't bother with preview and prefer layer views since they give me a far better idea how the model will print. I do sometimes like to check the preview just because it tends to look nicer


My x-carriage I've been working on for my extruder upgrade wound up with a small error in one of the fillets. You can see it in Cura (at least the v. 3.0.4 I'm using because the "upgrade" button it keep showing me doesn't do anything) but it doesn't really flag it or warn me about it:



It's kind of hard to make out but there's a hole in the surface there where you can see the red behind it.

In Layer view you can see that Cura was able to automagically correct it:



Slic3r also detects it but warns that it's doing fixes:



Note the little yellow warning triangle saying it fixed 121 errors.

But in slic3r's layer view you can see that it's fix isn't very pretty:



I'm not sure just why onShape caused this particular error...it's just a fillet and it doesn't give me any signs that there's anything invalid in the geometry either when modeling or exporting. But I suspect this small flaw is a big part of why I had so many frustrations printing this piece.

 

[jhitesma]

BTW - if you haven't been following my extruder upgrade thread you may enjoy knowing that after over a week of failed prints it was Cura that finally got me a printable version.

I was also much happier with how cura generated some of the paths - bridges in particular. You can really see the difference in the areas where the bearings go in my carriage.

Printed with slic3r:


Printed with Cura:


To be 100% fair I did use supports on this particular print with Cura - though I also printed it with Cura without supports and it did the bridges the same way making them MUCH cleaner than slic3r since they were so much shorter.

And the slic3r devs are aware of this and looking into it - I actually saw an issue filed on their github account about it right after I experienced it

 

[JimCR120]

I am glad you were able to get a good print and I am pleased that I coaxed you into trying Cura. I am sympathetic to the whole week of failed prints episode. I think you're more patient than I would have been.

Your explanation of the coding makes a lot more sense of why I've been experiencing the missing faces and how the reattempts have been successful. Now I need to go about my drawings conscious of that and hopefully I can learn to avoid and remedy them better/smarter.

Everything on the green print looks better. Are they similar brands and filament types?

 

[jhitesma]

Everything on the green print looks better. Are they similar brands and filament types?

The grey is MakerGeeks "Raptor" PLA which is a modified PLA that's supposed to be as strong as some nylons if you anneal it after printing. The green is their standard "maker" filament, dirt cheap and nothing fancy but prints at higher temps than other PLA's so they must be doing something a little different with it.

The grey I had my Z probe offset a bit off so the 1st layer was getting over squished. I tend to err on the side of caution - I'd rather have a little bit of "elephants foot" than my print come off the bed mid-print The green I had adjusted the offset better before that print. I actually have better ones in Raptor done with slic3r that was just the photo I had handy.

Not many prints am I willing to have that much patience for. But...I really wanted a titan extruder to hopefully solve the issues I've had with printing Nylon filament and since my wife got me one...I needed a mount for it



That's not all the failures...that's just the ones I saved once I started getting frustrated and wanted some trophies to show off (in a desperate attempt to keep myself sane!)

There are over 16 failed prints in that pile. Well...not all "failures" Some are complete prints I just wasn't happy with the design of the part or the modifications I made to it.

And it's not over yet. What I have now is working...but I'm not happy with it since I lost over 20mm of width on my printbed so I want to work out a way to modify it further. But I'm in no rush to tackle that now that it's working again!

 

[JimCR120]

If I may offer some encouragement... like Edison, none need be considered as failures but rather discoveries of unsatisfactory ways to print an extruder mount. And your discoveries aren't insignificant as you are possibly the most likely person on this forum to freely share your findings and frustrations for our benefit.

 

[jhitesma]

Thanks. I'm really good a finding the wrong way to do things The hard part for me is remembering to share the way that actually works when I finally achieve it. Though to be brutally honest I mostly do that because my own rotten memory rather than out of an altruistic desire to help others. Which isn't to say I don't enjoy helping others, I very much do. But I'm more likely to help others accidentally because when I try to do it intentionally I tend to find ways to screw that up

The problem with projects like this mount is that the longer it takes me to get it right the less likely it becomes that I ever get it to where I'm 100% happy with it. I get caught in a cycle of finding increasingly minor issues to fix and then wind up accepting good enough for myself but don't want to release the final work because it doesn't meet my own expectations for what's worth sharing to others.

I started to upload the mount to thingiverse last night...but then writing the description started listing all the things I still want to change about it and decided I better fix those before I post it. But now that I have something that kind of works I'm less likely to finish fixing those little things.

Still there are enough things I plan on changing for my own use still so I'll keep plugging at it. But progress will slow now that I'm printing again.

 

[JimCR120]

So maybe you can just post it as version 1.0 like software does with its updates and major revision numbering conventions.

 

[JimCR120]

Hey Jason, I think something is going on with one of the pics you posted. In post #30 there is a pic of a green image I believe you were using to illustrate your point. The caption calls attention to the 121 fixed errors. The thing is I am seeing this same pic within many other posts and signature lines, including one of my own I just spotted in post #14 of this thread. I'm curious about how this happens and what it might mean but wonder if there is some sort of virus working it's way in.

Follow-up
I was able to edit out the pic from post #14. Here are before and after snapshots...

 

[jhitesma]

That's odd. I'm guessing it's a browser cache issue due to something funky going on with the BBS. I know the admins have been doing some work behind the scenes to get ready for a newer BBS package and due to abuse by spammers - so it could be related to that.

It looks as intended to me right now when I load the post so you may want to try clearing the cache on your browser to see if that clears it up...or just give it time. I wouldn't worry too much about a virus it's most likely just something transient that can happen from time to time.

 

[JimCR120]

I asked a question about it in another thread where I saw it happening and another forum member said he could only see my screen captures but not any on his own leading me to believe it wasn't a virus but something more of a glitch or now maybe what you are suggesting. I'm on another machine now I will surf around and see what I see. When I get back on the other machine I will try what you suggest. Thanks.

Update:I checked in 2 other machines (a laptop and another iPad) without the artifact.