Layer help two fold.

[RChicago]

I printed a face of a clock and it was a 17 hour print. The last 20 minutes required a filament change to the gold color and pausing the print and manually backing the filament out probably upset the layer height and there for caused the “scrape” between numbers. Is there a way to fix this or do I need to spend another 17 hours printing if I want it perfect?

Also related to the above question, has anyone successfully do a filament change using Cura 4.9.1 and if so how? I paused the printer at the height and manually back it out. This can’t be the right way?

Second, My layer line for the PLA seem “line-ish”. Again, this cannot be right. If I put my flow to 100% or 92% or 80% (as the teaching tech site’s flow test indicated). I get the same thing. Any help here? I don’t know why no matter what I set the flow to, it still is liney.

I know the gold is hard to see, but you can also see it in the clock face.

[Geit]

You need to enable z-hop or z jump or what ever it is called. In Cura it is z-Hop AFAIR (I use the german version, so cannot tell and only translate back). It will lift the nozzle and then move to its destination, lower it and done.

Also did you use the "M18 S9999"? Under normal circumstances you only have around 90 seconds to change the filament before the stepper disengage. As a result it is possible to move the tool head by accident and it could be that your change pushed it down slightly. By adding the command to the print you will have 9999 seconds before that happens. If you use the plugin in Cura add this command to the settings. AFAIR there is a commands before pause or so. That is the place where the command needs to be. The only thing it does is keeping the stepper active, so the tool head can only be removed my force and not when changing the filament. I am using this with a direct extruder, where you more or less always would move the tool head while swapping filament, when the steppers are off.

It could be that your print head got pushed down a little causing this scraping.

[RChicago]

Thank you so much. Can I ask which plug-in you mention above?

[Geit]

I usually use the "Pause at Height" Cura plugin.

There is also a plugin for FilamentChange, but it needs more specific commands build in Marlin firmware.