Brand New to This

3d Printing / Slicers / Setup / Problems
1

Hi guys, I’m brand new to 3D printing and design and have jumped in with an Creality Ender 5 Pro. I’m using Fusion 360 and Cura for slicing

Doing my very first print and learning a lot already that you can only learn when you actually try and print something. Up until now I have watched a ton of vids and read just as much. But theory is fine, putting it into practice is another thing ?

I am printing my own design first - its a little logo for my car. So far so good.

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A little tip that many of you I’m sure already know but took me ages to figure out - My print started fine - the brim prints and then nozzle moved to start the actual print. But nothing was adhering to bed.
I leveled ( have BL), I cleaned, I changed nozzel, I changed filament, I adjusted temp, speed etc etc. Wrecked my head. Couldn’t get the actual print to stick to bed even though the brim and that little test line down the side were printing and holding fine.

Anyway turns out that my design had a little, tiny piece that was sticking below the bottom of my main print. But when imported to Cura that tiny piece was the base, and the rest of the bottom of my print was sitting slightly above X axis. So the print head was printing in mid air. So now I know to look at the under part of the print in Cura before slicing.
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My first question that I can’t find an answer for anywhere -
On the home screen of the Ender 5 it says FR 100% - I understand this means Flow Rate.
Now if I go to the TUNE menu during a print I can adjust the SPEED and FLOW.
Adjusting the SPEED to 50% during the first layer or 2 helps with bed adhesion and quality - espically on this small logo I am printing.

Now my question -
When I adjust SPEED , FR changes to that % - so I guess FR is the Speed? What then is the FLOW?

And in Cura it had it set to print the first couple of layers slower than the middle layers.
Lets say Print Speed is 80mms and Initial Layer Speed is set to 20mms. - If I then adjust the SPEED to 50% in TUNE menu when the print begins does that slow the initial layer print speed to 10mms or does it take 50% off the 80mms?
It seemed like my print was still printing way to fast on the first layer so I went to TUNE and adjusted the SPEED to 50% to slow it right down but then I presume when the speed speeds up at higher layers, it will now be restricted to 50% of that higher speed in the slice unless I go back to TUNE and change to 100% again.
So I’m guessing that TUNE will adjust the slicer settings by whatever % change I make in TUNE.

And how does that affect FLOW. Are flow and speed independant? I would think that if I slow the SPEED thats just slowing the Print Head speed. But if the flow is not changed wouldnt that mean that more material will flow out as the head is not moving as fast?

Hope that makes sense?

2

That’s quite a lot in 1 post. FR is Flow Rate. When you change the speed the FR is automatically adjusted to prevent overextrusion of filament. Cura adjusts many things automatically, although many of them can also be overridden manually.

I don’t know what the tuning of speed from the LCD menus will do in the middle of a print. Seems like a good place to experiment. I stick to setting speeds in Cura. 25mm & below should be good for initial layer speed – I’m usually in the 15 - 20 range.

It’s good you learned the lesson about checking the bottom of models in Cura to ensure they are flat on the bed. On mine I look for solid red across the bottom. Another way you can get printing in mid-air is if a model is ever so slightly tilted. It looks OK from the side or top but, if it is looked at very closely, there can be a very small gap between the model & print bed. Checking the bottom view makes it clearer.

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Usually the Cura defaults are working out of the box. Of course I have no clue about printer specific profiles, but I never used them.

I just create a new profile, specify the print bed and stuff and change the speed from 60 to 55mm/s, set my temperatures and tweak the retract values a little. Since Cura uses relative default settings the first layer speed is 50% of my initial speed by default. In addition to that I usually use three walls, enable support brim and some other minor things that ensure my prints get finished.