Something isn’t right that’s for sure. I will check the belts and wheels tomorrow . The printer was printing great before I started messing with it. But it’s all be firmware other than the shield for the power supply. At 1st I thought the desk it sits on was warped but got to looking and saw it sitting on the cable and rocking there. I’ll put the feet on and print the last one over and see if looks any different.
Not sure what the problem was but it printed much better
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The right one was printed this morning after I put the new feet on the printer.
The feet didn’t make that much difference so the problem had to lie elsewhere.
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To see if it was a printer issueI decided to slice it with PursaSlicer to see
if that would make a difference.
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The cube on the right was sliced with my normal .2mm profile, as to not make any changes
to the PS profile I edited the normal startup gcode out of the gcode file and replaced
it with the Klipper start print macro.
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Now I have to figure out what the heck happened to my Ideamaker profile
I did more the z-offset down another 0.25 looking at the bottom of the cube
I think that might be the sweet spot. The bottom looks pretty smooth other than
the little dots from the coating on the glass bed. Might go another 0.25 to see what happens.
Certainly the left cubes look better, especially the top of the left 1 in the bottom photo. How are the 1-lay squares looking?
Here’s some more weirdness I’ve been printng 40x40 1 layer squares trying to dial in the z-offset and the slicer profile. The squares are tight but a little on the rough side and was leaving a small club when changing directions on the infill. I adjusted it up and down from what I was using on the 20x20 cubes. Made a little difference but not enough that you could look at one and see that it was set different from the others. This was all sliced with Ideamaker, I finally decided to try PrusaSlicer and see what happened. right off the bat it was to close, just printing little dots, did a couple of live z-offset changes to raise the nozzle and it started printing better. When that one finished I immediately printed another after savng the new z-offset. The next square though not perfect was the best of the bunch.
I’m not sure what’s going on with Ideamaker I know I printer a couple of things on the ender 3 when I 1st started using Ideamaker and they printed fine. I have been using the Ender much since I got the SV04. I just can’t figure out why a slicer would be messing with the Z-offset. I know you can set it in most slicers but I have never used it. Might be easier to just dump the profiles I have for the Ender 3 and start over, something is messed up in all of them. I know if IM that you have to be real careful when making changes because everything gets saved and it’s not like PrusaSlicer that ask you if you want to save the changes or disguard when exiting.
Generally, if a 1 layer square feels rough and/or has blobs, it’s a sign that the Z Offset is too low (i.e. the nozzle is too close to the bed). When the Z Offset is too low it makes it too hard for the extruder to push the filament out of the nozzle.
So I’m going to assume that if you delete the z_offset section in the printer, cfg that it is then at the default setting like setting it th 0 in Marlin. I think I need to set it back to default. Then reconfigure it and print the square sliced with PrusaSlicer and see were I am.
The other thing that can make it rough is over extrusion. This is a setting in most slicers that you can change, and could explain different results in each slicer
If you delete the Z Offset section I believe you will just get an error message on Restart, saying that Z Offset must be set.
I’ll try it like it is and see what happens, maybe it automatically starts from scratch.
Good point @woodwaker_dave. If I can’t seem to get a smooth, shiny finish on a 1 layer square, that is what I look at next.
Oh, and BTW, my apologies to everyone: I’ve been saying 20x20 mm squares forever. They’re actually 30x30 mm squares. I think 20x20 are too small to get a real picture of what’s going on.
Just to make things, perhaps, a little easier, I’ve attached four 1 layer 30mm squares of different thickness: 0.12mm, 0.16mm, 0.20mm, 0.24mm. Last night I printed all 4, to ensure I could print all 4 thicknesses with good results. When slicing them, make sure to set the Layer Height and Initial Layer Height are set to the thickness in the filename. Also, ensure Top Layers is set to 0 and Bottom Layers is 1. One way to check if it’s sliced correctly is to check the Preview. In Cura there is a slider on the right side of the Preview window. It should so 1 layer in total.
30x30x0.12.stl (684 Bytes)
30x30x0.20.stl (684 Bytes)
30x30x0.16.stl (684 Bytes)
30x30x0.24.stl (684 Bytes)
Apology accepted. I’ ve been using a 40x40 that I scaled from a 80x80 that I make 1mm think then scale to my needs. It’s an old eye thing.
LOL. I do think it’s important to ensure the test squares are 1 layer thick, and only 1 layer thick. Even having 2 layers can mask the actual situation, making it look like the lines are properly joined when they really aren’t.
As far as the ‘old eye’ thing goes, do what I do: put on 2 or even 3 reader glasses ?
The one I made is 80x80x.06 then when I slice it I scale the ,06 to .02 if it’s a 0.2mm profile using or adjust accordingly.
I wear 2 reader all the time, for reading. I have a pair of 3’s for when I need to see something closer when it get real bad I throw a hood over the 3’s
Bed Level 80x80.stl (684 Bytes)
And I thought I was getting old! I have progressive lens that allow me to read normal text. When soldering I often use magnifying glasses.
My distant vision is good but I have implants to correct that.
Try the ones I uploaded. See if there’s any difference. You shouldn’t need to scale them at all.
I wear 2 reader all the time, for reading. I have a pair of 3’s for when I need to see something closer when it get real bad I throw a hood over the 3’s
Sorry. What I meant was to put on 2 pair of 2.00 or 2.50 readers. You have to look really close up, but it magnifies a lot.
OKay I;ll try one of your and see how they compare.
Been trying to dial in the z-offset all afternoon. finally got one that I’m pretty happy with, sliced it with Prusaslicer. Now I’m printing it sliced with Ideamaker to see if there is a a difference.
I start with the 0.24, get it working well, then move to the 0.20, then 0.16, and 0.12 last. I fine tune the Z Offset as each square gets thinner. I figure if I can print 0.12mm well, everything else should be good.
I used your square and compared it to the last one I printed with the 80x80 that I made. I bought you can tell from the photo but the 30x30 square appears to be to high the strands are not stuck together. It was not like this at all with the 80x80 both were sliced with Ideamaker using the same profile. Really strange, I’m going to rerun the same test tomorrow and see what happens.
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The blue dot you see was mark the left rear corner. Can’t really explain the small separation in the lower right corner.
Good idea with the blue Sharpie.
I agree; the 30mm square does indicate that your nozzle is about, at a guess, about 0.2mm, maybe 0.3mm too high. That’s why I love these squares – they really home in on the problem(s). Also, they print really quickly. If I was doing it, I would increase the Z Offset in === SAVE_CONFIG === by 0.1mm increments, until I got the right value. If, for example 4.2 was too high, but 4.3 looked a little too close, I would divide and conquer by going 4.25. Then I play with Flow Rate until the thickness is correct.