My slicers all defaulted to first layer fan off, which gives the melted plastic a better chance to adhere to the bed. I can always tell that my print is progressing when I hear the layer 2 cooling fan kick on.
My slicers all defaulted to first layer fan off, which gives the melted plastic a better chance to adhere to the bed. I can always tell that my print is progressing when I hear the layer 2 cooling fan kick on.
Is there a file I can download from somewhere that has good TL-D3 pro Ultimaker cura defaults so I can start from something workable and gradually perfect it from there?My second attempt wasn't much of an improvement.Quote:
Originally Posted by fred_dot_u
After an apparent good start on a third attempt with fans off for the first 4 layers I came back 3 hours later to a catastrophic displacement of everything off of the glass and total print failure.
I'm resorting to the glue stick again just to see if this thing can even do this print or if something other than weak adhesion is at work here like a nozzle managing to bump into earlier layers for some reason.
with the glue after the fans finally kicked on the print almost worked but one little joint had come loose and moved away when I came back to check on it.
With the voxel I ended up using a raft on everything. It seems like that shouldn't be necessary but I am nearly at my wits end. It just takes so very little to disturb and displace these tiny little pieces and once it does the whole hours long print is ruined.
Tough print there. That is the sort of print that will find issues with bed adhesion and slicer settings.
Watch the first few layers and see if the edges of the smaller parts are lifting up and being hit by the nozzle.
Is Z-hop set in the slicer? You can tell either from checking your settings, or just watch how the nozzle shifts between the smaller objects. Does it hop up and down each time?
I have done nothing with z hop at all. Should i generally set it to something? What are the trade offs if any?
The print with raft was the first one to succeed. now I can't remove the raft from the print. I never had this problem with the voxel. The rafts may have left a raft scar but they always peeled away neatly and easily in one piece.
I suspect Monoprice did serious homework tweaking the hell out of their slicer default settings that worked so well with my Voxel, so I dug around Cura documentation and found that profiles are the way to go to import settings en masse and then dug around the tenlog website where I downloaded a cura profile that did not come with my machine but which was supposedly designed for the TL-D3 pro and added the profile to ultimaker. I was not filled with confidence by what I saw however. They set the bed temperature for PLA to 45C contrary to the wisdom I have received here and I know I had more trouble with looser adhesion when I tried a cooler bed. Hopefully that was a concession to safety on an open piece of equipment but...I may have to look elsewhere for a great "default" starting point cura profile for my TL-D3 Pro.
https://3dprintbeginner.com/tenlog-tl-d3-pro-review/
This was an interesting read, especially the image of the waver/ripple in the glass bed! I would not have expected a piece of glass to have such distortion. The article notes that it is necessary to print with a raft due to the uneven bed!
Another part of the read was a reference to a weak spring on the extruders, creating underextrusion. That's a rather important aspect of any printer.
I attempted to locate Prusa Slicer profiles for your printer, without success. The linked site does contain profiles for your printer if you are willing to try the ideamaker slicer. I've not yet tried it but the reviews I've read compare it favorably to the Simplify3D slicer, a paid program that I use. You'd have the advantage of a canned profile for your printer if you gave Ideamaker (free) a shot.
Thanks Fred!Quote:
Originally Posted by fred_dot_u
It seems like a good idea for a noob to try a couple of free slicers.
I'm sure last time i tried ideamaker it only produced sliced files in it's own propriatary format.
have they changed that ?
As far as z-hop goes.
try not to use it. If your retraction settings are correct - you will never need to anyway.
But with any printer (deltas excluded) constantly moving the z-axis up and down, will always introduce errors.
It's one reason that a flat bed is better than using 'auto'level' to map a beds inconsistencies and constantly be moving up and down.
Deltas are exempot from this as the hotend move in all 3 dimensions as a matter of course.
The less often you move the gantry up and down the fewer chances there are to introduce incinsistencies into your prints.
Ah ha - yep you can setup any printer for ideamaker.
Got some interesting features too.
And automatic print surface texturing facility. That's different.
But it is more complicated once you get to slicing.
On the other hand it is setup for idex printing. So probably worth perservering with if you have an idex machine.
Cheers fred.
The texturing will be useful :-)
Only just now have I installed Ideamaker to see how close to S3D it compares. It's not close in any manner. It doesn't appear particularly difficult to use and does have a profile for the tenlog pro available to download. It appears to generate g-code, which avoids the proprietary aspect. The company does not have a profile for either my x-max nor the Sigma R16, which means no testing for me.
I'm still a big fan of Prusa Slicer, but didn't find a profile for tenlog pro with that program.
In paper graphical printers the USB cable has always served primarily as a means of transferring the print data from desktop or laptop to the printer. My Voxel and TL-D3 pro came with such cables but in the case of the voxel I didn't care because the wifi functionality worked great and in the case of the tenlog TL-D3 Pro there was no documentation concerning the usb cable at all apart from its inclusion in the parts list. Today I decided I would see if it would save some time with the slicer tweaks to use the wire. Since I had no documentation I powered down the printer and plugged it into the PC. immediately the printer powered itself on and the LCD display lit up with a static display of vertical randomly colored lines- a crash of some sort and the power button became unresponsive. I had to unplug the printer power cord and then unplug the USB cable and then replug in the power cable and re power on the 3d printer to regain functionality. Do 3d printers use their usb cables differently from how paper graphical printers use them? are they just for flashing roms on the mainboard or something?
I need your help here Aardvark. I want to print that octopus to prove to myself that I can print something that has been failing and do so without glue, or rafts, or Z-hops and I know from your chainmail print that you have achieved something like this. But every time I try to do this my printer eventually manages to dislodge one or more of the small early pieces well before the overall print is articulated and print failure then becomes guaranteed.Quote:
Originally Posted by curious aardvark
Is there perhaps some variable that I can't account for? Perhaps you succeed without using a glass plate?
Unless the printer is specifically a tethered device (rare), one does not have to use the USB cable. Typically, the printer is powered up and the computer is powered up. When the cable is connected, the computer should "see" the printer, which also is probably going to reboot the display. The display should return to normal, not go haywire as you've described. If I forget to disconnect the USB cable and power off the printer, the power leads from the computer to the printer will continue to operate the display, but not the printer, of course.
Using USB to perform your prints implies that there is a feature in your software which will recognize the attached printer and offer the option to send the file to be printed. This also requires that you keep the computer powered on (no sleeping!) and connected while the job is underway.
By using Octoprint, one can send the job to the SD card over USB and disconnect, but Octoprint can be configured for wireless access and requires an intermediate device such as a Raspberry Pi or another dedicated computer (no sleeping!) to perform the queuing and monitoring.
Trade-off with Z-hop is that it makes the print take a little longer. Contrary to what aardvark says, it does not introduce errors into prints. On any reasonably built printer, the Z-axis has no issues at all getting back to the same position. What it does it lift the nozzle away from the print when travelling between printed parts. This means that if you have any over extrusion, or the very common slight lift around the edge of low angle PLA parts, the nozzle will not collide with the print when travelling. It's typically set to 0.6 to 0.8mm. It may well be already set, as PrusaSlicer has it on by default (at least for Prusas), and Cura has it set to occur on retractions.Quote:
Originally Posted by minneapolis-matt
Just downloaded that octopus. The slope at the base of the model is a lot steeper than appeared in the photos here, so I think we can remove the concern about edges of the PLA lifting.
The next thing I'd do it take a look at the base of the prints that are lifting. Do they have any sign that they are lifting at the edges first (usually there's a visible 'crease' where the outer edge has lifted while the centre holds). That will give an indication of whether it's mostly bed adhesion which is the problem, or the print leveraging itself off the bed. You can also do this by watching the first few layers as they print.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3503779
Yeah, Ive just been trying to print this little guy. It's not even necessarily something that I wanted to have it just looked like a good demo item for troubleshooting multiple issues in one print. Now the multiple fails have made it something of an obsession. I feel if I can't make it work I am asking for more random fails on other prints. I temporarily moved on to reducing stringiness by modestly adjusting retraction amounts and after some success there, I guess I will try another overnight print of the octopus using cura and the profile I downloaded from tenlog with a raft. I think with a raft you actually want a cooler bed so I'll try that this time and see if separation will be possible.I may try using ideamaker as well but there seems to be more troubleshooting support for cura.
Try a brim instead of a raft. Saves plastic, and still gives heaps of adhesion.
Will a brim be more difficult to peel away in prints with many small parts like the octopus or chainmail?
Wouldn’t recommend it for the chainmail, but should be fine for the octopus.
Maybe not. Over night i had the octopus running on a double thick raft with a more than doubled from default airgap value of .39mm (parameter cura describes as facilitating raft removal from the print...not the bed) and a 66c bed temperature on a thoroughly cleaned and dried bed. As i watched to ensure the entire raft completed normally and the first layer finished successfully i left thinking to myself that maybe now i had opened myself up to the risk that the octopus parts would simply get dislodged from the raft mid print and fail the print.
This morning i found a perfectly formed 4 to 6 layer octopus partial print on the floor solidly super welded at each and every point onto the perfectly intact raft and a huge spaghetti mess being piled up on the print bed. Apparently the entire raft had been totally displaced at high bed temp.
I think i even had a z hop turned on for this print.
What the hell? Rafts can't be separated from the print at all but can't remain in place on the bed for even the duration of the print?
Something is very wrong. This should not be this difficult.
Actually there's a lot of useful information here. Can you take a photo of the base of your print, and, while you've got the camera, the top surface as well and post them up.
Couple of quick questions. Have you done an e-steps and/or flow calibration?
What filament are you using?
What infill and perimeters?
I've just performed a quick scan of this entire thread. It's interesting to see how it's progressed from one problem and solution to the next. Nowhere did I see the information that comes to mind with this latest description.
What print speed and temperature are you using? The description is consistent with slower speeds for earlier layers, then faster ones. In this type of printing, the heater block has to heat more filament per unit time than on the slower layers, often causing underextrusion failures.
The slicer will often have predetermined reduction of speed for the base (raft) and first x number of layers, then move on to one hundred percent for the speed. If the temperature is too low, perhaps borderline okay for the first layers, it's going to be too cold for later, higher layers.
Post your print speed and temp and we'll pick it apart.
Thanks guys! I took a picture before i left for work. But didn't realize how blurry it was until i tried to upload it. Now i realize i should have also attempted to export a profile from cura since between the mysteries of what was defined in the profile i downloaded from tenlog, and my own imperfectly recalled modifications i suppose ive made it much more difficult to troubleshoot the print.
I do recall that after spending the day printing a few dozen of these things
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:909901
and eliminating massive stringing just by upping retraction from 2.0mm to 5.0mm I also found the things printing fine and adhered fine (without a raft!) at 0.1 mm resolution even at 100 mm/s so I decided to try the octopus at that speed and same overall settings except with the addition of a raft for good measure, and yes i remember by default the raft was set at an independent lower speed setting, 60 mm/s.
Is there any use in having 150mm/s capable printers if everything just gets whacked off the bed at speeds only 2/3s that high?
right - absolutely NO brim on that octopus - It will weld all the links together.
And yes - rafts on a longish print will pretty much always weld themselves to the print.
Just plain avoid rafts.
and it is actually a bit of a sod to print.
The tiny little links between the sections are really narrow and lift fairly easily.
Like everything else, the sapphire laughed at such things and I knocked out a re-mix of it with the same legs but a spiders body :-)
Okay - so we need some print setings.
what is your extrusion ratio ?
speed of first layer
z axis offset
bed temp
print temp
print speed.
Retraction settings
And what is your objection to decent print glue ?
Great stuff.
Unless you have PEI or printbite (and often even then) a decent print glue that sticks when hot and releases when cold - is the answer to a lot of problems.
To be fair PEI also does that quite well.
Me I'd order a sheet of self adhesive PEI. It's about 0.2mm thick - get the cheap stuff, so has no effect on bedtemp and all calibrations can be dealt with simply by adding +0.2 to the z-axis offset.
It should be around $15 for your bed size.
The last sheet I bought was £7 and that was 250x250 and trimmed it to size.
So yours shouldn't be that much more
In the meantime try some PVA gluestick from a buckstore.
heat the bed to 60c.
And run the gluestick over it lightly - you don't need to press down.
do it a couple of times - leaving about 5 minutes between layers. It forms a thin plastic layer.
Pla love it.
I've never bothered trying to print on glass and none of my printers have use their original print surface.
'cos basically until manufacturers start using PEI - I'll keep sticking PEI on top of whatever crap the printer come with :-)
Thanks Aardvark,Quote:
Originally Posted by curious aardvark
For what it is worth, the Voxel would print for hours and the rafts came away easily every single time, even on large time consuming prints. I suspect the slicer did its' rafts quite differently.
I hope I can open my cura profile files when i get home from work and dump the contents here. I think given my schedule this weekend that might be the only way to be sure I am answering the questions correctly.
what is your extrusion ratio ? - no clue...probably never modified after downloading tenlog profile
speed of first layer - probably same as speed of the rest of the print. I remember finding an option to change the speed for the raft but not one to change the speed for particular layers of the print itself.
z axis offset - no clue...probably never modified after downloading tenlog profile
bed temp - I've been gradually increasing as build come loose and no build shows signs of warping or melting. I've been trying 68C lately. nothing higher yet.
print temp - 200C
print speed. - 100mm/s but I believe the raft was only 60mm/s - supposedly the printer can handle 150 mm/s
Retraction settings - until yesterday I had left it at 2mm retraction and 60 rate for everything but my prints were too stringy for my tastes. I printed 4 post retraction test prints and increased these until the strings no longer concerned me. finally setting was 5mm retraction at a rate of 65
I have nothing against gluestick but I got the impression here that if prints succeed due to use of a gluestick the operator is doing something wrong and the glue should not be necessary so I stopped using glue as I never needed it on the voxel and as I was worried it would mask deficiencies in my technique. my prints are failing even with the use of glue at this point however.
I would love to have a PEI sheet. I just wish I had bought one with the other new items. I'm sure my timing would be poor to add another $20 3d printer related purchase. too bad they don't appear to be sold at any brick and mortar.
100 millimeters per second is screaming fast, especially at 200 °C for the nozzle. At that temperature, 60 mm per second is pretty quick.
You have to keep your problems and symptoms distinct. Your prints are failing above the first few layers, which has nothing to do with the bed temperature. A bed temp of 60 °C is likely sufficient, anything higher is just throwing away electrons.
I think you should slow the print speed down a good bit and you'll get good results.
Long term I've always felt slow prints should be fine...if everything works. That said I am disappointed that the high 100 mm/s was way too fast. Would the vendor quoted 150mm/s ever be good for anything at all? Maybe the simpler the print the faster the speed or something? how does it work? I'd like to dial in the speed in the future without just guessing or always defaulting to slow.Quote:
Originally Posted by fred_dot_u
Yes, it will be useful, but troubleshoot first, then ramp up speed once everything is dialled in. There will also be some prints that just do not warrant that sort of speed. I've got machines that will hit 300mm/s without blinking, but there's still a whole bunch of situations where that is a bad idea, particularly with small, fiddly, prints.Quote:
Originally Posted by minneapolis-matt
I just printed the model. Printed it with a brim and had no issues removing it. Those smaller pieces are going to be a challenge to print without brims/rafts/etc. If the nozzle hits them on the way past it's pretty likely they'll pop off.Quote:
Originally Posted by minneapolis-matt
Got any photos of the underside of that raft and top surface of the print from a few posts back?
While we're troubleshooting, spend a few minutes printing this and see what your results are. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1622868
first I tried opening the profile as a text file and copying here. it looks incomplete though.
PK ! `3žëÎ Î tl-d3pro_tl-d3_pro[general]
version = 4
name = TL-D3 Pro
definition = fdmprinter
[metadata]
quality_type = draft
setting_version = 16
type = quality_changes
[values]
material_bed_temperature = 45
retraction_combing = all
PK ! ’“”»œ œ tl_dual_0_tl-d3_pro[general]
version = 4
name = TL-D3 Pro
definition = fdmprinter
[metadata]
quality_type = draft
setting_version = 16
intent_category = default
type = quality_changes
position = 0
[values]
material_print_temperature = 200
retract_at_layer_change = True
retraction_amount = 3
skin_overlap = 20.0
speed_travel = 60.0
support_angle = 70
support_infill_rate = 30
support_xy_distance = 0.2
support_z_distance = 0.15
PK ! ¤ ` ` tl_dual_1_tl-d3_pro[general]
version = 4
name = TL-D3 Pro
definition = fdmprinter
[metadata]
quality_type = draft
setting_version = 16
intent_category = default
type = quality_changes
position = 1
[values]
infill_sparse_density = 50
material_print_temperature = 200
material_standby_temperature = 190.0
retraction_speed = 60.0
speed_travel = 60.0
wall_thickness = 0.8
PK ! `3žëÎ Î tl-d3pro_tl-d3_proPK ! ’“”»œ œ þ tl_dual_0_tl-d3_proPK ! ¤ ` ` Ë tl_dual_1_tl-d3_proPK  \
this is all that was identifiable from the print attempt as far as photographable remains
"material_bed_temperature = 45" - Is that correct? I thought you were using 60ºC?
Thanks for the photos. Very useful. I've marked up a few things to look at that may give a hint as to what's the main problems might be.
First photo of the raft - seeing lots of missing lines and gaps. This suggests that you're only just lightly sitting on the bed. Go closer (at a guess about 0.05 - 0.1mm), until that first layer is "smooshing" down onto the bed.
In the second photo of the top of the print, you can see some edge lifting at least on the white parts. This is likely what the nozzle ran into and popped the print off the bed. This is because PLA needs to be cooled rapidly when doing shallow overhangs, or it tends to pull upwards into the corners. To resolve this slow the print down, and make sure the print cooling fan is running. Give the filament a chance to cool down.
perhaps my modifications are not being properly saved to the profile? I got the file dump by using Cura's export profile and opening with a text editor. I remember that the original Tenlog profile I downloaded and used as a template had a bed temperature of 45 degrees and I didn't like that so I directly edited that and a few other parameters, such as raft thickness before slicing, saving and printing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin_au
I wish I knew how to directly export the parameters used as a profile and share them in forums like these.
Thanks!Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin_au
I thought about running a print tonight but I think I need to ruminate about what you said and see if offline and during downtime at work (of which there is a lot on the weekend) I can somehow put together a good profile modification or at least a list of specific modifications to the existing profile and make sure the next attempt has much better odds of success.
I'd print this if I could spare the time not just for the print but to follow up on any adhesion issues but I almost forgot to plan for it. I'll try to squeeze it in tomorrow.Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin_au
Just use screen grabs. Much easier.Quote:
Originally Posted by minneapolis-matt
If you open up a generated gcode file in a text editor it may contain all the settings as well. I know PrusaSlicer does that. Can't remember whether Cura does.
against my better judgement last night I whittled away a few minutes of my 6 hours of work night sleep to fire up the slicer, find and install from marketplace the Z-offset plugin to cura and set offset for both extruders to the gcode equivalent of 0.1. The in-Cura description says that in cura a negative z-offset will increase adhesion and decrease space for initial layer even though my understanding is that a negative z-offset in gcode would actually increase the gap and decrease adhesion. I added a brim and didn't change the brim settings that cura offered and started the Fast edge over/under extrusion test with to copies in mirror mode so i could check both extruders.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1622868
I needed to get to bed after only getting 4 hours of sleep the night before so a few minutes later i checked one last time before going to bed and found that both of the extruder 1 prints had displaced very early in the print and failed and extruder 2 had completed without apparent issue. I think both extruders had the same slicer settings but E2 gets independently raised or lowered during levelling so there is room for difference between the two.
the real problem is two fold:
1) cura - it's just a nightmare to use.
2) profiles.
print profiles are generally not worth the bits-n-bytes they're composed of.
They are made by someone who is not using your printer, in your house, with the material you are using, in the climatic conditions you have.
And who's idea of a good print may vary widely from your own.
There is NO substitute for learning what your slicer does and how to set every damn setting yourself.
the slicer is the single most important component of the printer-filament-slicer trilogy.
You need to know what speed things are running at.
100mm/s for an i3 with linear rails - is medium speed. that's not the issue.
The speed of the first print layer, in comparison to the main print speed is VERY important.
It needs to be sloooww.
It's not unusual for half the total print time for a smallish print to be just the first layer.
Once that's down you can speed right up.
There are exceptions.
Flexible filament are super sticky so you can run the first layer at the same speed as all the other layers (which is generally 40mm/s max)
The most important layer of any print is the first one.
If it goes down tight and flat - then the rest of the print will usually follow without issue.
So you need to understand the slicer parameters that effect it and how to change them.
And if you need glue to get that first layer down - then you us eglue !
hell over the years I';ve used everything from blue painters tape, abs slurry to pva glue sticks to 3 different types of print glue.
On everything from bare metal to glass to printbite to pei.
I even bought some hairspray - and then gave up entirely on abs and never used it - it's still around somewhere.
Commercial printglues are brilliant.
They look expensive. But A small bottle with a sponge tip applicator can last for many years. One reason i like PEI is that the print glue's seem to just enhance it's natural properties.
It's good with out glue - it's damn near miraculous with the occasional layer of glue.
When i first started my flashforge creator came with a pre-applied sheet of kapton.
I never managed to get anythign to stick to it - ever.
I've got a 50mm roll of the bloody stugff that I;ve had for over 8 years.
I think it took me a couple weeks before I ever got decent print.
It did not help that there were no decent slicers around at the time that could handle x3g files.
Makerbot desktop is hands down the worst slicer ever.
So by comparison you have it easy :-)
A print surface that might work with the right settings and a selection of slicers rthat will all talk to your printer.
You just need to download a bunch of slicers and have a play with them all and then learn to use the one that makes most sense to you.