Designs Not Printing Correctly

Im a noob to the 3d printing world but trying to learn, I did a little reading on the forum in the first couple pages I thought were relevant to my issue but couldn't find my answer. So here goes. Im making my models in sketch up exporting as 3d image (obj. file) and loading the into CURA to rotate them around and to get the g-code. Everything looks great in Cura and in sketch up, I get it into Repetier Host and the Preview looks good. Once it starts printing first there is a noticeable gap between lines Ive tried increasing the flow rate and slowing feed rate and it dose not help. My filament material settings and size are correct. I let it go ahead and print and that where things get interesting. Say I have a rectangle with a inner rectangle laying flat, it will print 2/3rd's of the rectangle on the first-third layer then on the 4th layer it trys to print the entire thing. I've tried designing the model differently and making sure everything is flattened on the plan so all is included in the first layer with no luck. The printer is a Prusa A600 (china printer). Any help or ideas is much appreciated and if Im leaving out some needed information to help diagnose let me know I will try to add them

The important thing but the hardest thing it to figure out where the error is coming from. You need to eliminate as many things as you can and zero in on the issue. If you will upload your model I'll make sure it is a good manifold, meaning, that it's watertight and has no errors. If the model is faulty then you might have your solution. If the model is fine, then you know to look elsewhere.

Im trying to figure out how to upload the model lol. Thats sad I know

Attachment 4315
Ok figured it out

Got it. Let me have a look.

Awesome, thank you for your help

The mesh has problems. That's not uncommon for SketchUp. It's notorious for "not playing well with others." Let me see if I can get it open and fix it.

Below is the report on the mesh from Rhino3D:

---------------------------------Begin Paste------------------------

This is a bad mesh.

Here is what is wrong with this mesh:
Mesh has 1 degenerate face.
Mesh has 175 non manifold edges.
Mesh has 3 duplicate faces.
Skipping face direction check because of positive non manifold edge count.

Important things to consider with this mesh:
Mesh has 6 naked edges. Although this does not necessarily mean that the mesh is bad,
naked edges can cause problems if the ultimate goal is STL output.
Mesh has 5 pairs of faces that intersect each other. Although this does not
necessarily mean that the mesh is bad, it can cause problems if you're doing mesh boolean operations with it.

General information about this mesh:
Mesh does not have any extremely short edges.
Mesh does not have any disjoint pieces.
Mesh does not have any unused vertices.

ID: 7913ece1-fcf2-46d1-a7c9-c62df5a9ee08 (4)
Layer name: Model
Render Material:
source = from layer
index = -1
Geometry:
Valid mesh.
Open double precision polygon mesh: 616 vertices, 423 polygons with normals
bounding box: (31.948,2.57144,0) to (86.7085,83.7525,13.5093)
Geometry UserData:
UserData ID: 3B7FB506-437C-431e-B1D7-93C4CBFF417F
Plug-in: Rhino
description: Gumball grip frame
saved in file: yes
copy count: 1
UserData ID: 31F55AA3-71FB-49f5-A975-757584D937FF
Plug-in: 17b3ecda-17ba-4e45-9e67-a2b8d9be520d
description: Mesh N-gon list
saved in file: yes
copy count: 1
UserData ID: 17F24E75-21BE-4a7b-9F3D-7F85225247E3
Plug-in: c8cda597-d957-4625-a4b3-a0b510fc30d4
description: ON_Mesh double precision vertices
saved in file: yes
copy count: 1

Wow yea that looks deff screwed up, I chose sketch up because it was google based and is fairly easy to use, Is there another free 3d modeling software you would recommend that I would be less likely to run into these problems, or is this something more along the lines of user error lol

Here you go. Try these. Let me know if they help. They are error free.

Attachment 4316
Attachment 4317

As for free software, Blender is probably the most powerful but has a steep learning curve. Still, it's really great. There is a CAD program called FreeCAD I think that will do solid modeling. Finally, try Meshmixer. It's a slicer too.

At least there are a lot of video tutorials for Blender. Both from them and on Youtube. I was able to pick and choose because I only cared about designing for my 3D Printer (obviously I don't need to be able to draw 3D animation! :p ). A number of the videos took me a few times watching to really get them, but all in all it wasn't that impossible. Also, google for a keyboard shortcut cheat sheet for it. Two different cheat sheets gets you everything you need (of course you still have to learn what the shortcuts all do!).

Its perfect! May I ask how you went about fixing it? Im curious that way I know next time

I rebuilt it in 3ds Max. You'd have modeled it the same way in Blender if you had used it. Both are surface or mesh modelers. Then I exported both an .stl and .obj version for you. This design might have just as easily been modeled in a CAD program like SolidWorks (insanely expensive) or IronCAD (expensive but reasonable). Both are expensive but there are some lower cost and at least one free open-source CAD program out there. They are parametric modelers and are called 'solid' modelers. It's sometimes easier to model non-organic objects in these CAD programs and because of the parametric nature of them, it's quite easy to modify dimensional requirements if those change.

I'd try FreeCAD (steep learning curve), Meshmixer (easy) and Blender (steepest learning curve but you get animation). These are all free.

If you are a student, the supercharged CAD programs are all really affordable. I'd love to get my hands on a student version of Solidworks. It's about $8500 for a commercial license and I think it's only a few hundred for the student version.

If you are going to really put your 3d printer to work, it's critical that you are able to do some good modeling. Otherwise you are at the mercy of Thingiverse, etc. There's a lot there but not everything. And besides, once you print your phone case or a few super hero characters downloaded from there, you need to move on...lol....well, unless you want the Itty Bitty double extruder by our user "clough42.' It's one of the best things on Thingiverse...(how's that for a plug clough42?)

They only thing that really has me confused with blender is the measurements, I dont see anywhere I can either enter/change/view measurements of the object. Ive read through almost all the user manual and cant find it lol. Its deff a learning curve from Sketch up.

I've only played with Blender a few times just so I know how it looks and so that I can talk about it without guessing. 3ds Max is my primary program and it's difficult to measure in it also. There is a helper tool called a "tape" that you can snap from vertex to vertex to measure. But is has no dimensioning tools like Sketchup and CAD programs. It's not a fault in the programs, I think that's just the nature of mesh modeling. It's not driven by dimensions and constraints (not parametric) so you learn workarounds to get things the right size.

FYI, it took me two years on 3ds Max every day to feel like I could really model what I needed to. It's very powerful and very difficult to master. If you stick with Blender, it will get easier each time you touch it. In no time you'll have it down. It doesn't get any easier than Sketchup. But that's part of it's downside I think. To make it that easy, you have to give up a few things.

Let us know if you have any more problems.

Is there something I can use to repair the issues with the model coming from sketch up? Prob not lol. Ive just been trying a couple diff ones, meshmixer seems really limited on standard shapes and designs and more towards free hand drawing, Freecad is also a big learning curve trying to find all the normal buttons and actions Im used to using in sketch up. Im pretty sure Im going to have to figure out one of these because I imagine sketch up is a no go for a solid image to be able to print from it

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Ex...ol/Measurement

Are you a student by chance? I think there is an educational license for Autodesk's Fusion360 which is a cool parametric modeler. As for fixing bad meshes, I don't know how you can do that without a solid program. It sort of takes some power to find the flaws and then allow you to fix them. Most free and simple programs don't have that advanced functionality.

So, give your brain some exercise and jump in and ride that learning curve. You can do it.... It will change your 3d life...

Note about Freecad. I tried it for a few weeks and I have to say it's one of the most confusing and frustrating of the CAD programs I did demos of, but it's free and if you have the patience, it looks powerful. I recently did demos of: SolidWorks, IronCAD, Fusion360, OpenSCAD (want to fry your brain try this one), SolidEdge, TurboCAD and a couple of others in search for the perfect sub $1000 CAD program. I could not find one that suited me and wasn't just insanely difficult to figure out. IronCAD was the best from my standpoint but it's not cheap, cheaper than a lot of them but still over my $1000 limit.

You can rent Fusion360 by the month. I hate this monthly rental scheme that Autocad and Adobe have now. Bending over that barrel is hurting my ribs but that's a soapbox for a later time. If you aren't a student though, you can rent Fusion360 pretty cheaply for month-to-month, do a lot of work and then not use it until the next time. That might be an option if they let you stop and go, but, they probably prohibit that as it makes the barrel softer.

'ssayer' supplied the measureing tips for Blender. So, for now I hope you have some options.

This might help: Comparison_of_computer-aided_design_editors

Awesome, got the add on, I guess Im going to play with this thing for the day. No Im not a student, I build personal vaporizers (box mods). Im using the 3d printer to print battery holders (sleds) for the inside of my boxes to hold several diff batteries and several sizes. Its a lot for just one component of the box but I would rather print my own and have the freedom to make changes to it without spending 12 bucks a sled, (I go through about 200-300 boxes a month). Im also going to be printing the entire box also once I get everything down. But just to clarify, using blender Im am most likely not going to have any mesh issues or am I still going to have to repair it?

Honestly, I run everything through Netfabb just as a matter of course...

Need to investigate Netfabb. Don't know if it. I guess it's a mesh checker.

If you learn to model cleanly, you won't have to repair anything you build in Blender. You can just export your .stl or .obj files. Like anything, if you model sloppy, well, then you'll have errors. I'd bet that you could have gotten a clean model in Sketchup. Your part was not that complex. You had some back surfaces that were coincident with the bottoms of your curved battery slots, meaning, that they occupied the exact same place in space. That confuses a model that's supposed to be hollow and have an inside. You might want to try again in Sketchup and be very careful that your back surface doesn't intersect or lie exactly on the back or your curved battery slots.

So Im just taking stab, a cleaner build would be more drawing and less push/pull so nothing is overlapping (taking up the same space)

Ok, so Netfabb is pretty handy. Thanks 'ssayer.'

Chris, I ran your original model through it and Netfabb did fix it but it dropped out those coincident planes I was talking about. That's why it wouldn't print well from the original model. There was technically "zero" thickness on the back because the bottom of the curved grooves were right on top of it.

Here's a shot of the Netfabb fixed mesh. See how it dropped out that area so that it could fix it?

http://3dprintboard.com/attachment.p...tid=4325&stc=1

Yea I see that, I found one by Microsoft thats working pretty well to repair, some things are a little skewed, but I think I get the idea now of "clean building"

Modeling isn't brain surgery. But, if you haven't done it then it's confusing. Once you get in there and figure out how it works, you'll go, "oh, I see" and you'll never look back. For clean modeling you can't have any holes or vertices that are not attached to anything. If two verts are on top of each other, they need to be welded into one vertex. If you have a hole, you need to fill it in with a plane. I think you have it now.

Yep lol, Im building it in sketch up, running it threw net fab, then loading it in repetier host and previewing by layer to make sure there are any holes or gaps, 4 models down one to go coming out great. Thanks for all the help everyone!

Great. That's what we are here for....

Got a copy of 3dsmax education I can't even figure out how to select an object. Lol.

I can help you out a lot later. Watching the Ravens beat New England for a few hours. I'll get you rolling. We should talk on the phone.

Yea I'm at the bar. We can talk tmr

10-4..tomorrow works.