Beginner questions

[hamster]

Hi everyone,

I'm a new owner of FF Creator Pro. Been experimenting with it for several days now, with mixed degrees of success (made a pretty cool looking owl, a skull and several unrecognizable blobs of plastic), and I have a few random questions.

* What's up with print corners curling up, especially for the first 5-10 mm above the platform? It's very pronounced with the "20 mm calibration box" model that came with the printer (I have not been able to get a perfectly square print yet, after several tries at different temperatures.) Bigger shapes come up more or less OK, but small pieces have it hard. It almost feels like the extruder feeds the material a bit too fast for its z-speed (each time it gets to each corner, it has to push the material under it down & out, which then partially rebounds but ultimately cools in a warped shape.) The platform is properly levelled (as well as I could level it), lowermost layers adhere to the platform, at least at first. With bigger pieces, sometimes the print starts fine, but, by the time we're 10 mm off the platform, curling in the upper layers pulls one or more corners of the support off the platform. I'm printing with ABS. I run the platform at 110-115 and the extruders at 220-230, with original kapton tape, with or without hairspray (can't tell yet if hairspray makes any difference.) The printer is fully enclosed and it's normal room temperature in the room.

* I have a 3 foot long thin gray wire (not USB, some sort of flat black plug) left over from the assembly. It's not mentioned in the start up guide and there are no apparent places where it might go. (To be exact, it says that there's a "sensor line" in the package, but it does not say what to do with it.) Is it just an extra piece or did I miss something? I also have a ton of extra screws and nuts - is that also normal?

* ReplicatorG software that came with the printer has filament thickness set to 1.82 mm by default. Is there a deep reason for that, should I change it to 1.75, or it does not matter?

* 0.1 mm layer thickness seems to present particular difficulties to the machine, I don't think I got even a single print right at 0.1. 0.2's come out OK as long as they don't tear off the platform, but 0.1's are mostly just unrecognizable. Is that to be expected?

* And finally, what do most people use for slicing? ReplicatorG defaults to Skeinforge, which seems to be doing a decent job but its performance is just murderous - I guess it should be expected from single-thread Python (1.5 hours to slice a moderate sized print, with a possibility of hanging up at the end, seriously?) KISSlicer seems to get good reviews, but it only does one extruder in the free version. I'm going to give Slic3r a spin.

[hamster]

Just had another failure.

ABS, 115 C platform, 230 C extruders, kapton+hairspray, relatively large part (~5 cm across at the base.) Part started out perfectly fine. By 10 mm, the piece was visibly warped and one edge was off the platform. By 14 mm, the piece was completely pulled off the platform and was riding back and forth, pushed by extruders. I had to cancel. Redoing it one more time now, but I see no reason why it should turn out better. Any suggestions?

[ssayer]

Best suggestion I can give you... if you need the strength or you need weather endurance so that PLA won't do it for you, try PETG. I've got 3 or 4 rolls of ABS here that I may or may not ever use now.

[stevendm]

Hamster.

I am also new to FlashForge Creator Pro but I have about 2 months experience with a XYZPrinting Da Vinci 1.0. I had the same problem as you with my initial prints not sticking. Calibrate your printbed using a single sheet of copy paper. That fixed it for me.

[soofle616]

ABS needs to be kept warm to hot during printing to prevent curling. A couple things you can try that MIGHT help are letting the machine sit for a few minutes after the bed is fully warmed up before starting the print. This will help boost the temp in the enclosure. Similarly you can try upping the ambient temp in the room. I'm assuming you have the acrylic pieces over the top of the printer in place yes? If not, heat will escape up and out and that could be part of your problem.

As for bed levelling, you should be able to get a single piece of standard printer paper under the nozzle with a bit of drag. If there's too much, or not enough drag that could cause issues though if the first layer is printing fine and sticking that's most likely not your issue. Your temps seem fine but you didn't mention what your speeds are. 60-70/80-100 seem to work best for me. Faster or slower than that tends to result in ugly prints.

The filament diameter setting should be set to the ACTUAL diameter of your filament. This will vary from roll to roll even from the same manufacturer sometimes. If that is off it can cause all sorts of issues in your prints.

I've only managed maybe 1 print at .1mm that didn't look awful. It doesn't seem to like .3mm either. .15 is ok but .2 is definitely where things seem to work the best.

The extra gray wire is for the x axis stepper (i think it's x, might be y, whichever stepper moves with the carriage). Because that wire is constantly in motion it can break internally over time so they give you a spare. The screws are also spares so not something you need to worry about.

[Bobbler]

Heated bed + Buildtak - no more warps at all. Not had a single ABS issue since I switched to Buildtak, it just holds on to the bed like nothing else.
Also if you are not using them, a raft is very forgiving and helps give more of a surface area contact with the bed.
60mm/s print speed and decent ABS.

[hamster]

ABS needs to be kept warm to hot during printing to prevent curling. A couple things you can try that MIGHT help are letting the machine sit for a few minutes after the bed is fully warmed up before starting the print. This will help boost the temp in the enclosure. Similarly you can try upping the ambient temp in the room. I'm assuming you have the acrylic pieces over the top of the printer in place yes? If not, heat will escape up and out and that could be part of your problem.

As for bed levelling, you should be able to get a single piece of standard printer paper under the nozzle with a bit of drag. If there's too much, or not enough drag that could cause issues though if the first layer is printing fine and sticking that's most likely not your issue. Your temps seem fine but you didn't mention what your speeds are. 60-70/80-100 seem to work best for me. Faster or slower than that tends to result in ugly prints.

The filament diameter setting should be set to the ACTUAL diameter of your filament. This will vary from roll to roll even from the same manufacturer sometimes. If that is off it can cause all sorts of issues in your prints.

Yes, I have the acrylic pieces over the top. But, of course, there's a big hole where the wires go in, and slits in both side walls of the enclosure. I did a bit of poking around with an IR thermometer. With the platform set to 115, sides of the piece being printed are somewhere around 80-85, the extruder seat (black plastic piece) measures at 60. I'll try to block the slits in side walls and see what happens.

I've been printing at default speeds (40/55).

Are you suggesting that I should get a micrometer and measure the actual diameter of every roll?

[jfkansas]

Yes, you should use calipers to measure the filament in several places over 4-5 feet then average the amount. Be sure to get calipers accurate to .01mm otherwise all your filament will read 1.7mm.

I run all my ABS at 90 bed temp on glass, no kapton, with glue stick on small parts and ABS melted (thin slurry) in acetone on bigger parts.

Speed is always set to about 80mm/s extruding and 100 travel. 235 extruder temp.

Don't worry about the hood cut out in the back, you need a little ventilation. Yes, cover up the handles with some tape at least and you can print some handle covers eventually.

[hamster]

Yes, you should use calipers to measure the filament in several places over 4-5 feet then average the amount. Be sure to get calipers accurate to .01mm otherwise all your filament will read 1.7mm.

I run all my ABS at 90 bed temp on glass, no kapton, with glue stick on small parts and ABS melted (thin slurry) in acetone on bigger parts.

Speed is always set to about 80mm/s extruding and 100 travel. 235 extruder temp.

Don't worry about the hood cut out in the back, you need a little ventilation. Yes, cover up the handles with some tape at least and you can print some handle covers eventually.

This actually gave me an idea. I tried covering the handles, that didn't help, I tried to up the platform temperature to 120, that seemed to make it even worse. So I went the other way. Put more hairspray on the platform and dropped temperature to 100. Looks like it goes a long way towards eliminating corner lifting. I suspect that the problem is not that ABS was too cold, but just the opposite: with the platform at 115+ and full enclosure, the print remains too warm and too flexy.

[propwash]

Im new also ive ran into the same issues, !st i dumped rep g 2 days into printing i went with simply3d ,, what a difference. curls are few and in between. try rpinting with rep g and over hang .. didint work at all for me.