Printer noob - Can't print consistently on FFCX

[lucidpsykosis]

I have multiple problems that I hope you guys can help with. I've had my FF Creator X for a week now, and have had mixed results. I'll start with the ABS. Before I printed a thing, I read through all of Geoff's posts (thank you Geoff!), hoping to minimize the wasted time of figuring it out myself (caution, noob here). So, with the printer comes two spools of white and blue ABS. I set the extruder to 230º, and 106º for the table. Cleaned it with alcohol, and leveled it. I set up my simple print with settings of: 15% infill, .2 resolution, 1 shell, and 50F/80T. I tried the white and the blue, both printed messy and lifted off the table. I changed the table temp down 5º, then another 5º...still kept lifting. I said screw it and loaded a white PLA spool to try. Those settings were: 190º/75º, 15% infill, .2 resolution, 1 shell, 50F/80T. Now we're talking! It stuck great to the table, but in various places it tore up or missed lines (see pic below). Then I tried blue PLA with the same settings...holy hell what happened!? It printed horrible, and lifted...what the french toast is going on?! I read one of Geoff's comments that color can affect temp so I raised and lowered it by 10º and got spotty change. I'm sure its something that I'm missing, since I'm a complete noob at all this, but I really want to get it right. If anyone has any suggestions, please drop a reply. Oh, I'm also still printing on the yellow tape...Friday I'm going down to get a sheet of 1/8" glass. So to summarize, 1) why is the ABS lifting and printing messy? 2) why is the blue PLA printing crappy vs. the white PLA? 3) how can I get smoother prints on the first layer? Oh, and is there a trick to printing off the SD card? I put .stl files on there, but it doesn't see them. The only thing on the menu is "exit menu". Thanks again for any help given.

2014-07-16 14.56.46.jpg

[Geoff]

I have multiple problems that I hope you guys can help with. I've had my FF Creator X for a week now, and have had mixed results. I'll start with the ABS. Before I printed a thing, I read through all of Geoff's posts (thank you Geoff!), hoping to minimize the wasted time of figuring it out myself (caution, noob here). So, with the printer comes two spools of white and blue ABS. I set the extruder to 230º, and 106º for the table. Cleaned it with alcohol, and leveled it. I set up my simple print with settings of: 15% infill, .2 resolution, 1 shell, and 50F/80T. I tried the white and the blue, both printed messy and lifted off the table. I changed the table temp down 5º, then another 5º...still kept lifting. I said screw it and loaded a white PLA spool to try. Those settings were: 190º/75º, 15% infill, .2 resolution, 1 shell, 50F/80T. Now we're talking! It stuck great to the table, but in various places it tore up or missed lines (see pic below). Then I tried blue PLA with the same settings...holy hell what happened!? It printed horrible, and lifted...what the french toast is going on?! I read one of Geoff's comments that color can affect temp so I raised and lowered it by 10º and got spotty change. I'm sure its something that I'm missing, since I'm a complete noob at all this, but I really want to get it right. If anyone has any suggestions, please drop a reply. Oh, I'm also still printing on the yellow tape...Friday I'm going down to get a sheet of 1/8" glass. So to summarize, 1) why is the ABS lifting and printing messy? 2) why is the blue PLA printing crappy vs. the white PLA? 3) how can I get smoother prints on the first layer? Oh, and is there a trick to printing off the SD card? I put .stl files on there, but it doesn't see them. The only thing on the menu is "exit menu". Thanks again for any help given.

2014-07-16 14.56.46.jpg

Hi!
Ok well, looking at your picture I can see one issue,your hot bed is not level. I can see good tight layering at the top, but your lines are further apart at the bottom, and the goopy hole in the bottom left would be because at that point, your extruder was too far from the surface and could not extrude onto the plate so the bottom left of your plate needs to come up a fraction. If it is an autolevelling system, I would try it again a few times- I calibrate my hotbed daily. , but it's a manual thumbscrew system

White PLA issue
1. Recalibrate hotbed - you are printing too close or too far away on some areas of the plate.
Your nozzle is hot, the bed is not - (I consider anything under 80c a cold or PLA hotplate) so the nozzle is too close to the already extruded PLA and is melting it.
I use a piece of A4 paper for calibrating, when I feel friction between the paper and the plate and nozzle, that's where I leave it.

PLA can print anywhere from 120c to 200c... if you are getting goopy prints at 190c, go down to 180 - still goopy? go to 170 and basically keep going until you are happy with the consitency. If it wont print and goes CLICK CLICK! you know you are too low.

Blue ABS issue

Your settings for ABS are ideal, but if you are not getting stick with ABS, it works the OPPOSITE to PLA. More heat, means more stick - raise the bed temperature to 110-112c

When you heat a bed with PLA too much, it lifts. When you DON'T heat a bed with ABS enough, it lifts.

BUT there is a limit. To hot and the ABS will curl during printing due to rising heat, so please follow the below steps and see if it helps.

Printing ABS
1. Set your preheat temperatures to 232c and 112c.
2. When you print, print at 230c and 110c. Why did we set preheat higher? because you lose heat when you start a job, all the home axes and movements lose time and heat, ignore the little screen. The thermistors are good but always lag behind the actual heat a little. That few degrees means life or death for a print. Starting the print when the plate is hotter than printing ensures a really good stick on the first layer and then as it cools a couple of degrees, does not affect the first few print layers, which are the most important.

[jfkansas]

There is no need to preheat the extruder, the extruder doesn't take much time at all to get up to temp. It is most important to get the build plate fully heated and then level it. The plastic platform sags to the front when it all gets heated up.

Under preheat settings on the front panel turn preheat platform to yes and extruder to no. Reason, I don't like leveling the plate with a piece of paper with the extruder at 450F. Also usually when the extruder is fully heated it will seep a little material and this interferes with setting the plate gap.

Order of operations to start a print goes like this. Start slicer on computer so it is running, sometimes this takes several minutes. Preheat build plate. When you start preheating you can back out of the menu and go to home axes, it will still preheat when you go to another menu. Home axes and start getting things set as good as you can using a post it note for setting the gap. It is right when you can slide the note under the extruder with a little resistance. Get all 3 thumb screws set as best you can, you can manually move the print head to the front right and left then back and forth a couple times. The right side affects the left side and vise versa so go back and forth a few times until both sides are good. Then set the back gap. Let the build plate get fully up to temp then check the front again, it probably dropped a little so reset the gap. After all that then get the file copied to the SD card and start printing.

This sounds like a lot to get a print started but it only takes a few minutes to do.

The most important thing not to do is level the build plate again cold and adjust the front, it will just go out of whack again when it heats up.

[Geoff]

There is no need to preheat the extruder, the extruder doesn't take much time at all to get up to temp. It is most important to get the build plate fully heated and then level it. The plastic platform sags to the front when it all gets heated up.

Under preheat settings on the front panel turn preheat platform to yes and extruder to no. Reason, I don't like leveling the plate with a piece of paper with the extruder at 450F. Also usually when the extruder is fully heated it will seep a little material and this interferes with setting the plate gap.

Order of operations to start a print goes like this. Start slicer on computer so it is running, sometimes this takes several minutes. Preheat build plate. When you start preheating you can back out of the menu and go to home axes, it will still preheat when you go to another menu. Home axes and start getting things set as good as you can using a post it note for setting the gap. It is right when you can slide the note under the extruder with a little resistance. Get all 3 thumb screws set as best you can, you can manually move the print head to the front right and left then back and forth a couple times. The right side affects the left side and vise versa so go back and forth a few times until both sides are good. Then set the back gap. Let the build plate get fully up to temp then check the front again, it probably dropped a little so reset the gap. After all that then get the file copied to the SD card and start printing.

This sounds like a lot to get a print started but it only takes a few minutes to do.

The most important thing not to do is level the build plate again cold and adjust the front, it will just go out of whack again when it heats up.

Hi, I'd appreciate it if you let him try before discrediting my suggestion.

I did not say he needs to preheat before leveling, it seems you didn't actually read what I posted. The preheat was before printing, and yes it does make a difference. We all know the heatbed heats up first, and then the extruder - it makes absolutely no difference in what order you preheat them, other than the heatbed taking considerably longer, but that is understandable given its transferring heat and not generating it like the nozzle element. The fact I was trying to point out to him was to preheat his bed slightly hotter than he intended to print, so the starting layers had more stick and the following layers printed at the set temp.

I think I sort of also mentioned he needs to level his bed, but I assumed he already had a grasp of how to do that since he head already successfully started printing.

People say "Dont use paper, use a business card!"

Well, that's great if you are printing chunky prints at 0.3mm or 0.4mm. I work in high tolerances of 0.1 to 0.2mm. I don't know if you have ever tried, but you would know that when you lower the resolution of your print (or raise it in this case) you also affect the Z starting position. If you are printing at 0.3mm the platform will start much lower than you would at 0.2mm, this makes a difference.

If you are printing raftless at 0.1mm, and you have levelled your bed using a business card, the card is too thick at over 120gsm, meaning your nozzle is too high off the platform to perform its initial layer at 0.1mm raftless.

There is alot more to the levelling than just getting it right and printing, it's not a one-in-all solution.

Printing thick and chunky? use a business card.

Printing nice, thin and smooth? use something that is between 60 and 80gsm. If your nozzle cannot go this close there is crap in it.

[jfkansas]

All preheating happens automatically before printing. It is just most important to preheat the bed, level, then print.

[lucidpsykosis]

Thank you so much for breaking it down. I was about to pull my hair out. Right off the bat, I can see my first mistake...I was using a business card to level the table; I'll work on getting it better leveled. In my opinion, having three points to level is harder than four. I say that because when I try to level the back of the bed, sometimes one extruder is looser and the other tighter. I guess I'll just keep trying till I get it right. Thank you again Geoff, as always you're a major help.

[lucidpsykosis]

Geoff, I also forgot to ask, how do I get my printer to see the files on the SD card? I use ReplicatorG, and selected to have the files written as a .s3g file, then copied to the SD card...but they don't show up when I choose "print from SD card"?

[jfkansas]

3 points for leveling is all that is needed for a solid surface, 1 to control front to back pitch and 2 for side to side tilt. 4 points on a soild surface and a couple of the points will always be fighting each other. Now 4 points is a more stable surfaces because of more support. But nothing really puts downward pressure on the table.

[lucidpsykosis]

This blows...I re-leveled the plate using a sheet of paper, only to tear the Kapton film when I started to print my next piece...FML. I'm thinking this printer idea was a bad one. I just wanted to make replacement / add on parts for my RC drones / cars, and anything else that seemed useful.

[jfkansas]

This blows...I re-leveled the plate using a sheet of paper, only to tear the Kapton film when I started to print my next piece...FML. I'm thinking this printer idea was a bad one. I just wanted to make replacement / add on parts for my RC drones / cars, and anything else that seemed useful.

Lol, wow, thats almost impossible to do unless you bump the build plate and it lowers a little when you are leveling it. This throws off the z height because you end up raising the plate up too high to level it. Ditch the Krapton all together anyway, glass is the way to go. Get 2-3 3/16" glass borosilicate from Mcmaster-Carr. Really 2 is enough.