Help! noob in over his head with new ("used") Tenlog TL-D3-pro setup :-(

[minneapolis-matt]

Ok to get the ball rolling on new slicer starting parameters.

1. find and set Z offset to the slicers equivalent of Set position command: G92 Z0.1 - I think slicers usually handle this as some variation of z offset = -.01 this will squish the first layer somewhat for better adhesion
2. find where the slicer sets an initial speed and set it to 20 mm/s for 3 layers (60mm/s thereafter?)
3. find where the slicer controls bed temperature and raise it to 66C for PLA on a glass bed
4. find where the slicer controls initial fan speed and turn it off until layer 4, or speed is 0 until layer 3 or however slicer handles that
5. find where slicer controls fans general speed and make sure will be on at 100% at layer 4
6. find retraction and set to 5mm and speed to 65 (tested for PLA on my D3)
7. load .slt
8. slice and save
9. re-wash glass. dry glass. wipe with vinegar. allow to dry. begin preheat to 200 on each nozzle and 66 on bed. apply thin layer of glue
10. when pre-heated, transfer file and print.
11. watch printer beautifully lay down perfect foundation layer.
12. get coffee.
13. clean up PLA spaghetti mess and retrieve and photograph first layer debris from floor for post-mortem discussion.

This is just a skeleton. I know I need more and I really hope this leads to improvements I can use to to get past these issues and back to actually completing new prints. thanks guys!

[AutoWiz]

wipe the warm bed with the distilled white vinegar. Let the bed be warm first. Clean the cold bed. Warm and wipe when warm. The vinegar should evaporate from the plate as you wipe it leaving behind that film you need for adhesion.

[fred_dot_u]

2) typically faster than 20, perhaps 30-40 is a good start.
3) for PLA, you can get away with 40-60 °C easily. My Sigma has a glass bed that sits 3-4 mm above the heater pad (!) so my 70 °C setting results in 60 °C on the glass. I use glue stick. I recently learned of Elmer's PVA Glue Spray which goes on quite easily ( and bubbly ) but grips the part like it was all one piece! After a few prints, it releases more easily but those first few are knuckle-crackers.
4) I've been slicing with fan off for first layer, on for the rest. (PLA only, ABS is fan off all)

If you're getting a good base, the problem is either in the heater block getting too cold or the filament speed too high or the travel speed too high.
Have you checked the e-steps? Using a terminal program such as Pronterface, connect to the printer. Load filament and push a bit through to ensure that it's feeding well. Make a mark at the opening to the extruder or any convenient point, then make a mark at 100 mm from that point. When you command a 100 mm extrusion, the mark should move that precise amount.

[minneapolis-matt]

Have you checked the e-steps? Using a terminal program such as Pronterface, connect to the printer. Load filament and push a bit through to ensure that it's feeding well. Make a mark at the opening to the extruder or any convenient point, then make a mark at 100 mm from that point. When you command a 100 mm extrusion, the mark should move that precise amount.

Ok I have no clue about this. My printer came with a usb cable. The one time I plugged it in my printer was turned off, my pc was turned on and the printer turned itself on and the printer screen locked up on a screen of colorful static vertical lines and could not be switched off.Are USB cables primarily included with 3d printers for supporting the use of a terminal program? If I had such a terminal program installed and running on the connected PC, might the usb connection have not locked up the printer?I hope that's the correct interpretation if only so I can start poking around with gcodes when necessary and not have to suspect that the usb cable functionality of my printer is grossly glitched/broken.

[minneapolis-matt]

revised:

1. find and set Z offset to the slicers equivalent of Set position command: G92 Z0.1 - I think slicers usually handle this as some variation of z offset = -.01 this will squish the first layer somewhat for better adhesion
2. find where the slicer sets an initial speed and set it to 40 mm/s for 3 layers (60mm/s thereafter?)
3. find where the slicer controls bed temperature and raise it to 66C for PLA on a glass bed
4. find where the slicer controls initial fan speed and turn it off until layer 2, or speed is 0 until layer 2 or however slicer handles that
5. find where slicer controls fans general speed and make sure will be on at 100% at layer 2
6. find retraction and set to 5mm and speed to 65 (tested for PLA on my D3)
7. load .slt
8. slice and save
9. re-wash glass. dry glass. begin preheat to 200 on each nozzle and 66 on bed.
10. when pre-heated, wipe with vinegar. allow to dry.
11. apply thin layer of glue
12. transfer file and print.
13. watch printer beautifully lay down perfect foundation layer.
14. get coffee.
15. clean up PLA spaghetti mess and retrieve and photograph first layer debris from floor for post-mortem discussion.

please keep them coming...

[minneapolis-matt]

My 3d printing hobby may be over for a while.This morning I made a foolish attempt to print two copies of the small over/under extrusion test in mirror mode using the ideamaker slicer recommended in a review posted earlier in the thread.https://3dprintbeginner.com/tenlog-tl-d3-pro-review/ and https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1622868I selected that in part because it prints so fast and uses so little filament. ideamaker predicted 1.5m filament finished in 28 minutes.I came back 46 minutes later to the disaster pictured below. Note that the clips had even gotten displaced off of the glass and the glass was now askew on the print bed. too bad i immediately turned the printer off instead of simply hitting stop or you'd also see that the print progress bar indicated that 46 minutes had elapsed and the print was estimated as approximately 2% completed on the progress bar. my PLA prints tend to be odorless but this room smelled like a hot box of crayons. not good. I don't really know anything about clogs but I'd guess best case scenario I have some lengthy maintenance activities ahead of me to somehow declog these extruders. I also see no reason why this hardened backed up PLA might not have fouled and destroyed both extruders or at least hard to replace components of them.In the future *maybe* ill walk away from the start of a print again. But I'll be damned if I ever use a new slicer without staying in the room for at least one entire successful print start to finish. New slicers appear to be dangerous things even for short familiar prints.

[Martin_au]

Interesting error. That the bed moved suggests that the print stuck down well, and then the nozzle collided with the print. The build-up around the nozzle is not necessarily a huge problem, so long as the wires are all still intact. Just heat up the nozzle to 180 or so. Then the plastic will become plastic, and can be peeled off.

Personally, I'd stick with one slicer until you are happy and confident with the prints. Changing too many things at once makes it hard to learn the effect of each change, and swapping slicers is a lot of change.

[minneapolis-matt]

Both extruders required a lot of external scraping at near operating temp with the silicone covers out of the way to even begin to assess the damage. After that i attempted to unload both filaments and reload with cleaned up ends but the e2 gears won't move filament unassisted and with assistance they can only break the filament on unload. I did get the e1 to actually print again using a 230 temp no retraction short print a few times and it seems to have cleaned up pretty well. But on e2 im resorting to removing the nozzle from the extruder and dipping a little bit of gummed up pla at a time from deep inside when it is warmed using a 1.5mm wire grom underneath with the nozzle left off. It is a crazy slow seemingly endless chore. I am unsure if ill ever fix it. Maybe i need to order a nozzle kit instead. I think that includes the entire path downstream of the gears

[Martin_au]

The stuff in the nozzle shouldn't be a huge problem, assuming it all goes back together nicedly. Then, once it's back together you can heat it all up and just extrude the vestiges of whatever was in the nozzle. What's likely causing the jamming is solidified filament in the heatbreak. This is harder to deal with. There's two approaches I'm familiar with, both challenging.

First, you can remove the extruder fan and let the heat from the heatblock creep up into the heatbreak until the jam becomes loose. The trick is to stop it then resolidifying before you can push it through. I'd use a wire rather than filament to poke it through.

Second approach is to heat up a wire rod and slide it down into the heatbreak. Twist it around so the stuck filament can adhere to it and then extract.

If you're lucky your printer may have come with something like this - https://www.3dprima.com/accessories/...inters/a-22070
Very useful tool.

[minneapolis-matt]

Thank god this may be behind me soon.I had found nothing on clearing TL-D3 Pro clogs when searching directly but when I went to Tenlog parts supplier warm.fit to consider the purchase of a replacement extruder or nozzle kit I noticed they also had a bevy of Tenlog help videos, one of which was de-clogging TL-D3 Pros. Turns out I had done things somewhat backwards and possibly made things worse. They recommend using an included (and forgotten) 0.4mm wire for the nozzle in place heated to operating temperature and more most importantly recommended pushing a 1.5mm wire (also forgotten) down from above, using the assistance of a practically invisible cleverly concealed "button" at the top to spread the gears apart so the clog can be pushed out via its correct flowpath. Of course by this time I had been doing no such thing and had managed to gum things up with melted and cooled PLA throughout the heatbreak and above.I had to resort to almost totally dismantling the E2 extruder and blasting it with a hair dryer on high heat while pulling steadily on the exposed bit of PLA between the separated nozzle kit and the gear assembly before it finally softened enough to come out in one string and a chunk from that end and then to the same for the nozzle assembly to pull the other end from that end. Finally, I had to ry to put all back the way I found it, which frankly might have been impossible if not for the nozzle kit replacement videos on the warm.fit website.I wish I could say I'll never leave a print unattended again because clog clearing is a grueling slog fraught with uncertainty but realistically, there is no way I will get much millage out of a 3d printer if I have to baby sit every print. Instead maybe Ill just swear off unattended prints and prints of more than about 30 minutes until I figured out the slicer parameters more thoroughly and gotten more predictable results from both extruders. I suppose I'll also be sticking to cura for a while. At least it has a large user base to lean on for guidance.