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

[fred_dot_u]

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.

[minneapolis-matt]

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.

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.

[minneapolis-matt]

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.

[Martin_au]

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?

[minneapolis-matt]

I have done nothing with z hop at all. Should i generally set it to something? What are the trade offs if any?

[minneapolis-matt]

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.

[fred_dot_u]

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.

[minneapolis-matt]

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!

It seems like a good idea for a noob to try a couple of free slicers.

[curious aardvark]

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.

[curious aardvark]

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 :-)