Sore fingers, amazement, frustrations and hair spray: First days with my Creator Pro

[Serena]

Hey everyone- Got my Creator Pro and I'm obsessed. And confused. I am so
glad I found this forum. It has helped me so much all ready in working
thru some things. Overall I am so so impressed with the print quality on
this thing. It has literally blown my mind. Every time I successfully
print something I am filled with a God-like "I made this!" joy. But then
I tear my kapton tape, or burn my fingers, or get ABS stuck in my hair
and it brings me down to earth pretty quick.


I wanted to share a few pics hoping some of you may offer insight into
what I need to tweak to improve my results. First off- the LEVELING. The
struggle is so real. I have spent so much time on it that the platform
cooled off and I had to go thru the preheating and leveling process
again. Ugh. When I first got my printer I went thru my bed leveling
process and according to what I've read here I preheated the bed
beforehand. Used the paper technique and felt it worked great. The few
three or four prints I made were PERFECT. I was in awe of the exactness
of the printing. I had prepared myself for them to be bad, so I was
thrilled. Here's the first non-test print I made, an Olaf cookie cutter:

Photo Sep 24, 11 30 03 PM (1).jpg


Then several prints later I think I must have leveled incorrectly, (or
maybe forgot to preheat it?) because it was too close and I dragged the
extruder thru the ABS and tore the kapton tape. (Which also resulted in
getting a bit of tape jammed in the extruder and then a clicking sound, etc but
I fixed it using Geoff's instructions which worked perfectly thank you!)
I removed the tape and used the blue tape they sent. From that point on
it went downhill and I haven't gotten a great print since. The blue tape
was awful and nothing stuck to it. The abs just dragged around behind
the extruder. What a mess. Tried making acetone slurry, glue stick,
clear glue, and hairspray. Nothing really worked very well. Finally got
my order of kapton tape from amazon and applied that to the platform
hoping that everything would be fixed and I'd be back in business like
it was at first. While the sticking is better, it's still not good. It's
extruding thin and stringy and the first layer doesn't stick completely. I
tried doing a simple triangle print that worked great the first day so I
knew the STL file wasn't the issue. Here's what my base layer looks like
(it's on blue tape with glue base in this picture but it's doing the exact same
thing on the plain kapton:
Photo Sep 26, 9 31 17 AM.jpg



Throughout all this I've kept everything the same as the first day when
I printed successfully- same abs roll, same temps and using the same few
STL files so I would know the issue isn't with any of that. While
waiting for amazon to ship my kapton tape I got antsy so I tried a test
file that came on the SD card and it printed great which blew my mind!
then I saw it had rafts. The rafts had no trouble sticking and the abs
didn't lay down stringy on them. (I still dont understand why?) I then tried
printed a little owl figure, adding rafts to the print. It printed perfect-
it's like the rafts were able to stick so it could then print fine once it had a solid
base to work on. Here's the owl after rafts and supports were removed (sorry
not sure why it's sideways)

Photo Sep 26, 3 51 26 PM.jpg


At this point I wondered if the problem really is the stickiness of the
platform, or maybe it's a leveling issue since it worked great with
plain kapton at first. I tried leveling again (sore fingers!) and
tweaking temperatures, preheating the bed a little higher than my print
temp (112) and got same stringy, not really sticking, results. Then I
tried hairspray on the kapton which worked and made it stick for the
first print (yay!) and got a somewhat good print of that triangle piece
(Legend of Zelda sign in case you wondered) all though still not as good
as my earlier one.


With the kapton and hairspray I'm getting the first layer to stick
better but now it's curling. Here's a pic of the Batman Batarang I printed
and a close up of the curling on the ears:

Photo Sep 27, 8 33 23 PM.jpg

Photo Sep 27, 8 40 07 PM.jpg


So my (primary) questions are why the curling? Is it a platform stick
issue or a leveling issue or something else? Why can't I get a good
first print on plain kapton when I could at first? I need a long term
solution other than the hairspray because I can't be spraying it into my
machine. Either I need to find something else, or get the glass bed and
clips so I can spray it before I clip it on. And any other insight you
can can offer. If you have read this whole lengthy mess to this point
than I thank you now, because you are a better person than most.

[Teledog]

Have an FFCx here, my configs anyway - "I";
-always preheat the bed prior to leveling it (via the front panel) to 110C for ~5 minutes or so, then do the bed leveling with a sheet of paper. (I only level it ~ every 2 weeks now, the more you use it, the less tweaking it seems to need)
-sometimes, but rarely - tweak the bed (move leveling knobs ever so slightly) on the first layer as the print is running/on the fly , if it clicks a bit - lower it, if not sticking- raise it a bit
-use kapton on the bed (never had good results with blue tape with ABS).
-preheat the bed prior to running any prints
-print ABS 95% of the time @ 222C to 224C
-have the bed at 102C for all ABS (edit /save Gcode for each file in RepG)
-use ABS slurry made with MEK {Methyl Ethyl Ketone- hardware or plastics store} to make stuff stick (MEK is horrible smelling stuff, a glue sniffers delight! Use lots of ventilation!!)
-also clean the bed with MEK
-use IPA {90%+ isopropyl alcohol} to break the bond of large raft-less objects ,.. drizzle it around, then wait 30 seconds - then tap object off with a maple stick & rubber hammer (at the base)
the IPA doesn't dissolve anything, it merely helps break the molecular bond -{ try it for removing old hot glue!} -use the MEK for cleaning the bed after, as some IPA has oils in it.

The first layer is often lousy, ..unless it's REALLY bad, I just let it run,- it often tends to clean itself up after a few layers. (I run ~0.22-0.27)
The curling might be from too high a bed temp - could be wrong.
Also, larger objects often tend to warp a bit - haven't figured that one out completely - sometimes running multiple copies of the object seems to help, as the plastic cools a bit between layers.

Again, those are my settings (with much assistance from Geoff!!!)
I'm sure everyone's settings/results vary (document everything!)

G'Luck
TD

[Geoff]

Have an FFCx here, my configs anyway - "I";
-always preheat the bed prior to leveling it (via the front panel) to 110C for ~5 minutes or so, then do the bed leveling with a sheet of paper. (I only level it ~ every 2 weeks now, the more you use it, the less tweaking it seems to need)

TD

Any idea why you would do that? sorry have never heard of that one, nor have I ever heated my bed before levelling in over 2500 hours of printing, and I level my bed before each print so....

[curious aardvark]

I started not heating before bed levelling and didn't get great results.

You heat the bed to the printing temp before levelling because the metal expands and the calibration of a cool bed is different to the calibration of the same bed at a higher temp.

I pretty much only calibrate after changing filiment or changing bed temp (for nylon or pla) But because miniscule differences in printhead to bed distance can make a lot of difference to how things print - I would say you should always calibrate the bed at the temp you intend to print at.

It's definitely made a lot of difference to my prints.

As for levelling - print a set of these knobs and you won't burn your fingers any more :-)
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:243998
Use some of the spare nuts that came in your little bag of bits.

The other obvious thing is that your print bed isn't perfectly level. Mine wasn't.
I now use a 3mm aluminium sheet on top of the original bed and it's perfectly level. I can calibrate the edges and the centre is spot on. With the original bed I calibrated the edges and the centre was always much higher. ie: it bowed up in the middle.
So it was impossible to calbrate more than the centre of the print bed.

Hence I could print in the centre but anything of any size never stuck properly.

Things are much better now.

Change filament and use the other nozzle.
Looks like you might have some blockage.

I got two rolls of abs from flashforge. A white roll that was amazing stuff and a blue roll that blocked my printhead after a couple of prints.
I haven't touched the blue since and have had no more blockages.

I've bought a bunch of cheap filament off ebay and so far - it's all been good.
The 'silver' was a dull grey, but that's my only issue with the cheap stuff.

But yeah that triangle definitely looks like a partially clogged nozzle to me.

The owl doesn't need supports.

Printing with raft really works well. Okay you don't get a great finish on the bottom - but it's pretty much bombproof.
For larger prints you still need a perfectly level bed though.

This whole diy 3d printing arena is still very much more of an art than a science.
What works for me - won't necessarily work for you - and vice versa. There are so many factors to take into account.

But the basics should stand most people in good stead.
The most important thing is a perfectly level bed that's calibrated correctly.

Second is finding something your prints stick to - I currently use blue tape. But given dargonfly's experience am seriously considering the build tak stuff.

Third is getting temps both of the bed and printhead to match with the filament.
I've found that nylon 618 will stick really well at 30c but not at 20 or 40. Likewise different rolls of abs print better at different temperatures.

Fourth is getting to grips with the software. Print speeds, don't seem to make much difference to me - but they might to you.

I don't do much printing without rafts as it just takes a tiny bit of rouge filament to screw the whole thing up. But hopefully I will when I've sat down and really worked my way through proftweak and got some kind of control over my first layer speed and extrusion.

The thing that's made the biggest difference in the quality of my prints (not my ability to print, but how well they turn out) is adding a ducted fan to blow on the area being printed.
that's thoroughly recommended.

I bought a 24volt fan and hooked it up to the 24volt stepper motor cooling fan connector on the motherboard. Works great.
Use these for the duct setup.

It's these two:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:295317
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:350649
Combined together, both printed in ABS. As you can see in the first link it has ducts that redirect the air to where the extruder is placing the material, thus cooling the extruded material that much faster! Because you want the material to cool from +-230 degrees to 30 degrees as fast as possible so that it retains its shape and doesn't warp.

So there are a bunch of things that all go together to make a succesful print.
Try all of the above and if none of that works - I'm sure we can think of other stuff for you to try :-)

[Dargonfly]

Well, looks like you already got a lot of suggestions for the curling edges. I'll sum up what I've done with my Flashforge to get rid of curling edges:
- Level the build plate 1~2 layers of paper between the nozzle at all points (my plate is pretty bend, so at some points it's way more.. but it still works.)
- As mentioned, when using a heated build plate (for ABS), do the leveling while heated to prevent any extra expansion tolerances when starting your print.
- Use kapton tape or painters tape or BuildTak or glue stick or hairspray or basically whatever works to get it to stick.

At this point your material SHOULD stick for the first few layers if it immediately starts curling; check the above steps.

If your print starts curling beyond this point (in the 'air' or in pointy areas) then it's most likely that you are adding too much heat in your workpiece:
- Lower extruder temperature if possible
- Add more cooling to your workpiece (look at the air duct that Curious Aardvark linked, it works beautifully!)

That should get everything working without curling. Worst case scenario if the model just has some really tricky pointy parts (which means; relatively high temps in a small pointy area allowing it to curl anyway...) then you could always adjust the model a bit or add rafts / supports. But that will of course increase the material cost and decrease the exterior quality of the print due to break-off parts.

Keep trying and keep us posted. I too got a lot of useful and good responses when I joined this board and I will do my best to return the favor.

[Serena]

-print ABS 95% of the time @ 222C to 224C
-have the bed at 102C for all ABS (edit /save Gcode for each file in RepG)
-use ABS slurry made with MEK {Methyl Ethyl Ketone- hardware or plastics store} to make stuff stick (MEK is horrible smelling stuff, a glue sniffers delight! Use lots of ventilation!!)
-also clean the bed with MEK
The curling might be from too high a bed temp - could be wrong.

Thanks for the specs- I do think i will try lowering temps and see if that helps. That slurry sounds interesting too. May give that a go. More fumes? Nah-between the acetone, the plastics, and the hairspray I may not even notice.

Any idea why you would do that? sorry have never heard of that one, nor have I ever heated my bed before levelling in over 2500 hours of printing, and I level my bed before each print so....

I've read in many places to level after heating- I haven't tried it any other way so I don't know if it matters or not. Seems to me if you have a good tight platform and its really flat that it wouldn't matter. BTW- I printed the most amazing Groot head and was just looking at the model in Thingiverse- think maybe it's your upload? If so it's brilliant! Turned out great.

As for levelling - print a set of these knobs and you won't burn your fingers any more :-)
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:243998
Use some of the spare nuts that came in your little bag of bits.

Thank you! I remembered reading about those somewhere- you saved me from looking it up. At this point I've read so much its all starting to blend together.

The other obvious thing is that your print bed isn't perfectly level. Mine wasn't.
I now use a 3mm aluminium sheet on top of the original bed and it's perfectly level. I can calibrate the edges and the centre is spot on. With the original bed I calibrated the edges and the centre was always much higher. ie: it bowed up in the middle.
So it was impossible to calbrate more than the centre of the print bed.

Yes! I have read the thread about your alu bed. Sounds interesting. At this point when I level with paper I can't seem to get it the same on all points. i don't know if its me or the platform. I tend to think if it is warped it's not by much and it's just me not knowing what the heck I'm doing. All these little minute adjustments can drive you crazy after a while. But the fact that some of my prints have turned out good tells me it's me and I'm just getting lucky sometimes.

Change filament and use the other nozzle.
Looks like you might have some blockage.
But yeah that triangle definitely looks like a partially clogged nozzle to me.
Printing with raft really works well. Okay you don't get a great finish on the bottom - but it's pretty much bombproof.
For larger prints you still need a perfectly level bed though.
This whole diy 3d printing arena is still very much more of an art than a science.
What works for me - won't necessarily work for you - and vice versa. There are so many factors to take into account.
But the basics should stand most people in good stead.
The most important thing is a perfectly level bed that's calibrated correctly.

Rafts definitely help. I don't mind using them at this point- I'm hoping it's something I will need to do less often as I get a feel for this. It is an art- that's part of what I find so fascinating about it! I didn't consider it might be partially clogged. I will try using the other extruder and see if it changes anything.
Now, when you (and others) say make sure the bed is "calibrated"- does that mean leveling? Or something else?

If your print starts curling beyond this point (in the 'air' or in pointy areas) then it's most likely that you are adding too much heat in your workpiece:
- Lower extruder temperature if possible
- Add more cooling to your workpiece (look at the air duct that Curious Aardvark linked, it works beautifully!)
Keep trying and keep us posted. I too got a lot of useful and good responses when I joined this board and I will do my best to return the favor.

Yeah it does seem it's too hot- especially since there is a little burning on the edges. At this point I'm using everything at just about default settings so I will start tweaking some of the temps and see if it helps anything. Yes I loved your "Marvin" thread- very helpful to see what other people try and how it turns out for them! I haven't even tried PLA yet. It looks more translucent in pictures which I think looks great on certain items. Does it look like that IRL? I thought my printer may come with a roll of each but both are ABS.

Thanks so much to all of you for helping with this! Just knowing there are real live people to ask for help has made trying to learn this new toy much less intimidating!

[Dargonfly]

Yeah it does seem it's too hot- especially since there is a little burning on the edges. At this point I'm using everything at just about default settings so I will start tweaking some of the temps and see if it helps anything. Yes I loved your "Marvin" thread- very helpful to see what other people try and how it turns out for them! I haven't even tried PLA yet. It looks more translucent in pictures which I think looks great on certain items. Does it look like that IRL? I thought my printer may come with a roll of each but both are ABS.

Thanks so much to all of you for helping with this! Just knowing there are real live people to ask for help has made trying to learn this new toy much less intimidating!

To set up the right temperature, you should extrude a bit of your material before printing products. Because this supposedly differs for every material you buy, meaning ABS from manufacturer A doesn't equal ABS from manufacturer B.

A good way would be to connect via USB and simply heat up the extruder and extrude a bit of material. If it works good (without clicking or anything), then lower temperature by 5 degrees and try again.
Once it start clicking or not extruding well (MIN TEMP) just increase that temp by 5~10 degrees and you should be all set.

I recently lowered my temp by a lot resulting in much better accuracy of my prints, will post a showcase topic about it later today.

Regarding PLA: if the walls are thin enough it will allow light to pass through easily giving it a milky-translucent appearance. Though any walls larger than 1[mm] will nullify this effect almost completely.

[Serena]

Ok quick update- yesterday morning i spent a very long time on leveling my platform. I felt like it had gotten way off and I just wasn't getting it right. What confused me most is that when i forst got it I was able to print clean on just the kapton tape with nothing else. But since then I had tried everything from blue tape, ABS slurry, glue stick, clear school glue, hairspray and all combinations thereof. So I got out an actual level and tested the table it was sitting on first, then the bed itself and leveled just the bed in every way I could until I was convinced it was level from that standpoint. Then I wen into the actual leveling process with the paper and the extruder. By the way- I still feel like it should have four adjustment points. Maybe it doesn't make any real difference, but in my brain I want four corners to move. Anyway, after much tweaking, several failed test prints, a leveling tester I downloaded from thinkiverse and 3 hours of time I got a good stick on my first layer. Yay! From that point on it was smooth sailing. You read how important leveling is, but I guess it can't be over emphasized. I went from nothing sticking to clean prints everytime on plain kapton tape. No glues, etc needed. Now, this could, of course, change at any minute, but I feel like I have made some learning progress. Here's a Tardis print a did yesterday:

Photo Sep 29, 4 36 00 PM.jpg

Today when I get home I plan on doing that temperature testing that you mentioned Dargonfly. I think that will help a lot. I am most excited about trying my own designs but I want to get better with the process first. Also, there are some jacked up files on Thingiverse! Definitely learning to only use the ones that have printed successfully and check them with meshmixer or Netfabb.

Will keep you guys updated.

[Dargonfly]

Ok quick update- ...

Good to hear you are making progress!

When I look at the Tardis print I notice two things;
1) The corners of the first layers are 'bloopy' - might mean that your bed is a little bit too close (or the temp of extruder and heat bed combined are high resulting in material remelting)
2) The bridging isn't solid yet; this can be improved by cooling the material faster after it coming out of the extruder - or by increasing bridging speed / decreasing extrusion during bridging.

That said; it already looks pretty good and I think that just adding some cooling on the workpiece/extruder and tweaking the temperatures will already give you the results you are looking for.
Keep up the good work and keep us posted!

[jfkansas]

Ok quick update- yesterday morning i spent a very long time on leveling my platform. I felt like it had gotten way off and I just wasn't getting it right. What confused me most is that when i forst got it I was able to print clean on just the kapton tape with nothing else. But since then I had tried everything from blue tape, ABS slurry, glue stick, clear school glue, hairspray and all combinations thereof. So I got out an actual level and tested the table it was sitting on first, then the bed itself and leveled just the bed in every way I could until I was convinced it was level from that standpoint. Then I wen into the actual leveling process with the paper and the extruder. By the way- I still feel like it should have four adjustment points. Maybe it doesn't make any real difference, but in my brain I want four corners to move. Anyway, after much tweaking, several failed test prints, a leveling tester I downloaded from thinkiverse and 3 hours of time I got a good stick on my first layer. Yay! From that point on it was smooth sailing. You read how important leveling is, but I guess it can't be over emphasized. I went from nothing sticking to clean prints everytime on plain kapton tape. No glues, etc needed. Now, this could, of course, change at any minute, but I feel like I have made some learning progress. Here's a Tardis print a did yesterday:

Photo Sep 29, 4 36 00 PM.jpg

Today when I get home I plan on doing that temperature testing that you mentioned Dargonfly. I think that will help a lot. I am most excited about trying my own designs but I want to get better with the process first. Also, there are some jacked up files on Thingiverse! Definitely learning to only use the ones that have printed successfully and check them with meshmixer or Netfabb.

Will keep you guys updated.

Nope, 3 adjustment points is all that is needed on a solid surface. 4 would be a more solid support structure though, but for leveling 3 points is all that is needed.

With the Creator X/pro the adjustment points are a little closer together than they should be. What happens is if you set the extruder gap on the far right side, the left side will teeter up and be too close. Then you lower the left side and the right side teeters up. Try to set your extruder gaps right over the top of the adjustment points.

In my opinion you are spending far too much time on the "leveling". It really is a couple minute procedure to check and you should never have to make huge adjustments. I don't turn my adjusters more than 1/8 turn once I have a relatively flat surface.