New 12" user and I am LOST!

[tsteever]

Working my way through the e calibration and I am noticing some light white smoke/steam coming from the extruder. I have it set at 250 and hit it with a temp gun. It registered at 232 at the tip. I bumped up the temp to 260, still got the steam. I lowered the setting to 230 and I am getting 219.

What is the smoke? Am I too hot?

[sniffle]

If your not extrudi g possibly it coild also be water that the plastic has absorbed...

All filament i know of absorbs moisture from the ambient air when left out.

[printbus]

Does it just seem to be coming from around the extruder? Maybe you're just burning off some of the material left on the extruder from the melted shroud. Have you tried wiping down the aluminum block and nozzle while hot with something like a paper towel?

[tsteever]

Coming out the nozzle, not around. It really does just look like steam.

[Chadd]

I am also having Z homing issues with the 12" that I put together 1-2 weeks ago. I have swapped the Z axis home switch around with one of the others and have everything mounted with screws. It is very frustrating to have to fight with the printer for 20 min to get the Z home position fixed every time I want to print something. I have been very close to throwing the damn thing in the trash because of it. I also have the Rumba board so I am not sure if there is an issue with the Rumba or something else but I would like to get it figured out so I can actually enjoy using the printer instead of fighting with it.

I am beginning to think the issue is with the type of switches sent with the kit. For some reason he included micro switches with roller ends on them instead of standard lever ends. If you are homing off of a flat surface the roller switch would be fine IMO but on the Z axis you are using the tiny bolt as the homing surface so I think there are some inconsistencies related to that because depending on what part of the roller radius the bolt hits on it changes the home position. I have some standard micro switches on order to swap out the roller switch with. I hope that fixes the issue because at this point in time I don't really want to even use the printer because of it.

Clips in the corners.

Thanks, I am still learning a lot about the code and really (if you can't tell) do not know what I am doing...yet.

I plan, was to manually set the Z axis myself cause every time I autohome the z axis is in a different spot. I am not exaggerating. Right now I have things tore apart for cleaning but my intention is to replace the Z endstop with a printed setup from thingiverse. Before tear down I hit autohome. The bed wend to the corner and the z descended to a level below the glass. Previously i had adjusted it to be a paper height from the glass.

My glass is clipped at the corners and the home is actually off the glass (in case of the nozzle going below glass level). When I hit home and the machine was at zero I moved the extruder over to verify that the nozzle was at "paper height". I then hit home again and this time it descended below the glass level by almost .6mm (estimate). I immediately hit home again without moving anything and the z went up and stopped. It never descended down again. This time the axis was .4 above the glass!

[tsteever]

I am also having Z homing issues with the 12" that I put together 1-2 weeks ago. I have swapped the Z axis home switch around with one of the others and have everything mounted with screws. It is very frustrating to have to fight with the printer for 20 min to get the Z home position fixed every time I want to print something. I have been very close to throwing the damn thing in the trash because of it. I also have the Rumba board so I am not sure if there is an issue with the Rumba or something else but I would like to get it figured out so I can actually enjoy using the printer instead of fighting with it.

I am beginning to think the issue is with the type of switches sent with the kit. For some reason he included micro switches with roller ends on them instead of standard lever ends. If you are homing off of a flat surface the roller switch would be fine IMO but on the Z axis you are using the tiny bolt as the homing surface so I think there are some inconsistencies related to that because depending on what part of the roller radius the bolt hits on it changes the home position. I have some standard micro switches on order to swap out the roller switch with. I hope that fixes the issue because at this point in time I don't really want to even use the printer because of it.

I am finally at a point where I can start to print some parts. No where near the quality of the Afinia or Ultimaker I have used before. Funny too as there should be no reason we can get the same prints out of this machine, on the inside they are all very similar. I think the Afinia has a superior slicer engine. The top layer prints on those look so good! My top layer looks like poop with a stick drug through it. Gotta play with the setting a bit more.

What helped me was the advice given here in this thread by the awesome forum members. Prints, Sniffle and countless others have kept me from trashing the machine. To start I would change the following in no particular order...

!. Raise height that the Z moves up when it home the second time. See Post #88
2. Change the speed at which this 2nd high-res homing move is done at. I found these settings in the config thread by printbus. There is a line in the code that sets the homing speed and divides it by a number. Increase that number until you are happy.
3. Do everything Printbus and Sniffle have told me to do, they know their stuff!

I am sure there is more but that should help. I can now get a good accurate home position set repeatedly. I will be changing the switch out at some point. I am going to give the Auto Bed Level a try. Can't hurt right?

[tsteever]

Now, about that top layer poopiness? Take a look at this pic. It is the top layer od a model printed on an Afina. How can we get this out of a Maker? The part on the left is the Afnia printed at their fine speed, .2 layer height, solid. The part on the right is one of my first prints. Take a look at the top layer on the maker part. See how the nozzle has drug through the top? On my most current prints these lines are even more pronounced. The Afinia part on the left is so nice to look at. Very finished. The parts just print very accurately.

I know it is a 1500 dollar machine with limited user input. But the parts and pieces that make it are so close to the maker. Cannot we get this level pf performance?

[Chadd]

My print quality is good when I am not screwing around with the homing issue. It is hard to say what the print quality issue is without actually seeing the part in hand. I am sure you posted it elsewhere in your thread but what are all your print settings for that part? Looks to me like your nozzle may be dragging. One thing I had to do was to put a shim inbetween the hex hotend and the extruder base because the hot end would wiggle back and forth, especially when retracting to reduce nozzle drool.

Now, about that top layer poopiness? Take a look at this pic. It is the top layer od a model printed on an Afina. How can we get this out of a Maker? The part on the left is the Afnia printed at their fine speed, .2 layer height, solid. The part on the right is one of my first prints. Take a look at the top layer on the maker part. See how the nozzle has drug through the top? On my most current prints these lines are even more pronounced. The Afinia part on the left is so nice to look at. Very finished. The parts just print very accurately.

I know it is a 1500 dollar machine with limited user input. But the parts and pieces that make it are so close to the maker. Cannot we get this level pf performance?

[tsteever]

Print setting for which part? The Afinia is very limited on what you can choose. I need to do some digging to see what the actual settings are. You have the option of layer height, Speed (fine, normal, fast), and fill. The rest is out of your hands. The top layer is a good indication to me of a good print. The Afinia on the Left does an amazing job. The part is very smooth. I have no idea how it does it and I would like to get my hands not he g code to see if I can decode the speeds and temps.

The Maker does okay. Just a bit of work to do to get it to a level I would like to produce at. The nozzle does appear to drag through the top layer a lot. Here is a typical print I am getting. Is there a setting I am missing somewhere that will tell the z to move up when it moves to a new position?

[sitio]

an interesting thread. newbie come listen.