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

[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.