Hi all - seen many posts raving about CTCs so I bought one but am having awful issues I’m trying to grasp.
Basically 2 months into owning this I have yet to get a good calibration cube w/PLA or ABS. It looks like it extrudes far too much on the right and rear sides - the bands poke our and the perimeter (esp on rear) is higher when it prints.
Other forums said too hot etc and working on active cooling. But one thing that is particularly perplexing is the head seems to drag across the lower layer - this is especially true if I use Makerware’s raft (very heavy)
I tried SLIC3R, Skeinforge & makerware and see about the same issue.
Also, bed seems to need a lot of leveling and despite my gap bed adherence is an issue (sanded kapton, blue tape, blue glue stick)
These are the basic parameters:
PLA - 185-210C HPB 90 (for est 60c)
ABS - 210-230C HPB 130 for (~95C)
I am at wit’s end here and appreciate any direction.!!
I’m sorry to hear you having issues but I’m sure with some proper setup you will be printing like a pro !
First up, build plate levelling. Everyone has to go through the pain of REALLY understanding the purpose of a level built plate and to begin to recognise what a good first layer looks like. Believe me, once you begin to see what a flat layer looks like you’ll be tweaking the levelling of each corner as it prints until it’s right.
Just use the paper method and try for a “just feel the friction of the nozzle” distance from the built plate. Then use .2mm layers
Now let’s talk active cooling. Yes you should work out an effective active cooling method for complex prints…no you don’t need one to print a perfect calibration cube. If you can print a nice square cube you have a more basic issue.
Temps. Try 200, 205 and then 210. Look at the differences and try to understand how the temperature effects the extrusions characteristics of the printer as well as the filaments finish (shine and flatness)
Speed. 25mm/s / 25mm/s. Seriously. Slow and steady. Don’t drive fast until you can drive slow (properly)
Do you mind printing a few Cubes and taking well lit high detail close ups of the first layer , mid way through and then finished print ?
I print wood and pla as well as tpu. Pla likes 230 to 240 and bed of 50. Wood 245 bed 65 with reduced print speeds. Different colors of pla vary also. I did have to adjust my print heads so the 2ND extruder wouldn’t drag. Took a minute bit it worked. Are your. X y rods straight?
If you install the latest Sailfish Firmware (via ReplicatorG, which works well on CTC) you can tune the Speed and Temperature while you’re printing. I often use this feature to see which temperature is the best for printing a specific filament type.
Great advice! Yea, got the knack of the paper-level so slight drag (at temperature and cool) and try for a squashed 1st layer but the bed leveling doesn’t seem consistent like it moves. I put a 3mm spacer to get the bed springs a little less stressed and the parallelism of HPB-to-arms looks MUCH better - but didn’t help
Definately get the ‘try temps and get idea’ as well as 5deg increments just not that slow! Will try and post pics - got some fresh glass so will try w/PLA TY!
I’ve had my Bizer for 8 months now, and the first thing that jumps out at me is that your heatbed temps are crazy-high. The highest I ever go is 90°C, which I do for PETG-- read at the sensor, not ‘actual’ --and that’s served me well. As for the bed leveling, you might want to check that your bed is, in fact, flat. Mine was slightly concave, and that pretty much made up my mind on buying a piece of borosilicate glass to put on it. BEST DECISION EVER.
No more painter’s tape, no more kapton (Except the sheet I kept on the bare aluminium bed to protect the glass…which turned out to be totally unnecessary*…), no more hideous damned rafting and worrying about whether or not the print was going to irreparably fuse itself to it! Just the lightest coat of Elmer’s purple washable gluestick, and pretty much any material sticks.
* That bit about protecting the glass being unnecessary? Every several prints, when the gluestick film’s gotten too beat to just ‘touch up’ without it getting lumpy, I just shave it all off with a few good strokes of a razor blade, and re-apply. Not a scratch on the glass yet.
If you’re wondering the kind of output I’m getting…this is a pretty good example. A 0.20mm layer height print in PLA, with a standard 0.40mm nozzle and half-assed active cooling (A fan sitting next to the printer.) The grid it’s sitting on is 0.5" and the diameter of the miniature’s base is 44mm. (At the 200% print size) You can see a timelapse of the print here 1.
Thanks for the tips! Just to be sure - my HPB reads 40 at room temperature so I have to add 15 degrees to get it in the ballpark - I verified this with my thermometer so a true 90c is the hottest my bed goes (set to 130).
Yes, I have been using glass and just got some cut-to-size so I’m excited to try.
BTW - your sample print is nice however it looks like it has the 'bulging band" problem I’m battling
Yeah, mine reads 40°C at room temp, too. I just go with what the machine says and build my profiles using that, unless there’s a problem with a material that can’t be reconciled by simply adjusting up or down 5°C at a time. Because trying to mentally juggle my own temperature offsets just complicates things, especially when-- when I get additional printers --each printer will likely be different. (i.e. simpler to just remember that PETG prints best at what my printer says is 240°C/90°C than to try and remember that those’re actually such-and-such and what-have-you degrees.)
There’s some slight waviness from layer to layer, a lot of it is attributable to vibration; the machine shakes like crazy if I push the speed, I need to get it mounted on the shelf better…it was behaving so much nicer on the workbench. Though if you’re talking about the forehead area, that’s actually the model.
Yep, as the owner of a mini-mill and mini-lathe, I know all too well the importance of making sure the workbench is as solid as possible. Somehow when I first set up my printer it was perfect, but after I moved it from its shelf to the table for maintenance and then back, I couldn’t find the way I had it sitting where it was nice and rigid…
I’m going to print some new feet for the printer that solidly mount it directly to the rails of the shelf. (I design a lot of clip-on accessories for my wire shelving.) Hopefully that will take care of it. Because the shelves themselves don’t wobble at all.
Rigidity-- both in the machine itself, as well as its environment, i.e. what it’s sitting on --is of paramount importance to the accurate operation of machine tools, 3D printers, really anything with moving bits and bobs.
Hi - yes - I tied both - but focus on at temperature as well as differing thicknesses - ‘the paper just dragging’ with regular paper, cardstock and even tried eyeballing it.
It sounds like I’m aiming for good consistent ‘squash’ - but I’m finding the bed height to be very inconsistent / repeatable - or I’m doing something very, very wrong.
Also each the skein engine puts down a different layers - esp when using a raft.SLIC3R being lightest and MakerWare being very, very thick and RepG’s SF in between. MakerWare’s raft is way to heavy - I’d say it is almost 1mm high - but it does stick to the bed - but nozzle drags on subsequent layers and I can’t bear the bashing noise!!
Any thoughts on how you calibrate the extruder? I read in the Sailfish manual where you set the two ‘K’ values but the goal is very nuanced differences - I need to get in the ballpark before these kind of tweaks!
With Marlin you simply calibrate the steps/mm so extruding 100m filament puts out 100mm - with Sailfish there doesn’t seem to be a way. With Marlin the skein engine made somewhat of a difference but among these 3 skeining options the output is radically different but end result pretty bad…
It is all very strange to me. Wish I had bought & built a Marlin-based Delta - I would have been printing a long time ago!
Hello JP - so here’s the 20MM calibration cube showing the rear-most side - where my problem is!
This was done with PLA, RepG 033 & SF 50. It started at 200C but bumped down to 190C 1/2 way through. The HPB is plate glass with blue tape, set to 70 (~30C) so it’d stick. (HAVE to heat bed or PLA will not stick)
No matter what it is the same back edge seems to be over-extruded even with extruder temperature so low it ‘clicks’.
