The looks of the photo indicate to hot of a nozzle temperature. A very glossy finish is the clue, while a cooler temperature will produce a matte like luster. Are you printing with a third filament cooling fan? Also, I printed my Marvin at 20mm/sec, if I remember. Low slow and plenty of cooling of using pla, same with abs but omit cooling fan until the key chain ring.
Also, you should be using sailfish 7.7. All other firmware has been abandoned long long long ago
Are you printing with PLA or ABS? You are correct the print should not just fail at the end. When I have trouble like this on smaller details I tell my print job at to slow down at the layer I’m having issues with. What you could try to do is print at your highest resolution and look for a setting to change the # of mm/s print speed. That’s my only suggestion at this point.
I’ve done several printer upgrades after getting the CTC. It now prints very well with not too many hiccups any longer.
You are using the wrong version of repG. I think the correct version is r30. Get the newest from thingiverse.
Done! Thanks for the advice, first sailfish print underway now!
What temp did you use and do you have an internal screw type thermocouple or external tap style? Looks like some kind of replicator type machine in the background. That marvin actually looks really really hot, you should use the lowest temp you can get away with. Marius is right, you should print multiple marvins or even put a simple tower next to whatever you print so that marvin gets time to cool. I’m not sure if speeding up the print would improve your results, I think you’d actually want to decrease the speed or increase the minimum layer duration so that the layers have time to cool. I think that plus printing multiple marvins or other objects at the same time and using a cooling fan will improve your results dramatically. If you don’t have a cooling fan just point a regular household fan at it for now.
Also, when you get a fan, something like this Active Cooling Fan Duct for Replicator 1 / Duplicator 4 / FlashForge by thruit00 - Thingiverse won’t make that big of a difference if any because all that ducting lowers the airflow way too much, as axial fans are not made for ducting. Soon as you add ducting, especially tiny thin ducting you lose all the horsepower so to speak. An axial fan would work way better with a high flow duct such as Cooling fan hanger for FlashForge Creator 3D printer by Harh - Thingiverse. A centrifugal (also called squirrel cage) fan works dramatically better than an axial fan. I’m going to upgrade mine to a centrifugal fan soon.
I remember I used to have horrible failures that looked just like your marvin before I made numerous upgrades, and now I can’t fail a print like that if I tried.
Wow Robert, lots of great info there, thanks for taking the time to help! I had been printing at 210, just tried this silver margin at 195, the top seems better, but definitely still something wrong. Notice the face and back of the head. Looks like over extrusion? Not sure what setting will take care of this.
Cooling issue, garanteed. I have one of these printers as well, got some tips at the forum, running stock firmware still - my best marvin yet has been produced using a fan blowing directly at it, at around 94% of printing (when the ring is about to be done). I’ll get back to you on my settings for this particular print, meanwhile I’m also working on a simple guide for adding led strips and fans to the case, should it interest everyone else.
Just please make sure you let us know what worked at the end 
Ok, next step is definitely a fan then. I’ve seen in the settings in makerware that you can activate a fan after a certain layer, how is this connected up though? Is there another fan output in the board? A guide to adding a cooling fan would be fantastic! Thanks again for the help so far everyone.
I believe that before thinking about cooling automations and such, just try to get the print recipe right.
I’ve only had this printer for about a week now, printed a bunch of marvins already and can confirm that the head ring is indeed tricky and is best pulled off by using cooling.
Try using the settings I have below on your ReplicatorG job, make sure the nozzle is set to 0.4 and filament is 1.75mm (considering that’s what you also have). Also, these settings are PLA only.
Let it print and when it is at about 94% (head right starting) use a normal cooling fan like the one I’m posting (doesn’t need to be that big ok, in my case it was the only one I had available) and set it up facing marvin.
Check for results and when you’ve fine tuned things, then consider setting up a more “integrated” cooling solution.
The issue I’m now having with this is that the nozzle still holds around the head ring for a few secs at the end of the print, creating that slight blob on top - It might get solved with a faster print speed and/or better air flow, I’ll keep trying, although I’m already quite pleased with the overall quality when comparing to a week ago.
I didn’t know about RobertPaul’s suggestion using an adapter to house some fans directly above the platform, seems like the best approach - in my case, I’ve gone for a slightly different approach and will try to use a couple 120mm fans on the sides of the case and see how that goes.
I say you need to lower both your print temp, and your speed. If you have issues with the ring, slow your print even further when it gets to that point. Also print at least 2 copies, i did and it helps a ton.
From those pics, it still looks like simply a temp issue… running too hot and or not enough cooling. If you look at where it looks ugly, you can see that it’s only on overhangs, and better cooling or lower temp should help with that. I tried to tell you a few things that would help, you only did one, which is printing at a lower temp. Those marvins are little and take no time/material to print, so just print 5 or six of them at the same time.
You very well may be overextruding, and you will know for sure if you notice/hear your nozzle hitting the previously printed layer. You should print some calibration cubes and calibrate everything. Start by measuring your filament with calipers in at least ten different places, and then turn the calipers 90 degrees and measure again in those ten places then average out your numbers. Then after you print the cube you can either mess with the feedstock multiplier or change the diameter the machine thinks the filament is, to fine tune your extrusion. If you’re not using makerware then it will be called filament packing density. Then you will have your extrusion right, but it will still look bad on overhangs because you don’t have enough cooling.
You aren’t going to very good results at all without a cooling fan.
After you remove the cover to the motherboard, you need to solder a mosfet in the empty slot:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-mn2\_MVpXZfQ/Uq9\_DozKdAI/AAAAAAAAAAM/UPqXBQ9Nx5M/s1600/fet6.jpg .
If you’re lucky, there might already be one there I don’t know how CTC does it now.
Make sure the solder enough contact area on that tab. You can check what’s written on your existing mosfets and then search for them online. Let me know if you have trouble finding them.
Next buy a fan and connect it to the motherboard. I used slightly thicker wire for my fan to keep the power up.
Seriously though, you should save yourself the time and get rid of the PTFE liner and get all metal threaded thermal barriers and a threaded cooling bar with thermal paste on the cool part of the thermal barrier and where the heat sinks and cooling bar meet. Otherwise your prints will keep getting worse and clog a lot. You’ll have to replace the PTFE soon anyways, and while you wait for some of the ingredients in the PTFE to slowly degrade it will be putting toxic stuff into the air.
The thermal barriers have to be stepped on the inside, otherwise they won’t work. Mine are AVN Swiss’s thermal barriers + nozzles. If you get the AluDual cooling bar then you need to get slightly longer thermal barriers (not AVN Swiss) and also a replicator 2x carriage and drive mounts and you’ll have to print a bunch of spacers before you begin the mod, so I wouldn’t recommend the AluDual cooling bar.
When you install it, tighten the nozzles all the way by hand, then unscrew about a half turn to a full turn and then screw the thermal barrier in by hand all the way until it stops (Should be all the way to the heatbreak). Heat up and tighten gently until it stops to get a good seal but don’t overtighten because the thermal barriers are hard stainless steel and the heater block is soft aluminum.
In my case, using the PLA that came with my CTC at 200º or less will produce messy results. At about half way through the Marvin print, the piece detaches from the adhesive strips on the bed and starts moving around the bed, which leads to a very messed up Marvin head.
Curiously enough, so far the best results I’ve had have been with 210º/220º for PLA on my CTC printer - but I always seem to get the slight blob on top of the head ring. From what I could observe so far, when the print is finishing, the nozzle stays slow on top and probably does that due to the high temperature.
The fan cooling solution I’m working on won’t be integrated with the printer, I’m not quite ready to start messing with the mainboard just for this - I’ll be using an ESP8266 wifi module to control the fans and led strips and just turning them on/off either manually or try to integrate the solution with octoprint, which I’m currently using with this printer in order to print remotely.
So far ESP8266 wiring and code is finished, the leds are installed, now I just have to figure out where/how to position the fans for best results.
I print on a piece of glass with Aquanet hairspray (unscented). One quick even spray and even without the HBP on it will only come off by pulling very hard and throwing it in the freezer for half a minute helps loosen it. If I use more than one coat (spray, wait 30 seconds, spray again) it’s not coming off unless I throw it in the freezer for five minutes. Especially it I heated the bed, then it’s never coming off lol. Integrating only sounds daunting because you have to solder the mosfet to the empty slot, but it’s actually easier than I expected and was one of the quicker mods to do.
I’ve been thinking about adding LED’s somewhere on the extruder so that I can charge glow in the dark prints while they print.
After just printing Marvin, I had to increase the filament diameter to 1.80 in order to increase the quality, even though my glowfill diameter is only 1.74. I was severely overextruding. Here is is. I’m using an active cooling fan, and I still need a bit more cooling. This one was printed by himself.
Why are you using replicatorG??? When I first started I also used it and people would ask me why I’m using repG.