I have a new Mini. It looks like a nice machine so far. I leveled the bed. Printed the cat. It looks like a reasonable print. But I don’t have anything to compare it to. So I created a model which just fits the 120 mm build size with a few millimeters to spare. When I open the .stl in Cura 14.04.6 I cannot save it to gcode until I scale the model to a smaller size. With Cura 2.4.0 it opens at about 66% scale. If I then scale it up to 100% it is bigger than than the printable area.
Everything I find online indicates that 120 mm cubed is the actual build volume. But using the published printer settings I get the above error at 100%.
I assume I’m missing something obvious. Is the actual printable area smaller than 120 mm? What is the printable area for this machine? I appreciate any advice anyone can offer.
I actually just ran into the same issue with my Monoprice and Cura. I found out that cura seems to have like a margin so although the print area is 120 it wont let u print right to the edge.
I scaled my model down by 5% because I was in a rush and wanted to print my model. But I am going to try and see what those margins are and maybe we need to trick cura by increasing the size of the buildplate just a bit, so it allows us to print closer to the edge… i also dunno if thats a good idea or not (?)
Notice: on ur cura screenshot all around the perimeter of the buildplate has grayed out a certain area all around, once u scale the model down to fit inside without touching the gray zone it will print ok.
Likely you have brim or ramp set for the surface adhesion. That can expand your dimensions in x and y directions and cause Cura to report it as larger than the print area.
As some others have pointed out it’s your build plate adhesion settings just set it to skirt and a value that works setting it to 0 will give you no skirt at all.
I think the advice to increase bed size setting while decreasing the adhesion size is what I’ll try. For the part I’m building scaling is not an option. It’s a stand for my laptop to place it vertically behind my monitor so it’s not in the way on a small desk. Space is at a premium with the addition of the Mini. I was able to produce gcode and print by eliminating part of the model so that the remaining parts fit the build space. I used Cura 15.04.6 included on the SD card. When I used Cura 2.4.0 for the same model and tried to print it sent the print head crashing all the way to xy 120, 120 with the head a couple of inches above the plate and making an awful noise. Maybe I had the wrong printer settings. I’d like to use 2.4.0 but I’m a little nervous about screwing up the printer. Thanks to everyone for the helpful advice.
