Okay, so basically the printer simply will not work unless I find some way of printing the thingiverse ctc printer fan duct and install an additional 24v fan?
The problem here is that I cannot print the fan modification duct as the printer doesn’t work well enough. You need cooling to print the cooling! Catch 22!
Unfortunately there’s no magic answer here. This will all depend on the type of plastic being used. You will find there is a sweet spot. 5 house fans might be a little overkill, you will need some heat to get good inter later bonding, but then it must cool before the next layer. The print head is also a source of heat that will deform the lower layers. For your particular situation, a fan blowing across the printer, as well as a 20mm cube as tall as your model. This second model will pull the print head away for a bit of time.
Hi Eduardo, when I search that it comes up with a small round model … And instructions for prof tweaks.
nowhere on the page is it clear what you actually need to do, what do you do? Print the model? In the link? Measure what? It doesn’t make any sense to me, the chap who made the model in the link said he followed the instructions, what instructions is he on about. I really don’t understand. And I can’t seem to find percentage multipliers in prof tweaks either!
am I missing something here?
OK, lets all just take a step back and get to be friends again. CTC is an copy of an open source design, they took from flashforge. CTC as a company does not have the best reputation, in my opinion ( i don’t want to be threatened by another employee of CTC with litigation ). If you look at the 3dhubs results, from past years, you will see people being very happy with the output of the printer but lacking quality control from the factory. My printer came from the factory with un-insulated wiring to the heater cores, blowing up my motherboard. As to being the bottom of the barrel in the rep 1 clone world, well there is the monoprice version that has no heated bed, but this printer has not kept up with the advances of either flashforge or Wanhao. The current crop of clones now come with all metal Z stages, improved filament pusher drives, more durable 4x2 ptfe liners, not to mention mighty-boards equipped with 2560 processor, led drivers, extra cooling fan mosfet installed. You even said yourself that you had to do all these “mods” to get it to work. With all that being said, its a fine printer that once you really get to know it, and how it works you will be very happy with it. After owning mine for about 2 years it is the plug and play machine that I anticipated buying, but it was definitely a frustrating journey.
What are you slicing with? makerbot has become more and more hostile to the clones and burying settings deep inside makerware. I don’t personally use it, I use S3d, so I can give you and advice there. I have read reports of needed up open python eggs and recompile them to change some things. If you would like a copy of makerware 2.4, the last version to contain an update pertinent to our machines email me at adamcooksatgmaildotcom and I will send you a link, its a free dropbox account so i wont post that link publicly.
http://www.sailfishfirmware.com/doc/tuning-slicer-calibration.html#x27-670005.1 3
This is essentially the 3d printing bible. Please follow the calibration steps there. the 20mm 100% infill cube is the proper way to calibrate these machines.
A good rule of thumb for setting filament temps, hotter prints will come glossy, cooler prints will be matte. for high detail PLA printing you will want less of a sheen then appears in your pictures.
That’s mine. I made the model and instructions. If you go under instructions it says what to do and what to set in proftweAk. I’ll try and take some images later
I am not arguing. I am not a Ctc employee. I am just happy with what I bought and think it’s a decent machine for what I paid. I agree with all your statement but the price for a flash forge or a wanhoo in comparison to a Ctc is almost double. So again yea the printer lacks many things and Ctc could have a much better product out of the box if they applied quality control and some slight design changes. I am just a happy customer that after having my machine for a year I can print anything I want in any material and not have to baby sit. I burned my mb too. My fault since I shorted the heater cartridge by mistake. But you live and learn. It’s a frustrating journey, I agree but once you get to know the printer it works rather well. S3d makes a huge difference as well. Cuts set up time and prints so much better. No one is arguing here Adam.
Hi Eduardo, the link to the page on Sailfish was very helpful and I was able to follow the instructions…
My filament was 1.80mm not 1.75mm as it should be.
I have printed the box at standard speed (90mm/s extrude, 150mm/s travel). And the box seems to miss some of the top lines. so I reduced the Feedstock multiplier by 0.05 to 1.0.
the roof is nice and flat - the box is 19.69mm x 19.38mm - I guess its nearly impossible to get it to print at 20mm to match the size on the computer.
At least all the lines on the roof are present. but there are gaps in between them. It seems that it is not over or under extruding as the roof is flat. - see IMG_0508. - temp was 200c
I then chose to increase the temperature from 200 to 205, but leave everything else the same. the print has come out a little better than the 200c print. - See IMG_0510.
After calibrating the nozzles, i’ll try the pilot again and see what happens
That’s good progress. Keep
working at it and learn from it.
Will do! I guess as this is all new to me I’m not sure how good a block can be. Currently trying to print the pilot again, but forgot to turn off 100% infill! So it’s taking a while!
Good. I would try and print the fan duct first though.
Will do, it seems the fan duct needs to be made from ABS, not PLA, so will need to order a roll of ABS to make the fan duct.
I tried the pilot again after calibrating the nozzles… bad things happened, he doesn’t have a head!
The temp was 205, thought I’d increase it a bit to try and remove the broken layering. But that didn’t seem to work that well! if anything it made the layering even worse. It comes apart in layers easily.
Definitely need the cooling!
I use a PLA printed cooling duct and don’t have any issues, though I do need to replace it sometimes because it does warp from the heat overtime (something like every 6 months or so.) I printed my first duct very slowly, it wasn’t prefect but it was good enough to make it so I could print a second duct at a normal speed without any troubles and since that quality is only getting better.
It still look like you are printing too hot, and it could be that you are printing to slowly now too. It sucks but for the first little while there is a lot of trial and error in getting the printer’s settings figured out. On my printer I generally get the best layer results when my feedrate is between 50 and 70 mm/s. Try changing your infill from honeycomb to rectangle. It will save time and filament (and be just as strong with less vibration during your printing.) As for removing layers during a print that will more often cause the print to fail than save it. It’s better to stop the print and start over, it sucks but sometimes that is all you can do.
Hi guys for anyone reading this post. I have finally got good quality prints by doing the following…
- Install Makerware 3.8
- Print on standard settings, but change the following values, Extruder temp:222c for the PLA that comes with the printer, and Setting minimum layer time to 30s.
- I’ve left the filament diameter at the default setting (1.75) - although the filament is 1.79. Changing to 1.79 doesn’t seem to make a difference. I’ve also left the extrusion multiplier at the default of 0.93.
I’m now printing perfect pilots every time.
It seems it was a simple case of raising the temp for the PLA to 222, and slowing the layer time to 30s. Makerware 3.8 Beta is much better.
I’m sure that ensuring the printer isn’t over or under extruding is important, but doesn’t seem to be a contributing factor in the pilots i’m doing. I probably need to revisit the cubes as they are 19mm across, not 20mm. So when i come to needing to print accurately sized parts that slot together, getting it accurate will be important, but for people these settings seem pretty good.
Makerware 3.8 gives you the ability to change all the settings without having to use proftweaks.
I’ve semi perfected printing in PLA now. good enough for what I need at least. They are no works of art, but they’ll do nicely. Im now moving to the dark art of ABS.
Quick question. Which version of makerware desktop do you guys use? Since upgrading from 3.8 to 3.9, the left extruder has started working, but for some reason i get another structure next to the main piece… and ideas?
