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Feb 2016

The recommended temperature for my PLA actually is 190°C!

I have found a replacement fan blade part, looks like my fan is running again, but a bit slower.

Ill try giving the layers more cooling time, and when my new fan comes I’ll try out the 360° cooler to cool my project more evenly.

Ill try printing Marvin without cooling very slow today again, so let’s see if that helps!

The new fan finally arrived, and it’s cooling output is amazing! At least two times stronger than the old fan. The left side of Marvin (which is cooled) looks even better than before, but the airflow still comes from the left, so Marvin is not being cooled good enough on the right. Again I could try rotating Marvin, but there will always be a side which is not going to be cooled. I’m still messing around with the extruder flowrate, the speed and other settings, but I am just not getting anywhere… A thingiverse user pointed out a site (http://www.desiquintans.com/coolingtests 1) in which a guy tested different fans with different fan shrouds. Looks like the blower fan Im using now is the best one, whilst a normal fan shroud (not this 360 cooling fan) should do the job best.

My cooling really has been improved, but it doesn’t change the fact that the print is only cooled from one side. How are all the printers able to print things fine when many work in the same way as mine? I might consider trying out the 360 degree cooling shroud again, since my new fan can produce enough pressure for that shroud, but I still dont know yet. I’ve turned down the flow rate of the extruder, but I don’t know when the flow rate is correct. How can I see what flow ware suits me best?

Anyways, take a look at the included pictures, and tell me how I should proceed… The 360 degree shroud could be my last guess for fixing my problems, if it’s not I’m going to have to print Marvin with supports.

It is done! I finally printed the Marvin without any defects! It was really hard, but in the end the effort was worth it. I had to change many settings, and trying out different attempts of printing the Marvin.

Here is what I did:
I made sure to get a better fan shroud and a new fan. I’ve used a small radiator fan, which had cost me around 5€. This radial fan in edition with a new and better 360 degree fan shroud this really made a big difference!

The warping still occurred, so I experimented with more things. I ended up mounting a bigger 80mm fan to the print bed, which helped to cool the print more evenly. I also finetuned the probe offset.

The last thing that made a great difference was using a different slicer. Simplify3D, you did a great job! At first using the program seems complicated and Cura seems alot easier at first, but once I had set up everything as I needed to, the slicing and overall experience with it was wonderful. It somehow only took one hour to print, and I could go much slower and at a higher resolution, but the print came out much better than the one printed with Cura.

The print looks cleaner than it is on the pictures, seems like my camera just picked up alot of details.

I hope this will get me accepted as a hub, but I will still try to improve my prints, especially with printing even slower, maybe using a different fan shroud and rotating Marvin so its cooled more evenly.

So far I’m satisfied with what I’ve achieved, and if you compare the first Marvin print (https://3dhubs.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/talk/attachments/photo1453398803142.png 2) with this one (https://3dhubs.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/talk/attachments/photo1454880934339.jpg 2) it made a huge difference!

Gonna do some more prints with different settings again tommorrow before I’ll send in the pictures for the test order but you guys really helped me out.

Thanks!

Looks great dude, glad you got it all sorted! I’ve heard nothing but praise for Simplify3D, I may have to invest!!

I think it is really worth it :wink: Sometimes Simplify3D seems to pause the print for no reason, which is weird, but it is most likely a software problem.

By the way, im printing the last Marvin now, with slow speeds, changed settings and another orientation. I’ll post pics of the final result!

Looking better! Next area to check is your extruder and your filament. You may need to fine tune the screw on top of the extruder. You may have it a tad too tight or too loose which can cause some of those lines in your most recent picture postings.

You can try bumping the shell count under the layer tab in your print settings to 3. A stronger outer wall can help smooth the print a bit.

Another reason lines still may be occurring in your print is due to the filament itself. I just had a recent print turn out similar to your original posting with the lines and ruff patches. Spent my entire night last night unraveling the spool to realize that the rest of it was contaminated and unusable.

21 days later

Looks way better! Printing small items is a whole new bag compared to large items. You can really appreciate that the plastic is at ~200C and it is HOT and ‘melty’!

2 years later

Hi,

I use Simplify3D. It does not give an option for layer time.

How do I do this 'coz I have the same prob.

Thanks

That option is in the “Cooling” tab in the process options “Adjust printing speed for layers below:”

Cheers,

Steve