Tell me whats wrong with my Calibration Cube!!

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thinmint
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Tell me whats wrong with my Calibration Cube!!

Post by thinmint »

Hey guys,

lurker here. Ordered my rostock 2 weeks ago, finished building it over the weekend. I calibrated the bed height & micro switches fairly successfully, I did not even have to recalibrate the radius (I forget if thats what it is called)

I am printing vases and single walled objects very well, however I can't seem to be able to get the tops / bottoms of parts to be a solid layer. When printing 2 perimeters on vases, at some points the walls don't touch, this is also an issue.

Please take a look at these photos

[img]http://oi40.tinypic.com/2s6t4k0.jpg[/img]
Bottom of 20x20x10 single walled, single bottom cube. Notice how the bottom strands of filament don't connect. They form more of a mesh / net than a solid.

[img]http://oi44.tinypic.com/4iztdl.jpg[/img]
The sides came out well

Calibration cube

[img]http://oi40.tinypic.com/2q1sy2q.jpg[/img]
Bottom of the cube. Again, the strands dont touch.

[img]http://oi42.tinypic.com/3089np3.jpg[/img]
Sides of the cube came out well. My only complaint lies in the area where the base turns into the pillars, and back into the top. The photo shows how some plastic protrudes past the dimensions. Any ideas?

[img]http://oi40.tinypic.com/zv6jcn.jpg[/img]
Top of the cube. Notice some issues.


I have calibrated my extruder using the instructions in the sticky.
Any ideas guys? Thanks!
bubbasnow
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Re: Tell me whats wrong with my Calibration Cube!!

Post by bubbasnow »

what is your layer height?

are you using slic3r?
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lordbinky
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Re: Tell me whats wrong with my Calibration Cube!!

Post by lordbinky »

Really nice looking cube besides that one issue. Also it speaks well of your build that the gap is there on all four sides instead of just two.

So first I'll say a likely scenario is that the slicer is thinking your extrusion width (I typically call this a trace width because it varies over a range dependent on height) is larger than it is in reality. A general rule is that you're layer height can't be bigger than .66 * the diameter of the free-air extrusion from the nozzle (ex. My .25 nozzle extrudes .3mm filament into the air, so .66*.3=1.98 so my max layer height with that nozzle is 1.98 although in reality I fudge it to .2mm) . This imposed upper limit puts a 1.5 ratio of layer height to the extrusion diameter. That ratio was derived empirically from some great and dedicated guys on the reprap forum for predictable results with good qualities like layer adhesion and trace width. This can also be caused by going too fast, you end up stretching the filament as you print and the faster you print the more it stretches. To counter this you have to increase the amount being extruded typically in whatever extrusion fudge factor you're chosen slicer gives.

Since this is happening top and bottom it's going to take playing with slicer settings, if you post yours we can be more helpful. You're bottom layer should be solid anyways so you might want to increase your max height a fraction of a millimeter, this will help with bed adhesion as well.

I'll throw this out there anyways:
Since you said you followed the guide and everything matches that, I assume you measured your single wall cube wall width and it is the input nozzle diameter. If you input your exact nozzle diameter, add 10% to it (So for a .4 mm nozzle you're entry would be .44). Why? As stated above, the diameter of the filament that comes out of the nozzle tip is bigger than the nozzle hole because it expands when the compression from being pushed out is relieved. So your printed trace width will typically (lower layer heights get exceptions) be bigger than the nozzle hole's diameter because you're squishing the filament between the nozzle and the layer below for adhesion. Which slicer you use can make a difference because they handle the details differently, so it is likely the slicer is expecting it to squish when it decides how far to separate the traces and you're filament is stretching and not squishing as much as the slicer predicted.
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Flateric
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Re: Tell me whats wrong with my Calibration Cube!!

Post by Flateric »

I am going to go with extruder calibration. I would check that when you ask for say 100mm of filament to be extruded you actually get 100mm and not something short of this.

Second make sure you have the filament diameter correctly set within the slicer you are using. This is located under the "Material" tab in Kiss and "filament settings" in slicer.

Otherwise Lordbinky has good suggestions as well. But you seem to be starving the solid fill layers for plastic ever so slightly.

Your arms move without any friction? This is an outside possibility and probably not your issue since you are even on all 4 sides as lordbinky stated above.

Get back to us on how it goes and we'll go from there.
"Now you see why evil will always triumph! Because good is dumb." - Spaceballs
geneb
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Re: Tell me whats wrong with my Calibration Cube!!

Post by geneb »

The kit is new enough that he's got the new arm design which really helps the DABs. :)

g.
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lordbinky
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Re: Tell me whats wrong with my Calibration Cube!!

Post by lordbinky »

:shock: OOOoooo... I've been waiting to see those arms in more peoples builds, not that your review wasn't great, but I was curious to see how new users got along with them and I am really impressed with that updated design.
thinmint
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Re: Tell me whats wrong with my Calibration Cube!!

Post by thinmint »

Settings:

; layer_height = .2
; perimeters = 1
; top_solid_layers = 0
; bottom_solid_layers = 1
; fill_density = 0
; perimeter_speed = 80
; infill_speed = 60
; travel_speed = 200
; nozzle_diameter = .5
; filament_diameter = 1.74
; extrusion_multiplier = .87
; perimeters extrusion width = 0.55mm
; infill extrusion width = 0.55mm
; solid infill extrusion width = 0.55mm
; top infill extrusion width = 0.55mm
; first layer extrusion width = 0.55mm

made a mark on the raw filament, extruded 10 mm, made a second mark and measured. Right at 10mm which is good.

I recalibrated the x y and z axis, as well as the extruder using the cube method again. Sadly, the problem persists.

I am using the updated arms, they were fairly easy to install and seem trouble free.


Any ideas?
geneb
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Re: Tell me whats wrong with my Calibration Cube!!

Post by geneb »

Your extrusion multiplier should be 1.0

g.
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thinmint
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Re: Tell me whats wrong with my Calibration Cube!!

Post by thinmint »

geneb wrote:Your extrusion multiplier should be 1.0

g.
After extruder calibration, I thought were were supposed to apply a calculated extrusion multiplier.
Printed a .55mm wall cube, walls came out to ~ .64 so .55 /.64 = extrusion multiplier
thinmint
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Re: Tell me whats wrong with my Calibration Cube!!

Post by thinmint »

I went ahead and bit the bullet to try KISSlicer today, and that seemed to solve all my issues. All I can say is wow, my printer is producing much better work. Its a shame that Slic3r doesn't work as well, I like it's GUI and integration into Repetier.

I spent many hours changing settings with Slic3r, all being fruitless. A couple of minutes with KISS and I was printing better than ever before.

Thanks for the help and recommendations guys!
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Re: Tell me whats wrong with my Calibration Cube!!

Post by geneb »

Unless you've got a specific print that requires it, you shouldn't fiddle with the extrusion multiplier. If you have your extruder calibrated correctly, 1.0 should work well.

Did you change the multiplier in Kisslicer?

g.
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grabredemeyer
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Re: Tell me whats wrong with my Calibration Cube!!

Post by grabredemeyer »

I had the top and bottom infill troubles when I first got my printer up and running. Edward dropped me a line that fixed that problem for good. Drop your top infill width below the width on for nozzle. For instance, I have a .5mm nozzle, the default is .55 layer width, I run it at around .45mm for the top layer. The slicer is then told to bring those moves closer together aka closing the gap you see in your filament. I recommend doing just that. Once I did it I've never had a single problem with that since. Hope this helps.
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