Slic3 Settings for E3D v6

[Nath5]

I am having a lot of problems with my E3Dv6 and bed adheasion. I started with a v6 lite and my prints were fantastic. Then I had a nozzel clog bad so I decided to upgrade the heatbreak when I got the new nozzle converting the v6 lite to the full v6. Since then I have been having a horrible time getting my prints to stick. I think the problem is with my first layer but I have not been able to figure out the best settings in sli3cr to fix it.

I have a .4 mm nozzle.

If someone could help me with the settings to use on the Print Settings, Layers and Perimeters and Print Settings, Advanced tabs in Slic3r for the e3dv6 I would be very appreciative.

Thanks,
Nathan

[IMBoring25]

Recheck your Z zero.

[Nath5]

That was the first thing I did, about 10 times I have gone through the whole calibration process. But I am fairly sure it is the first layer height, layer height, and extrusion width that are the problem. I have been tweaking them and things are better but still not great so I figured I would see what other people with my setup are using.

[Nath5]

Some more settings,

I am printing with the bed at 90 which is about as high as I can get it to go and it takes ages to get to that temp. I have the hotend at 235.

[Xenocrates]

I'm assuming that given the temperature, you're using ABS? Have you changed the spool at all? Which ABS is it? What's your surface material on the bed (Gluestick, Kapton, Blue tape, PEI, bare glass)? have you cleaned your hobbed gear after the jam? Could you take a picture of a 1 layer print on the bed? Are they coming off the bed and sliding, or are the getting pulled curved and distorted? Is Z hop on? Has the nozzle bore been polished at all? (I suggest a piece of leather if you have one, if not, well, very fine abrasives also help.)

[Nath5]

I'm assuming that given the temperature, you're using ABS? Have you changed the spool at all? Which ABS is it? What's your surface material on the bed (Gluestick, Kapton, Blue tape, PEI, bare glass)? have you cleaned your hobbed gear after the jam? Could you take a picture of a 1 layer print on the bed? Are they coming off the bed and sliding, or are the getting pulled curved and distorted? Is Z hop on? Has the nozzle bore been polished at all? (I suggest a piece of leather if you have one, if not, well, very fine abrasives also help.)

1. You are correct I am printing using ABS
2. I am using makergeeks black abs which was working great before the "upgrade"
3. I have always used glass with hairspray
4. Never heard of a hobbed gear, do you have a link to directions on how to clean it?
5. I will take a picture tomoroow is there a particular stl file that would help to diagnose?
6. The prints are pulling up are warping up at the ends but not coming completely lose.
7. What is Z hop?
8. Never heard of polishing the nozzle bore, I will look that up.

Thanks for the help.

[Nath5]

Well sadly my hotend clogged again last night so first I will have to figure out how to fix that before I can fix the adhesion problem.

[Xenocrates]

The hobbed gear is the one on the end of the extruder stepper, just take the clear plastic off and brush it out with a brass brush. As far as clogging, if you haven't already, reduce your retracts to the 2MM neighborhood, and that should help some. Z hop is a slicer setting that tells it to lift up when it's moving and not printing. As far as an STL to diagnose with, anything with just a single layer would help, and Mike has a bunch of nice ones in his print tuning thread.

[Nath5]

Spent all morning fixing the clog, the hotend and the heatbreak all the way up into the cold section were clogged so lots of torching + acetone was needed to get everything cleared out. I also took the whole exstruder mechanism apart as it was full of plastic shards. It is now nice an clean again.

[Nath5]

Just finished printing the first layer cylinder from Mike's thread and it printed well. I printed a larger calibration model found here http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:50505 and it printed decently but I think my nozzle is higher on the z axis so I need to tweak that. Below are my current settings in slic3r please let me know if anything seems wrong or could be better.

[Nath5]

Just finished my first real print, not a very large or tall print but it adhered well will is a promising start. One problem that I did have which I didn't have before was a lot more stringiness. Not sure what the best way to fix this is. I am afraid to increase the retraction as I don't want to have another clog. Should I got above 2mm or is there something else I should change.

The print was done with ABS at 235C with the settings above.

[Xenocrates]

If you're using a .4MM nozzle, I think .3 is a little on the high side for layer height. I usually run .2 to .175, but that's more a surface finish thing, unless you're experiencing some amount of delamination.

[Nath5]

I have dropped my layer height down to 2.5, decreased my temp to 230 and increased the retraction length to 2.5 mm. We shall see how the next print goes.

[Nath5]

Well the latest print suffered the same problem as the first couple where The edges of my print keep warping up an fulling off the glass. I will post a picture as soon as it is done.

[Nath5]

Still getting quite a lot of stringynes in addition to the warping. When I print only one in the center it works well but as soon as I get outside the inner 2 inches of the heated plates things start warping.

[Xenocrates]

Have you calibrated your horizontal radius? Is it fairly consistent lifting that gets worse when you get farther from the center?

[Nath5]

As far as I can tell it is pretty even when I do the tower calibration macro.

[Xenocrates]

Alright, go ahead and try 2-3 layers of heavy aluminum foil under the glass, and see if it helps. I'm thinking it might be an uneven heating issue, with you having no heat spreader at all.

[Nath5]

I just tried one more print, this time it stuck pretty well. I will give the aluminum foil a trick as well.

For the last run I changed the first layer extrusion width to 200%, the layer height to .25 and the first layer height to .35. I also turned the retraction length to 2.7 and the print temp to 228.
i am still having really bad stringing as can be seen in the photo below. Any idea what settings to tweak to help with that?

[IMBoring25]

I too found first layer extrusion width to make a big difference in adhesion.

For the stringing, your retraction is very fast for an E3D. I know it's counter-intuitive, but few I've seen retract an E3D much faster than 30 mm/s. I'm actually using 10 on mine.

[Nath5]

I will try to turn down the retraction speed and see what that does.

Does anyone know of any threads where people have listed all of the most common settings that they are using successfully with the e3dv6?

[Nath5]

Just grabbed a heat spreader from tricklaser. We shall see if that helps, hopefully it doesn't increase the heat up time to much as it already takes ages to bring the hot bed up to temp.

[captainpotatofudge]

I too want to know if there is a 'commonly used E3D v6 settings' thread. I'm having NOTHING but problems since i "upgraded" to it. Everyone seems to rave about them, but I've got 10x the stringing, 1/2 the correct layer width, and many more issues. Granted SOME of the issues are due to physical problems with the build plate/heating PCB, but the rest are new with the E3D and I'm about to chuck it!

[Jimustanguitar]

Honestly, I run Cura (15.04) with nearly stock settings except for the obvious ones like nozzle diameter and 1.75 filament.

For strings and things like that, have you done any calibration prints to dial in your retraction? That's the correct solution.
What about your first layer, does the extrudate measure in at the right thickness?
It's also a great idea to measure out a meter of filament and to calibrate your extruder's steps per mm.

[captainpotatofudge]

Well I don't know about Nath5, but in my case I take 10 sample measurements of the filament, 1 per 12". That's how I set my filament diameter. For a while I was even taking measurements 2x at each location, 90 degrees to each other around the filament, which did show that a lot of filaments are very oval, but it didn't seem to change anything so I dropped that double sampling.

I have calibrated the extruder I don't even know how many times at this point, I've lost track. I've even done it per roll of filament, no matter if it was the same brand/type or not. Didn't change much so I left it alone since. I've seasoned the E3D v6 with oil as I've read so much about, maybe a bit too much, but it isn't preventing bed adhesion or layer adhesion that I can tell so it's just annoying to have a bit of extra oil coming down the PTFE and sometimes it smells like I'm cooking in the kitchen instead of 3D printing.

First layer HEIGHT measures 0.17-0.22 and I'm set to 0.2 first layer height. I've calibrated with paper and feeler gauges an absurd amount of times. The Z doesn't seem to stick really well at all. I'm not in a humid location, in fact right now it's 71.6F@36% humidity and that's fairly common. My HR seems to change constantly also and I have to run the Z calibration and 3 tower script at least 15-20 times before I can get the 3 towers even close to the same. But I'm guessing that's another issue all together aside from the E3D v6 problems which I'm about to make a rather large post about if things don't clear up like quick.

I've been running nothing but MatterControl up to this point and mostly using MatterSlice with the occasional Cura slice. What I cannot seem to find is a seriously good suggestion/often used E3D v6 0.4mm nozzle settings. I've tried the 120% rule of thumb for First Layer Extrusion Width and stepped up and down all around it from 0.32-0.6. Guess what I'm NOT getting? Consistent results. Each pass has a habit of leaving gaps no matter what the setting. Sometimes gaps are worse, sometimes better, but either way I've ALWAYS got gaps. I never had this problem with the stock hot end. It also has a habit of not even making contact with the outer perimeters so I have a bottom layer that just hangs there on the infill, if I'm using infill, otherwise it hinges open like a door and falls off of a hollow print. I even read some people say setting nozzle diameter to 0.6mm for the 0.4mm E3D v6...weird, but I'll try it if it works. nope

Last night I finally ran Cura 15.04.5 standalone and have been printing in T-Glase to see if standalone Cura worked better than built into MatterControl Cura. Input all the same settings from MatterControl, as best as they translate anyhow, fired off the Cura robot print and it was pretty danged good. Minor stringing and excellent detail @0.2mm layer height. Honestly I do not like Cura in many ways compared to the greater level of options in MatterControl, but it basically 'just worked'. Granted it still shows the same first layer lines not connecting properly issue a little, but it was BETTER by far. I now have four of the robots, 1x1.0 scale, 1x1.5 scale, & 2x2.0 scale. They all came out really well despite the bottom and top layers not being quite up to snuff and a bit sparse. Still WAY better than I was getting before. I was getting a sparse first layer, no connection to the perimeter, and then the top layers would be all over squished and rough. Granted Cura has its own set of machine control issues I don't understand yet. The start/stop Gcode doesn't seem to do what I'd expect, I have the machine settings set for the Rostock Max v2 as much as I can tell, center of the bed at 0,0 and all that. Gcode says that at the end of the print to home, but it doesn't. It actually doesn't even END the print. It just finishes printing, raises a few CM and stays there, turns off the heaters and does nothing else. I've modified the end Gcode and it just won't home.

Right now it's in the middle of printing a 20x20x150 tall rectangle with Z tweaks every 10mm to change the extrusion rate to see how that comes out, 100-106%. That is one feature I REALLY wish MatterControl would add!!

EDIT: Just added a pic of the Cura dialog that just sits there after a print finishes. Has been done for over 20 minutes now and there it still is.