Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

Hola,
I've been mostly using repetier and the default settings that came from SeeMeCNC but was told that MatterControl(MC) did a better job of slicing and well control ..

All these tests are running ABS 1.75mm temp is ~220 bed is ~80

Sadly after a normal Repetier calibration (with the 4 scripts like in the manual) I printed this nintastic case from thingiverse.

As you can see from the group of pictures:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/w3mizagj6ujh ... iK9zveSDFa

the red plastic with repetier turned out pretty good but i wanted to refine the prints and make the layers cleaner and with more detail (no idea how to improve this)
The grey plastic seems to be of poor quality as the same corner caves in all the time and i have not found a way to improve this.

Finally the feathered print that just looks awful is the MC one with the standard ABS settings from the site. As you can see it just failed in a big way. Somebody suggested that it was under-extruded.

I could definitely use some help and suggestions for the following:
1. How to improve the print quality of ABS with just repetier, get it to be smoother, more details, and not cave in (in the case of the grey filament). I have tried skirt/brim and increasing temperature.
2. What's up with mattercontrol slicing/printing this improperly ? There seem to be a plethora of settings other then the basic ABS ones so I'm all ears on how to methodically improve this softwares ability to print.

Any help is appreciated. This case is going to a friend for Christmas so it's more then just wanting to improve technique

I think you should put some glue stick, hair spray, painter's tape, kapton tape or PEI sheet on top of the build plate to promote adhesion. Also, raise the bed temperatures to as high as your onyx bed will sustain (up to about 110 is reasonable).

After that, we can see if you are under extruding or your Z height is high.

prussiap wrote:Hola,
I've been mostly using repetier and the default settings that came from SeeMeCNC but was told that MatterControl(MC) did a better job of slicing and well control ..

All these tests are running ABS 1.75mm temp is ~220 bed is ~80

Sadly after a normal Repetier calibration (with the 4 scripts like in the manual) I printed this nintastic case from thingiverse.

As you can see from the group of pictures:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/w3mizagj6ujh ... iK9zveSDFa

the red plastic with repetier turned out pretty good but i wanted to refine the prints and make the layers cleaner and with more detail (no idea how to improve this)
The grey plastic seems to be of poor quality as the same corner caves in all the time and i have not found a way to improve this.

Wow. The grey case looks to me like the corner lifted (did not remain stuck to the glass) and that is why you get that bent and squashed look.
I also have had troubles when printing large flat things in ABS, I found PLA was much easier to get looking great. Like Bot says, cranking up the heat on the bed is supposed to promote adhesion. My last ABS print was at 95 and one corner lifted up.

Your red case looks horrible, not pretty good. I printed I think the same raspberry pi B+ case in PLA and it came out pretty much perfect, I'll can take a picture at home tonight.

I don't know for sure but possibly you do not have a hot enough head. I had one of my heater resistor leads break and the minion I was printing looked really crappy and somewhat similar before the head jammed, as it could not even keep the head warm enough with one resistor.


I just switched back to ABS from PLA this weekend because I need to print a new lid for the coffee grinder and I only have Black in ABS. I am having some stringing troubles and the curling up from the glass too.

oh I should have added that I already use hairspray and those were freshly washed glass and re-sprayed in order to rule out old spray.

I've also used the glue to varying degree. The second grey print was one i did hairpray and then added glue on top to see if that helped any.

I had the same thought on the grey one about it lifting/collapsing so I added a skirt/brim but nada. when I went to measure the grey filament on a 5meter run the width varied tremendously from like 1.67 to 1.78. I re measured further down the line and got the same thing so i'm relatively convinced that the grey filament was not helping any.

I re-printed the same exact gcode with red filament and got a better print off the bat.

I should increase the bed temp then.. I'll try 95-100 i guess. Also you're saying i can go above 228 for ABS hot end? The temperature seems to be what it states. So my guess is both resistors are working.

Try 110 on the bed, 235 for the head.

228 for ABS seems like it should be good enough. But try hotter, like bot suggests, 235.

The bottom half of your raspberry pi case looks pretty good, the top half looks horrible. Something serious changed between the two.
If it was hot enough, maybe the extruder stepper was not working right, I don't know what could have been going on.

A plugged nozzle? That doesn't seem like it would fail that way.

The grey case - I would be printing with a 7 loop skirt and, once the skirt was printed and the printer had moved to filling the guts of the first layer, go around the outside of the skirt with a brush loaded with ABS juice to really glue it down. Second, setting a ginormous bed temperature only increases the temp delta from the bottom to the top and it's that delta that causes the forces that push the curl. So whilst a high bed temp promotes adhesion, it also promotes corner curl. I find 60-70ºC is optimal for this. Third, in "advanced" there's a first layer multiplier setting which I'd crank up to 130% to really mash that plastic into the bed.


Next: all of it looks underextruded. Have you measured (micrometer is best) the filament at a few places and got that diameter loaded in? Have you done a thin wall calibration cube and measured the wall thickness against the predicted wall thickness, then gone back to set the extrusion multiplier accordingly? Have you calibrated your extrusion rate in the EEPROM (disconnect hot end, get the filament flush with the end of the bowden tube, spit out 100mm and measure that '100mm', adjust eeprom to fix)?

Temperature - do you know the nozzle is at 228º when it says it is? Have you measured with a thermocouple? $20 from Amazon, fleaBay etc and well worth it if you don't have one. Even if it is good, 228º seems to be about the right temperature to get it to come out of the nozzle, but seems a little cool for a good print. I print ABS at 250º or 260º via an E3D and note that, the higher you go, the better the flow and inter-layer adhesion. If all the adjustments are good I'd try winding it up to 235 or 240º and see if that squirts a little happier. If it's still going nasty after all of this, try slowing down the print.

Sadly, you're going to have to do a bit of hunting for answers here. Find a small test piece - the pyramid, thin wall cube or torture test. Something that's easy and QUICK to print but will hilight deficiencies. Then one thing at a time, label each piece as you go with what you changed, until you find the combination that works.

Good luck!

You can always turn the bed temp down after the first few layers...

Hi guys,
Sorry for delay. I didn't get to play with printer until today again due to hospitalization and work to catch up ...

I tried many of the things suggested. Increased the temperatures of the prints, re-calibrated at-nausea and changed the horizontal radiu to make sure. Everything just catches the paper even in the middle. (Hell i'd say it's better xyz calibrated then before)..

I'm deeply frustrated though. now i'm getting swiss cheese prints. it's like I took 20 steps back. Not a good way to end the year .

Please keep the feedback coming. How can I take steps back on the right path and atleast get the swiss cheese to stop...

Other then temperature i'm still pretty much using stock setting. I added 7 loop skirt that's it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tw5e0oqsagn70 ... 6.mov?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pwydeksf3dvfo ... 9.jpg?dl=0

I'll send one of the finished print after.

and now more mystery at the end of the print continues....

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qmhr2z4a8l1v7 ... 8.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rv2bszsgbq68a ... 0.jpg?dl=0

it's interesting how the last top square.. looked nice and smooth for the most part... night and day compared to the rest.. why ?

Is the roll of filament easy to unroll from its hanger. I had a problem with filament starvation when the roll could not rotate easily, and the extruded could not supply filament to the hot end as needed. The hobbed gear would slip and eventually became clogged with plastic and I have to clean the teeth with a pick.

Hi,
Yes it's rolls fine. That and I cleaned the ez extruder completely (took it apart and cleaned the gears) before starting the test.

More pictures. It's almost like it's pulsing on it's print.. Maybe it's cheap plastic ? I don't hear popping for air pockets and measuring it seems like its' pretty uniform unlike the grey crap I was using before..

I also made a batch of ABS juice. I've been having the problem of sticking to the plate also but juice seems to have fixed. It's weird that the hairspray/glue wasn't sufficient.

oops forgot pics:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/roy8nfksmhbdv ... 2.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x8769w5q6sf71 ... 6.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/robd430n402s2 ... 6.jpg?dl=0

Check out this link. I had extrusion problems and found this.



http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=6373

Is it possible to post a little longer video. The nozzle movement in the first video seems to be behaving oddly but it is too short to tell. You could also post the .stl file you are using with the slicer settings.

Have you tried different models?

Have you ever had a good print?

Hi,
Thanks for the reply.. wondering if the nozzle might be clogged. it feels like less i plastic coming out.. Having said that here is some more info as requested:

Longer video of the swiss cheese print. Quite flimsy but it seems to be aiming for that pattern..

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9bj5xdb7gdbus ... 8.mov?dl=0

stl:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r85yusler0xya ... s.stl?dl=0
gcode for 5mm calibration cube:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/iv1hdl6yqdtyw ... gcode?dl=0

yes it's printed before. the top sometimes is warped but definitely much better then this..

slicr settings here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ma29j6sesmon ... NsYKa?dl=0

Thanks for the help. this is just really weird and hunting on the forums and googling hasn't yielded much for this problem.. Trying to find a good way to take the hot end apart and maybe clean out the nozzle.. is there a best procedure for that ?

Ok,
So before I started this debugging I cleaned the hob gear. There was quite a bit of red filament there. Also even when holding down the thumb pressure thing on the hob nob and releasing pressure pulling out the red filament was really hard.. almost like it was stuck..

Having said that i just decided to check the ez extruder again.. and low and behold it's even worse
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/w8ifn2kgxg8r ... aVlZ0G1lMa

same problems pulling the filament out to clean the thing..

So i'm left with some thoughts (no idea how to execute though)..
Ez extruder is stuck or the pressure from the nob is too high and grinding? Also if it's nozzle is clogged. the nob is trying to turn and grinding the plastic instead of pushing it.. It's obvious that the plastic has tons of teeth marks in it.

Also this explains the weird pattern. Where the teeth ground the plastic (unevenly) then the extruder would push out everything assuming 1.70 filament.. which it didn't have always thus the gaps and swiss cheese...

Now how the h..lkjljl do i fix this... First figure out how to remove the ez extruder.

also no idea how to clean the hot end and make sure nothing inside is clogging...

help help help please !!!

I would say you have clogged nozzle. All the debris on the hobbed gear is evidence. You can unscrew the nozzle with a 3/8 wrench and inspect it. It's pretty straight forward. GENTLY hold the exterior of the hotend with a pair of pliers and unscrew the nozzle. |Be careful not to damage the resistors or dislodge the thermister. You should be able to see everything pretty clearly once you have removed the nozzle.

You are definitely under-extruding. If you don't already have them, head off to eBay or your local electronic hobbiest shop and grab a pin vice, drill bit(s) for your size nozzle and a multimeter with a thermocouple. Clean out the nozzle and measure the actual temperature vs the thermistor reading, you may be surprised at how off the thermistor is.

Also worth opening up the door on the RAMBo (does the V2 still have a door over the electronics?) and getting some kind of fan going over the board if there isn't one already. I had similar problems caused by the driver chip for the extruder servo overheating and shutting down then picking up after it cooled and kicking on. Really weird shitty prints until I sorted that out.