Does anyone here use Ultimaker Cura for the slicer? If you use something else for an Ender 3 Pro I would love to hear about it.

 

I frequently use Acetone to recover hardware such as magnets embedded in my hair brained creations. I wish PLA were as soluble as ABS.

 

I'm starting this thread to put various observations I have made over the years about 3D printing.
You cannot lay a horizontal surface unsupported, with the following exceptions :
You can make a vertical Circle just fine . I do this frequently on my prints . As a matter of fact , I find that printing a circle in the X Y axis takes a lot longer than A horizontal circle. I have found the 3D printer works much better in some cases if the circle is in a horizontal mode. This is STL file work much better in the horizontal mode and it cut down on the print time considerably. I make this as a storage method for pill bottles.

I use SketchUp 2016 because it is free and does not require video accelerator. I really need to learn something better but I am pretty decent with SketchUp. Even though it is far from perfect I love my Ender 3 Pro

View attachment 280044​

Hello there Wendy,

Can i ask you, what do you mean by "you cannot lay a horizontal surface without support"?
I am unfamiliar with these printers but would like to learn more about them. This thread has been very informative.

Nonetheless I do have a suggestion that may help because i have experience with wanting to place threaded inserts into various materials including wood and sheet metal. That is what they call "rivet nuts".
These things are great if you have to add a very strong threaded insert into some material or in sheet metal. Normally you would use a special tool that does the work of fixing the insert into a hole drilled into sheet metal. It works like a rivet, but it's got threads inside so once it is fixed to the sheet metal with the tool you then have a nice set of threads to screw a bolt into. They are very strong too being made of carbon steel or stainless steel for example.
That's the main use, to use them with sheet metal. After fixing they grab the sheet metal like a rivet so they don't twist when you put the bolt in and tighten it.
As far as putting them into plastic, like a plastic sheet, the plastic would have to be a type that can give a little and not crack.
Alternately, since the hole for it would be round, that may be easier to make, but you'd still have to either glue or press fit.

One question about the hex nuts. I see you have indents where the hex nuts go, in the shape of a hex i presume. Is it possible to then place the next nut in, then use the printer a second pass to cover over the nut so it becomes embedded into the plastic piece?

 

Think about it for a second. You have an extruder pushing out a thread of molten plastic if you try to do a flat surface without support it would just fall to the ground and not form a wall. Circles and arches gradually build up in the vertical direction as well as in the horizontal and you can make a flat surface using that approach.

Here is the latest release on my 3D notes:

 

Think about it for a second. You have an extruder pushing out a thread of molten plastic if you try to do a flat surface without support it would just fall to the ground and not form a wall. Circles and arches gradually build up in the vertical direction as well as in the horizontal and you can make a flat surface using that approach.

Here is the latest release on my 3D notes:

Hi,

Well i have zero experience with those machines.

Isn't there some kind of base or makeshift base you can use to start the formation?
How can you make a circle in mid air, it has to start somewhere.

Thanks.

 

When needed, the slicer will build a support structure for unsupported surfaces. You then have to cut this out from the finished print. But that can be difficult to impossible.

Most items I make can be turned so that the horizontal surface is on the bed. You just have to design around this. The printer can span a gap of up to about 5mn.

 

I can draw a hole in my print then cap it with plastic is the printer can jump the gap of the hole. The extruder quite literally extrudes a string of plastic because it is liquid when it first comes out it will bond to any plastic it is in contact with. Allowing it to make a larger form. I have to wonder how many of my problems they're caused from the slicer itself. The slicer is a program that translates the dot STL file into layers that are used by the printer as gcode. The slicer is machine specific more or less.

 

Does anyone here use Ultimaker Cura for the slicer? If you use something else for an Ender 3 Pro I would love to hear about it.

I use Cura, PrusaSlicer, BambuStudio, and OrcaSlicer.

Since I am doing most printing on the Bambu Lab X1 Carbon now, the latter two are most common. Each have strengths and weaknesses.

Cura and PrusaSlicer are similar, but Cura’s UI is probably a little friendlier than PrusaSlicer which is a bit more feature-forward. Cura’s latest version has an interesting feature that prints interlocking tabs so otherwise incompatible materials can be used on the same print.

Cura is a good choice in general and you probably won’t see any huge advantages to using something else. If oyu aren’t using the Cura plugins you should certainly consider starting. You an add a lot of functionality and maybe something you need but can’t currently do.

PrusaSlicer is a fork of Slic3r. Prusa is pretty good about maintaining it and adding features. It has a lot of access to settings and is maybe a bit “nerdier" than Cura. There are differences in the UI that might be little gotchas until you pick up in it, but I would encourage you to give it a try to see what it does. Who knows, it might be a better fit for you.

BambuStudio is the open source slicer provided by Bambu Lab for its printers. That might seem to make it irrelevant to you but in fact it ships with an Ender-3 profile! I am not sure why, but they have just a few third party printer profiles included. Bambu Studio is and amalgam of PrusaSlicer and Slic3r but with an entirely different interface.

It would be reasonable to say that its UI is “better”. It’s more user friendly and has different features. While it is based on the other two, it is definitely a distinct application. Some more technical features are omitted, but 99.9% of users wouldn’t even know.

But, if you want to try it (and it’s worth a go) you should probably just use OrcaSlicer (formerly SoftFever) instead. OrcaSlicer is a community fork of Bambu Studio with additional features more advanced users want. It is actively maintained and so as features appear in NBambu Studio they are soon released in OrcaSlicer.

It has many more third party profiles and various enhancements. I use both BS and OS, probably leaning towards OS.

A few more things to consider. Octoprint runs on an RPi or other SBC, or even on some old PC. It will run on an RPi Zero W just fine, or a 3B, etc. It is a little hard to describe with Octoprint does.

It is an intermediary between your slicer and printer. It accepts jobs (and some slicers have plugins to make submitting the jobs easier), then queues them, spools them to the printer via USB serial. It tracks the jobs, can give you live displays of the executing G-Code as a visualization of the printer’s progress (very cool), notify about job completion or failure, and supports a web cam so you can see the actual printer when you are not present.

It has a lot of plugins offering additional functionality as well. It can support multiple printers but I found it very useful for just one Ender-3 V2 Neo. Read about it in the link for more. I would strongly recommend using DietPi to install it. I have started using DietPi for any new RPi installations and it has a specific distribution for OctoPrint. OctoPi is a good alternative to DietPi if you don’t want to use the latter.

Another thing, if you don’t already have it, is CR-Touch bed leveling. CR-Touch is Creality’s version of BL-Touch bed leveling. If uses a probe attached to the toolhead to check 12 spots on the bed then generates a mesh which is used to make a “virtual” print bed where any value sent as G-Code is passed through this mesh and modified by its values.

In this way errors in leveling and warping (almost all Ender-3 beds are slightly warped in some way, this is one reason people like glass beds). If you use Octoprint, there’s a cool plugin that visualizes the mesh which is very helpful for seeing if you do have warping and how sever it is. Replacement beds are only about 25 bucks and sometimes it’s a good investment.

CR-Touch requires a 32-bit mainboard so depending on your printer there is a chance you couldn’t run it. But, if you do have an 8-bit board, it would be a really great upgrade to put in a 32-bit board. So, there’s that.

Last thing, once you have a 32-bit board you can upgrade the printer’s firmware to Klipper. Klipper is a very advanced replacement for the Marlin firmware that ships with the printers. Creality sells an add in device that call Sonic Pad. This is their way to get Klipper running. However you do it, it is a two part thing, first upgrading the firmware on the printer so it can talk to Kilipper, then running Klipper on a more capable computer than the STM on the mainboard. This can be an RPi, or something else.

You can read about Klipper in the link, it is a big upgrade to the G-Code aspects of the printer and a lot of added functionality.

 

Does anyone here use Ultimaker Cura for the slicer? If you use something else for an Ender 3 Pro I would love to hear about it.

I am using Cura 4.13 with a Longer LK5 Pro printer. I tried the latest Cura, but it didn't work at the time I tried it (I'm guessing the Linux build was not working at the time), and I haven't yet tried again.

I haven't really tried to many features as I am still learning and I try to stick to simple designs as much as I can. I did find there is a horizontal expansion setting to compensate for differences between the designed measurements and printed that I need to learn how to use (I have just been shaving .1 or .2 mm here and there in cad to make things fit right).

As Ya'akov mentioned you may want to look into OctoPrint. I have it running on an old laptop. My main reason was because I wanted to put the printer on the other side of the room from my computer. After a few times of moving the SD card between computer and printer it became quite the pain. Although I don't have one to set up I would like to add a camera to see how well it works with detecting print errors. There have been a few times now where I have come back to check on a print that turned into a ball of random strings... luckily it always happened early in the print so far.

 

Oh, sorry—I forget to add it! VoxelPLA.com (also added in the original post)

I ordered your recommendation for PLA, I will give it a try and we shall see. Something that occurred to me after the fact is maybe I can up my feed rate to my print. We shall see.

 

I ordered your recommendation for PLA, I will give it a try and we shall see. Something that occurred to me after the fact is maybe I can up my feed rate to my print. We shall see.

Great. It’s really good stuff. They publish recommended settings for printer/slicer combinations, including Ender printers with Prusa slicer. You can easily translate that to Cura since they aren’t very different but if you need any help with that, let me know.

If you have a decent hot end, you can print a lot faster than the default and with a larger layer height which speeds things up and adds strength (at the cost of more visible layer lines). If your hot end can handle it, you can experiment on the cheap with some inexpensive larger nozzles.

You can also definitely improve performance with a hot end upgrade like this Spider ceramic heater hot end upgrade. It’s got a much longer hot zone so not only can it get hotter, quicker it can produce a lot more molten filament per unit time. It’s a serious performer. Not cheap but very high value.

Spider hot end, currently not installed in a tool head​

A step further and for more cash, of course and unfortunately, is the Sprite direct extruder toolhead. It is a complete toolhead with extruder, hot end, and fans and has multiple advantages. It’s light and fast so less “ringing” at high speeds. It’s got a direct extruder so flexible filament is no problem, even floppy TPU will feed fine. It’s got a top quality heater and hot end and will definitely kick your Pro up to the next level if not two levels higher. It supports the BLTouch/CRTouch bed leveling probe (if you don’t have one installed, there’s an upgrade that will save you a lot of stress!), and includes everything you need to put it on the printer.

Sprite direct extruder tool head on an Ender-3 V2 Neo
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The Sprite uses a single flat cable rather than the messy bundle usually on Ender printers, and it has a nice breakout board at the toolhead for everything to plug into. At first I was concerned about the wire gauge running to the heater (the ribbon cable has very small conductors) but sure enough they doubled up on them for the heater power.

The installation of this toolhead is not just drop in, you have to wire it to your main board and it takes some time, but none of it is particularly hard, you just have to take it at a reasonable pace. The work is worth the payoff in the end.

One more thing to mention, if you don’t have a “silent” main board, seriously considering getting one. Not only does it support an upgrade to Klipper in the future if you choose to do that, it is called “silent” because the stepper drivers don’t make that fun-at-first-but-soon-irritating movie robot noise. It makes being in the room for long prints much more tolerable.

As an aside, if you haven’t printed with TPU, get a real of TPU 95A (flexible but at 95A durometer not a flop-fest). The stuff is amazing, it flexes so you can use it for things like living hinges, grippy surfaces, and things that need to be very impact resistant. PLA is actually quite strong, but it is also very stiff which can be a great advantage when needed but is also why it lacks the toughness of TPU.

Here’s some recommended TPU. It’s affordable (some is a lot more per kilo) and prints well. You should definitely dry it out if you see any stringing or hear snapping and see voids. You can use the heated bed of your printer and a cover made of a filament box to dry the filament effectively. Drying makes a huge difference in print quality, particularly in the case of hydrophilic polymers like TPU, Nylon, ABS, ASA, &c.

 

I love my tool ender 3 pro too much to risk taking it down. So I will leave it as is.

 

Oh, sorry—I forget to add it! VoxelPLA.com (also added in the original post)

On June 16 I ordered the filament, they tell me they will be shipping it tomorrow. <sigh>. It had better work better than the Amazon brand or never again.

Speaking of solving problems I casually get an unwanted curl when I print flat sheets on my 3D printer, I have discovered a solution for this problem. I take the heat gun that I use to shrink tubing and use it on the print and Walla it flattens out. Of course the Sheet metal I use for the workbench helps a lot.

 

On June 16 I ordered the filament, they tell me they will be shipping it tomorrow. <sigh>. It had better work better than the Amazon brand or never again.

Speaking of solving problems I casually get an unwanted curl when I print flat sheets on my 3D printer, I have discovered a solution for this problem. I take the heat gun that I use to shrink tubing and use it on the print and Walla it flattens out. Of course the Sheet metal I use for the workbench helps a lot.

Yes, they are very up front with stocking levels so you can tell if they will ship right away or not. They are very accessible and happily answer questions (not some CSR on a help desk, one of the principals, it seems). Recently they have been waiting on stock or many colors and have been saying so. I am waiting for the clear PLA to be in stock myself. Just keep in mind these guys are really customer oriented and if you have any problems, contact them—they will certainly do what they can to help.

Curling can be a problem to be sure. It’s usually not so much the case with PLA, but ABS and some others want to curl so much it can practically tear the coating off your bed.

A hearty endorsement and recommendation to you for a PEI (Polyetherimide) coated build plate. The powder coated types are pretty affordable, though quality can vary so reviews are very helpful. PEI plates are like a miracle.

PEI has a low surface energy at room temperature, but when you heat it up (fortunately, to a perfect temperature range for FDM filament polymers) the surface energy goes way up. The practical upshot of this is that first layers stick like mad to the heated plate without any prep (save an occasional wipe down with IPA) and stay that way until the print is done.

Then, you just leave it alone to cool. And, once the temperature is about ambient or a little more, the print just isn’t stuck at all any more. It’s just sitting on the plate. It’s really amazing. Most PEI plates have some texture which is also an advantage for top surfaces because if gives them a really nice look. There are finer and coarser textures available, and even some patterns.

A double sided plate with fine on one and coarse on the other is a great option. But whatever, the effectiveness is really (really) amazing. I can’t properly emphasize this enough because it sounds like exaggeration but I promise, it’s not. I use a PEI plate almost exclusively.

 

An odd problem with an Ender 3 pro:

My printer stoped extruding filament you might think this was the extruder head but I could not pull the old filament out of the plastic feed tube it actually broke before it came out so I had to remove the little nut the filament went through (not such an easy task when all you have is one working hand) and found that the plastic tube and filament had been fused together with heat. So I cut the plastic tube back about half of an inch put the nut back in and it worked just fine. Weird. Someone showed me a modification for this extruder where the extruder feed is at the head similar to the other printers I have seen on the floor of Dallas Makerspace, this is not something I could do by myself. Though I would love too have it .

 

An odd problem with an Ender 3 pro:

My printer stoped extruding filament you might think this was the extruder head but I could not pull the old filament out of the plastic feed tube it actually broke before it came out so I had to remove the little nut the filament went through (not such an easy task when all you have is one working hand) and found that the plastic tube and filament had been fused together with heat. So I cut the plastic tube back about half of an inch put the nut back in and it worked just fine. Weird. Someone showed me a modification for this extruder where the extruder feed is at the head similar to the other printers I have seen on the floor of Dallas Makerspace, this is not something I could do by myself. Though I would love too have it .

The Bowden tube is considered a consumable, albeit one that lasts a long time. Friction and heat can take a toll and sometimes you just have to replace it. You can get much better quality PTFE tubing than what comes stock on the Ender, and it can help with reliability and even print quality in some cases.

A direct extruder is a very nice thing. It lets you print faster and use flexible filaments like TPU with much less risk of clogging. Unfortunately, the very inexpensive kits that let you convert an Ender 3’s Bowden extruder to a direct one suffer from some problems.

The biggest is the huge stepper that the stock extruder uses. When you mount that up on the toolhead carriage it adds a lot of weight which is not good for print quality or print speed. You would be much better off buying Creality Sprite direct extruder and hot end kit, like the one in the post above.

​

This is a photo of it on our Ender 3 V2 Neo. It’s really nice, and the ceramic heater on the new hot end is super fast and capable eating you use a larger nozzle and/or print faster. It’s not hard to install, but it can be somewhat involved running the new wiring. You can see the (great) filament feeding right into the extruder with no Bowden tube.

 

Another problem cropped up that was easy to deal with my prints were no longer sticking to the bed like they should. As it happened I figured out that the bed needed leveling.the industry pro has a large thumb wheel screw on all four corners of the printing bed the technique I use is to use one of my personal business cards ( introduction cards actually) adjust the head over each corner of the bed then adjust the thumb wheel screw to where the car just barely slides under the print head and bed I do this to all four corners of the bed, much better!

 

Bed leveling is critical and should be checked every once in a while.

It is important to get the first layer right. I don't know what is the actual thickness of the first layer but you want that first layer to be a bit squished down on the bed. I am guessing that if the printer layer thickness is 0.2mm then you want the first layer to be about 0.1mm.

You can get a good estimate of that first layer thickness by judging from the first extrusion on the side and on the perimeter brim.

I just got a new Ender 3D Pro V2. It appears that this printer has a different bed (PEI - polyetherimide), not sure.
What I have observed is that the job sticks too well to the bed and must be allowed to cool down in order to remove it from the bed. This is a good thing because the prints no longer warp at the edges as they did on my other printer.

I will have to play with the bed leveling and give it some extra space.

 

In my case it had way too much extra space you need to squash the molten plastic into the bed a little bit to get good adhesion.

 

@Ya’akov
would you please include a link to that modification?