A person with way too many hobbies, but I still continue to learn new things.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • Hmm I’m out of ideas then, sorry. Still wouldn’t hurt to do a single-layer test print (there are various models that put squares all around the bed) just to see how that’s looking. If the issue had been confined to one side or one corner it might have been a mechanical issue, but random areas makes it a lot harder to figure out.

    If I remember right, jerk settings should be rather small, like single-digits, but I think calibrating your e-steps will go a lot further for cleaning up the prints.

    One other step (and of course I cannot remember what this is called) is related to calibrating the filament ‘pressure’ along each path. It takes a bit of work to set up but the goal is to create a profile so you get a perfectly consistent amount of filament extruded through the entire length of a path, which compensates for excess amounts at the beginning and end of each path, or too little extrusion through the middle. You might even have to compile your own firmware to enable it if there’s not an option in Marlin to turn it on from the software (I was compiling my own anyway for a DIY direct-drive extruder), but it really does make a difference and it’s a set-and-forget thing that you only really need to do once.


  • Creality bases are notoriously NOT flat although I’ve heard their quality has improved over the years. I have one of the 1st-gen Ender 3 Pro machines with a terrible dip in the aluminum base. One nice thing about a thicker bed material is that you can use discs of aluminum foil the shim the base. I started with a glass bed and 13 layers of foil to get the glass reasonably flat. I have since moved to 3mm G10 with a PEI sticker which is working pretty well (in case you want to try PEI again). I found some scrap G10 material on ebay and chopped it with a table saw, sanded all the edges, then got a PEI sheet that was 10mm wider than my bed to allow for some slop. Putting down the stickers is a lot easier if you have someone helping you. Then trim the overhang and you’re ready to go.


  • Yeah that’s a pretty tight range for the bed leveling, shouldn’t be causing any issues then. OK another possibility here… the failing prints, are they on the left side, right side, one specific corner, or does it tend to move around between prints?

    E-steps varies per extruder, not per manufacturer. What they recommend will get you close but there will always be some variance. On my printer Creality recommended a setting of 93 but my measurements put me up around 98, so quite a difference. Are you still using a bowden tube style extruder or did you upgrade to a direct drive? And is your filament spool mounted on top of the printer (if so, what guides have you added for the filament path), or did you move it off to the side?

    Erg sorry, jerk is probably what you’re looking for here. It’s been awhile since I did much printing so I keep confusing the terms.


  • Belt tension should be tight enough that you can strum it and hear a tone. It’s possible to tighten a belt TOO much, which causes extra stress on the motors. This would result in the motors being physically very hot. However if these were both printed at the same time, that wouldn’t be the issue here.

    I wonder, how level is your bed? Yes yes, you have a bltouch and all that, but you still need to manually get your bed relatively level. Were these two prints next to each other or on opposite sides of the bed? How did the other prints in the same batch compare (like was there an obvious pattern of failure from one side to the other)? The bad print looks to me like the nozzle is too close, so it might be interesting to see what your first layer looks like in a test across the bed.

    Even in the good print there’s some blobbing at the end of each path and the main surface should be the same height as the walls around the cutouts. Did you calibrate your E-steps? It kinda looks like you’re pushing out a little too much filament. depending on your slicer options, you may also check acceleration to slow down the head at the end of each path, which can help give the whole path a more uniform output.

    One other consideration, although not as likely… Warm up the bed and check to see if all areas feel like they’re about the same temperature. If part of the heating element went bad then maybe you’re over-heating one part to compensate for a lack of heat on the rest of the bed. I only mention this because the bad print looks like it has a slant to it, but that could be an illusion of the photo.




  • I’ll have to check it out, thanks for the link! [Edit] oh it’s a book, not an online article.

    Yeah this article is really long, and a lot of it is over my head (especially the math), but they have brought up several interesting points and provided a much easier-to-understand model of the holographic universe. I mentioned this theory in another post here a few months ago and was basically shut down with claims that this wasn’t even possible and the theory had been long-discounted, and yet here we are with modern work still plugging away at the concept. It makes me appreciate just how much hell all scientists go through when they posit theories that contradict other people’s personal beliefs.















  • I think I missed something in your description, but what are you running on your local server? I think most people set up postfix to relay the emails over to gmail or whoever, and there are options in postfix for backwards compatibility with Outlook or even Microsoft Mail so your wife could use whatever client she wants. If you don’t have a local mail server set up then this is probably what you want to do. This method allow a local or remote connection from any client so you could run K9 on your phone instead of a VPN.

    For opening such a setup to the internet (and allowing access from anywhere), make sure you have strong passwords on your accounts, require SASL authentication, and set up fail2ban to block repeated attempts to hack your mailboxes. Don’t run anything else on the same server (or use virtual machines or strong containers) to reduce the chance of your mail server getting compromised other ways, and you should be good to go.