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3D Printing

3D Printing Information, How-To’s, Tips, Tools, and Guides

ENDER 3 PRO – UNDER EXTRUSION ISSUE [SOLVED]

To fine tune your Ender 3 Pro you will need to measure the amount of filament that is passing through the machine using the following test, to ensure your settings are correct

First you going to want to disconnect your hotend from the extruder, and place these in an area where you can heat them up and they will not damage themselves or anything around them.

Next you’re going to want to go into the settings of your Ender 3 and click on preheat PLA. This will warm up the hot end and allow you to extrude for our test

Measure out 120mm from entry point on extruder to the spool, and mark it on the filament using a notch or a marker (I prefer a slight notch)

Open Octopi
Go to Terminal Tab
Enter in the following code
G1 E100 F100
Press Send
This will extrude 100mm of filament

Now measure the difference of what went in, verses what is left.
I extruded 90.5mm instead of 100mm, and have 29.5mm left before my notch

Back in Octopi
Terminal Tab
Enter in the following code
M503
Press Send

Search for M92 line and verify it says E93
This is what you will edit

To figure out the new value for E93 do the following
100/90.5*93=102.76
E93 should be E102.76

The values above translate to this
100 – Distance that should have been extruded
/ – divided by
90.5 – is the distance that was extruded
* – Multiplied by
93 – This is the E93 value we saw earlier

Back to Octopi Terminal Tab
Enter in the following
M92 E102.76
Press Send

Enter in the following
M500
Press Send

Your new settings are saved, and your extrusion will be accurate. Feel free to repeat the above steps to ensure your settings are correct and the extrusion works as expected

Dimensional Accuracy with PETG on the Ender 3 Pro aka Elephants Foot [SOLVED]

In printing PETG On the ender three pro I found a variety of settings and examples and temperatures all of which are great suggestions and will leave me in the direction that I need to go however none of them are exact to what I need.

So I started with printing the calibration cube and found the X and Y axis are fine, however the Z axis seems to have some extra squish to it meaning that it’s about 0.3 mm too short, and those first few layers seem to bow outwards

Down my settings are as follows

PETG – AmazonBasics PETG Black

Nozzle – 250C

Bed – 80C

Printer – Ender 3 Pro

after a bit of measuring and fine-tuning I found that my bed temperature was too high so the solution was very simple.

Change the bed temperature to 60C and re-print

Problem solved and my next cube had the perfect dimensions

Ended 3 Pro – Massive Layer Shift in Mid Print [SOLVED]

OK so I was in the middle of printing the gauntlet from the predator costume and about halfway through the print a massive layer shift occurred. Continuing on with the print thinking that I can just cut that Layer and reattach it properly another massive layer shift happened.

Layer shift generally happens very early on in the print out is because a base layer essentially had issues. With this being so far and you can tell that’s not the case at all …. so what was causing all this

After re-slicing and re-printing check in the environmental factors and 100 other things the final verdict on it was……

Heat!

This was printed in an enclosure in the ambient temperature was above 90°F. This temperature in the enclosure caused the later shift because one of the Axis motors temporarily overheated and shut down, all while the other two motors kept on printing. When the motor restarted it was in the wrong position causing the later shift.

ENDER 3 PRO – PETG ISSUE – EXTRUDER CLICKS AND PETG WORN DOWN BY EXTRUDER [SOLVED]

So this is she was a tricky one your extruder starts to click but the PETG still prints for a while. If it goes on long enough your PETG will stop printing all together and jam in the nozzle

When you clear the jam by pulling the PETG out and you look at the hot end part of it, it’s melted and thicker than the rest of the filament.


When you look at the filament where it was stuck in the extruder it’s substantially worn down and sometimes it’s completely broken off

Essentially what’s happening here is you are putting too much filament through the extruder and it’s backing up at the hot end. Once it backs up too much it jams the nozzle in your extruder starts clicking and wearing down the filament all the way to the point where the filament will break off

The fix for this is easy slow down the amount of filament you are putting through the extruder and that will solve the issue. PETG cannot print as fast as PLA so you will need to put new settings in for the print speed field in your slicer.

I have found that printing somewhere between 1800 to 2200 mm/min is the sweet spot for my under three pro running Amazon basics PETG black. However this setting will change depending on the manufacturer you use and the color and the density of the filament as well.

IMPORTING A CURE PROFILE

Quick How-To Guide to walk through the steps of importing a .curaprofile file into your Cura Application, and enable it.

Download and install the latest version of Cura. In my case it is 4.6.1

Click Settings

Select Printers

Select Manage Printers

Click Profiles

Click Import

Navigate to your .curaprofile and upload it

Now, create a new Cura project

In the Top Right of your screen click Printer Settings

Click the drop down arrow next to Profile

Select your Profile (the one you just uploaded)

You can now slice using the imported profile

3D PRINTING – HEAT TOWER

To find out the proper temperature to use with a filament, i highly recommend you print a heat tower for each manufacturer, and color. To setup Simplify3d for this you will need to do the following

First download the heat tower
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2223651

Open up the Heat Tower Zip file and we are going to work with the heat tower with bridge for this test

Now open Simplify3D

Import the heat tower in the designated area

Navigate to the Processes area
Edit your Process
Go to the Temperature tab
Navigate to the Temperature Controller List
Select Primary Extruder
In the Per-Layer Temperature Setpoints box you will want to change the following
Layer 1 – Set the temperature to 240
As you add Setpoints, each subsequent layer will be +25 higher and -5 for Temperature. For Example
Layer 1 – Temperature 240
Layer 26 – Temperature 235
Layer 51 – Temperature 230
You will continue on until your last temperature is 190

You can then click OK to save the settings for this print

Slice the print

And send it to your Printer.

Once the print has completed, review which temperature had the best look and feel (no stringing, cleanest lines, etc)

This will now be the temperature you use for this Manufacture with this filament type, and this filament color. Yes each of those 3 things matter. If you change any of them, re-run this test to get the new baseline



ENDER 3 PRO – OVER EXTRUSION ISSUE FIX [SOLVED]

To fine tune your Ender 3 Pro you will need to measure the amount of filament that is passing through the machine using the following test, to ensure your settings are correct

First you going to want to disconnect your hotend from the extruder, and place these in an area where you can heat them up and they will not damage themselves or anything around them.

Next you’re going to want to go into the settings of your Ender 3 and click on preheat PLA. This will warm up the hot end and allow you to extrude for our test

Measure out 120mm from entry point on extruder to the spool, and mark it on the filament using a notch or a marker (I prefer a slight notch)

Open Octopi
Go to Terminal Tab
Enter in the following code
G1 E100 F100
Press Send
This will extrude 100mm of filament

Now measure the difference of what went in, verses what is left.
I extruded 101mm instead of 100mm, and have 19mm left before my notch

Back in Octopi
Terminal Tab
Enter in the following code
M503
Press Send

Search for M92 line and verify it says E93
This is what you will edit

To figure out the new value for E93 do the following
100/101*93=92.08
E93 should be E92.08

The values above translate to this
100 – Distance that should have been extruded
/ – divided by
101 – is the distance that was extruded
* – Multiplied by
93 – This is the E93 value we saw earlier

Back to Octopi Terminal Tab
Enter in the following
M92 E92.08
Press Send

Enter in the following
M500
Press Send

Your new settings are saved, and your extrusion will be accurate. Feel free to repeat the above steps to ensure your settings are correct and the extrusion works as expected

Simplify3D Opens and Immediately Closes [SOLVED]

Simple fix for this issue. Please note that this will remove your FFF files, so make sure you have them backed up prior

Navigate to
C:/Users/%USERNAME%/AppData/Local/Simplify3D/

Delete the folder named:
S3D-Software

Now you can launch Simplify3D and the issue is fixed

ENDER 3 PRO – OCTOPRINT – BED SIZE ISSUE [SOLVED]

When you send a print job to your Ender 3 Pro, using your Octopi, it starts to print, and the hotend does not recognize the correct size for the bed. The hotend is pushed off to the side, begins clicking, and the print is a mess.

Solution:
Make sure your Slicer has the correct bed size set in it
Make sure the OctoPi has the correct printer setup in it
Turn OFF your printer
Turn OFF your OctoPi
Disconnect the USB Cable in your Ender 3, from the OctoPi
Wait 30 seconds
Turn ON the printer
Turn ON the OctoPi
Wait 1 minute
Plug the USB cable back into the Ender 3
Login into your OctoPi
Click connect so the OctoPi works again with the Ender 3
Send the print job that failed before

And now it works!