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You might also trying printing it with a single perimeter and check the "Vase" option - it does a continual Z lift in that mode, so there's no visible layer change.

g.

geneb wrote:You might also trying printing it with a single perimeter and check the "Vase" option - it does a continual Z lift in that mode, so there's no visible layer change.

g.

Due to the size of the object, I didn't want the walls to be too thin.

Also, with randomizing the starting points, I may have ended up with little dots all over the place. At least with the way it is right now, I can just face the defects away. They're always on the one side. I'm still super pumped about the prints. The marks don't bother me too much. If it really killed me that bad, I could always try and manipulate the gcode to perform the z change right at that 90 degree intersect. It'd be a lot of layers to go through though. Not sure if that's the 'proper' way to solve the issue.

I've had that on prints before, and I'm fairly certain it's related to speed/acceleration.

IME, the "seam" seems to be from the head slowing down on hard corners (>80 degrees) for too long.

Ideally, you want the print speed to be as even as possible on those edges, rather than fast into the corner -> slow on the corner -> fast out of the corner. Try lowering your acceleration to 800-1000 and your jerk to 10, and print at 30-40mm/s. I've done that exact print and when I slowed it down a bit, the seam went away.

cope413 wrote:I've had that on prints before, and I'm fairly certain it's related to speed/acceleration.

I'll have to try that next time. Seems to make sense as I had the speed significantly faster. I still have yet to try out the acceleration settings so mine are all currently at the default 0 in Slic3r. I haven't touched jerk either. All things I hadn't though of. I just kept thinking gcode.

Thanks for the input. Gives me a lot to think about in the future. More settings to experiment with.

After this happened (http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php ... 31&p=32774) I decided that I might as well just toss on my new E3D V5 hot end! Ran into a couple small things I'll mention below.

I used 626Pilots http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:137140 for the mount for the new extruder. It printed like a dream. Everything was perfectly snug and it looks good too.

I found that using this mount (I also made some 44mm aluminum spacers at work instead of printing the supports) the nozzle end comes very close to the bottom of the effector plate, leaving no room for any kind of parts fan.
I really liked the stock squirrel cage fan and the mount it used. It became clear that this is no longer an option. I can see I could shave about 4mm off the aluminum spacers, but that still doesn't give a lot of room below.

For the time being, I ended up installing the hot end and mount onto the bottom of the effector plate and using the 44mm spacers to install my light ring. Doing this I lose over 2 inches of Z height though. Not ideal at all. I could have installed the mounts to the top of the effector, I know, but then I couldn't use the light ring or it would get squished by the PEEK fan mount on the E3D. I have 1 little compact CFL lighting the entire room, so I really want that light ring.
I going to try and design a mount that I could use that stock squirrel cage fan with. I've seen other designs for this hot end, but they seemed rather cumbersome.

I set me new Z0 height, PID tuned the hot end and loaded it up with ABS... Wow. She prints nice.
Until, of course, your part pops off the bed.
I knew I should have done differently, but I was hoping to squeak this little print by without it popping off. It was only 2 minutes away from finishing too. *facepalm* ABS juice next time!

That had to cause a sick feeling in your stomach, we've all been there.

You should mount it on top of the effector so you don't lose any of your Z height.


Like this is how I mounted mine:
Plenty of room for the fan, then you wont lose probably somewhere around 60mm in Z height.

Yeah I've gotta do that. My standoffs are too long and the bottom of the nozzle is only a few mm below the effector. It would be fine, but I need to resize the standoffs to get that peek fan resting right on the effector.

AndThenSome09 wrote:You should mount it on top of the effector so you don't lose any of your Z height.


Like this is how I mounted mine:

Plenty of room for the fan, then you wont lose probably somewhere around 60mm in Z height.

Did you just put the PEEK fan higher up on the fins to get it that low? I've been afraid of cooling near the bottom if I tried that.

Yeah, my cooling fan is up to the top fin. I thought that was where it is supposed to be since the fan shroud has a little indent at the top which I assumed was to hold it in place on the bigger fin, maybe I'm wrong but it has been printing perfectly fine so far with no jams or anything.

AndThenSome09 wrote:Yeah, my cooling fan is up to the top fin. I thought that was where it is supposed to be since the fan shroud has a little indent at the top which I assumed was to hold it in place on the bigger fin, maybe I'm wrong but it has been printing perfectly fine so far with no jams or anything.

Printing standoffs to do that as I type. I'll give it a try putting the fan mount higher up on the fins.

On another note, I thought I'd give the Diablo demon head a try. Turned out awesome.
And just cause - IR picture of the hot end printing. I wanted to make sure the heat break was staying cool and it also let me see the heat across the bed. Just too bad the pictures aren't the greatest quality and the logo and crosshair takes up so much space.

The Diablo demon head turned out GREAT!
Good job!

I just went to the hardware store and grabbed 3 tensioner pins for my spacers, don't remember how long but they were about the length of the printed spacers with pilot626s mount.

The Diablo demons head came out great btw!

I've added a print bed using G10 insulating material. Looked it up and it's Polyetherimide + 10% Glass Fibre. I figured that was close enough to straight up PEI to try out.
I also added some 38watt heating pads to heat up the print bed more quickly. Used 4 pads (self adhesive) to a 1/64" piece of G10 to keep them together.
The heating pad has been running for about 15 minutes and the print bed is up to about 70C... without the heated bed running. With it running, it's made a significant difference in heating time.

I've tried printing PLA on this surface at 70 degrees and the part popped off mid print. I tried at 80 degrees and it was like glue. Let it cool and it popped off nicely. I have a roll of mysterious material that gave me some serious headaches (http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=4625) and I'm going to see if this mystery material will stick to the bed at 90C. The material won't dissolve in acetone or anything and I couldn't get it to stick well at all no matter what I tried (hairspray excluded as I couldn't find Aquanet). I was only able to complete a couple of small prints after multiple attempts with this stuff, but the prints that did complete were the smoothest I'd ever gotten, so I really want to try to make it work. To be continued.

Did you use tape to adhere the PEI or is it just sitting on top?

It's just sitting on top right now. I just wanted to see if anything would stick to it. PLA was excellent, but I couldn't get ABS to stick. I didn't try too hard though. It was pretty late last night.

It's been a while, so I figured I'd update the log:
I use the stock end for printing PLA and the E3D for ABS at the moment. I'll have to get a new .4mm nozzle for the E3D to try and drill out to solve the PLA jamming issues. I thought I was doing well with higher speeds and temps, but it only lasted for a while (about 24hrs worth of print time) then the jammings started happening again.

This was the E3D printing in ABS, but with the PLA effector so close to the hot end, combined with the heat of the bed...
... a warped, mushy effector. It caused many a problem before I realized what had happened.
Luckily I had printed 2 effector plates so I didn't have to put my stock arms back on in order to print a new plate for the magnetic set up. I made a new stock hot end PEEK fan shroud to fit so that I didn't need the support pillars to grab onto. I also modified the blower fan shroud. I was having a hard time thinking of how else I could set up that blower fan, but I liked how the stock set up worked, so I simply modified it a bit to make it work down where I needed it.
I wanted my spool to move more smoothly than the stock arm as every few minutes I would hear a good 'clunk' of it suddenly sliding along. I wanted to make something like a cone with a bearing to fit all the different spool sizes and found this pretty quickly: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:105484. Awesome. Exactly what I wanted. Works great too.
I used a piece of 5/16 ready rod and the filament holders use standard 608 bearings. The rod on the left side could be cut a lot shorter, but it would also be nice if I ever get the cash to do a dual extruder set up. I could just toss a second spool on there. I used nuts and washers to hold the rod onto the stock melamine spool holder pieces. Just sandwiched them as you can see. On the far right, I have the double nuts just to stop the inside spool holder from sliding out. There is about 3/16" of play so it can still move freely.
Just toss on the filament you want, the outside spool holder and the wing-nut and BAM! Slick. It coasts on there like a dream.

Just a picture of the E3D effector setup. It looks like a beast with that giant shroud http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:170317. Works great though. Thanks daftscience!
I also wired 12V to a speaker audio jack that I currently have sitting up by the build plate (I just need to make a small mount for it). I seem to always be plugging in a little light strip or an extra cooling fan or something, so this was easy to give me power where I needed it without making a bunch of solder connections or anything.
I was using this 'G-10' electrical insulating material (technical info http://www.boedeker.com/ilamg_p.htm) and gave up on it and went back to blue tape on the boro glass. After a week or two, I figured I'd try it again and that perhaps the finish on it was too smooth. After scratching the top surface with scotchbrite, I found that the G-10 with the Elmer's purple glue is the cats ass. I can stick both PLA and ABS to it like a dream. I couldn't get ANYTHING to stick straight to the boro glass. The glue wouldn't work, neither would ABS juice when printing ABS. I never did try the hairspray though.

I haven't bothered to tape the G-10 to the glass build plate as I experience very little if any warping. Printing ABS causes the G-10 to warp with it ever so slightly, but for the size of the objects I'm currently printing, it's been fine. I might get a thicker piece of G-10 to try and minimize the warping of larger ABS prints, but for now it's nice to have the ability to pull the whole thing off the glass and just bend it to pop the parts off.

If you have a thin piece of aluminum you could use it on the bottom of the effector to help reflect the heat.
Also check out the section on PEI from Mhackney, great material and you don't need any glue to hold the parts down.
http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=4336

Eaglezsoar wrote:If you have a thin piece of aluminum you could use it on the bottom of the effector to help reflect the heat.
Also check out the section on PEI from Mhackney, great material and you don't need any glue to hold the parts down.
http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=4336

I stripped a hard drive platter to use just for that as suggested by bubbasnow.

I actually don't mind using the glue at all. Until I have a few bucks to spend I'll leave it the way it is.