Thanks for the response Jules!! I know MG's print looks good because they're MG, BUT I figured they made this gcode file which takes out a lot of the guess work for me. I thinkJules wrote: Have as much experience printing as the folks at MakerGear. The reason their print looks a lot better is, they've been doing it a lot longer. Don't wait to run other prints until you get to that point - it's running the other prints that will get you to that point.
There are some settings that you need to adjust to fix a couple of the issues on your print:
1. Adjust the width of the extruded thread to fix the gap problem between the walls. It looks to me like it had an extruded width that is too high (like 0.5mm), and the total width of the wall is only 1.4mm. So S3D dropped the middle thread. (If it can't fit it in, it drops it.) Change your extruded width to 0.4mm, and the layer height to 0.2mm. You'll probably get a solid wall. (And if you don't - stop the print. You don't have to print the whole thing if something is amiss.)
2. You need to adjust your retraction settings to minimize that line of blobs that appear at the start of the layers. For PLA, that is all that is generally needed. The ones that come on the SD card are probably just a generic setting - they will give you a print, but it's not going to be the best quality for the filament that you are printing now.
3. Learning to adjust the settings in S3D to give you the best result for whatever filament you are printing (and it changes for each spool) is the main thing we do in the beginning. The best way to learn it is to jump in and start printing - but use something small at first, like the calibration squares. The very first thing you should do is calibrate the extrusion width (and height) for that roll of filament, and you do that for every new spool. It will get you familiar with how the machine operates and not take a tremendous amount of time. Save those settings as a profile in S3D. Then use that whenever you print from that spool.
4. Plan on buying more filament. I shot through an entire roll while learning the machine and slicing software. (Might as well order it ahead of time, so you have it when you need it.)
5. Welcome to the loony bin! When you have questions - ask. There are a lot of guys here who are excellent at talking through even the most beginner of beginners.
1. For the two test prints I did, S3D was set to the default M2 settings which are 0.4mm extrude width and 0.2mm layer height. Just to clarify, I'm printing MakerGear's .g file. S3D isn't slicing or anything, I'm just telling M3D to print the .G file from the SD card that MG included with the printer. It was mentioned earlier in this thread that settings are in the gcode file. Does printing this way use the process settings I have set in S3D or is that in the
2. Is adjusting the retraction settings the same as doing the extruder calibration? If not, how do I figure out the proper retraction settings? If the settings coming from the GCODE on the SD card are just generic settings, then I really don't understand how MakerGear got a good sample print from my printer using the GCODE files they included. It doesn't really make sense. I'm printing with the MakerGear branded filament they included with the printer. The same filament they used to make the sample print, other than the color.
3. Extruder calibration is about be done. How is a retraction calibration done? Any other calibrations that should be done every spool or often?
4. I already went overboard in the filament department when I ordered the printer. Didn't realize it at the time of order. But it definitely won't go to waste.
5. Thanks for the welcome and the response! Sorry if my tone sounds off at all in this thread. This is all fun for me but I'm getting frustrated because I just want to print a bunch of stuff!
I tried printing an M2 tool holder from Thingiverse a little while ago. First layer ended up like this...
- IMG_2305.JPG (141.27 KiB) Viewed 10607 times
