New RepRapper! I got the bug!!

Hello all

I have been lurking on here for a while and just wanted to say wow what a wealth of information so thankyou

I started building my first 3D printer a few weeks ago and I chose to build the wolfstrap on the RepRap wiki the idea was once I finished it I would use it to print parts for a new printer anyway it started printing a couple of days ago but would never finish a print! after fiddling about with the settings in Slic3r and had completely rebuilt the hot end from scratch and had to re hob the hobbed bolt before finally managing to print something! but I'm still struggling with the filament retraction settings and some of the layers don't seem well bonded to the previous little bit of trial and error and should have it sorted.
I'm Printing with Pla at an extrusion temperature of 190C and a bed temp of 70c for the first 3 layers then I reduce it to 60C Im using a 0.4mm nozzle and 0.3mm layer height. I'm using Slic3r and putting the gcode files onto an SD card to print directly from the printer.

Anyway here is a 10mm test cube I just printed



and here is the printer



Im sure you will be seeing more of me around here

Not a bad looking build there Harry,

I would go with a calibration print like a 20x20x20 hollow cube and get that right.

My hollow cube uses about 115mm filament and takes 7 minutes. I have included the stl file if you want to use it.

Print and check with digital calipers. It will also show you the layers and detail and you can adjust and reprint.

Lots of adjustment and calibration at the start saves a lot of heartache later on. I learned the hard way.

Got in from work and after changing a few more settings I printed the cube it measured x:20.10 y:19.80 z: 20.27 which i didn't think was too bad for a wobbly wooden printer. One thing which was annoying was that the far wall which was printed first each layer was very thin almost as if there wasn't enough filament in the nozzle the third and fourth were pretty good apart from the small amount of lift on one corner

settings I used were
0.25mm layer height
200c extrusion temperature for the first layer then 190c thereafter
70c bed temperature for the first layer then 60c thereafter



first attempt



second attempt a little better



and during the third attempt the thermistor wires came loose at the hot end after fixing it i was having more trouble! the extruder kept getting stuck so i will do more stuff tomorrow there is always something with this machine

Not bad at all! I'd imagine your retraction settings are trying to pull too much too quickly.

I'd recommend setting your retractions to 1mm at 12mm / sec with an acceleration of around 400mm/s and possibly setting your E-jerk to a conservative 1 or even less to get things sorted out.

I wish there was a way of setting the amount of retraction based on the amount of travel, but some day man!

wow thoes retraction setting worked wonderfully!!

here is the cube printed with the new retractions settings although the walls are still a little thin its much better than the other two, will work on it again tomorrow