I've taken the plunge and tried using SF instead of Slic3r. I copied the ABS profile from the SD card that came with my M90 as a start point. Apart from setting a different filament diameter and tweaking start.gcode for correct nozzle and bed temperatures I didn't change anything else. The print was sooooooo slow (guess around 1mm/s nozzle speed) that the extruder hardly turned at all and just prby threedyprinter - Mendel90
I have some apologising to do. @QuackingPlums You were right and I was wrong! I've just checked the effect of changing Default Extrusion Width and Perimeter width in Slic3r. For a .1mm layer height the calculated width is .68mm (which is pretty accurate when printed) . Changing Perimeter Width to 0.5mm reduces the extrusion rate (print speed remains the same obviously) and adjusts the nozzle posiby threedyprinter - Mendel90
Oh, that's made things a lot clearer. Thanks for a great post Chris.by threedyprinter - Mendel90
@QuackingPlums The tooltips imply that these are to set the widths So does the manual which is why I'm not happy I fully understand what's going on. When I've fixed my Z axis* I shall investigate again. Clearly, this is much more complicated than my initial assumptions And mine. It gets worse when you start poking around in Gcode and realise the extruder is driven at different rates for lines ofby threedyprinter - Mendel90
@QuackingPlums ...if I print with a filament width and layer height both set to, say 0.4mm I assume you mean nozzle size rather than filament width. And a nozzle size of .4mm doesn't mean you'll get a .4mm extrudate. Better to think in terms of volumes (where the nozzle size is fairly irrelevant); you extrude Xmm of 3mm filament to get a volume of extrudate. All other things being equal, the volby threedyprinter - Mendel90
@QuackingPlums The equivalent W/T setting in Slic3r is on the Print Settings tab isn't it? That's exactly what I thought. But when I tried Default Extrusion Width & Perimeters I didn't have much joy. Eg: When trying to print a 20mm cube with .5mm walls, setting Default Extrusion Width &/or Perimeters to, say, .5mm made no difference at all to the wall thickness - it just moved the positioby threedyprinter - Mendel90
Hi Dan, W/T in SF, what does this mean Take everything I say about SF with a pinch of salt. I really don't know it at all well but I understand W/T is the ratio of the width (W) of the extruded line to the layer height (aka thickness T). You adjust it such that, for a given layer height, SF knows how much filament to extrude to produce a line of the given width. So for a layer height of .25mm andby threedyprinter - Mendel90
Attached is a pic. of a single wall 20x20x20 cube in PET. It's perfect in everyway except for the vertical striations. They are very slight variations in wall thickness which are not present when printing stretchy, opaque filament but show up clearly with stiffer, transparent stuff like PET. The lines are suspiciously close to 2.5mm* apart, occur in X and Y axes and go away in Y if I pinch theby threedyprinter - Mendel90
Attached is a pic. of that object I just printed on my M90. If it looks a mess on screen it isn't actually; it's just that you can see the infill through the transparent PET* that I used. The threads are very clean. (*PET prints very similarly to PLA) I've also attached the Slic3r settings if you want to try them. If not: I used 100% fan throughout, a nozzle temp 0f 230C and print speed of 70mmby threedyprinter - Mendel90
@nophead ...even suggested his method would leave blobs. ah! I can see cause for frustration there! @olegodo it also seems layer stacking improved That's just what I thought but I can't see why it should make any difference in Z. Maybe it's just a subjective reaction to getting rid of the bumps!by threedyprinter - Mendel90
Yes the author of slic3r always refuses to implement things properly. Harsh, innit tho'. Adding pauses is not the same as slowing down! Especially if there's no retract. Must say though that Slic3r is extremely fast and, having calibrated all my filaments now, I get very good results generally. One thing it can't cope with yet is small areas at the top of a pyramid say. No amount of fan, slowingby threedyprinter - Mendel90
When I first started using Slic3r I found some infills really shook my M90 carriages. I set Printer->General->Advanced->Anti Vibration to 20Hz and promptly forgot about it. Recent experiments with vase mode showed problems with "acne" spots and strange diagonal lines; they're detailed here . I later realised the same thing was occurring with non-vase prints. The solution was to set Antby threedyprinter - Mendel90
Thank you for that thought; I've just tried various cooling options but all to no effect. Looking in the slic3r code GCode.pm it's obvious the culprit is Printer->General->Advanced->Vibration Limit. I had this set non-zero ages ago as some infills were a little violent. It's not required for vases (or most prints I do now) so setting it back to zero removes all the G4 codes completelyby threedyprinter - Slic3r
Slic3r 0.9.10b Using vase mode I sliced a cylinder. It printed OK but had acne; seemingly random little pimples here and there caused by ooze as the printer kept stopping very briefly during the print. The gcode has lots of G4 P49 (dwell for 49 mS) lines. There are other G4 lines with different delays but 49mS is the most common. I can't photograph the cylinder but the attached jpg shows the efby threedyprinter - Slic3r
Just a quick update now that I've been running the Brecoflex belts for a few days. Every print has been spot on. Belts are running straight and true, not a hint of climbing out of the pulleys and no blacking evident on the belts at all. I've noticed one thing; buzzing. At certain speeds there is a metallic "bzzzzt" sound (guess about 15-20Hz, very sawtoothy!). I thought it was just a loose fixiby threedyprinter - Mendel90
At the risk of stealing Chris's expert thunder: If that displacement on the circular part is 2.5mm your belt has slipped a complete tooth. The walls of the other parts look uneven. I had this occur as a precursor to missing a complete tooth. The belt rides progressively higher in the pulley until it slips over. Suggestions: Check out and . Turn off the motors, and move the bed by hand. Checkby threedyprinter - Mendel90
I received and fitted the ends and belts yesterday. (Thanks for superb service!) The difference in belts is surprising; let's face it, they're chalk and cheese! I noticed: Tensioning X was a breeze; just a turn on the tensioner got the belt twanging really nicely. Three clearly audible notes and the belt is nicely tangential to the pulley. (I had to put much more tension on with the old belt, aby threedyprinter - Mendel90
>We posted a couple of X ends and a pair of Brecoflex belts That's great, thanks very much. I'll let you know how I get on.by threedyprinter - Mendel90
The belts are in the post. I marked on them the rough position where trouble starts and the direction of travel at the time. See photo attached.by threedyprinter - Mendel90
>The way I see it is the effective part of the belt that takes the tension is the wires. Sadly, I have to agree with you! >pulleys Were the belt to run against the end flange that would definitely have given problems. I had to scrape out a few bits of swarf sandwiched between the flange and the teeth. Running in the middle though ought to be fine. I can see the milling lines on the teeth bby threedyprinter - Mendel90
>If simply sliding the carriage makes it skip teeth then either there is next to no tension on it or there is something very wrong but I can't think what. Exactly! I spent a long time getting the axes lined up correctly. On the Y I found it quite challenging to position the idler with enough tension, the belt smack in the middle and not have it wandering side to side in use. I did manage it tby threedyprinter - Mendel90
It's impossible for me to see exactly where/when the climb out starts. My X axis is in pieces, on the Y axis the motor gets in the way one side of the pulley and the flange of the pulley obscures the other - I have to use an eye glass to see anything useful so it's a bit difficult. Added to which, I've pulled and twisted the belt around so much today that it's just started behaving itself properby threedyprinter - Mendel90
I wish I could take a photo of it! Imagine looking at the belt in profile. You have the belt at the bottom and the teeth on top. On the good side you see one continuous profile. On the bad side you see the belt at the bottom, then a gap, then the teeth. You can get your nails in the gap a mm or so and wobble the edges of the teeth around a bit. All the teeth are firmly attached to the beltby threedyprinter - Mendel90
>With the power off does the belt ride up when you move the carriage? Yes. All the belt is duff! I've just looked at page 153 in the Brecoflex pdf you mentioned to neptunier and realised that the sealed edge is missing on one side of both X and Y belts. One edge is smooth and connects all the teeth nicely. On the other side there is no smooth edge at all for the whole run of the belt. No toby threedyprinter - Mendel90
Chris, I chipped in with neptunier's X axis problems yesterday saying my X clamps had failed. I've been trying to fix that problem today and in so doing I've discovered there's a related problem with the Y axis. To recap: When I built the machine, both X and Y carriages moved smoothly with no tightspots at all. The belts twanged well, and ran dead centre in their idlers and pulleys. I startby threedyprinter - Mendel90
Coincidentally, this week, I've experienced exactly the same problems with the X clamps failing. 1. Prints exhibited small X errors at first - front motor rod clamp was loose (but did not appear cracked to the naked eye) so motor axis slightly pointing to centre of machine, belt moves down to ride the pulley washer. Obvious belt stretching and tight spot particularly when carriage is in centrby threedyprinter - Mendel90
There you go Chris, that nice Mr. Gove has said that all children should be taught how to use 3D printers. I reckon that means a Mendel90 in every school. You're going to be a rich man!by threedyprinter - Mendel90
I did try SF briefly but it seems development has stopped and the site is down (or was for the last few weeks). Slic3r for me now! - especially as I've just hacked some code to allow me to do different things at different print heights using custom output from Slic3r.by threedyprinter - Mendel90