Tag: 3D Printing

Hello all!

Lately, I’ve been working with my 3D Printer and I want to talk about some of the things I’ve been doing to get better prints from it.  In my previous post, I forgot to say what 3D Printer I actually have and if I’ve made any modifications to it.  I currently have the Monoprice Maker Select V2 printer.  I only have a singular mod on my printer, and that is a custom filament holder, so there is little to no effect on print quality by this mod.

My venture with trying to fine-tune my printer began when I purchased some new filament, specifically the Hatchbox Blue PLA.  This filament was a great choice because it is a very high-quality filament despite being only around $20 USD.  Before purchasing this I had been printing with the Monoprice Transparent PLA, but that filament had several issues where layers would poorly adhere to each other and it wouldn’t attach to the bed properly.  I’m unsure of why but the new filament has completely fixed this, my layers are now flawless except for some wobble from the printer moving fast.  I also haven’t had to use blue tape or glue on my bed at all since using this new filament.

After getting the new filament I felt a surge of adventure to experiment more with my slicer settings and try to make my prints even better.  For those who may not know, a slicer is a software that takes a file containing a 3D Object and slices it into layers of certain thickness and outputs this as a G-Code file.  This G-Code file is then loaded on the printer and controls what all of the axes and motors on the printer do.

Onto what I changed and experimented with.  The slicer I use is Cura and it’s made by Ultimaker, it’s a free slicer and in my experience works very well.  This is by no means meant to be a post about how to tune your printer, or how to use a slicer, this is just my experience that I find interesting and hope you do too.  I began my experimentation with changing my printing speeds.  While attempting to do complex prints I would get lots of artifacts and ghosting.  I realized that, if the printer is doing a complex print with many small parts, it’s going to shake a lot because I don’t have it braced and its frame is made out of sheet metal.  So in order to fix this, I turned the print speeds down from 60 mm/s to 35 mm/s, a drastic decrease but it worked very well.

The next major change I made with my slicer settings was to find the best flow rate for my extruder.  The flow rate is the amount of filament that the printer pushes out while printing a layer.  I found through some testing that my printer tends to underextrude filament, meaning it needs to push more.  I found that a good setting for my flow rate is around 110%-115%, but this depends on the print.

The final 2 major changes I made were with my temperature and my wall count.  I changed my printing temperature down to C from my previous C after I notice that the extruder was melting the filament below it over again and ruining prints.  So the Hatchbox Filament is definitely more susceptible to heat than the Monoprice Filament.  The final change I made was my wall count.  The wall count is quite literally the number of walls the printer makes, and with my 0.4 mm nozzle size I was originally using a wall count of 2 for a thickness of 0.8 mm, but this turned out to be extremely fragile in some cases so I bumped it up to 3 walls (Often referred to as perimeters) meaning I have a thickness of 1.2 mm.  This made my prints very durable compared to before and even made complex prints turn out better.

Overall these changes really upped my print quality, and I’m very happy that I can print complex models now.  The testing took a lot of trial and effort but really paid off in the end.  Learning about all of the different G-Code specifics was also a great experience.  And lastly I’ll leave you with the final fruit of my efforts:

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day!
~ Corbin

Hello all!

So in May this year, I received a Monoprice MP Select 3D Printer. So far it has been an interesting experience, and I’d like to take this post to reflect upon what I’ve learned and struggled with. I’d also like to note that my experiences and solutions are my own and that if you want to try them, follow them at your own risk.

So over the past few months, I’ve run into only a few issues, but they have been very repetitive and hard to fix. The worst of these so far include print bed adhesion, nozzle jamming, and severe retraction problems.

Retraction

By far retraction has been the most challenging problem I’ve faced with my printer. Retraction is when your printer will pull back filament inside the extruder slightly to retrieve pressure from the print head. This help reduce stringing in prints wh en the printer is making non-print moves. My issue arises from the stepper motor that drives the filament; I don’t quite know what is wrong with the motor yet (I’m waiting to get a new one before I disassemble the old one to diagnose it) but I know that it makes an uncomfortable whining noise and doesn’t push or pull the filament enough. This results in prints that have missing sections, very pool infill, separated layers, and many other issues. The only way I’ve found to fix this that actually works is to just turn off retraction when slicing my prints, and use a razor blade to cut off the strings and sand it down later. Hopefully, in the future, I can update and diagnose this feature

Nozzle Jamming

Another issue I have encountered is nozzle jamming, and this was far easier to fix than my last issue. So, my method to fix this issue was to turn up the temperature of my extruder by 10 degrees Celsius. Another option is to drill out the nozzle, my printer came with a small drill bit to clear the opening, but I didn’t want to use this for fear of damaging the printer. And another method is to attach a cleaning piece to your filament as it runs to the extruder, but this only works if your problem is debris jamming the nozzle.

Bed Adhesion

And finally, the easiest to fix issue I’ve had is bed adhesion. Now albeit my solution doesn’t replace the actual BuildTak, but it does fix the issue, and maybe a little too well. The solution to this that I chose was to put rough blue painters tape over my BuildTak to provide a better surface, and then use a glue stick to coat the tape and provide very good adhesion to the print surface. Overall I think that doing this has been the best solution for me rather than modding the printer and adding a removable build surface.

These have just been the issues that I have faced so far. I definitely think that 3D Printing is something more people should get involved in, as this technology is amazing and it has been an absolute blast printing out everything from D&D Miniatures to trumpet mouthpieces or part.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day!
~ Corbin