Title says it all.
I had the prime tower fall over at the tail end of a 20 hour print. I was able to visit the printer every few minutes and clean the mess up for the final hour, but I would have loved to just disable the tower and sacrifice some potential quality over the time suck.
Is this a terrible option to add?
(I made this a question because of the flair requirement).
I'm heading to Sante Fe for a family vacation in a few weeks with my wife (who hates cars) and two kids (3 and 7).
Due to this, we need access to bathrooms, road food, and a place to play (like a park with a gym set) along the way.
Currently, it seems the family can go about 2 hours at a stint before needing to get out of the car for one of these things.
Which route is better for this (through Taos or Raton)?
Which is more scenic?
Are there any "must stop and see/eat" places along either route?
So, I intentionally set up a 15 hour print of PETG-HF knowing I was 10-20 grams short on my spool to test out settings for filament switching on runout since there's been a ton of posts about it not working recently.
Here's how I got it to work:
#The Slicer Setting
I think this is actually the step many miss. Your g-code has to be generated with both spools listed, even though you only use one of these spools in the model.
I put my short spool on location 4 and my new spool on location 3 (arbitrary, but my short spool was already loaded). The model used only location 4, but I added location 3 to the filament panel and listed it at location 3. It was not called out anywhere in the model though.
Note, the filaments must be identical profiles and colors. If they aren't, the U1 will not switch. Even if you have different filament brands and you have custom profiles for them, don't use both! The profiles must match even if the filaments technically aren't identical.
When sliced, I verified that the filament at location 3 had zero grams used.
#The Printer Setting
I don't believe runout detection is 'ON' by default. Go into the printer settings on the U1 front panel, select 'Print Preferences' in the list, and then verify that 'Runout Detection" is on.
Go to the filament profiles and verify that they are identical profiles and colors in the U1. If they are not, the U1 will not switch on runout.
#Know your Filament Termination
This is crucial to success!!! Your filament must pull free from the spool and be straight or else it gets hung up and the printer either throws an air print error if 'Air Print Detection' is turned on, or it just air prints and doesn't throw any error, ruining your print.
I'll say it again: The printer will not detect runout and switch if the filament hangs up and the printer binds.
So, know your termination. For my filament, Inland High Speed PETG+, the termination is the end of the filament is bent and poked into a hole on the spindle. This will not come free on its own.... So for me, I timed the print so runout was when I was available.
Once I could see the termination point, I just went in with my snips and cut the end off and pulled it away. This does mean the filament will eventually unwind from the spool, but by the time this happens, you want it to happen to ensure easy feeding to the hotend.
There are other termination types, including ones that will come free on their own without manipulation by you (eg. The end is just wrapped over by the wound filament and held in place by tension). But in this case, you still need to be cautious about bends and kinks that might get caught up and stop the feed.
#Press Go!
Print your file using your short spool as default.... And it should now work.
#The Result
I anxiously watched on my phone as my 97% complete print switched from toolhead 4 to toolhead 3 and carried on printing.
Happy day and happy printing all!
I've tried this print with a wide variety of settings and haven't been able to sort it out.
The filament is Inland Chameleon PLA (Red). I've watched the print through the camera and I can't tell if the edges are curling up or if the machine is suddenly depositing a blob.
AI seems to think that the printer is layer shifting due to being hung up on a curled edge and skipping a print step.
Any wisdom from the group would be appreciated.
I printed this cave model in PETG and used tree supports with default support material but PLA interface.
When I pulled the model, it didn't look like all the interface was PLA and the roof that was supported was really poorly formed (see image).
I don't know what happened here or how to go about fixing it. These roof structures were very well supported by trees, but it doesn't look like it at all based on the finished roof.
Thoughts on what I can change or should look at in my support or interface settings?
Edit: Support Settings
Type: Tree (auto)
Style: Default (grid/organic)
Threshold Angle: 30
Threshold overlap: 50%
First Density: 90%
First layer expansion: 2 mm
Remove small overhangs: true
Support/raft base: default
Support/radt interface PLA
Avoid interface filament for base: True
Top Z base: 0.2 mm
Bottom Z distance: 0.2 mm
Support wall loops: 0
Base pattern: default
Base pattern spacing: 2.5 mm
Pattern angle: 0
Top interface layers: 2
Bottom interface layers: 2
Interface pattern: default
Top interface spacing: 0.5 mm
Bottom interface spacing: 0.5 mm
Normal support expansion: 0 mm
Support/object xy distance: 0.35 mm
Support/object first layer gap: 0.2 mm
Dont support bridges: false
Tip distance: 0.8 mm
Tree support branch distance: 1 mm
Branch Density: 30%
Tree support branch diameter: 2 mm
Branch diameter angle: 5 deg
Tree branch support angle: 40 deg
Preferred branch angle: 25 deg
Every time I use the auto arrange feature and select "fill plate" I get a never ending cascade of errors.
I've also regularly been able to fill the plate with more of the same model and fix those errors by manually cloning outside the plate and arranging myself.
Why is that? Does the fill feature work for you? If not, how are you doing it to cut down on time?
Thanks!