Skeinforge Settings

[Deane Woods]

Hi! I'm very new to this. We just finished building a TOM with MK7 and Heated building Platform. We're running RepG 0027.
Please have a look at the attached photo. This is a print of our school logo. The letters in the center and the crest surrounding them should all be "solid". The design was created in Rhino 4 and exprted to an STL file. Both files appear to contain a legit "solid" object, without any voids.

I'm guessing that there are some settings in Skeinforge that need to be "tweeked" to get a good finished solid appearance.
Anyone able to point me in the right direction?
Thanks!

[Whosawhatsis]

Set extra shells to zero in print-o-matic if you're using it, or in the fill plugin within skeinforge if you're not.

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Attachments:

- 2011-11-23_12-17-40_465.jpg

[Deane Woods]

Thanks for the feedback. I gave that a try and re-printed.

Strangely, when I set the shells=0 (3 different settings, all under the "fill" button) my result was worse. The letters are now just outlines with no fill at all. The underlying base (a block about 5cm square and 5mm thick) is now practically solid. There was some honeycomb like fill in the base, but many solid layers. And as the base cooled, it distorted more than the less "solid" model I printed earlier, pulling away from the platform, causing the layers above to be of poor quality as the hot extruder plowed through previously laid layers of ABS.

I'm a bit puzzled.

[Greg Thorstad]

Are you using Print-O-Matic?   If so then  the shell settings in the fill section are overriden by Print-o-matic shell settings. 

The solid layers are actually the surfaces settings in the fill section of skeinforge.

 

Are you printing on the Heated Bed or Automated Build Platform?  If you are using a raft on the heated build platform on Kapton Tape then you should not have a problem with the object lifting.   On the ABP you might.

 

Greg Thorstad, B. Comm.
Thorstad Computer/Thor3d.ca/Canadian Makerbot Distributor
Box 268
Outlook, SK
S0L 2N0
306 867-9596

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[Deane Woods]

So I haven't tried Print-o-matic yet. I printed this part this morning on the Heated Bed, with Kapton tape covering the build platform. I set Skeinforge extra shells to zero (under "fill" -> alt solid, base and sparse layers - all 3 set to zero).
As you can see, the letters are now completely hollow. Cool effect, but not what I was shooting for. The base seems to have too much plastic fill. On the final layer, the extruder was plowing through the fill that had already been laid, leaving deep grooves in the surface.

Is Print O Matic a better way to go? What settings do you suggest?

Thanks,
Deane

[ddurant]

I'd double check your model and make sure everything's manifold..

 

If you're using skeinforge >= 40, you might also want to drop the infill w/t - some of those threads look pretty fat which may be causing problems.

[Greg Thorstad]

Hi Deane

 

Yes I would recommend Print-O-Matic as good tool.  You can quickly control quite a few of the settings without digging into skeinforge.

If it looks like you are getting too much plastic laid down then it may resolve the issue by matching flowrate to feedrate.

 

I would recommend starting with the default settings of

.3 on layer height

30 on feedrate

2.94 on filament diameter

 

Do you have a copy of the stl.   I would like to do some experimenting to see why you are having the issues you are having.

 

If you want to look at your toolpath before you actually print you might want to turn on Skeinlayer in the Analyze section of skeinforge.

It will draw out the exact path the head is going to take for all the layers.

 

 

 

Greg Thorstad, B. Comm.
Thorstad Computer/Thor3d.ca/Canadian Makerbot Distributor
Box 268
Outlook, SK
S0L 2N0
306 867-9596

----- Original Message -----

From: Deane Woods

To: make...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2011 12:03 PM

Subject: Re: [MakerBot] Skeinforge Settings

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[Deane Woods]

Hi!
Sure, here's a copy of my STL file.
I'll do a test print using those print o matic settings and see what we get.
But I'm curious - why is the filament diameter 2.94? I thought the material was 1.75mm dia.

Deane

[Greg Thorstad]

My mistake.  I looked at the settings on a machine with 3.0 filament.  The default for 1.75  is 1.80 I think

 

Greg Thorstad, B. Comm.
Thorstad Computer/Thor3d.ca/Canadian Makerbot Distributor
Box 268
Outlook, SK
S0L 2N0
306 867-9596

----- Original Message -----

From: Deane Woods

To: make...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2011 2:34 PM

Subject: Re: [MakerBot] Skeinforge Settings

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[dec...@shanaghy.com]

Dean,
I have an TOM with MK7 and usually use the print o matic settings.
You should be able to do away with the raft for this object.
I only use a raft for something that has a tiny attachment area to the
base.

Here are my Print o Matic Settings.

Support: None
Raft: No
Infill: For a small model like that 100%
Layer Height: 0.25
# of Shells: 0 for the model
Feedrate: 30

Plastic: ABS
Diameter: 1.75

Nozzle Diameter: 0.4
Drive gear diameter: 10.58

In skeinforge itself the only settings i tweaked are the first layer
flow and feed rates.
Duplicate "Based on Thing o Matic Baseline". Then tweak:

Raft - Object First Layer
First layer feed rate infill multiplier: 0.38
FIrst layer feed rate perimeter multiplier: 0.6
First layer flow rate: 0.6

By slowing down the first layer printing you should get a nice smooth
surface
on the underside of your printed object.
Also the adhesion to the bed should be better when the first layer is
printed slower.

See this:
http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2011/06/21/going-slow/

>  2011-11-24_10-13-48_763.jpg
> 67KViewDownload

[Greg Thorstad]

Hi Deane

 

I did some testing on your drawing via the Skeinlayer viewer and got the same results you did.  I could not come up with a way to change the settings where there inner lettering got filled in.  If think you are fighting with a design limitation/bug in skeinforge.   It has issues with filling in small objects sometimes-  usually the 0 shells trick fixes it but not in this case.  There is another thread that is a very similar issue started on the 15th       Fails to fill in outlines.  That thread suggests that skeinforge 44 solves the problem.  If I get a chance over the weekend I will test that.    The other option is a redesign so that the lettering is higher than the sheild but that is probably not true to how your logo looks and the sheild portion may not stand out as well.

 

By the way I figured out why you got some much more plastic laid down when you went to zero shells.   The angled edges with zero shells mean that most of the layers are being counted as a exposed surface because the shell is so narrow.    Viewing it with skeinlayer made that quite obvious how that worked.  If you are still laying down too much plastic once you test with printomatic, you might want to make sure that your z height is moving properly by doing a test cube because you should not be plowing thru plastic.

 

Greg Thorstad, B. Comm.
Thorstad Computer/Thor3d.ca/Canadian Makerbot Distributor
Box 268
Outlook, SK
S0L 2N0
306 867-9596

----- Original Message -----

From: Deane Woods

To: make...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2011 2:34 PM

Subject: Re: [MakerBot] Skeinforge Settings

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[ddurant]

Your thread width is too high to fill in those areas.

 

Here are two screen grabs of skienlayers view of the top layer. Both are 0.2mm layer height; left is 2.0 w/t; right is 1.5 w/t..

 

[Deane Woods]

You guys ROCK!

Thanks for the help.I've played around with Print-O-Matic today, and have gotten some much better results. Still a lot to learn, but at least I feel like we're making progress. There's definitely something messed up with my model of the logo. I don't think its just the printer settings. Here's a link to a pic of some stuff I got printed this afternoon. The letters on the logo are still hollow, but otherwise the quality is the best I've gotten so far.

https://picasaweb.google.com/115248502220835473582/3DPrinter#5679000844490401842

Have a great weekend!

Deane

[Greg Thorstad]

Sorry about the failed print based on filament size,  It probably turned out better than if I had screwed up the numbers the other way around.

 

You might have some success adjusting your layer height down a little.  I did some more testing and got the letters to fill in better.

 

Greg Thorstad, B. Comm.
Thorstad Computer/Thor3d.ca/Canadian Makerbot Distributor
Box 268
Outlook, SK
S0L 2N0
306 867-9596

----- Original Message -----

From: Deane Woods

To: make...@googlegroups.com

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