CubeX Infinite Frustration

[Will Murray]

I have recently take over control of a cubex printer within my company. I have replaced the tips, which were both clogged with ABS. I only use PLA now as ABS has 100% failure rate. After reading on this group that using KISSlicer provides better results, I spent yesterday getting that working. Early signs appeared very promising and the print looked much better. Unfortunately, I walked into work today and found a complete mess of a print. I have attached a picture. Can someone knowledgeable PLEASE HELP me get this printer to go through a complete print without massive failure!? 

[Peter Gregory]

It looks like one of your robots decided to take a walk from his starting position.
Your robots have a good amount of bottom surface. They will stick well if:

You have the bed very level and the Z-Gap is tight.
Do a Z-Gap. Turn off the machine while it is in the Z-Gap position.
Now you can manually move the head around your print bed and make sure the bed is perfectly level.
You may have some warping in the bed. This will show you where the bad spots are so you can avoid those spots or fix them with a mill.

Get a heated bed and use kapton tape.
The robots will be glued in place as long as the bed is hot.
Once the bed cools, they just lift off.
The heated bed is glass and will be very flat compared to the plastic bed.
You won't have a warped bed to deal with.

[Giovanni]

I've found that PLA sticks better if glued directly to sanded bed with 3Dlac or Aquanet hairspray instead of using blue tape.

Looking the skirts of your robots looks like the level and Z-Gap are not the source of the problem because they look all the same and well squashed on the surface, if the glue is good the robot doesn't move.

How much do you set the temperature of the first layer ?

[Will Murray]

Peter and Giovanni, thank you very much for your responses. I have done some investigating and have determined that it is not a problem with the parts sticking. The one robot did fall (I think because of the print tip knocking it over) but the prints are sticking very well to the blue tape. In fact they are quite hard to remove.

I have posted pictures of a very strange problem. Part way through printing, the print shifts. You can see how some of the robots have their heads attached to their shoulders. This print was done overnight, no buddy knocked anything. Additionally, I know this is not a slicer problem because it has happened to me with both KISSlicer and the CubeX slicer. I have attached a picture of a print done with the CubeX slicer in which the print shifted during printing. The shift is obvious as shift resulted in white filament being printed on a black part. The only connection between these errors is that they are multiple model prints.

Does anyone know how to solve this shifting problem with multiple prints on the CubeX?

[Giovanni]

The shifting appends when the head hits an object and the axis motor try to turn while the head cant move, the motor loses steps but the printer didn't know because it doesn't check the real position, so the printer continues printing thinking the head is still in his position while the head is in another position.

If possible try to print with one color only, it saves a lot of time , a lot of filament and you have less problems.

If you print with two colors the head must go to wiper at every layer and purge, the purged filament can stick to the head and hit the object producing the proble you had.

[Peter Gregory]

You may also,want to try the new beta version of KISSlicer that prints multiple parts one at a time.
It will completely print one robot, move out of the way and print the next one.
You would not be able to print as many robots at once, but the quality would be much better.

[Hugues]

Hello all,

I get the same thing in dual color print. I printed a cage with 2 balls inside, one was printed outside...
Setup your jet wipper for the plastic flow directly in the bottom of the case, not on the white moving part. The jet wipper has to be at the right position, take your time and try several times to check if the nozzle is clean after a material change.
I also change the value in ks ptgr code to decrease the quantity, I divide the value per 2. To prevent plastic on the nozzle I add 2 pieces of PVC on the side of the wipper.

But for you is it a Z axis problem ? The robots on differents prints are cut at the same position or it looks like... When you manually move the bed on Z, is it something wrong with the screew ?

[Peter Gregory]

I had wiper problems.  No matter how I set the wiper bar, It would still drag filament into the build sometimes.

So I put together a filament catcher.

It sits in the dump bin and pinches off the trailing filament.

The wiper bar pushes it back when the head enters the dump bin.  When the head travels out of the bin, it catches the trailing filament.

[costant...@hotmail.it]

Il giorno martedì 17 giugno 2014 13:54:36 UTC+2, Will Murray ha scritto:
> I have recently take over control of a cubex printer within my company. I have replaced the tips, which were both clogged with ABS. I only use PLA now as ABS has 100% failure rate. After reading on this group that using KISSlicer provides better results, I spent yesterday getting that working. Early signs appeared very promising and the print looked much better. Unfortunately, I walked into work today and found a complete mess of a print. I have attached a picture. Can someone knowledgeable PLEASE HELP me get this printer to go through a complete print without massive failure!? 

Will I had a similar problem some mounths ago.
I think you are using a space of print too large. Try to put robots closer each other and save some space.
This because, expecially when you are printing with two colors the printable space is smaller of you bed dimensions.
You can cover all the bed dimension only using the first extruder.

[Will Murray]

Thanks to everyone for their responses. Sorry for the massive delay, I was pulled away onto other projects. I hate to drag back up an old thread but as a frequent lurker I know how frustrating it can be to find an unfinished thread. For anyone else that runs across this problem, I made several changes and have not experienced the problem since. 

1) Slowing down the print speed dramatically

2) Only using 1 extruder per print (I would like to eventually overcome this constraint)

3) Leveling the bed and Z-gap VERY WELL. At each corner, I adjusted the level until the tip would just barely allow a piece of paper to slide under it.

I have seen some other comments on this site about how the large mass of the print head can sometimes cause a skipped y-step. I think that this may have been the cause of my trouble. As a result, I think slowing down the printer is probably the main solution to this problem.

[Giovanni]

You have decreased the speeds I've set into the ini files of the Cubeitmod thread ?

[HappyBacon51]

I have used maskingtape instead of glue. It works very well for me. I used the brand Colad.

[Frank Fisk]

I had this problem in X.  The issue was the print would start out great then slide several cm to the right.  I found the stepper gear had broken and turned freely after the stepper heated up.  Epoxy has temporarily gotten me up and printing I'm trying to get the part from Cubify.

The Z-gap and stage leveling are critical.  I found leveling the bed at "0" height position (around 13mm of leveling screw protruding from mount bottom) solved my Z-Gap issues.  I have good repeatability even after the printer has been off.  Go figure. 

I had this extruder issue yesterday. You can heat the extruders to 260 then use a #13 or 14 guitar string to loosen any debris in the nozzle, let it run a minute then repeat a few times.  When clear the melted filament stream should shoot straight out the nozzle, no curling just straight out.

Good luck and remember, measure youre leveling job repeatedly, eyeballing it just wont work.  Use paper or feeler gauge.  Did I say repeatedly?  I meant until you're sick of it.  Walk away and check again later.

[Bob Ash]

Will - thanks for starting this thread it has been very helpful.

You said that you....

1) Slowing down the print speed dramatically

...
What did you slow the print speed to?  I've had similar problems printing multiple objects and would like to try the setting that worked for you.