Kisslicer Refugees,
I recently purchased my first 3D printer - a used BFB 3000 Plus with various modifications and although the initial help I received from the seller was very good, I have reached the inevitable stage my knowledge has run out and I am encountering issues. Please could you help me with the following.
Setup
BFB 3000 Plus, dual extruders.
OEM bed replaced with bespoke aluminium equivalent - 3M 2090 blue masking tape covered.
OEM filament system removed - using '3mm' faberdashery PLA.
Software Sequence:
Modelling in AutoDesk 123D Design (only using this to play with basic shapes and words so far).
Exporting models directly into AutoDesk MeshMixer (or saving first then opening with), correcting print orientation plus for the automatic .stl 'repair'.
Opening and slicing .stl in Kisslicer Pro, assigning extruders to the meshes and amateur level tinkering, then exporting to .bfb format. I have inherited a full set of settings from the printer seller which have got me up and running without much editing so far.
Single extruder prints are working fine and I am now at the point where I am trying to introduce a second colour to a simple model (please see attached photograph). I have not yet attempted to understand or edit the gcode, relying on the software to solve everything. I have two issues that I need help with:
1) Extruder temperature. I am printing PLA at 195 deg C, however, the extruders do not appear to obey the keep warm temperature when they are not printing. The extruders are cooling off due to the fans continually running, ignoring the keep warm temperature. I've tried 120, 175 and 195 deg C keep warm temperatures, all producing the same result. The screen on the BFB shows which extrude is active with an asterisk, this asterisk flicks between extruders but never appears on both at the same time. An extruder temperature only rises when the asterisk is shown by it, It almost seems like power is only being given to one extruder at a time?
The result of this is that even the most simple dual colour prints are very slow due to the repetitive waiting for the extruders to heat up. Unconcerned with power usage, I would like to keep the inactive extruder as hot as possible without dribbling to minimise print time.
2) Extruder offset. The extrduers initially had an offset of 0mm in x and y within Kisslicer. My first attempt at a dual colour print came out as shown in the attached photograph, with a mismatch of about 8mm. I put an +8mm offset on extruder 2 (the grey), not realising I needed +8mm on extruder 1 (the green), which meant in practice I actually needed -8mm on extruder 2, as extruder 1 is the reference / permanently no offset.
After correcting the offset, the first layer of the print came out correctly, however, when the second layer of the print started, extruder 2 was then offset from the first layer that it produced (layers are identical). Where am I going wrong here?
Kind regards,
Adam