INCREDIBLY frustrated  

RE:

I always start with the Prusament profiles, make test prints and adjust them to my needs. After every test I SAVE the Profile and name it after the filament I used. You can access all profiles you have saved later on! You can access unsaved profiles if you are able to open a .3mf-file where you used this profile because it is automatically saved within the .3mf-file and you can save them into printables using the computer disk symbol next to the name in the settings.

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

Thank you for the info, I will try that. However, can someone point me in the direction of what a good test print file would be to be able to do the tests with that will give me a clear answer if I got the settings right or not before I save a bunch and get lost on what worked and what didn't? Also is there anything you can refer me to where I can be able to look at the bad prints and be able to analyze them to tell WHAT went wrong so I can make appropriate changes? (ie, too hot, too cold, whatever other parameters I can change) Thanks again for the help and have a great day!

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

Posted by: @kyle-kerby

Thank you for the info, I will try that. However, can someone point me in the direction of what a good test print file would be to be able to do the tests with that will give me a clear answer if I got the settings right or not before I save a bunch and get lost on what worked and what didn't? Also is there anything you can refer me to where I can be able to look at the bad prints and be able to analyze them to tell WHAT went wrong so I can make appropriate changes? (ie, too hot, too cold, whatever other parameters I can change) Thanks again for the help and have a great day!

To be clearer about my question I guess, I have a laser printer that has a built in program that allows me to put in baseline parameters and then have it run a test cut to see what's going to work, which is essentially a grid with increasing speed on 1 axis, and increasing power on the other so that you can see what's going to be best (see photo). Is there anything like that for 3d printing? Because I think that would help tremendously. 

RE:

I always start with the benchy boat. You can find it in the prusaslicer gallery when adding a new object or referred in the collections of prusa research on printables.

it can tell you much about your settings. Benchy homepage

This is the only test I do but I know my printer is in a good condition and well tuned.

There are tons of other tests out there. Some for the printer and some for the filament. To name only a few: xyz calibration, overhang test, bridging test, retraction test, ringing test, esteps calibration, temptower,..

Almost every screw of your printer has its own test. Do you need all of them? Look at your print and you will know.

Perhaps you are looking for a test called "temptower" to dial in your optimal printing temp. This could be the equivalent of the picture you posted.

Beware that too low temps will make the layers not bind together. So make a breaking test with every temp tower!

Don't mess around with too many tests. You bought a prusa, you are a printer now 😉

Just print and look at your prints. Are you satisfied? No? Search for the problem you see and dial this one in. There are tons of tutorials how to dial in a printer and troubleshoot. Especially on the homepage of your printers manufacturer.

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

I'm sorry you got to the point of being incredibly frustrated. I don't know what your financial situation is, and I don't know how you value your time, but my suggestion is buy some Prusament from Prusa and see if you are satisfied with the print quality using their default slicer settings. I hardly ever need to deviate from the default settings for Prusament.

To save the cost of buying filament from Prusa, I recently bought three spools of Printed Solid Jessie PETG filament. They were less than 1/2 the price of buying, and shipping from Prusa. Printed Solid is owned by Prusa, and there are profiles in PrusaSlicer. It seemed like a safe bet.

Turns out that they didn't print as well as Prusament. The first thing I noticed was that they melted at a lower temperature so I had oozing to deal with during bed leveling. The print quality is acceptable for iterative test models, but not for many final prints.

Instead of spending who knows how much time trying to get better quality out of the Jessie filament I ended up ordering more Prusament.

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

Thanks for the reply, and you're probably right. I don't mind spending the extra $10 or so per spool, but the international shipping is a gut punch. I almost pulled the trigger last night on some Prusament but 2 spools shipped was almost $80. If you're telling me that it will for sure print awesomely (that's probably not a word) with the premade filament profile, I'll probably do it. I just waste so much time and filament on a daily basis trying to make this thing work that if it happens with $40/spool filament I'm just going to snap haha! I just wish they had US distribution so that I could verify it's going to work before spending that cash. Ahh the joys of learning new stuff...

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

I feel the same way about the shipping. I bought four spools and some nozzles to blunt the blow.

I have no experience with he Mini+. I had an MK3S, and now I have an MK4. Will the Prusament print perfectly? Of course I can't say. Not to have you waste any more of your time, but did you at least try to print w/o IS?

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

I have not. Should I? It's SO slow without IS and I didn't think it would matter. As I understand it, the issue with IS is that the hotend can't keep up sometimes yeah? I have upgraded my hotend and extruder with the Slice Engineering upgrade and have never seen it struggle to maintain temp even with IS on. Is there another reason not to use IS that I'm not aware of?

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

At times I've had to print slower to get the quality I wanted. Turning off IS is just another way of slowing the printer down. It's not a final solution, but if you are waiting for some new filament it might be interesting to see the results.

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

Interesting. Okay I'll try that and see what it does. Thanks for the tip!

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

Okay so I made some changes, disabled IS, and found a profile for my Hatchbox PLA and the print came out GREAT! Then I tried my Overture PETG for the same print, and had a problem but was MUCH closer than I've been before, so I'm getting (cautiously) optimistic!

So I ran the "generic PETG" profile for it and had poor print quality on the bow. So I tried to figure it out and in so doing, I made fan run at max after 5 layers, fan on always, and changed the infill to rectilinear, dropped bed temp by 5 degrees, and none of them changed what was happening. The rest of the print came out great so I don't think print speed or temp is a factor, but I'm lost where to go from here. Any thoughts? See attached photos for details. 

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

Try reducing the hotend temperature by 10 degrees.

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

Okay I tried that and had the same issue with separation on the sides as well. Dropped another 10 degrees and it got worse. Added 10 degrees from baseline and it was horrible. So I THINK the temp I was at is correct being that everything looked good except that bow area. So what other parameters could I work with to dial that issue in?

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

It will not hurt to dry your filament also, i had issues with new spools of PETG until i started drying. mini+ seems to devour any filament i have used so far. but it must be dry.

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

How was the benchy oriented on the print bed? With the bow pointing to the front or to the back? In the latter case you could try to rotate the model to make the bow point the other way. Could be the cooling of the fan for overhangs is insufficient in this orientation. I arrived at better results for overhangs when I changed to a bidirectional shroud for the parts fan on my MK4. I have not researched for the Mini, but for the MK4 and the MK3xx there are multiple mods on Printables, so I expect there could be similar mods for the Mini.

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

Okay I tried rotating it, and then I got a whole new error (FUN!). It stopped a few layers in, gave this error message, and kept the bed heater on. I reset the machine and tried again and it worked just fine. Then on the next print, it did the same thing. I ran all the self tests and they all passed. What does this mean?

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

Perhaps the bearing of the fan is blocked or the fan has just reached EOL. You could try replacing the fan and see if the problem persists. Having a spare fan around is not a bad idea, perhaps except if you have just ordered some spare fans for your MK4 and the next week Prusa introduces a totally new model making the fans you just received obsolete. 🙂
But fans are consumables and not the most expensive spare parts to keep as spares.

RE: INCREDIBLY frustrated

Okay new issue here. I FINALLY got the Benchy to print properly (almost FLAWLESSLY) but then forgot to plug in my computer and the battery died! When I fired it back up, the app was obviously closed so I have no idea what the last changes I made were that made it work right! I have a bunch of Benchy's on my flash drive but to save myself from having to print them all to figure out which one worked right, is there a way to load the GCODE file from my flashdrive into PrusaSlicer and bring the settings back up to save them? Whenever I try it just opens the GCODE Viewer which just shows me the model and no filament profiles. PLEASE tell me I don't have to start back from scratch! 🤞🤞🤞🤞