Advise needed for testing filament with temperature tower  

RE: Advise needed for testing filament with temperature tower

Also, I am trying to learn how to test the temperature of filaments using my mk3s and slicer. Any advice and tips will be much appreciated. 

RE: Advise needed for testing filament with temperature tower

You need to add gcode that will change temps on layer height triggers. I've got notes on printing a temp tower here. 

RE: Advise needed for testing filament with temperature tower

Thanks Bobstro, 

your project notebook is a wealth of knowledge. I will check it out. 

have a good weekend.

RE: Advise needed for testing filament with temperature tower

Hey Bob, 

Not sure if you have try the temperature tower in your guide, what i am encounter is when i download the file the tower is seperated into smaller blocks. Do you have to rebuild the tower? because prusa slicer doesn't let me stack them. If i can't make the tower then i can't do the test no? 

RE: Advise needed for testing filament with temperature tower

After I think about it, i think the better question to ask is how do you build the temperature tower base on those blocks from that thingyverse file.  Is it through simplify 3D? 

The tower file comes in blocks which I have to assemble them myself, but I don't think prusa slicer allows me to build the tower. 

RE: Advise needed for testing filament with temperature tower

Oh I totally missed the prebuilt tower in the folder.   Just disregard my previous message. 

Thanks.

RE: Advise needed for testing filament with temperature tower

That's the tower that I use. In order to build your own custom tower, what I did was I imported the base. Then I added each block that I wanted to use as parts to the base. Then I was able to build up vertically. As I recall (it's been a while), I set all the individual pieces to zero on the x and y to center them all on each other. Then I manually entered in the z coordinate for each block. I also think that after I built the tower up I had to adjust the base a little to get it to fit better to the bottom temperature block.

Here is the tower that I built for nGEN so you can see the coordinates for each piece of the tower. Also look in the Printer properties for the custom layer change g-code that I used to do the temperature changes. I didn't bother to wait for the extruder to change temperature, and as I printed this tower the extruder reached the new temperature in the first or second layer of the new temperature. SmartTemperatureTower_nGEN_210-255

I hope this helps.

But, yeah. That Thingiverse item does have pre-built towers for PLA and PETG.

RE: Advise needed for testing filament with temperature tower

Thank you for sharing your ngen block,   I tried what you suggested in the Prusa SE, I imported all the stl blocks into slicer, and i tried to translate them vertically up, but the slicer doesn't allow me to do so.  However, the file you sent me or the tower i download from Thingiverse I notice the object can be split into many part.   Once I split the object into their individual component then I can translate them in Prusa SE. 

So my workaround to this issue was I downloaded simplify 3D just to built the tower because s3d let me reset the position of all the blocks and then I can vertically translate them up 10 mm at a time to stack them.  

Any suggestions why this is the case?

RE: Advise needed for testing filament with temperature tower

Posted by: hwlin85

Oh I totally missed the prebuilt tower in the folder.   Just disregard my previous message. 

Sorry, I just use the PLA+ and PETG pre-built versions. Can't help with stitching the small bits together.

RE: Advise needed for testing filament with temperature tower

you have to load the first part (base) and the right click on it and add each additional part to allow Z stacking or add all the rest as a group select and add as a multi-part group

RE: Advise needed for testing filament with temperature tower

Thanks all for the helpful tips.  

@david, i will try your sugguestions.

Have a good weekend.

RE: Advise needed for testing filament with temperature tower

Some quality advice here, but I just wanted to note that you don't have to go through a lot of trouble if all you want to do is customize a temperature tower. There are many customizable designs on Thingiverse that will allow you to specify a start and stop range, as well as temp increments. You can use the online customizer, or download the openscan source file and play with it locally.