Shdwdrgn
A person with way too many hobbies, but I still continue to learn new things.
I still don’t know why anyone USES linkedin. It was a shit company built by hacking Windows and sending out emails in other people’s names to try to build their user base. The fact that Microsoft actually bought the company that hacked their operating system just shows how little moral value is present in any of this.
Sure you will… you just need to become a white male with middle to high income, cisgender, zero moral values, no ability to think for yourself and will happily follow an idiot who has no plans for improving things but lots of plans to destroy the country, and it doesn’t hurt if you’re willing to bow down and kiss the ring.
Of course none of that will save you if there’s another pandemic or natural disaster since Trump wants to eliminate most of the agencies that provide life-saving information to the public. Also remember that if you live in a blue or purple state then you will be ineligible to receive disaster relief because Trump doesn’t like anyone living in an area that didn’t 100% vote for him. And let’s not forget there are already plans being laid to deport anyone who doesn’t look like a stereotypical American. If you’re female and of child-bearing age, welcome to the 1700s where you can expect to die from any minimal complications. And it pretty much looks like Ukraine and Palestine will no longer exist as independent countries, if they’re not just completely wiped out. Yeah things look pretty bleak.
I’ve got another ten years or so before I consider retiring, but I’m close enough that this kind of stuff has been on my mind lately. Retirement itself is easy – just don’t ever get sick, have any accidents, or reach the age where the insurance companies decide it’s cheaper to pay your family for a wrongful-death suit than to pay for your medical costs. The bastards will choose to murder you every time.
I’ve seen the opposite being true… A loved one dies after a lifetime together and the other person no longer has the will to keep going. I think you can keep going as long as you have the desire and your body doesn’t give out on you (and your insurance company doesn’t deny you a life-saving procedure because they think you’re too old and need to die).
Sorry, just because you’re not capable enough to work with something that wasn’t completely fine-tuned for you at the factory doesn’t mean many of the rest of us have any problems with these machines. I do manual bed leveling and I can walk away from my printer for a year, turn it on, and pop out as good of print as the previous time it was used. How well does your “real” printer work after a year of neglect and with all the fancy gizmos turned off?
Hmm I’m out of ideas then, sorry. Still wouldn’t hurt to do a single-layer test print (there are various models that put squares all around the bed) just to see how that’s looking. If the issue had been confined to one side or one corner it might have been a mechanical issue, but random areas makes it a lot harder to figure out.
If I remember right, jerk settings should be rather small, like single-digits, but I think calibrating your e-steps will go a lot further for cleaning up the prints.
One other step (and of course I cannot remember what this is called) is related to calibrating the filament ‘pressure’ along each path. It takes a bit of work to set up but the goal is to create a profile so you get a perfectly consistent amount of filament extruded through the entire length of a path, which compensates for excess amounts at the beginning and end of each path, or too little extrusion through the middle. You might even have to compile your own firmware to enable it if there’s not an option in Marlin to turn it on from the software (I was compiling my own anyway for a DIY direct-drive extruder), but it really does make a difference and it’s a set-and-forget thing that you only really need to do once.
Creality bases are notoriously NOT flat although I’ve heard their quality has improved over the years. I have one of the 1st-gen Ender 3 Pro machines with a terrible dip in the aluminum base. One nice thing about a thicker bed material is that you can use discs of aluminum foil the shim the base. I started with a glass bed and 13 layers of foil to get the glass reasonably flat. I have since moved to 3mm G10 with a PEI sticker which is working pretty well (in case you want to try PEI again). I found some scrap G10 material on ebay and chopped it with a table saw, sanded all the edges, then got a PEI sheet that was 10mm wider than my bed to allow for some slop. Putting down the stickers is a lot easier if you have someone helping you. Then trim the overhang and you’re ready to go.
Yeah that’s a pretty tight range for the bed leveling, shouldn’t be causing any issues then. OK another possibility here… the failing prints, are they on the left side, right side, one specific corner, or does it tend to move around between prints?
E-steps varies per extruder, not per manufacturer. What they recommend will get you close but there will always be some variance. On my printer Creality recommended a setting of 93 but my measurements put me up around 98, so quite a difference. Are you still using a bowden tube style extruder or did you upgrade to a direct drive? And is your filament spool mounted on top of the printer (if so, what guides have you added for the filament path), or did you move it off to the side?
Erg sorry, jerk is probably what you’re looking for here. It’s been awhile since I did much printing so I keep confusing the terms.
