Christmas Advent 3D Printing 2017 Day #6 Filamentive & Chroma Strand Labs INOVA-1800

December advent calendar - modular Christmas tree

3D Printing advice #Day 6.

For the background and introduction - Day #1 Post click here

Yesterday - Day #5 Post (Christmas Robot) was printed in Polyalchemy Elixir PLA blend colours.

Christmas Advent 2017 Download on Thingiverse here - designed by Tom Van den Bon @geekc0der With some help for each day by the South African Makers team.

The original advent calendar from 2012 is on Thingiverse - designed by from Peter Leppik.

Day #6 is here, and today the gift is designed by Candice Howe -  It's a Christmas Stocking.

After a few problems, Day 6 is finally finished.

Disaster strikes - (twice!)

For Day 6 I also needed to print some new tree sections in another shade of Green. I'm a little behind on doing these so in an attempt to catch up I started printing Days 6 and 7 of the tree in Filamentive Recycled RPLA Apple Green. Unfortunately in my rush I used a partial coil and had not noticed a tangle in the filament, that caused the printing failure (above) around 2 hours into the print. 

Recycled RPLA filament from Filamentive.

Filament coils became tangled causing print failure, escape from spool holder and abundant unwinding (all over the floor).

This is a time sensitive series of projects, we only have one night every day to print, write and post everything. Oh no.

Measure the height of a failed print to enable a restart of printing - explained below.

Do I scrap the print and start again. No, that would be a waste of filament. I'm going to take this failure as an opportunity to show you how to restart a print even after a filament feed failure.

This failure had nothing to do with the filament brand/type. I have printed over 650g of this recycled PLA filament roll, without any problems I can remember. It was a tangle (filament end wrapped under multiple coils) - I should have spotted before loading the filament into the printer, but the next failure was not the same, read below for more info.

I was using Magigoo on the build surface, this is good because even when the bed is now cold, power is off and it's hours later. The parts are still well bonded to the surface. I can re-heat and continue the print - with a little Gcode editing first... (read below on how, and what to do).

First thing is to do is take a measurement of the print height, so you know where to re-start printing from.

Then you need to edit the Gcode file you were using for the model.

First find the Z height position you measured. Do this by searching for the nearest round number to the height you measured. In my case the measurement was 10.86 so I'm searching for G1 Z10.800

Now search for the last time in the file G1 Z10.800 is used before it jumps back to an earlier point. This step is important if you have Z-hop enabled, you may find the jump height rather than the extrusion height.

See below in Green, we have our restart point in the Gcode file.

Almost everything above is going to be removed from the file (delete it, from the top to the green line)

> Lots more Gcode above this point  - it will also be deleted <
G1 X51.543 Y74.216 F7800.000
G1 Z10.800 F7800.000
G1 E0.80000 F2100.00000
M204 S2000
G1 F3600
G1 X55.432 Y70.327 E0.18615
G1 X59.544 Y70.327 E0.13919
G1 X51.543 Y78.328 E0.38300
M204 S1000
G1 F6240
G1 X53.224 Y76.647 E-0.76000
G1 E-0.04000 F2100.00000
G1 Z10.950 F7800.000
G1 X51.543 Y115.337 F7800.000
G1 Z10.800 F7800.000
G1 E0.80000 F2100.00000
M204 S2000
G1 F3600
G1 X52.060 Y114.821 E0.02472
G1 X52.210 Y114.897 E0.00571
G1 X52.698 Y115.085 E0.01767
G1 X53.202 Y115.220 E0.01767
G1 X53.718 Y115.301 E0.01768
G1 X54.239 Y115.329 E0.01767
G1 X54.761 Y115.301 E0.01767
G1 X55.277 Y115.220 E0.01768
G1 X55.781 Y115.085 E0.01767
G1 X55.988 Y115.005 E0.00751
G1 X51.543 Y119.449 E0.21275
M204 S1000
G1 F6240
G1 X53.224 Y117.769 E-0.76000
G1 E-0.04000 F2100.00000

G1 Z10.950 F7800.000

The last thing you need to do to the Gcode file is add a way for the Z axis to be reset back to the correct height (home, without any bed leveling enabled)

So make sure you add a section like this (below in red) to the top of the Gcode - just before the start point in Green above.

M83  ; extruder relative mode
M104 S210 ; set extruder temp
M140 S58 ; set bed temp
M190 S58 ; wait for bed temp
M109 S210 ; wait for extruder temp
G28 W ; home all without mesh bed level

This will ensure you are at the correct print temperature and perform a simple bed probe check on the top corner - hopefully this will out of the way of any partial print on the build plate. If you have a very big, or tall partial print, then this method is not going to work. It is great to save smaller prints or low height failures.

Now save this modified Gcode and print on your machine with the failed print still attached to the print bed. It should continue where it failed...

Restarting from a extrusion failure can save a print, time and material. Do try it.

Great! we are printing again, exactly where it failed. No wasted plastic here...

Bam! Failed again...

Just as I thought it was going well, another failure. Now I'm wondering if there is a material problem... This time the final few solid layers have failed to print. the filament is jammed in the extruder and it's not a feed problem.

Second failure - this time it's a filament tolerance problem causing a jam in the hot-end. see below.

Spool almost finished, just enough material to complete these prints (I hope).

This is the very end of this spool, so I'm going to do the same process again above for the final few solid layers, and hope I have enough material on the roll to complete.

This filament section had a bump of over 2.0mm* and that's just going to block in the stainless steel heat-break of a V6 hot-end.

* In some older style hot-ends I may have been concerned that heat was creeping back up into the thermal break / heatsink causing a softening of filament. This can cause a plug like shown above. But this is just PLA at 195 Degrees C with an E3D V6 hot-end. So I know for sure the thermal capacity and cooling ability is not the problem here. *


After removal of the blockage, you can clearly see the filament has an out of tolerance bulge (measured at 2.08mm diameter - see above) and it's wedged at the stainless steel thermal break point in the hot-end. That's not good.

If you look close you can even see a force line where the extruder drive has tried very hard to push it into the stainless steel nozzle entrance, then when things stopped the extruder gear started munching through the filament and material extrusion stopped.

E3D V6 cross section - also showing the correct Fan mounting for heatsink cooling.

If you have a good/adequate thermal cooling system for your hot-end, then you will not get significant heat past the glass transition point, creeping up the filament, past the thermal break causing filament to deform or jam.

On an all metal hot-end the heatsink should be cool to the touch (all the time) it should never feel warm or hot. If you do have a heatsink that’s warm, then do make sure to check the heatsink cooling fan is connected correctly (to the correct voltage for the fan 12v/24v) and that you are using a minimum 30mm sized fan. Ideally one that came with your original V6 E3D Hot-end. Also make sure it is well mounted and cooling the heatsink fins.

You can see from the above highlighted drawing above (Original drawing by E3D) the design of the thermal stainless steel V6 heat-break has a maximum 2mm diameter clearance.

Remember to clean out all the debris in the extruder drive gear - it will be blocked after a failure like this. It will not work correctly if you leave the teeth blocked.

Cleaned and ready to go again.

This was the very end of an old RPLA filamentive roll I have had for over 12 months. I'm going to chalk this one down to very bad luck, I have not had this problem before with RPLA, so maybe it's a one off. Let's hope so, I don't want to be doing that frequently.

You should always analyse your failures, it's good to know it was not because you did something wrong. When a material is +out of tolerance it causes more trouble than almost anything else.

My trusty Die to check 1.75mm filament is not going to block my hot-ends...

With every new material I buy or new manufacturer I use, I always run around 20m of the filament through my home made die. This is a section of brass with a hole drilled with a 5/64″ bit — to give a metric 1.97mm hole. Experience has shown that this dimension is the very maximum size I can use with an E3D V6 1.75mm hot-end, without causing jamming, skipping or excess nozzle pressure.

Finally done. Not perfect, but good enough, and no wasted material at all.

Good, we need to get back to Day 6 - Christmas Stocking printing.

For today's Gift I have decided that Christmas stockings need to be strong (to keep all the presents safe). I have just the material -

A nice deep Christmas Red Chroma Strand Labs INOVA-1800 Co-Polyester. << I have linked to Lulzbot page as the Chromastrandlabs website is currently being updated.

This material uses Eastman Amphora co-polyester and it's really nice to 3D print with. It is a little tricky to get hold of (Unless you are in the USA, then LulzBot brands and stocks it ) - I would encourage anyone to try it out, it's well worth being in your filament range.

Don't print directly onto a glass surface (any glass type) Co-polyester materials can rip chunks out of a glass build plate. Ideally print onto a PEI surface covered in a thin layer of gluestick or Magigoo.

We got there in the end.

I would have liked to do the highlight detail on the stocking in a white piping, but I don't have any white INOVA-1800 material. INOVA-1800 does not like being bonded to other plastic's in my experience, (I have tried PETG / PET types) so we have a single colour print this time.

Printing advice - (INOVA-1800 Co-polyester)

What settings did you use? - Use a PEI print surface for INOVA-1800, lightly coated with Gluestick or Magigoo. I use 235 Degrees C, but 240/245 is also good and will provide an even better layer bond.

Print speed - Seems to like a moderate speed around 20 to 55mm/sec. It's not so great at bridging or spanning gaps, so slow down, use some fan and give a 120% extrusion rate for bridges.

Getting a good first layer is critical for INOVA-1800 if it's not going down well, check your distance from the bed, too close and it'll be a disaster. too far and you will suffer warping or lifting. Really, this is the key setting.

Why use it? - This is a strong and impact resistant co-polyester, it's good for anything that will be used in daily life - Brackets, machine parts, 3D printer parts and many practical objects
Warping is minimal even for objects over 120mm+ wide.

Is it strong? - Yes, It's a strong plastic. It has a higher glass transition temperature than PLA, but note it will shrink a little (~10%) if you apply 100 Degrees C water. I have used this trick to get a water tight seal on jar lids and pots. You can generally make INOVA-1800 objects even stronger by post-stressing them in boiling water after printing and cooling.

Is it easy to use/print - Yes - as long as you get a good first layer height and flow. Tune the bridge and spanning, then everything else is really quite standard. You don't need a lot of extruder retraction, the same setting you use for PLA should be fine.

Do you have to dry it before/after use? - No. I have not needed to dry this filament at all. It always seems ready to use, even when being stored out of any packaging - But as per the normal advice, try to keep it sealed in a bag with desiccant if possible.

Do i need a 'special' nozzle? - No, it's not abrasive, I have used it with all different sizes of nozzle from 0.25 to 1.6mm - It will work fine with Stainless, Hardened steel, Copper, Ruby or Brass nozzles. It works very well with big nozzles (0.8mm / 1.0mm) and can produce strong parts quickly.

Does it smell when printing? - No. I can't detect any smell at all using it at any temperature from 230 to 260 Degrees C.

Does it come on a eco friendly spool? - No, :( It's on a generic virgin plastic reel type (CARRIS REELS). It has a recycle logo, and is made of ABS. Packaged in a colour printed cardboard box.

Conclusion for Chroma Strands INOVA-1800 - It's not a low-cost material, but it is worth paying for. You get a very strong and straightforward to use filament. I use it for anything that needs to hold up weight, or clamp/hold things together.

Day #6 Is Completed. With failures and also the opportunity to save on plastic waste, Day 6 turned out okay in the end, but I'm annoyed about the out-of-tolerance filament bulge causing the second blockage failure.

Chroma Strand Labs Co-polyester is a great material when you require very strong finished objects, with high impact resistance. We now have a virtually indestructible Christmas stocking.

The story for today is all about turning failure into an opportunity both to learn, and always succeed.

Join me next time for Day #7 (I now also have the tree section for #7, so less of a panic tomorrow.)

Final note on Filament tolerance -

A few years back (2014) I wrote a blog post for 3D Printing Industry about what to look out for when testing a new filament / supplier. If you want even more background on the importance of 3D printing filament quality control, (even dust management) then take a look here – https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/richrap-reviews-spectrum-filament-3d-printing-24446/

There is also a great guide for care, guidance and troubleshooting of your all metal hot-end (E3D V6) on the E3D dozuki website - https://e3d-online.dozuki.com/Wiki/V6_Troubleshooting It’s well worth a read.

Thanks for reading.

Rich.

Please join me on Twitter @RichRap3D

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Using the LulzBot TAZ 6 3D Printer - Part 1 Setup

TAZ 6

LulzBot are without doubt (in my opinion) the most open-Source 3D Printing company in the world.

Here is the start of my journey with the TAZ 6 3D Printer.

I could spend an entire blog post just telling you how LulzBot have open-source in every single aspect of their business. Not just the 3D printers they design, develop, support and manufacture, but all the systems they use, computers running them and well just everything. If someone told me they only drank open-source coffee? I would not be surprised in the slightest.

To the point they will contact independent developers (anywhere in the world) and help them finish, refine and improve a little-known open-source software package, because they would like to use it in their business too.

Just have a poke around on the LulzBot development site if you want to be impressed by Openness - http://devel.lulzbot.com/

LulzBot (and the Parent company Aleph Objects inc.) support many independent projects and diverse developments, they don't always shout about it, they just get involved and encourage. If I lived in the USA I would be camping out at LulzBot HQ.

We need to see more of these manufacturers in an amazing community like 3D Printing. I hope LulzBot always manage to stay that way. Anyway, enough of that. You can see I have a lot of time for the LulzBot team, their products and everything they stand for.

My admiration of LulzBot is not going to stop me from a detailed (and sometimes critical) look at their 3D Printers, software and generally the user experience with all of it. They thrive on all feedback and it's one of the fundamental aspects of open-innovation, so here we go with a first look at the LulzBot TAZ 6 3D Printer.

I'm not going to attempt to 'sell you' on this 3D printer. It's been out for a while and has already won awards on 3D Hubs and has a good reputation in the 3D printing community. You can make your own mind up about the machine. See if it's right for you and at the price point and feature list you need.

I'm not even going to go into detailed specifications about print size or capacity, you can google that or just look on the LulzBot website. I'm going to focus on the experience and how reliable it is over a long period of use and abuse in the real-world and how it handles lots of different materials.

I hope to be able to show you what it can and can't do over this and more blog posts and video's. If you have any questions or want me to try something specific, just send me a message (twitter is best, but anything usually works - apart from carrier pigeon).

If you watch the first video below (it's long, but I make no apology for that) you will see that you get a really good first experience with unboxing, assembly and setup of the TAZ 6.

I hardly ever do 'unboxing' video's, but this machine just deserved a showcase.

Quick jump index -
01:28 - Materials
03:35 - Unboxing the TAZ 6
06:15 - MOARstruder ???
12:30 - Approvals, regulations, safety
17:00 - Taz 6 Assembly
28:50 - Power ON...
30:30 - Handheld Gaming (3D printed)
32:55 - In the next TAZ 6 Video

I have always been a huge fan of the LulzBot 3D printers, I printed out and built up one of the very early prototype TK-0 machines back in 2013 (an early version of the TAZ design) I made many modifications and eventually dedicated my variant as a portable machine to use at shows and events.

During discussions after the TCT Show in 2016, the team from LulzBot kindly offered to send me a TAZ 6. This is not only great, but as it's a machine that is not normally seen in the UK / Europe I really want to help support the growth and awareness of LulzBot products (and their open-source / Open-Innovation nature).

I did have some initial setup problems, I will go into detail in Part 2 of this blog post and video series.

A pesky dislodged connector caused me some initial setup problems, but it was quickly identified and resolved. Much more about the problems, issues and resolutions in the next video / blog post - along with lots of 3D Prints and feedback about both print quality and user experience.

LulzBot also sent me over some materials that are tricky to find over in the UK or Europe. These have been really great to try out and do work exceptionally well in this 3D printer.

 LulzBot standard ABS Filament.

 Chroma Strand Labs Inova-1800 Co-Polyester.

 The only Taulman3D material I had yet to try out - Taulman n-vent

 And Verbatim PLA.

LulzBot also included some sample filament in the TAZ 6 Box. This is what you would get if you just ordered the printer - Very nice filament from Proto-pasta and Colorfabb.

Initial assembly is very straightforward, a detailed manual guides you through all the steps and provides great advice along the way.

Every single part (including the full set of tools provided) feels high quality and 'engineered' to a fine level.

I talk a lot about the approvals and regulations for this 3D printer in the video (it's a very good thing). I'm not going to repeat myself here, but do watch the part about 3D printer approvals (12:30 onwards) as it's good to know why fully assembled, well designed and tested machines are worth the extra cost etc.

Noise level is acceptable during setup and also full operation. It's around the same overall noise level as a Prusa i3 MK2 (normal setting) the Prusa quiet setting is slightly lower. The TAZ6 has a lower frequency to it's noise level output (slightly bigger fans than many 3D printers) so feels less annoying and less distracting in the background. The TAZ 6 is a lower overall noise level than the BCN3D Sigma (2016 version).

I have no problem with the TAZ 6 running in the same small room when I'm 1.5M away from it.

 Bucket O' Octopi by yeoldebrian, published Apr 19, 2011) CC-BY-SA

A test print Octopus (Above) was included, I had no problems replicating and exceeding this print quality with the Taz 6.

We did plenty of  'play printing' over Christmas, lots of the standard objects, test prints and plenty of decorations. When it was all dialled in I started to explore what the TAZ 6 could really achieve.

The Red Chroma Strand Labs filament was really nice to use, and strong. I designed and printed some hooks for hanging objects to rafters, they were clean prints (just look at those perfect layers) and very strong indeed. I'll see if I can work out a way to break these and compare the results with PLA or ABS for the next blog post.

It was not long before 17+ hour prints were being tested and then multi-day objects in ultra fine and full build area dimensions. (more on that next time).

As default it is set to print quite slowly. The default profiles for Cura have a low speed of travel rate, it can handle a lot faster. The firmware (Marlin) acceleration feels slower than my normal settings. There is nothing wrong with going a little slower and having a lower acceleration, in fact it can improve both print quality and further reduce noise level.

The issue is more with the fact this printer can print BIG, so really you are going to need a compromise of both speed and quality for some bigger prints if you want them to finish in a working day or before going to bed. That's no different to many 3D printers, so this issue is not aimed at the TAZ, just an observation with bigger build areas in general.

LulzBot have installed a 0.5mm nozzle as standard. This provides a a good mix of speed v quality in many types of printed model. The original RepRap 'standard nozzle size' was 0.5mm, but over the last five+ years it's now much more common to see a 0.4mm being fitted to almost all 3D printers.

You could replace the nozzle, but if anything I may decide to go even bigger, this machine is just crying out for a great big nozzle to produce some serious 3D prints fast and accurately. And on that point I had hoped to be testing out the now MOARstruder, but sadly it was not quite available when I asked about it.  (see below).

MOARstruder is now fully available for the TAZ5 and TAZ6 directly from LulzBot on the website, you can check it out here.

After a lot more printing and testing with the TAZ6 Hexagon hot-end, I'm probably going to make a new extruder for the TAZ6 using the E3D Volcano. The Volcano is very similar to the new MOARstruder, in fact the nozzles are interchangeable for the Volcano ones, so you can fit hardened, stainless, brass or copper types.

In the next LulzBot TAZ 6 blog post (and video) will go into a lot more detail about the print quality, settings and use of both Cura and other slicing engines on the TAZ 6.

The TAZ6 did a lot of printing towards the end of 2016 and over Christmas. I now feel I understand many of the limits and balance between quality and settings for this 3D Printer. I significantly tweaked the profiles and then also stopped using Cura. It's producing solid and consistent results and has handled all materials I have thrown at it.

This 3D Printer is a very well engineered (slightly over-engineered, but in all good ways). It feels solid and always in control, the bed-level system is low-tech, but reliable and more importantly it works really well.

I'm totally enjoying the 3D printing experience with the TAZ 6. Plenty of things I would (and will) change, but for an out-of-the-box experience, it's delightful from delivery to first print (apart from the issue I had, but more on that next time). I have a lot more feedback for anyone considering this 3D printer, so join me text time for a closer look at the prints, profiles and capability of the LulzBot TAZ 6.

I almost forgot, in the video I talk about a Handheld Retro Gaming PC system I made up (Windows 10 to emulate older games and the like) - it was a simple and fun 3D printing project (anyone could do), I'm happy to go into a lot more detail, let me know if anyone would find this sort of project interesting. I do a lot of projects using 3D printing and often electronics / Arduino etc. - Not really sure if I should post more of these here or not?



Not printed on the TAZ 6, but I found it and talked about this project in the TAZ 6 video above, let me know if you want to see more projects (and maybe a design / assembly guide?) on these sort of things.

This was just a brief introduction to the TAZ 6 experience. Lots more next time, I hope you enjoyed it.

Rich.
@Richrap3D
RichRap on Youtube