I have the Monoprice Dual, and it’s been printing great for about a month. I started having some slight clogging issues, which cleaning filament seemed to fix. Then I had a disastrous print where the filament got bound up and stuck in the nozzle for a couple of hours while the head just sort of roamed around. As a result, I ended up having to disconnect the nozzles and open things up to clear out bits. It looks amazingly clean now.
But when it starts a print with either or both nozzles, it seems to draw a very thin line which doesn’t stick at all and the nozzles are visibly off the bed.
To answer the first two questions. Yes, I’ve leveled the bed, and leveled the bed, and leveled the bed. Then I leveled the bed. I’m using Simplify 3D.
Also, the part that really confuses me is that it draws the first lines across the front perfectly. They’re nice and thick and stick perfectly. But when it goes to print the rest, thin lines that don’t stick.
Any advice?
SOC3D
2
Stop leveling the bed. Print a large skirt or object and loosen the back level screws (to raise the back of the bed) until you are happy and the print sticks. Clearly, be careful and don’t injure yourself during this process.
What temp? all metal extruders?
Ive had this happen before it really usally ends up being a leveling issue. you can try using hairspray aswell.
Sounds like a good idea. But before I try it, let me add one more bit of information that might make a difference.
In between my first post and reading your reply, I went back to ReplicatorG to see what would happen. The first layer stuck. It wasn’t great, but definitely workable. Would that change your answer, or do you think I should try it? I don’t want to level the bed too much also, because I’m afraid I’ll eventually strip the screws or something. And it had been going through quite a few prints before needing to be tweaked.
Here is my settings for S3D:
Tools > Options
Change speed units to mm/s
Extruder Settings:
Extruder Retraction 2.0mm
Layer Settings:
Primary layer height 0.2000
Top layer 4
Bottom 3
Shell 2
Aditions Tab:
Check use skirt/brim
Make sure its set to primary extruder
Skirt layers 1,
Offset 4.00 or more is fine
Outlines set to 2 or 3.
(When printing with the skirt you can watch it print the rings and adjust the bed leveling slightly while its going until to have a nice firstlayer you like and then it moves to printing the real print)
Infill Settings:
Infill Extruder -Primary extruder
Infill Pattern - Fast Honeycomb
Support Settings:
Default is fine
Temperature Settings:
Right Extruder Temp 200
Headed Bed Temp 0
Cooling Settings:
“cooling” tab is where you would play with fan settings… but the CTC doesnt support that so just leave it all as is
GCode Settings:
Dont touch gcode… mostly used for dialing in offsets and dual extrusion settings
Scripts Setting:
Skip scripts… you dont want to mess with that if you dont know gcode
Other Settings:
Default Print Speed 45-55 (this is a setting you will play with alot) (its difference between speed and quality.)
Outline Underspeed: 65%
SOC3D
6
If changing slicers changes the first layer it’s somewhere in the settings. The easiest way to get a perfect first layer is to make a profile in your slicer and always use it. Level the bed using whatever method you prefer. Then adjust the level during a print until it’s perfect. That’s a three screw bed leveling system correct? Are you leveling it based on those three points and only those three points?
Yes. Three screws. Two in the back and one in the front. Seems like it would be easier to level with four, but maybe that would make it more complex.
I totally reset the software, but it was still printing a little off. But I used your method of printing an object with lots of skirts and it helped. Thank you.
Of course, then when I went to test it with the other nozzle, it was a disaster. I noticed one nozzle was visibly higher (about half a milimeter as it turns out). Perhaps it was from unscrewing the nozzles and opening up the extruders. I decided to check online to see if there was some screw or something to adjust the height. Turns out, the official method is to loosen up the block that holds the extruders and stick some tape under one side. It cracks me up that a machine that has such fine tolerances requires the same methods you would use to fix a wobbly table.
So I seem to be printing again. Thanks to all who answered. I knew at some point I would be learning these things. I was hoping it wouldn’t be right when I had promised to print like fifty pieces. But I might just make it.
