2

oh I forgot I am new to 3d printing and need all the help I can get lol

3

I guess you need to level the bed properly. Use a 80 gsm paper to calibrate. Place the paper between the nozzle and the print bed and then adjust the bed levelling screws. Make sure the paper is just touching the nozzle and not pressing hard that it would tear the paper when you try to pull it away. Do this in a 3 point method like 2 corners and 1 center. Try printing after the calibration and see if it improves anything. Also, use a 3M painter’s blue tape and have your heated bed temp aroun 45-60 degrees depending on PLA or ABS. 40-45 should be OK for PLA. Also try applying gluestick on top of the 3M tap.

I have this printer and I’m feeling sorry for buying it every single day. I spend more time fixing and aligning the bed and unclogging nozzle than actually printing something good. Welcome to the i3 world!

4

It seems to me your printing to close to the bed try recalibrating your bed making it a little further away from the bed or try adjusting the levelling nuts while its printing a skirt.

5

Do you have a glass on your bed?

6

The major items have been mentioned, but I’ll summarize with some commentary: 1) Bed leveling: home the z axis, unlock your steppers, and move the print head by hand around the bed and adjust the level at each corner until a pice of typing paper fits with a little bit of resistance at each corner. It will take a couple passes around the bed the first time since it’s way off. 2) Bed adhesion: if you have glass, did you move your z switch up? A thin coat of elmers glue stick makes a fantastic base layer for PET or PLA. Almost as easy is masking tape: the blue 3M tape is popular, but most any masking tape will work. For ABS, abs juice (google) works great, but I would suggest using a plate of glass with it so you can easily clean it off periodically. If you can do a few simple things and are willing to spend a minute or two calibrating and inspecting it before each print, the I3 is an excellent machine. It is not an appliance, and it does require some care, but I have been thrilled with the performance of mine, especially considering the cost.

7

I had the same problem with wanhao 4s. Bed leveling is your problem. I’m printing pla with heat bed turned off and 3M scotch blue painters tape. Heat bed can warp when heated and turn leveling into nightmare if you don’t have gino pads. Your bed is not too close, it’s too far from the nozzle. Level your bed with standard paper and then, if you see that filament is not sticking to the bed, stop the print and turn loose all leveling knobs evenly (about 1/5 of a turn). Restart print and repeat procedure if print is not sticking. If the print starts to stick on some places and some places not, turn loose only knobs closest to the part of the bed where print is not sticking. This method works best for me and once i set it perfectly i dont have to relevel the bed for many prints.

8

Sorry about this I been doing couple other things like sorting my washing machine .my new glass bed plate turns up monday and I will give that ago do I have to

Adjust the hight of the printer on the z axis to acomadate the glass plate with the new thickess of the new bed plate going on top

of the original one

9

I must admit I am new to this so I would glad of any that any one offers and thanks for any help that you can give me iwill be back

on the hub tomorrow some time hopefully I had to walk a way from it becuse it was doing my head in lol

10

What is the best free one you can recomend I cannot afford to pay because the wife would kill me lol .is there one in cura

11

You said masking tape will the plain white one do the same job and could use hair spay method on that would work

12

Cheers I will do that I will let you how it gose

13

Here is a very good video for setting up Cura with the Duplicator i3.

14

DUDE YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO EVERYTHING I AM GOING TO POST AND SERIOUSLY IF IT DOESN’T WORK CALL ME: 0424368356 IF IT DOES FEEL FREE TO SEND ME A THUMBS UP WHATEVER. BUT LISTEN. LIST OF THINGS TO DO:

1. Turn on the printer and set the temperature to 220 for the extruder.

2. Raise the z height to half way up the full height (18cm) raise to half way 9cm or so.

3. Let all the plastic melt out of the tip and keep wiping away with a tile grout brush or a metal brush whatever you fancy.

4. After there is no more plastic melting out, then go and heat up the print bed to 60 degrees.

5. home all.

6. go to quick settings and disable stepper.

7. now forget about getting a piece of paper or getting a business card or blah blah, here’s what works for me.

8. move the extruder head around as many places as you can and adjust so you can barely see a gap

9. make sure your head is level to the plate and move around so it looks evenly gapped around the whole heat bed.

10. AFTER LEVELLING COMPLETE. - LEAVE THE THING ON, OR IF YOU DONT WANT TO LEAVE IT ON AND WANT TO SLICE SOMETHING FIRST THEN BEFORE PRINTING DO STEPS 1 - 4

11. DOWNLOAD mattercontrol, free software a bit funny to get around but is the best for slicing IMO and I’ve used every slicer, Kisslicer, Slicer, Cura, Simplify 3d, the crappy davinci one, believe me just download mattercontrol and learn how to use it.

12. For the printer select custom setup or blah blah and go through and make sure you setup so your printer is 180*180*180 make sure you setup the firmware as reprap and the bed center as 100,100

13. always print a skirt and a raft and print the raft slow, 15, 20 something like that.

ALWAYS.

14. print speed make it slow for perimeter, make it faster for infill and select perimeter first on the settings, by fast i mean 30 max, by slow i mean like 20 or 25.

15. support print @ 20 and print lines.

16. first layer height leave it at 0.2

17. if you want good quality leave it at 0.1 or change to 0.2

18. always slice to gcode export to gcode on matter control do steps 1-4 and then print from sd card.

19. DUDE, MAKE YOUR LIFE EASY JUST CALL ME OR EMAIL ME AND I’LL SEND YOU THE LINK TO THE SOFTWARE AND MY SETTINGS THAT WORK. CAPISH?

EMAIL: adam_siddiqui@outlook.com

anyone else do the same whenever you like, please don’t spam me that’s all.

15

Hi guys been having fun with this printer I have printed a couple of things and now the bloodly thing is skips or jumps up a level or two and justs moves around if was still printing but not turning any filiment could any one please give me any idea on why this is happening . The model is wanhao duplcator i3 and big thanks to eeveryone who has commented and the guy who sent me that video link to help set the thing up

16

The heater block/ nozzle could be clogged. clogged or a broken filament is stuck in the PTFE tubing inside the heater block. The best way to fix this is, turn on the extruder temp to 210, then carefully unscrew the fan, disconnect the extruder and the fan so that you have access to the heater block. Use a long filament or a 1.5mm Allen key that came with the i3 should do the magic. Use it to push from top of the heater block while its at 210 degrees. This will make unclog the passage. Then mount back the extruder and fan and try printing. It should work.

17

Cheers for that seems to be working fine at moe the one thing that had me concerned was that the printer had jumped up on x axis and was moving round like it was still printing and the little fan on the just behind the exetruder has stoped working what has caused this

what do you think could of done this .

18

Sounds like your printer is trying to do cold extrusion. Did you check the extruder temperature when this happens? Check your thermistor if it’s reporting correct readings.

19

It seems to fine now just keeping a eye on it now I one more question for you what dose configuations do and what is eeprom do just curious thats all

20

Configuration is how your WanHao is programmed to work with all the parameters. When you change the config, sometimes you need to store it on the rom so that the next time you boot the printer, your custom settings remain how you configured it. This is when you need to save those changes to eeprom

21

I thought I would describe my own experience with my Wanhao Duplicator i3.

I was having a terrible time getting any kind of reliability with my printer and placed it aside under a sheet for 2 months while I was distracted with other things. Its was by coincidence I saw a post on a website (Im sorry I can’t remember which) about an accident that a printer used to his advantage. He used BLUE Painters tape to fix his print to the bed but was having trouble with the print sliding off the tape. He accidentally dropped ACETONE onto the blue tape, wiped it off and discovered the best adhering solution.

I decided to fire-up my printer again. I have used the glass front from an IKEA picture frame (225 x 225mm) as a build plate, four standard black clips with specially made clip inserts to keep the clips horizontal on the top side of the plate and now have 100% reliability. I ALWAYS use a raft simply because the raft sticks like a bastard to the blue tape but the model can be easily removed and the raft then can be pulled off.

The printer now requires some modification to stop the harmonic vibration (search for the braces on Thingiverse) but its VERY reliable.

I hope this helps.