I’ve had a TAZ 3.1 for a month or so and am working on printing the required parts to upgrade it to a TAZ 4. I’ve now printed my third pair of Z-Axis nut holders that have split in the middle. I happened to go check on them this evening while they were printing and actually witnessed the error that causes them to fail. I thought they were cooling oddly despite the “low effort” enclosure I built for the machine after the 2nd pair of failed parts.
This error happened at a z-axis height of 17.0mm (actually, the layer or two before.) Print sequence is as follows:
Printed full layer with infill
Printed a support layer
Printed a full layer with infill
Printed a support layer
Printed just the line at the front of the sloped section, skipping the rest of the perimeter and infill (see photo)
Printed a support layer
Attempted to print a full layer with infill, this failed miserably due to “step 5” above.
I’m using the stock Slic3r ABS-Medium profile with an adjustment for filament diameter and 50% slower print speeds. I’ve sliced this twice now, once with some additional parts and once with a pair of these nut holders alone. In both cases they failed to print at the same elevation.
I’m going to try slicing them with a different ABS profile, but figured I’d see if someone has an obvious suggestion that I’ve been overlooking…I’ve only been at this for a month and am resisting the urge to throw a piece of AL angle in the milling machine and crank out these nut holders the “old fashioned” way!
I’ve attached the g-code file to this post. I just realized that I sliced it with Slic3r 1.2.5 which is still in the experimental phase. I’m going to try re-slicing it tonight with 1.1.7. If you’re curious you can load the file into printrun and scroll up to the layers previous to 17.0mm. It was at this layer that I stopped the prints in the photo. I’ll let you know if I have different results with the 1.1.7 slice which I should have time to print tomorrow.
If it turns out that it’s Slic3r 1.2.5 that caused the issue is there someone that I should submit the g-code & STL files to in order to assist with development? I’m new to 3D printing, but intend to be a contributing member to the community whenever possible. Nut Mounts 2nd.gcode (6.01 MB)
I’ll have to check out that viewer, glad that you were able to confirm what I saw while it was printing. I’ve downloaded Cura and will give it a try as well. I re-sliced it with the 1.1.7 release and will check it with the program you suggested before trying to print. I got my head wrapped around all of the Slic3r settings, will have to look more closely at Cura to see the advantages/disadvantages.
Edit: Just checked the g-code file out in the link you provided…very cool. There’s definitely a missing layer.
