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SeeMeCNC Delta 3D Printer Manual

First Edition

v1.00 – January 13th, 2018

Cura v3.1.0

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Licensed as Creative Commons, Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

Official support is available through

[email protected]

As a SeeMeCNC printer owner, you’ll also find a ton of great resources on the

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forum

. seemecnc

. com

Summary of Contents for Delta

Page 1: ...3 1 0 Copyright 2018 By Gene Buckle geneb deltasoft com Licensed as Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3 0 Official support is available through support seemecnc com As a SeeMeCNC printer owner you ll also find a ton of great resources on the forums at forum seemecnc com 1 ...

Page 2: ...omatic machine can start unexpectedly Pay close attention and keep clear while power is connected to the machine The machine power supply is connected to AC voltage and can be hazardous Disconnect power before servicing this machine The hot end of the machine can reach very high temperatures of 700F and can cause serious burns The heated print surfaces heated bed can also reach temperatures high e...

Page 3: ... and how to import the pre built slicing profiles that SeeMeCNC has developed If you haven t yet had the opportunity to go through that guide please do so now Tasks involving controlling your printer will be discussed from the point of view of the Duet 3D printer controller interface If your printer has a different controller the steps shown in this guide won t apply 3 ...

Page 4: ...n Read Me First 2 1 The Cura Interface 5 2 Printing with Cura 13 3 Introduction to the Custom Options 18 4 The Cura Material and Profile Managers 24 5 Print Setup Advanced Options 28 6 A Strategy for Successful and Great Prints 34 4 ...

Page 5: ...rientation controls is a drop down that will allow you to select the type of view that the model will be presented in The choices are Solid view X Ray view and Layer view Like the adjustment controls we ll cover these views in detail later 4 This gray area is the non printable area of the bed 5 The printable area of the bed 6 Information on the currently loaded model It includes the filename of th...

Page 6: ...tion model We re going to need to resize the model in order to make it large enough to make a good first print example Adjustment Tools In order to make the model easy to click on we ll have to zoom in a bit on the build plate You can zoom in either by using the scroll wheel on your mouse or you can hold down the space bar while you move your mouse vertically Once you can easily see the medallion ...

Page 7: ...ow you to move a model around the build plate rotate the model or mirror the model Moving the model is easy just click on the model to select it and then click drag to move it where you like You can also click on the red green or blue axis arrows to move the model only in one axis 7 Medallion scaled up Move Model ...

Page 8: ...order to rotate the model how you need it As you rotate the model you ll notice a little tool tip that appears and will show the angle in degrees that your rotation is currently at If you ve got Snap Rotation checked the rotation will snap every 5 degrees If you uncheck it movement is at 1 degree increments The rotation tool includes two special buttons Reset and Lay Flat The Reset button will ret...

Page 9: ...ll notice that the horizontal motion of the mouse controls the rotation of the view and the vertical motion of the mouse controls the tilt of the view Your mouse wheel controls the zoom If you hold down your shift key then right click move you ll see that you can move the build volume around without tilting or rotating it This will allow you to visually center your model in the screen when you zoo...

Page 10: ...s 1 through 32 The example above is typical of the standard Cura Layer view It includes a color key that shows you each element that makes up a layer The slider on the right is set up to show you layers 1 through 32 If you only wanted to view a single layer you could click and drag the black marker up so that it s right below the blue layer marker Note that clicking on a marker will make it active...

Page 11: ...orted you ll need to click on the Custom button The Layer Height slider controls how thick each print layer will be expressed in mm Since the layer height directly effects print speed the Cura authors have grouped Print Speed with the Layer Height slider Conversely print speed effects layer height The Infill slider is going to dictate how solid your part is The density of the infill is approximate...

Page 12: ...t can be tricky to get to stick to the bed These and other settings work together to slice your model up into a series of layers that are as thick as your selected layer height The result of this is a set of instructions that your printer will follow for each printed layer in the model After the slicing process is complete Cura is ready to save out a gcode file which is a list of instructions your...

Page 13: ...pletely dry before applying the second layer Let THAT layer dry before starting a print If you re used to using other slicers you ll notice that there s no slice button With Cura if there s a model loaded it s almost always already sliced Each time you load or adjust a model position scale etc or change a printing parameter Cura will automatically re slice the model This ensures that as soon as yo...

Page 14: ...liced the model You ll then have a file you can upload to your printer Open a web browser and open up the printer control page for your printer Click the G Code Files link and then click the Upload G Code File s button in order to upload the file you just saved to your printer The button is going to be in the right side of your browser When your file is uploaded you ll be presented with a dialog t...

Page 15: ...ou can see below it s currently heating the bed The Active column shows the target temperature while the Current column shows the actual temperature as measured by the controller When the target temperature is reached by the bed the printer will begin to heat the hot end Once that temperature is reached the print job will begin The following pages show the results of this print job I ve increased ...

Page 16: ...ed Cura to print a brim this skirt would touch the outer perimeter of the part and expand outward concentrically for the distance specified by the brim settings 2 above are the perimeters that were printed for the actual part The photo has caught the process just as the first infill layer has begun to print Below you can see what this first layer looks like 16 Skirt Perimeter First layer ...

Page 17: ...one printing the infill layer will begin In this case occupying 15 of the interior area inside the model When the print finishes you should have a SeeMeCNC Blinky Eye medallion that looks similar to the one shown below 17 Finished ...

Page 18: ...some time to investigate the more advanced parameters later You ll notice that some of the categories have this symbol next to their control points This icon indicates that there may be hidden parameters that use values that differ from the Cura defaults This is normal and is the result of the SeeMeCNC supplied profiles The profiles that SeeMeCNC supplies change those default values in order to pr...

Page 19: ...model should be Here it s also 0 8mm but since the layer thickness is 0 2mm it ll need 5 layers to create that thickness This brings up an important point you need to make sure that your top layer thickness is adequate for the layer height you re working with Take for example the item shown below This example was printed with a 0 1mm layer height but only 3 top layers 0 3mm Because the layer heigh...

Page 20: ...oubt with either parameter follow your filament vendor s guidelines on printing bed adhesion temperatures Diameter is used to tell Cura s slicing engine how thick the filament is Getting this value as close to reality as possible is importance since it dictates how material flow is going to be calculated In order to get a good value for filament diameter I recommend spooling off a meter or so of f...

Page 21: ...be unusually high Since you re working with a SeeMeCNC delta printer of some kind this may not be the case SeeMeCNC delta printers that are equipped with the DuetWifi or DuetEthernet controller can easily run at high travel speeds If you re using a SeeMeCNC delta equipped with a RAMBo or Mini RAMBo you should adjust the travel speed to around 230mm sec Any faster than that and you run the risk of ...

Page 22: ...sed to artificially increase the surface area of a parts first layer in order to improve bed adhesion It prints only on the first layer Raft When you select Raft the Cura slicing engine will create a literal raft of material that slightly exceeds the extents of the part you re printing A raft is only a few layers high and your printed part will actually start printing once the top surface of the r...

Page 23: ...here are a number of special modes you can work with but in the default mode only Print Sequence is enabled It has two settings All at Once and One at a Time When set to All at Once all parts will be printed at the same time meaning the first layer for all parts will be printed then the second third etc With One at a Time set each part on the build plate will be fully printed before the next part ...

Page 24: ...plicate Import or Export The currently active material is shown with it s descriptive text shown in italics If the Activate button isn t active as in the example above that indicates you ve got the currently active material profile already selected Note that in order to Remove a material you need to deselect it by choosing a different material The material display list categorizes by brand and sho...

Page 25: ...our model Enter what you paid for your roll of filament in the Filament Cost field That in combination with the Filament weight field will allow Cura to give you an estimate of the cost in material of things that you print The Description and Adhesion Information entry fields not shown here are basically free form text fields that you can use to describe any special properties that your material h...

Page 26: ...ted profiles are those included with the Cura installation and cannot be changed These serve as guides in order for you to make your own profiles Any profile you duplicate from these will appear in the Custom profiles section of the list In order to create your own profile click on one of the included protected profiles and then click on the Duplicate button that s located right above the profiles...

Page 27: ...t changes you ve made since you last selected the current profile and it will allow you to update the profile with your changes or discard them That s pretty much all there is to profile management in Cura It s a nice and straightforward system Now that you ve got a handle on how Cura works with profiles let s move on to what actually goes in to those profiles 27 Update or discard changes ...

Page 28: ...e Quality settings deal with adjusting the extruded line width Those settings can be tweaked in order to improve print quality If you re curious about what each one does hover your mouse over the checkbox in the list and a tool tip will appear that briefly describes the item you re interested in Items marked with an i icon are options hidden by other properties Checking them won t make them visibl...

Page 29: ...e Wall Line Count Cura gives you the option to enter an absolute value in mm or specific number of layers for the top bottom Top Bottom Pattern will allow you to change the fill pattern used when creating the top and bottom solid layers Your choices are Lines Concentric and Zig Zag Examples are shown below The default pattern is Lines and is acceptable for pretty much any print Experiment with it ...

Page 30: ...the seam in roundish objects Experiment Infill The Infill category covers all aspects of how infill is generated by Cura s slicing engine As with the Shell category I won t cover the entire list of available options but that shouldn t discourage you from looking at the list to see if there s something that interests you Infill Extruder will allow you to chose a specific extruder when it s time to ...

Page 31: ...ere the infill is not in full contact with an interior wall Infill Overlap can be used if you want to specify a specific distance in mm that you want the infill to overlap the wall layer it should attach to Infill Layer Thickness gives you the opportunity to use a different layer height for infill than is used for the other elements of the printed part Using a thicker infill layer height can impro...

Page 32: ...nfigure Setting Visibility Z Hop When Retracted is an important setting as the slicing engine is going to command a retract on travel moves If you don t have Z Hop When Retracted enabled you run the risk of striking any inflated layers or other bits sticking up off the model At high travel speeds this can result in lost steps causes layer shift or you could knock the model loose from the build pla...

Page 33: ...lue in order to get support generated There are a lot of other parameters that configure how automatic support is generated I suggest that you investigate them as you learn more about your specific support requirements in the parts you print Special Modes The Special Modes category contains a lot of interesting parameters including things for creating mold shapes from an existing solid model The o...

Page 34: ...gun approach of trying one thing after another So I thought it would be helpful to describe a method that you can use to 1 develop a reproducible approach to successfully printing the things you want and 2 improving the quality of your prints to meet your realistic expectations I ll likely do this as a series of posts starting with this one Don t hesitate to join in or ask questions After some tim...

Page 35: ... in a 30 minute practice session you are really only practicing what you need to practice for 1 minute This completely changed my approach to practicing everything from guitar to 3D printing to machining to learning CAD to How does this apply to 3D printing Easily start with a simple object to print and practice nailing the first layer Once you have that nailed print the rest of the object Once yo...

Page 36: ...at s happening I ve identified everything from loose pulleys to a worn joint on a delta arm to separating arms on magnetic ball joints And I ve helped a lot of folks identify other issues simply by slowing down 6 Watch What s Happening Especially in the early stages of learning watch all aspects of the printer Combined with strategy 5 you ll start to develop an appreciation for how the slicer does...

Page 37: ...e it down see 7 you ll never second guess how best to print that filament again It s important to realize that higher temperatures are not always better they can actually lead to issues parts that are just a little too large parts that stick to the bed too well and can t be removed blobs on the print stringing and a host of other problems In general I like to print at the lowest temperature possib...

Page 38: ...where the rubber filament meets the road bed and getting it right is absolutely critical to successful fused filament 3D printing All sorts of folklore on bed materials coatings coverings concoctions and juju exists here and elsewhere on the internet It is also one of the areas that there is no one right way to do it If you have discovered a special incantation and bed preparation that works by al...

Page 39: ...Your fingers can also leave contaminants on the bed when you remove a part or brush off stray filament strands Don t touch the bed surface if at all possible If you do clean degrease it with an appropriate cleaner For uncoated surfaces like borosilicate glass PEI the various 3d party surfaces PrintInZ and BuildTak and films window tint Kapton you can use isopropyl alcohol I like to use the little ...

Page 40: ...e member walked up to the mic now there are 2 victims on the stage and a hoard of people working to revive them and carefully reached out his finger looked like the scene from ET and very very gently touched the mic with just the tip of his finger He was immediately thrown to the stage as the third victim All of this was caught on video No one died we were told Neither of the second two victims st...

Page 41: ...empt at using flexible soda straws 2 of them to direct the air flow to exactly where I needed it I also ran the fan at 20 The angle of the photo doesn t show it clearly but the double barrels are focused at the tip of the nozzle The dead air space between the tubes prevents air from flowing over the nozzle I know it s terribly clever It s a work in progress and I ve almost got it perfected with a ...

Page 42: ...ktop 3D printers is extremely primitive at this point It s fine for the majority of objects you might print but as we push the envelope on what s possible part cooling is one area that needs some more work to automate it Consider this the way I maintain very tight tolerances on the rotating spindle and hub assemblies on my fly fishing reels is to use a low beam of air cooling on the spindle as it ...

Page 43: ...ed to test adhesion to the bed and first layer thickness measure it with a micrometer or calipers and compare to what the first layer height was supposed to be You can use this to tune your printer and slicing parameters to get perfect infill and explore the effects of speed on infill quality without wasting a lot of time and filament printing larger parts poorly I also use it when I am testing a ...

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