Temperature Tower issues

[ZK63]

I am still new to 3D printing and have only had my 3D printer (Creality Ender 3 Pro) for a couple of months. It seems to print okay though not great. I changed to a metal extruder and recalibrated it. My one issue right now is when I try to print a temperature tower. I have tried several, but the temperature never changes even though I setup the various scripts in Cura that tell it to change the temperature. I was wondering if anyone had any idea what I am doing wrong.

[Alan]

Interesting. I made a temperature tower today but Cura 4.7.1 only inserted the last few temperature changes. Instead of seeing if it was me or Cura, I editing the g-code and manually inserted: "M104 S[temp]" after the layer (search for ";LAYER:[integer]") where the model repeats. In my case, that was every 50 layers.

Bottomline: I think it's Cura (they changed the way the program parses text in 4.7 to speed the program up).

Cheers

[ZK63]

I would agree except I changed to Cura 4.6.2 and I am having the same problem. I am sure it is something I am doing or not doing. But I might try your idea about just inserting the temperature in the gcode itself.

[Ender5r]

Yeah. In the Cura Preview, move the slider up and down to figure out how may layers there are per tower segment. Then, look for "layer xx" in the gcode, where xx is the next layer up in the stack. Keep adding the layers value and search again, and so on.

[Alan]

I did another temperature tower yesterday in Cura and it worked. The only thing that I can think of that I did differently is that it was the first thing I did in Cura. Launched the program, loaded the tower, set the post processing settings of the g-code, and sliced. The previous time, I had used Cura to slice various models while tweaking different settings. Maybe I forgot to reload my current default profile.

Cheers

[ZK63]

Well, I finally got it to work. I found a temperature tower that allows you to build your own in sections. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3444682/files. I had to use a raft though as it would not stick to the bed and would come loose after a few sections. I tried using the Cura post processing script changeatZ, but the temperature would never change. So I ended up using Alan's idea of manually inserting the gcode to change the temperature.

M104 S180
M105
M109 S180

I just changed the temperature every 50 layers, except for the first section which was 54 layers because of the raft.

I am using ESUN PLA+ Black filament and though it says to use 205*C, it looks like 190*C works best with the least amount of stringing.

[Ender5r]

My experience has been the same. I often find the temps printed on the filament packages are too high for getting good prints. For PLA, when I do print it, I usually use a hotend temp between 175C & 195C.

[Geit]

My experience has been the same. I often find the temps printed on the filament packages are too high for getting good prints. For PLA, when I do print it, I usually use a hotend temp between 175C & 195C.

Really? The temperature range is given upon the speed used to print. Usually they specify 190-220 for PLA, so 190 is for slow printing, 205 for medium print speeds and 220 for fast print speeds, because the material needs to be heated up in a shorter time frame.

I usually print with just 55mm/s and use 205°C and all filament brands I used gave very good results with the defaults of Cura.

[Ender5r]

I will have to experiment with that. I normally print at around 40mm/sec.

[Geit]

I will have to experiment with that. I normally print at around 40mm/sec.

Uh, and I thought my 55mm/s are slow for printing PLA on a shaking bed printer.

[Ender5r]

With higher temps, I may be able to print faster but, as I've posted B4, my biggest concern is getting successful prints over quick ones.

[Geit]

With higher temps, I may be able to print faster but, as I've posted B4, my biggest concern is getting successful prints over quick ones.

Default Cura is 200°C and 60mm/s, so I guess that is possible and a normal value. The first layer is printed with 50% speed anyway.

[roon4660]

I have been printing PLA at a basic speed of 40 (copied from Chep) and 210 C. Printing colder doesn't seem to work so well.

[Geit]

I have been printing PLA at a basic speed of 40 (copied from Chep) and 210 C. Printing colder doesn't seem to work so well.

What suxx in Cura is the separation between material and print settings. Well, it would make sense, when the right stuff would be shared, but they just allow to set temperature.

But you need other settings depending on the material, too. The fan is always off for ABS printing. You don´t want supports for TPU. You want a slower speed for TPU. And so on. These material settings stuff does nothing beside temperature and the print cost calculation and weight stuff.

[roon4660]

I hope I never have to use CURA again. I like Prusaslicer and will try as hard as I can to just use one slicer because I'm too old and brain damaged to learn too many programs.