Don't try 1-6 retract tower with a direct drive. It may lead to clogs especially if you have an all-metal hotend and using a filament with a filler (like wood PLA or CF PLA). Try something like 0.5-2 in 0.5 increments, using the custom retraction tower option. Typically with a direct drive, your optimal setting will be
Im rewatching all your cura settings videos all over again because ive tweaked so much over the last year and im starting new profiles based on what ive learned. Great primer for starting off and also for those of us whove made so many tweaks and can't remember what you've actually accomplished. Nobody explains this stuff as well as you do. My favorites are this one and supports. There is no secret sauce to this practice
Truely AWESOME tutorials - honestly can't thank you enough 🙂 ....... delivered in an easy way to follow AND in a manner that makes them easy to watch - which is sooooooo 'refreshing' (.... there are ALOT of tutorials out there that remind me of being back in school with the worlds most boring teacher 🤣🤣🤣🤣 which makes them hard to watch and tedious to follow 🤯🤯) I'm fairly new to 3D printing but over the past few months i've learned LOADS from your channel ----- sincere "Thank You" for teaching us your skills and helping us improve 👍👍
That’s awesome I’m glad I could help you out. I realize it’s a boring but important thing to learn. I try to make it as easy to follow as I can. Cause it can get confusing. Thanks for the comment.
This is a great video series. I see so many people on social media begging for print profiles from others and not taking the time to learn how to properly calibrate their settings at all. 3D printers aren't "set it and forget it" machines. If you take the time to test, calibrate and fine tune, the quality of your prints will be much better - and you save a lot of wasted materials in fails! My one grief with the AutoTowers is most of my machines are direct drive, so none of those work with the 0.4 - 1.0 distances I like to test
Superb. Clear, structured and as simple as the subject matter will allow. I did have zero stringing with my bondtech direct drive. However, I needed to mod my z axis movement because the z binding / wobble was driving me spare. So, I did the belt driven z axis mod and it's brilliant. The quality is so much better. But for some unknown reason stringing has returned! I also fitted a new nozzle which may not have helped. Anyways, superb info. I had no idea about retraction towers. I'll set up a custom one that operates within direct drive parameters. I've set combing to all but it really needs work on the actual retraction. Thanks again!
Amazing job explaining what a lot of the setting are, and what they do, and what good settings generally are! There are a couple things that I don't think were mentioned, but maybe I missed it. If your filament has moisture in it, or you have the nozzle too hot, retraction and slicer settings will not stop the stringing or defects. Dry your filament and do a temperature tower for your filament before starting on this video.
Brother i have to say of all ht echannels I have watched you are my go to I have saved your Cura basics play list and if I find issues with prints I review your video on what I suspect the issue may be. Even when rewatching a video I find little bits of information my ADD addled brain might have blocked out on the first watch thank you so much.
@@Slipz2357 that seems the case with any 3D printer. Well if you ever have any questions don’t hesitate to jump on my free discord I’m always there answering questions. Best of luck on your future prints.
Thank you so much for the information. Your videos are so valuable to me as a new learning 3d printer duuuude. So many different things. I have learned to produce better prints for my hobby of interest and Givin in a very easy to understand entertaining way. And you have a badass mustache lol
Yes i enjoy this video 😊. I recently started 3d print ada looking for a detail explaination in cura settings espcecially because i have this stringing issues to the top😅. Its really helpful
Im having a problem with to much travel for non print moves. It makes sense if there are 2 objects across the bed. But my designs are solid, and nothing is disconnected. I want my slicer to always travel a path that is printing.
Thanks some useful insights there as having some grinding issues on the infill with a CR-10 Smart Pro, I am not so impressed with the bed levelling on this machine.
i found your vids helpful. as i am new on 3d printing. as of now i have issues on clogging and grinding. now i saw this might give a try ASAP. TIA. (y)
I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out why my nozzle kept hitting my stringing test print and knocking it off my base plate and then I came across this video and decided to switch from PrusaSlicer to Cura and the difference in my prints was night and day. I went from crazy stringing and printing in mid air to a perfect stringing tower AND retraction tower. Not sure what exact parameters changed between PrusaSlicer to Cura, but it was enough to finally get my PETG to work properly
my print towers came out horrible, i printed 6 and only 1 made it to the top, for some reason the zits were so over barring it made the nozzle bump into the model, but i did a cube calibration and it was almost perfect, and i still don't know how to fix this
I guess i need some serious trouble shooting help. I got "tiny stringing" like you got on your "3mm retraction" all the time. from 4 upwards to beyond 10mm. it doesn´t get much worse, but it doesn´t get any better either. Its always tiny stringing. I printed all 3 preset towers and got stringing ALL THE Time Machine: Anycubic Vyper Nozzle 0.4mm Filament rPLA (recycled PLA from Recycle Fabrik) CURA 5.7.0 Settings: Layer hight 0.2 Print Temp 190 printspeed 80mm/s outer wall speed 45mm/s inner wall speed 100mm/s Top/bottom speed 40mm/s Support speed 80mm/s Travel speed 120mm/s Initial layer speed 40mm/s Z hop speed 10mm/s Number of slower layers 2 Travel: Enable Retraction YES Retract Layer Change YES Retraction distance 10mm -> still stringing Retraction Speed 45mm/s Retraction Retract speed 45mm/s Combing mode Not on Outer Surface Avoid printed parts when traveling YES Avoid Supports when travelling YES Travel avoid distance 0.625mm Z hop when retracted YES Z hop hight 1mm Cooling enabled 100% I´m realy going to get mad!
Good work. I tried the Retraction distance calibration columns with PETG and I was unable to reduce the amount of strings even with a travel distance set at 12! I am now printing the same sample with PLA filament, and, at the value of 6, I don't see any strings. Di you experience that different behavior (PETG vs PL) as well? Is it depending on the nozzle temperature or other factors? Thanks Claud
I've been playing around with retraction on one of my printers and found what appears to be a golden ratio. 1:10:5. By this i mean for every 1 mm of retraction i set the retraction speed to 10mm/s and prime speed to 5mm/s. The ideal i have set to, which pretty much eliminates stringing and blobbing, is 5mm:50mms:25mms. I find these 3 settings played the biggest difference for me and as long as my filament is good and dry stringing is virtually non-existent.
Isn't it a good idea to do the Temperature Tower before doing the Auto Retraction Distance Tower? When you do the Auto Retraction Distance Tower, what retraction speed is used? I am also curious why you didn't suggest using the Auto Retraction Sped Tower. Thanks for all of your awesome videos - they have helped me immensely!
A word of caution in printing the various towers suggested in this video. On my printer the extruder was violently janked to the front-left of the bed making an enormous loud noise and banging on the motors and belts. Since using this suggestion I have not been able to get a decent print of my new printer. Please be careful!
Newb here. I'm having a really hard time with this. On the test alone, I keep getting a seaweed look. Does it also depend on the size of the nozzle? I'm utilizing an 0.6 on an Ender 5 plus. I figured this would be a good way to shrink down time with a larger nozzle.
I am still a beginner in 3d printing with Cura. Your videos make a hole lot clearer thx. There is only one question and that is my printer Elegoo neptune 4 pro is not supported in Cura. Elegoo seams to have no interest in adding this printer to Cura. Could you help me with that?
I did this and cura said it would take 27 mins and in my ender 3. It took over 1 hour. It keeps doing that all my prints take at least double the time. Please help. Why?
I fitted one of those high flow nozzles with the three passages inside, Stringing went through the roof and retraction settings had zero effect. I went upto 7.5 mm at 75mm/s which started spoiling the other way. Trouble is i havent got any new normal ones left as i brough a few of these highflows and zero spare funds for another three weeks.
I got quite the stringing and blob issue right after I installed a bi-metal heatbreak on my Ender3 hotend. Couldn't solve it completely yet. It only get's a bit better when Z-hop is disabled, but that's not really what I want.
Thank you so much for the information. but I want to ask mine have ender 3 s1 which has direct extruder and retraction towers has higher values than ender 3 s1 recommended 0.8mm should i customized for that
My retraction is set at 10 and its still getting stringing. Im at 40mm a second. I need to get it tuned in because im about to start printing an rc airplane with light weight pla
Still having problems Is there a print that starts at 4 and ends at 1 - that would stop n eeding 1-4 and 4-6 Not worried about the filement but time Everything is so slow Where ios Custome tower
For the retraction tower, did you apply a post-script gcode? or does that retraction tower automatically change the retraction as it moves up the tower without adding a post-script??
Thanks for this video, Im struggling with retraction and even through adjusting all these settings I havent been able to get the stringing gone due to the features being so close together and Z hop doesnt seem to do anything. Is there an option to get the nozzel to move to a specific location after every completed section?
Hey guys! I'm having this problem where if I print with supports the supports ooze and string from them warp around my main model like a spiderweb. This happens only horizontally. Main model prints fine but ooze from the supports stick to it. Any ideas ?
Quaestion I have 2 Ender printers - If they are different I presume i ned to set up Cura each time ALSE Do we need to run a test for each type of filement Thanks
At my wits end Spent the last 4 weeks learning and using my 2 AnyCubic Kobra Neos and one Ender 3 Seen every video by Chris Mead Ran a Temperature tower test (Down loaded from Cura Market Place) and all i got was STRINGING But it only printed down to 210 and collapsed on Ender Didnt get passed 220 on Neo Must be the heating Is there a similar automatic test that starts at say 180 and works up ~ And i am getting all types of strining issues
lmao, whatever the retraction settings is, i keep getting those angel hairs, no way to get rid of it. PLus, at 1 mm i have LESS strings than higher settings, idk what to to.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could, I don't know, stabbing here, just forget about all the settings and hit print? Works well on my Laser printer. It's a pretty smart printer, no, not really... it just works though.
Got suckered on this one. Went to download the tower plugin and was prompted that I need to sign into an account to download it. After going through the hassle of creating an account and giving them my information that I'm sure they'll sell and cause me more issues, the plugin immediately disappeared from the marketplace saying that "It doesn't exist". Cura is the worst.
Help LOL.... I have an Ender 3 V2 for over 2 years and it's worked good up until about a month ago and been using cura as a slicer and some others with the same problem ....the problem I've have is about the first inch or 2 of my print is pretty good but the higher it goes it seems like the worse it gets ... it seems to me it's under extruding and the part is unusable .....I played around with the temperature went from minimum to Max I... l also tried different nozzles... 0.4.. tried different filaments two of them completely new in different brands and I also dried them... fans or all working good.... put an enclosure around it..... tried several different prints and they all do the same thing when it starts getting taller..... replace the Boden tube and installed a dual Drive extruder.... I'm using pla Plus..... I change the retraction from 0.2 all the way up to 0.7...... I've adjusted the flow all the way up to 125%..... I went back to an older version of cura.... I've checked all the v rollers everything is free with no slack.... I have tried several other things with no change this is getting very long so I'll stop it here... Thanks for any help
Wow. You have had some issues. Sorry to hear. Sometimes this hobby can be frustrating. It’s hard to give you a direct answer to your issue. I recommend to join my free discord channel and there me and others might be able to help you. The link to join is in the description.
Appreciate all the clarification on this as I'm fairly new to 3D Printing. Unfortunately, I'm still having massive stringing issues after going through all 3 Retract Distance Towers in AutoTowers. Any suggestions?
late response but it could be your temp that you're printing it at too. mostly before you do a retraction test, you should do a temp tower test to see where the stringing can occur based on the temp @@x415xSLAUGHT3Rx
I've printed every type of retraction tower, adjusted the temp based on the temp tower, retraction speed, I adjusted the bowden tube, checked the belts, used a fresh and dry filament spool. NOTHING removes the stringing
Good video. But alot more info than needed. For Newbies, need to find best temperature setting and best retraction. This will give you near on 99% quality in most cases. Once you've mastered that, then you can look at all the other setting but cura has it pretty close to perfect anyway. So imo 1. Temp test for the filament. ( Temp tower provided in plugin described above 2/. Print retraction tower with correct temp That is 99% of as good as you're going to get with the printer and filament you have.
Does anyone know why my nozzle grinds across the print it’s making? My first layer is perfect, so I know it’s not my Z. Only during certain maneuvers it grinds against the print and I can’t figure out why. It even knocks supports sometimes.
Thanks for great video, when printing the articulated dragon for eample the body etc is perfect but when it comes the spikes I get this training and the spikes are rough. How do you get a FDM printer to be able print clean spikes ? Thanks
I've been enjoying your stuff, find it helpful as well as easily digestable for one who's fairly new to the hobby. Still having stringing issues even on a 4-9 tower, gonna have to mess with more settings it seems. 😄
i am confused now i have a v400 direct drive tried the retraction towers the least amount of stringing i got was on 1 but tried the custom but gives me an error saying something about openscad not installed so cannot try and retraction lower than 1 any help would be great
hi there help me please, when i press save to disc and put my memory card in the ender the settings does not resemble the stiings i used to cut my print.
