3D printer questions

[Pete49]

Tom from my experience with both my printers I went to aerosol hair spray, a couple layers on the glass or tape and its good for several uses with just a top up now and then. I found glue sticks to be the bane of my printing life as most times even when the bed is cold it will not release easily and even damaged the Da Vinci glass bed with chipping the glass. I since changed that to borosilicate glass and hair spry (just a cheap no name brand) with great results on both PLA and ABS
Pete

[wagnmkr]

Thanks Pete. I will give the hair spray another go as it didn't work the first time.

Tom

[GordonL]

I got the replacement printer yesterday and the SD card reads OK so apparently the problem was in the printer and not the card.
 

[cfellows]

I just saw this thread and thought I'd weigh in on my experience with the Monoprice Select Mini.

I've been printing mostly with PLA on blue painters tape.  Following advice I found on this youtube video,

https://youtu.be/UdgneF0bgmA

I trammed the bed by heating the hot end to 200 C., then adjusted the bed by eyeballing the tip just touching the bed at each of the 4 corners.  This is more accurate than trying to gauge the distance with a feeler gauge.

To print PLA, I use a hot end temperature of 200 C, and a bed temp of 50 C.  Using the above tramming procedure and these print settings, I get really good adhesion to the bed.  By the way, I tried wiping down a fresh application of blue painters tape with denatured alcohol and the resulting print stuck so hard, I couldn't get it loose without ripping up the tape.  So, I think the alcohol is a good idea only after you've made a few prints and the parts don't stick so well.

If using these procedures don't give you the results I've indicated, you might have to fiddle with the extruder feed rate and/or the print speed.  Both of these have an affect on how well the print sticks to the bed.

I've watched all this fellow's videos on youtube and his advice has worked well for me. 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2qAHal8kbvnjk4bbhtZWew/videos

Of particular interest are his videos on setting up your print parameters in Cura.  By the way, the newest release of Cura, which is shown in this video, is totally different in appearance and operation from the version that comes with the Mini Select.  I don't like the user interface of the new version as well, but maybe it does a better job...

Chuck

[wagnmkr]

Thanks for that link Chuck, there is some interesting stuff in there.

I have taught myself a valuable lesson about these machines (any machines really). In the process of tweaking my printer to get some better quality prints out of it, I made a bunch of changes ... that didn't work  . Then, when I went to put everything back the way it was I couldn't remember what all I had changed

There are two morals here ... KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) only change one thing at a time, and WID ... (Write It Down) Buy a note pad or get a binder, but write down what you change and how you changed it, and if the setting is in an obscure part of the software, make a map to it! I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have to start the set up all over again ... twice, 'cause I didn't do the above.

All that aside, it is a fascinating aspect to the shop.

Tom

[wagnmkr]

The printer is working well and most of the prints are good.

I tried this cylinder yesterday and got a poor result. I had told the slicer to build a support wherever it would touch the buildplate and got this terrible result.

Notice that the surface of the main cylinder is the same as the surface on the bottom of the valve chamber where it printed support material. I will print this again, but without the support. I just have to wait until tomorrow when my new stock arrives.

Tom