HICTOP RepRap Prusa - Setting Nozzle Temp and Flament Feed Rate

Share your hardware improvements for your HIC i3, the good and the bad!
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Chip Luck
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HICTOP RepRap Prusa - Setting Nozzle Temp and Flament Feed Rate

Post by Chip Luck »

Gang,

This does not JUST apply to our HICTOP printers. I guarantee if you read below and follow what I have been taught recently, your print quality will be as close to the best your printer is capable of. After reading and kind folks sending me links to all kinds of data, I can tell you one thing you MUST do when you change filament, or even an open frame printer with a big ambient temperature change:

1) Calibrate your extrusion rate. On mine, the default Esteps stays at : 94.4 uppon boot, and that is about all I got with a command of manually feeding 100mm of filament just about right at 94mm of actual filament that was measured so that's 6mm short per 100mm . You cannot store this value, so you have to change/check the default every time you power up the beast. After calibration of that roll of filament, I manually set : /Control/Motion/Esteps/to : 96mm which produced 100.85mm per 100mm commanded from the extruder. Default setting feeding 6mm short in 100mm,that's not too good, according to logic and fellow geeks/purist.

Link to YouTube video here:
rate calibration

2) Calibrate your extrusion temperature: I downloaded a test file from thingiverse that is a hollow cube 100mm tall x 10mm wide x 1mm thick. I manually changed the extrusion temp's every 10mm during the print. I was real surprised at the results. 210 was too hot, 185 forget it.
Settings: Nozzle: 210 then to 175 (manual), Bed: 60/50, Infill: 0, Steps: 0.15mm, Vertical shells: 1. Instructions found on the link below...

o 210 - walls too thick and 'lumpy', a small amount of horizontal blobbing
o 205 - looking better
o 200 - looked the best...
o 195 - not much difference
o 190 - starting to 'thin' out
o 185 - got thinner (wall thickness < 1mm)
o 180 - getting worse on wall and fill
o 175 - forget about it, very thin vertical walls

Link to the YouTube Video here:

Link to the test .stl file here:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:337957

So as your nozzle temp goes down, so does your extrusion rate. Well it's physics, and it makes sense. Also, once you have found your correct nozzle temp, I would re-run the feed test as indicated they are related. In other words, get out that pencil and note pad.

IMHO - I will now calibrate and check the filament settings in Marlin each time I change a roll, it does not take that much time to print the thing; only thing is on this printer you have to keep and eye on the Z-axis Height to manually change the nozzle temp every 10mm of the print. Do not forget to write this data down on a sticker on your filament roll, that way you will know what to set the printer at in case you have to change it.

I use a SD card for printing directly and currently Slic3r for my slicer program.

Hope this make sense, it makes complete logical sense to me and my prints have GREATLY improved performing just these 2 steps.

Pictures Coming Soon (I hope) of test cubes No. 1 and No. 2., and just now printed No. 3 completed to 60mm at my new feed and temp settings looks good. Now to go print some real BB-8 parts...
Last edited by Chip Luck on March 2nd, 2016, 10:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Izzy
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Re: HICTOP RepRap Prusa - Setting Nozzle Temp and Flament Feed Rate

Post by Izzy »

Thanks Chip, just to let you know the video links don't work :-?
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martin-bienz
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Re: HICTOP RepRap Prusa - Setting Nozzle Temp and Flament Feed Rate

Post by martin-bienz »

Hi Chip, thanks for sharing, great summary. I have one question / suggestion, as your printer is using marlin, can you connect via usb and fire an M501? this should give you the current settings stored in the eeprom. You can then modify the step settings with M92 E[your value], check again with M501 and if all is good enter M500 => that stores the current values in the eeprom. That should then survive a reboot.
You can also, if you have a controller, achieve the same using the menu. I think it's under control/Store Memory (should be in the video also?)

Also, for the temperature, speed combination testing, I suggest using a cylinder as he did:
https://www.youmagine.com/designs/test- ... timaker--2
this is as far as I know, specific to UM2's. But this can be done from your gcode with changing the speed temperature in the gcode let's say every 10 Layers. In Cura that can be achieved by using the plugin change at Z / height.

Video's work for me.

hope that helps.

EDIT: For future reference, a list of gcode commands supported (not only marlin):
http://reprap.org/wiki/G-code#M500:_Sto ... _in_EEPROM
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Re: HICTOP RepRap Prusa - Setting Nozzle Temp and Flament Feed Rate

Post by Chip Luck »

Izzy wrote:Thanks Chip, just to let you know the video links don't work :-?
I'll check the links, copied the 'share' YouTube links to the message. Interesting. [edit] I just left clicked on the links and they work for me, opened a new tab in Firefox and worked fine. What browser are you using?
Last edited by Chip Luck on March 2nd, 2016, 8:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Chip Luck
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Re: HICTOP RepRap Prusa - Setting Nozzle Temp and Flament Feed Rate

Post by Chip Luck »

martin-bienz wrote:Hi Chip, thanks for sharing, great summary. I have one question / suggestion, as your printer is using marlin, can you connect via usb and fire an M501? this should give you the current settings stored in the eeprom. You can then modify the step settings with M92 E[your value], check again with M501 and if all is good enter M500 => that stores the current values in the eeprom. That should then survive a reboot.
You can also, if you have a controller, achieve the same using the menu. I think it's under control/Store Memory (should be in the video also?)...
Thank you very much, will try that today. The menu on the LCD does not have the Store Memory selection as shown in the video, only Restore Defaults. I wonder if a different version of Marlin for the HICTOP is available? I have not used Cura yet, but will give it a try.

I still prefer printing off the SD card as I hear horror stories of printer failures during power surges or PC problems. If you leave the printer running while your at work = fire hazard and fried axis motors?

Will definitely check out the gcode a I wanted to learn that anyway as I'm a programmer. Wonder if there is a gcode editor or what was the one guy using on the video? Sure would be great to be able to save and not have to go through all the menus at boot.
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Re: HICTOP RepRap Prusa - Setting Nozzle Temp and Flament Feed Rate

Post by LePaul »

You can just cut and paste the youtube link and it will embed.

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Re: HICTOP RepRap Prusa - Setting Nozzle Temp and Flament Feed Rate

Post by martin-bienz »

Chip Luck wrote: Thank you very much, will try that today. The menu on the LCD does not have the Store Memory selection as shown in the video, only Restore Defaults. I wonder if a different version of Marlin for the HICTOP is available? I have not used Cura yet, but will give it a try.
Look at this video, it's basically re-configuring Marlin to enable eeprom saving and re-flashing. I have no idea if this is the same process / any different for HICTOP (but I don't think so). I THINK the serial commands will still work if they are not disabled completly in Marlin.

Chip Luck wrote: Will definitely check out the gcode a I wanted to learn that anyway as I'm a programmer. Wonder if there is a gcode editor or what was the one guy using on the video? Sure would be great to be able to save and not have to go through all the menus at boot.
He is using Repetier-Host directly to modify the gcode, the softare is free and is actually quite capable, I use it to control my CNC.
http://www.repetier.com/ (btw: with that you can also connect to your printer over usb and talk to to it using gcode commands, see: http://www.repetier.com/documentation/r ... l-control/ ENTER the gcode and press [send]).
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Chip Luck
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Re: HICTOP RepRap Prusa - Setting Nozzle Temp and Flament Feed Rate

Post by Chip Luck »

@Martin,

Shame on you for making me actually work at this... <G>

Big thanks again, data and info is just what I needed. I'm still a noob at 3D printing, but getting there.
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Re: HICTOP RepRap Prusa - Setting Nozzle Temp and Flament Feed Rate

Post by martin-bienz »

hehe... that's the purpose of the forums, right? :)
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Re: HICTOP RepRap Prusa - Setting Nozzle Temp and Flament Feed Rate

Post by LePaul »

We all start new!
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Chip Luck
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Re: HICTOP RepRap Prusa - Setting Nozzle Temp and Flament Feed Rate

Post by Chip Luck »

Got repetier installed and connected. Now you are talking, complete manual control from my desktop and now I have my access to exactly what I wanted to do, control the thing. Having dealt with I/O for years, I sure like the option to be able to communicate with my hardware!

It took a while to get 'winblow's' to accept the USB driver properly, backed up and installed latest version of Cura with drivers (not the CD, Cura left a previous version/conflict), CCleaner is a big help and re-install, update drivers, delete drivers et. all, well you get the process. Next will be booting into Linux and to test run the program(s).

Already used it to re-program my eeprom to what my basic defaults are. Now onto the dept of the 3D printing abyss... and do what you suggested.

Now I'm a GUI 3D printing button pusher, "hey... look at this" my friend was completely off guard <G>. Update at 6, thanks again.
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Re: HICTOP RepRap Prusa - Setting Nozzle Temp and Flament Feed Rate

Post by martin-bienz »

Good feeling, right? Finaly back in control! It's great I could be of service (so far), love to hear more ...
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Re: HICTOP RepRap Prusa - Setting Nozzle Temp and Flament Feed Rate

Post by Izzy »

Hi Chip, I'm browsing from my iPad, may be just an iPad problem I will fire up the PC later
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