I posted this a few days ago but never got any responses.
Originally shared by Kevin Danger Powers
I’m back with a new question!
I somewhat recently purchased an Anet E10 and it has a bigger build plate than my last printer which allows me to print bigger things but now I have a new problem. When printing a large object, Cura likes to make long travel moves without retracting. This causes plastic to ooze out while traveling and then when it get’s to the next part, there isn’t any plastic in the tip so small features like holes keep failing. Is there a setting in Cura to change the maximum distance of travel so that it’ll force a retraction? Or maybe a different setting I should know about? I’m printing PLA at 190c to try and combat the oozing. Idk how hot my hot end actually is though. It’s possible the temp is off but it prints great aside from the plastic oozing while it travels.
I’m pretty sure the setting you’re looking for is “Retraction Minimum Travel”, you put in the minimum travel distance you want to trigger retraction. If changing this setting doesn’t work then the slicing engine must have a bug.
@Alan_Lord Slic3r PE is kinda buggy; have you tried generating rafts? And it’s ridiculous that there’s no time estimate for prints. That being said print quality is pretty good, but that’s mostly due to the printer itself.
@Adam_Steinmark I’ve been using Slic3r PE for about 6 months and am very happy with it. I don’t recall ever needing a raft actually, but brims and supports work well. I don’t care about the time estimate - most people who mention the time estimation of Cura always seem to be moaning about how it is wildly inaccurate Any slicer programme doesn’t actually know how fast your printer moves and accelerates so it’s only a best-guess thing anyway.
There might be lot of factors other than slicer settings coming into play. Part of it might be the type of extruder you are dealing with. A short hot melt zone seems to ooze less than the ones with long melt zones. The hot zone size also affects the response time when it needs to extrude out something after a travel. Depending on the slicer you might have more or less control to accommodate these other factors.
Per your question, I have a 12 x 16 build plate on some of my printers, in Cura I set the travel length before retraction to between 0.5 and 1.0mm travel distance for small details that are far apart. Turn combing to ALL. Keep the minimum extrusion length to 0.02mm. Turn my travel speed to between 60 - 80 so it is quick. For my extruder I set my retraction speed to 20-30 and the distance to 2.5. This will differ with your extruder setup.
Different filaments will ooze more or less than others. I first will drop the temperature (you are already low) then increase the retraction speed and finally adjust the distance. If I have thermally calibrated my filament it seems to minimize the ooze as well.
Sometimes a filament just likes to ooze and I can’t eliminate it completely. A good part cooling fan blowing right at the nozzle tip helps in this case. Any ooze I do get is enough cooler that it does not stick to the print well and the resulting little “branch” that gets left on the print brushes off.
@Adam_Steinmark you know, I saw that setting and the description it had for that setting made me think that it wasn’t what I was looking for. But I’ll give it a try and see what happens.
@Alan_Lord Yeah I’ve been using Slic3r PE since it came out, mostly out of necessity for my MMU setup. I only needed a raft recently for a multi-material print with very low surface area on the first layer of one of the parts. I didn’t want to use a brim because it would add a brim to the other parts as well. Rafts just crash Slic3r PE, or at least the MMU version. Cura time estimation has the closest estimation of any slicer I’ve tried, second only to Simplify3D. Yes it still underestimates by ~20%.
I will say one of the things I really like about Slic3r is how it segregates settings into profiles and how clear it is which settings are affected by changing profiles. With Cura and Simplify3D the settings affected by material and quality profiles are not as obvious.
@Jeff_Parish agreed, my comment was more for a well tuned machine.
@Jelle_B I believed I answered his issue, I’m just waiting for a response to see if it worked. I’m also the only one who mentioned Simplify3D and it was in a single comment.
@Adam_Steinmark it wasn’t that setting. That setting makes it so the printer DOESN’T retract until it has to move at least a specified distance. I wanted to force a retraction. I would need a setting called “retraction maximum travel” and I don’t see the option anywhere. It could just be that the part I was trying to print was just a little goofy or something. The printer was trying to print these little holes that were spaced far apart. It would print the first one just fine but as it traveled about 6" to print the other hole, it was just losing so much material that it had a really hard time printing the other part of the hole. I ended up just letting it run and the part ended up coming out good enough to use it.
By decreasing that setting it forces retraction on shorter travel moves. In the places you’re having issues is it not retracting at all or just not enough?
If the printer was already retracting before and you’re just oozing during retraction that’s an entirely separate issue and you don’t have to worry about the value of this setting.
If it’s not retracting then lowering this setting enough could fix it. It honestly depends on the machine and sometimes even the file if it’s torturous but it doesn’t sound like your case. I have it set to 3 mm on my direct drive printer and I think 2 mm on my short bowden printer. If you give me some info I can estimate a starting point for testing. Looks like the A10 is bowden, can you estimate the length of the feed tube to the nearest 50 mm? What’s your travel speed, retraction amount, and retraction speed? Do you have wipe or coast on and if so what is it set to? Is there any extra prime amount after retraction? And most importantly what was the value of this setting originally?
Any slicer programme doesn’t actually know how fast your printer moves and accelerates so it’s only a best-guess thing anyway.