When you're using the Cura slicer with an Ender 3 profile there's these
lines that show up within the slicer that prevent you from printing on the
full-size bed. Well there's a way to get rid of those lines and I'll show you how
to do it right here at Filament Friday. Filament Friday's brought to you
every week by these patreon supporters. I'll show you here in version 4.5 of
Cura. You can see these grey areas they're like a keep-out area where the
clips would be to hold a bed in place. But the Clips aren't across the whole
thing. And if I slide a CHEP Cube into that
grey area, it turns camouflage. Pull it out, it goes
back solid, put it in goes camouflage. If I try to slice it while it's in there, it
says unable to slice and it gives me a message that I'm in this area that's not
printable. Well we know it is printable so if I pull it out go solid slices just
fine. So we need to get rid of that area
because we can go around the clips we know how to handle that. And what bothers
me more is if I just extend this thing in the Y direction to 200, look at this.
It's hitting. I'm not even getting the 220 by 220 between the clips. So these
lines have to go. Now I looked at 3.6, which I use a lot, and there's
no keep out area. So this is definitely something that was added with version
4.something. And it's really kind of a pain. Well 4.6.1
did something a little different to address this. They didn't get rid of it.
But the Ender 3 still has those areas and they're not quite as big. But
they also offer now, an Ender 3 Pro profile, which doesn't have clips. So you
don't see that keep out area. It's got a magnetic bed so if you want it just
switch to the Ender 3 Pro profile you don't have it. If you want them back
in there switch to Ender 3. That's one way to handle it. But what if you want to
stay with an older version say at 4.2 or 4.3 or even 4.5? Is there a way to fix it?
Yes there is. This is how you can fix it on a Mac. If
you right-click, show package contents > contents > resources> resources> definitions
you'll find a file Ender 3 definition file. On a Windows machine
that's under whatever version you're using and then resources> definitions and
then there's the file. So we're going to edit either of these with a text editor.
Open it up in a text editor and find this disallowed areas section and you
can see there's all kinds of dimensions in here. We're gonna get rid of those. So
between the brackets I'm gonna highlight all that and then just cut it out of
this file. Once it's cut then I'm gonna save this file and then we're gonna
restart Cura. So I did this to version 4.5 and started it up and now you can
see that area is gone. No more grey lines to interfere. No more blocking me from
using the whole bed. So it took all that away. There's still that ring around the
outside but now if I make a print 200 it fits. In fact if I make a print 220 in
the y-direction it fits. In fact I can do something 220 by 220 and it fits. So
I'm getting the full advertised 220 by 220 build area. So that fixes it.
Hopefully that helps you print bigger on your Ender 3 if you're using an
older slicer like 4.5 or earlier. But the 4.6? I guess their answer was to just
have the pro version and the regular version which you can change the regular
version the same way I showed. But you can have both. And as far as getting any
bigger, you can make the bed bigger within the profile. Go bigger than 235 by
235 but then your print may not be centered anymore when it's centered in
the slicer. So you have to play with that as well. There's no perfect solution but
this at least gets rid of those stupid lines that were protecting for the clips.
If you like this maybe check out some of the other videos that are popping up and
in please click on that CHEP logo and subscribe. That way you don't miss an
episode. I'll see you next time right here
at Filament Friday