On today's episode I'm going to show you a new plugin that's available in cura
4.4 I'm also going to show you a problem that I found while I was testing with
the stock extruder on Ender 3 I know some people have replaced the PTFE tube
or done other things but still have under extrusion this could be the
problem I'll show you what it is and that plug-in on today's filament Friday
filament Friday is brought to you by these patreon supporters I've been
testing out the new Ultimaker cura version 4.4 and here it is I got the
CHEP cube loaded so I'll click on about cura just to prove this is version 4.4
frankly there's not a whole lot new in this one thing I did like is when I
installed it on my Mac it automatically brought in all my profiles so that was
nice I didn't have to reload profiles that seemed to work well so what I want
to do is just slice this chip cube at point two eight layer height says it's
gonna take 29 minutes now what I want to show you is this modified g-code script
it's a new one the person who created it actually tipped me off to this they left
a message in one of my videos and so I'm gonna scroll up here to display
remaining time and LCD and I know display is spelled wrong so does he it's
gonna fix it but what this does is actually display on the LCD how much
time is left of the print so I'll check the box to enable it and then that'll
make the little wrench appear still 29 minutes so it's not gonna take any
longer to do this let's send this to and under three and see what it looks like
so it's heated up to bed it's heated up to hot end and it's actually gonna start
printing because you can see it's already taking 1 minutes 4% done
according to that but it still says extruder heating so it's a little bit
delayed but then it says 28 minutes and 8 seconds
even though above it it says two minutes completed so that implies 30 minutes but
I no cura said 29 basically every layer it jumps to a new layer it updates the
time left so there's 27 minutes now there's 26 minutes I sped this up a
little bit so it works pretty good so that's an interesting app but what's
even more interesting is what happened to my printer
I used my printer that I just recently put new Capricorn tubing and couplings
on it and look at the results I got from this thing totally under extruded a
terrible terrible print and what's ironic is I've been getting a lot of
emails and questions from people saying they replace their Capricorn - and put a
new nozzle on it did all kinds of things and still can't get rid of the under
extrusion well let me show you what I found
I reran the print and the first layer just looked awful just terrible as you
can see so I knew I had an under extrusion problem so I decided to just
change the nozzle so I'll unscrewed it and then let it cool and then took a
look at it it seemed fine but I decided to put a
new one in anyway so I grabbed the new nozzle tightened it up and then tried
printing it again and I started to get the same results but then you could see
it start to get better well that's because I pulled on the lever arm and
this seemed to push the filament through better so I knew there was slipping
going on here so I decided to look even closer at ahead let go of the arm and
check it out the idler arm is not writing against the gear the the idler
wheel is not spinning so the filament is just slipping and this was the problem I
loosened the lever arm screw like I showed in a previous video that didn't
help it seemed the only thing that worked is if I pulled on the lever so I
put down another first layer and I held the lever the whole time and it came out
really good so then I stopped the print that's what the little blob is so
pulling this lever fixes it but as I pulled on it I could feel something
wasn't right something was flexing I pulled the lever arm off and I didn't
notice it at first but then I saw this hairline crack and when I pulled it too
apart the crack opened up this is what was causing the problem it's flexing and
preventing the idler from writing tight against the gear a while ago I had
bought one of these CH power all aluminum extruder I never installed it
on a machine so I took it out of the package and I decided to try it on this
machine I've showed you a duel gear drive I
showed you the easier but this is just like a direct replacement for the Cree
ality and I decided I want to just try the arms see if just the arm would fit
and work so I put the pieces together form the arm first of bearing with a
screw and then you slide in the insert and this is the pivot that the arm you
know rides again it's like a bearing I put the screw in and then I had to add
one more screw to guide the spring so I put that in and then I installed this on
to the stock ajudar so I'm using the same plastic base but I screwed it in
with the original spring and it worked I mean everything lined up the wheel was
turning and I was getting a very good print as you can see right here the flow
is perfect so I really don't need to replace the whole thing but I'm gonna do
that anyway I made sure power was off and then I disconnected the extruder
wire from the stepper motor then I unscrewed the Capricorn tubing and I had
already taken the filament out so that I needed to remove the new arm which I had
tested so I pulled that off and then there's three screws left to take the
top off and away from the stepper motor now I'm gonna put the new gear on but I
compared the diameter they're identical so I just have to do anything with east
steps so I put the new base back on just basically Oh same three screws then I
put the new gear on and adjusted it so it's centered to the filament then it
came in a little lock washer so I flattened that and put it underneath the
arm to give it a little better pivot then tighten the arm down against this
metal base then there was a screw there's no tightening screw it just goes
into the spring and guides it then I put the coupling back on the last step was
to reconnect the wiring to the stepper motor and then reprinted and when I
reprinted it it came out so much better here it is with the new metal extruder
this isn't a perfect print it's a point two eight but it's so much better than
what I had before I can't believe that just a hairline crack in that arm caused
this much trouble so there's something look for you may have a cracked arm or
something similar so this is an easy replacement ten dollars all metal I got
to sign Amazon you can probably get a little cheaper if
you go to Bank good I'll put links to this in the description below the only
thing I wish that could print the super flexible ninja flex and this one can
either which surprised me this is the same dual Drive that's on the CR 10s Pro
I mounted this on an under three in a previous video it works really well it's
a little bit more money at fifteen dollars you get it from various places
I'll put links to this but this one can't do the super you know flexible for
that I go to the easy are this is the easier extruder from simi C&C it's the
same one that's on there two thousand dollar Artemis Delta printer works
fantastic works for any filaments not just ninja flex but it does ninjaflex
beautifully I showed this in a previous video it's a lot more expensive at
thirty five to forty dollars I'll put a link to this in the description this is
my favorite extruder for any cree allottee machine especially the under
three I'm continuing to play with cura 4.4 to find out what changed it's really
really minor it seems like what's changed a lot of bug fixes I guess it
really was to help alta maker users with some new profiles other than that it's
really really minor so I may do a video of this in the future I may just wait
until version 4.5 but in the meantime check out this time left see if you like
it I'm not sure I like it enough to take away that last line because a lot of
times I display my file name down there so this may lose out to that but it's a
nice feature check it out give that plug-in a try let me know what you think