Support: Sharebot Kiwi-3D

Delete the last 2-3 cm of the filament. Cut the filament with a pointed angle, this will help to facilitate loading. It is important that the filament has no curves or tangles. Click the utility menu “upload’ filament”.

Check the CLD panel and, when indicated, slightly push the filament in the extruder. Hold the strand and push it in the upper hole of the extruder. Make sure you have entered the straight filament in the extruder, not diagonally.

After that you feel (gently with two fingers holding the filament) the motor is dragging the filament, continuing to keep slight pressure on the strand for five seconds, then loosen the grip a little and feel if the filament slips from your fingers and verify that a thin wire goes from below the extruder.

To release the filament unscrew the 4 lateral screws (those with springs), you have to remove the plaque with its bearing in order to have at home and with free access to gear; at this point,proceed by removing any remaining filament which block the nozzle inlet or block the wheel. Later, when you are changing the filament, “help it” by pushing it gently for the first few inches of extrusion.

On your desplay you have to select the option “Change Wire” from your printer’s menu. Wait until the printer had finished the expulsion’s cycle than insert your filament. While the machine is loading the wire, you have to try to block the filament with your fingers; If this were to lead to a “slip” of the pulley on the filament, the springs should be tightened up to have an outlet to blow away the engine (you should hear a ping like a tak tak). The springs must not be too tight so that the motor is not too under stress and consequently it will not lose any steps.

The reasons that determine a certain inconstancy in quality printing perimeters are both mechanical and physical. If the printer works at excessively high speed, mechanical vibration may be leading the printing plate to swing from the extruder head creating compression and other points of separation. In this case you can see waves or flaws in the pattern.

Speed management is critical to check the quality. If the defects are similar to layers “rarefied”, it is likely that the filament is struggling to be dragged within the extruder. Make sure there are no obstructions or that the path is not too tortuous and, above all, that do not form in the strand curls before entering in the extruder.

A similar case can result from non-uniformity of diameter of the filament, making different amounts of material in relation to the software and firmware. In this case there is no “cure”, if not replace the coil with a better quality.

A final reason of defects, physical nature, relates to the extrusion temperature not suitable for speed and to the material. The extrusion temperature depends on the material, but it should not be forgotten that even the print speed requires adjustment: slowly prints can be made with lower temperatures, while high speed prints can also request varying degrees more than the typical temperature. Be careful not to overdo it and the fact that at high temperatures the phenomenon of gravity casting increase a lot.

The buckle edge phenomenon occurs basically in models that have overhanging shapes that rapidly expand outwards, reaching or exceeding 45% of inclination. In practice the perimeters are relative to each other very moved, with the outer perimeter that touches only marginally below. In this way, while the material cools it creates a tension that, when passes the extruder, brings everything to buckle.

The solutions are:
-a greater forced ventilation (for example. turn on the fan if it wasn’t active or put it up if it was at 50%)
-the reduction of the height of the layer to have – as possible – a greater overlap between a layer and the next
-the decrease of extrusion temperature
-the refrigeration in print speed to give time to the underlying layer of cooling itself
-use more perimeters for the walls, so you have more material and more thickness as wall so that, consequently, it becomes less deformable.

The parameters that come into play to determine how quickly an object is printed are basically three:
-Height of layer
-Number of perimeters
-Filling Percentage
-Feedrate%

The height of the printing layer, typically between 0.12 and 0.22 mm, do not alter the amount of material that will form the finished piece, but change the way this material is laid out. Thinnest the layer is and greater will be the number of layers required, with consequent increase of printing’s time. The thickness of the layer influences the resolution of the curves on the z-axis.

The number of marquees has a direct impact on how the object is robust and “massive”. A single perimeter is at the limit of flexibility, while already from 2 perimeters you have a stiffener. Going beyond the 4 perimeter can become excessive, or it can be a solution to not use all the filling, leaving the walls supporting theirself. Obviously there must not be horizontal surfaces requiring a support (that’s why we do the filling).

The percentage of filling should be chosen according to the requirements of robustness of the model: If the fill is used to give a support to horizonatal parties in the model’s development, the 10/20% is enough; If you want to give some strength to the object, the 30/40% is adequate, while 100% can be used in the rare cases where a small object must have maximum strength (for exemple: a gear).

With the same model, a quick print is achieved with one or two perimeters, the 15% of fill and layers of 0.2 mm. The same model can be strengthen if necessary only by increasing the number of perimeters. The thickness of the layers is the parameter with the biggest impact on printing time and it should be chosen carefully.

The reasons that can cause the points where the model builds up more material than necessary, creating droplets, once again could be different.
a) temperature too high for print speed
b) slicing settings improvement
c) uneven filament diameter

In the first case, the material tends to leak from the tip of the extruder points such as the layer change or shifting from perimeter to another. Reducing the temperature increases the viscosity of the material at this point should be less prone to the phenomenon which in English is called “oozing” (leaking).

If excess material accumulates, forming a vertical line, you can work on slicing by setting parameters in the “Layers and perimeters” of Print settings the parameter “Randomize starting points”. This does begin at different points every boundaries so that you form a kind of scar on the piece. Alternatively, you can use the parameter “Avoid crossing perimeters” amending print path of each layer to keep as much as possible the extruder to the entire perimeters, preventing any drippings sticking to the outside walls.

When the filament does not have a uniform diameter, calculations made to dispense just the right amount of material are no longer valid and this could cause not only the uneven deposition of the layers, but also of the excesses and sagging. In this respect, it is very important to use only materials of proven quality and consistency, not loading the extrusion with filaments without adequate specifications or visibly uneven.
With the same model, a quick print is achieved with one or two perimeters, the 15% of fill and layers of 0.2 mm. The same model can be strengthen if necessary only by increasing the number of perimeters. The thickness of the layers is the parameter with the biggest impact on printing time and it should be chosen carefully.

The reasons that cause this problem are mainly three:

a) Poor adhesion of the first layer for incorrect parameters
b) calibration of the incorrect dish
c) glass treatment now exhausted.

These adds the issue of temperature in the case of print with ABS and heated bed.

Here your ordered solutions:

when you set up a profile by slicing, it is important to first set the thickness of the first layer to 200% to allow the printer to create the first layer with a certain abundance of material. If the surface is very small compared to the overall size of the object, you must use the adjustments that increase the contact surface on the printing plate and the first layer, RAFT or BRIM. If even with these measures the object tends to come off, you can consider next solution.

So that the filament material could adhere to the glass that came with the printer, there has to be a film of lacquer in good condition. With each print, a bit of material is removed along with the print so if you repeat a print in a short period of time the lacquer is removed. Similarly, if you printed a lot and some areas remained poor in lacquer, it is likely that in those places the detachment is lurking. Periodically you have to clean the dish washing it with warm water and sprinkle a new layer, trying to do it the more homogeneous and smooth as possible. Obviously you don’t have to spray too much material: two or three quick passes are usually sufficient.

If you are using the ABS with the heated plate, the situation may depends by a layer of lacquer too much consumed, but also from a object that, because of its shape, is subject to considerable retraction stress during cooling phase and therefore requires a higher plate’s temperature.

If the model has long and thin parts, with three-walled or more perimeters and with a certain abundance of fill, only with a temperature over 80 degrees and a layer of lacquer just laid you can hope to keep the piece without deformation. One potential solution may also be to slow down the printing of the first five or six millimetres to reduce thermal stress and allow the heated stage to do its job.

Avoid having draughts affecting these ABS models during printing and try to keep your printer in a hot environment.

When I print I don’t have a homogeneous material’s flow and I feel some taps from the extruder motor.

The extrusion system used has no mechanism for gear and then the engine must exert a significant force to push the filament in the path that leads it up to the heated part, where it melts and is extruded from the tip thanks to pressure from the still solid strand that follows it. If the temperature is not such as to bring the material to smooth enough, or the length of the extruder from the press plane is so low as to prevent the release of thermoplastics from the nozzle, the pressure should be applied to solid filament for it to escape from the nozzle is more than the engine is able to exercise and for this it miss rotation steps. The situation could also lead to the creation of a tooth in the filament is this is soft, further worsening the situation as it would not be applied any more boost to the filament.

The practical solutions are different: you must first make sure that the nozzle does not come into contact with the printing surface (intervene or on the Z-axis calibration or onthe four screws aligning printing plate). The second concerns the verification of printing temperature that you can check raising via software the nozzle from the printing plane (you have to lower the floor first), then through the nozzle a couple of inches from you, you must heat it to the desired temperature, then advance the filament to a few centimeters.

At this stage, it is very important to set the wire feed speed to a reasonable value (80/150 mm/min) to simulate the printing conditions. You have to extrude between 20 and 40 mm at a time and check if the extrusion is done continuously, homogeneous and without jumps. When the material comes out of the nozzle, it should be visibly fluid and create a kind of homogeneous donut. If with these settings the material has difficult to exit, there is a temperature problem, probably too low. Might also be a problem of excessive filament diameter, or you may have printed material that requires a higher temperature and its residues inside the nozzle are creating the problem. Increase the temperature by 2 degrees at a time, wait for 5 seconds and see when the tip of the extruder begins to look at the material which flows spontaneously. Go back a few degree, then you must give extrusion command again, trying to get a donut that grows evenly and with a diameter of no more than 1 cm. At the beginning the flow will be more liquid and then it will stabilize with repeated extrusions in sequence. Take note of the temperature because it is optimal for the material used. With this new approach, you shouldn’t have more problem with the extruder motor making jumps, assuming that you have also changed the flat adjustment if this was closing the extrusion of the first print layer. If even with these precautions, if you don’t get a filament without dragging jumps then you might have a problem on how to position the fixing the bearing block with respect to the motor pulley. Look at the part where is placed the filament, if it consists of a laminated block attached to the motor housing by two screws, the block has ball bearing fixed on one of its gills and then moving the block you can increase or decrease the space that exists between the bearing and the pulley on the motor shaft.

WARNING:, NOT unscrewing it but only loosening them) and pressing with your fingers to move horizontally all the slats and so supportive in an opposite direction to the front sprocket to widen the gap between bearing and pinion itself. Tighten the screws again and do the tests above. If the estruder’s block is in black PVC, you can intervene on side block that is attached to the pulley.

You will notice that is fastened with 4 screws with springs: speaking about tightening the4 screws, you can increase or decrease the socket of the pulley on the filament. In the factory, the tightening is optimized for biting all the strands that we tested. In general, the filament must be manually pushed in the extruder without exerting excessive force, but likewise should not slide too easily. In either case, the engine must not be running, otherwise the pinion was halted and the filament could not absolutely scroll.