Any idea why these keep failing?

[thinkdiffer]

Yeah, prints come out sometimes and sometimes it doesn't using the same model is frustrating. Even though i didn't have the same experience you had, did you take out your vat after you are done printing or did you leave it on the printer? Were you using the same vat that had successfully printed out and other times fail?

[reify]

I agree with Ron...the printer doesn't seem capable of enlarging the ring in one direction like this. Have you scrolled through the slice files to make sure they are ok?

[Ellie]

Yes I always scroll through the slice files and they seem fine, double checked and all my setting where fine, going to try and print the big square ring again today, I have pre-sliced it in CW and transferred it onto the laptop so fingers crossed it will work this time, just been worried about pressing the play button as although I can see the 1st slice layer when I load it I can’t see the slider for the layers and it says layers 0, can I just click print and it will work?

[Ellie]

ok new development, found the error but don’t know why it’s happening, I decided to re-slice the Sq ring in CW on the laptop and export the slices so that they were saved to see if that would help, and whilst scrolling through the slices I noticed 1 layer every so often was blue instead of white and was stepped in! I found 3 on this ring I have attached the centre step which is just after the start of the head,

obvious user error for not finding them before as I usually slice on my PC (which is always blue and squished) as its faster to scroll through all layers then re-slice on the laptop but just speed click through the layers as it takes so long to scroll when I don’t export them on the laptop (not sure which takes longer exporting on laptop or scrolling through each layer that isn’t exported) *bangs head off wall for trying to be clever and make things quicker* but this doesn’t answer the question of why it’s happening?

slice 738 - normal slice

slice 739 - blue squished slice!?

slice 740 - normal slice

[reify]

Bizarre. So this is happening on both of your computers?! And only to this ring or others too?

[rkundla]

The blue slices are a CW glitch. Normally all the slices are blue, which is fixed in one of the preferences by setting the exposure color backk to white. The squshy image seems to indicate that the display size somehow changed during that particular slice.

My guess is that something goes wrong during the slicing in CW and it somehow has the wrong color associated it with it in the slice data. Fixing it may be a problem since the source code is not available and the author isn't supporting the free version anymore. I'd recommend a fresh install of the CW software in another directory and try to slice it again to see if you can find the blue slices. Maybe it is something DLL/library related or Windows? So many variables...

Do you have the new Contour software available?

[Ellie]

Yes my PC shows all slices in blue and they are always squished, but I just figured it was because it's not connected to the printer and projector, I haven’t noticed it on the laptop before, but I hadn’t looked at every layer like an idiot trying to save time, I’m guessing its happened on all rings that have failed in this way, I always re-slice on a re-print if I need multiples of a model which I usually do, hence why they're sometimes are fine and sometimes have stepping,

I have luckily managed to pre-slice and print the Sq ring on the laptop yesterday 3rd slice try lucky, so will keep doing it this way until Contour is fixed, thinking of uninstalling and re-installing it to see if that helps?