Dual Extruder printing issues on FF Creator-x

[shoptoylife]

Hello, so after doing a number of somewhat successful prints through Simplify3D I wanted to give the dual extruder a whirl to see how two colors would print out using ABS. I followed the "Printing With Multiple Extruders" tutorial however used first a dual-color model from Nervous Systems, then tried the Hilbert Cube that came with ReplicatorG. Both were total duds...

Set up looked like this


on the left the cube is merged, looks more than fine. on the right in the preview window you can see that it's offset the two .stl files. I thought that might not print out that way, however here's the spaghetti mess that resulted from this



gaps, messy / fused base and many layers were not fully printed correctly.

as for the Frog from Nervous Systems


The raft fused together into this unbreakable mess. The supports (which were probably not needed) looked to protrude through the body somehow. There's also a ton of little curly bits of ABS all over the body, not the smooth print I was expecting, let alone offset like the cube. This was a costly print to boot AND took 10 hours.

First question is why is Simplify3D offsetting the .stl files? There wasn't any mention of needing to adjust them so they fit better. When the two files are merged in the starting window I would expect to see the same showing with the mesh view in the preview window.

second is more with the overall printing - there just seems to be some data lost or scrambled during the printing, no matter if I'm using USB or from a SDHC card.

Any suggestions on settings or guidance would be greatly appreciated - thanks!!

[KeyboardWarrior]

Can you save a factory file, and upload it in a reply? That way I can look at your settings and try to figure out whats going wrong. I've printed this part successfully on a leapfrog creatr 2, so I am interested to see whats going on here.

[shoptoylife]

hilbert_cube1_support.stl

(80.92 KiB) Downloaded 393 times

hilbert_cube1.stl

(24.11 KiB) Downloaded 401 times

just the basic .stl that came with FlashForge Creator-X. The frog I DL'd from Thingiverse here http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:329436 - each of these would look fine in the initial Simplify window but go bonkers once it's in the preview window. I don't know why the software shifts the two models, let alone just fries the output.

Thanks!

[KeyboardWarrior]

Really weird, I downloaded it and printed it on my FF Creator (not x) and got good results. I could obviously clean up some of the strings attached to it, but this print is much better and doesn't have the errors you posted earlier. I attached my factory file, I think the creator-x is close enough to where you can print with this factory file and be okay. The purge function at the beginning might be different since it wont be off the bed when it purges on your larger bed, or you can just look @ my settings and reference them.




to open the factory file, simply open Simplify3D and go to File-->Open factory file

[shoptoylife]

When you loaded it into Simplfy3D, did you see the meshes offset in the preview window? The screenshot in the original post shows what I see when I load it up and it's clearly offset. I don't know why it does that but all of the dual extruder prints look like this. I'll see what happens when I try your version!

[shoptoylife]

So i opened up the factory file and saw the two processes listed - but when I went to view the settings both were for the left print extruder and not set for dual printing. Shouldn't this be set for

FlashForge Creator Dual (Both Extruders) with one process set for the right extruder, one for the left extruder? I saw that in "Process 1" you have under the left extruder selection, the right extruder set for the tab options. Process 2 had the left extruder set for all.

Once I previewed this the mesh looked good but before printing I wanted to check as to why you had selected just one of the extruders but added the two processes.

Thanks!!