Calibrate Perfect Retraction Settings Using a Cura 4.8 Plug-in

on today's episode i'll show you how to set that perfect retraction setting to get rid of the stringing but not clog your printer i'll explain it all on today's filament friday [Music] filament friday is brought to you every week by the generous donations of these patreon supporters here's a cutaway view of a creality hot end you've got your heat sink and then your heater block and you get your ptfe tube which goes all the way down to the nozzle and then the filament runs inside of it and when the filament gets down by the nozzle it expands and becomes molten and sometimes you get oozing out the nozzle when you move and that's why you retract when you retract a little bit it relieves the pressure and hopefully gets rid of that stringing or the oozing but how much do you retract you don't want to retract too far that you get into that cooling zone because then that soft material hardens and could potentially block the filament from moving back down so you want to retract just enough to relieve that pressure but stay in the hot zone but you also don't want to be too hot with a filament because especially pla can get really really soft so when you pull up on it you're really not pulling the soft material it's just stretching it so you still get oozing so you got to get that right temperature and you got to get the right retraction and every filament is a little bit different well cura has a plug-in to help you calibrate this if you go up to marketplace you go into the plug-ins and you scroll down to the calibration shapes you'll get a whole bunch of calibration prints so i'll click on this and here's the list of calibration prints that are included with this plug-in we're only going to use a couple of them but it's a very handy plug-in so install it i've already done that and you have to restart cura and once you do you'll come up here to extensions and you'll see part for calibration and you got some basic ones like add a calibration cube a cylinder a tube just click on it and there's a calibration cube it's not a cheb cube but it'll work but what we're focusing on is something else that's in here so we'll go to part for calibration and slide down to retraction tower this is the retraction tower and is designed to test different levels of retraction from one through five now you can change it to whatever you want but one through five typically works so we're going to use this but we also need to know the perfect temperature so there's another one up here in part calibration called the pla temp tower there's also ptg and abs but we're going to do the pla temp tower so let's bring this guy in and now these two prints i'm going to use these to calibrate that perfect retraction now the temperature tower starts at 220 here it says and goes to 180 so it goes down five degrees per level now normally you'd have to go into per model settings and set the heights to change the temperature or the retraction or actually go into the g-code and modify it but this plug-in actually has some scripts that work with this if you go into the part for calibration menu there's a copy script option you click on that then you have to restart cura and then when you go up to extensions and click on post processing modify gcode there'll be some added scripts that take care of this for you so there's one for the retraction tower and in there is where you can set the starting value the increment value and at what layer you want it to change there's also a script for temp it's called temp fan tower here you can set the initial temperature how much you want it to change and at what layer to change that temperature so the first thing we need to do is run the temperature tower test to find the perfect temperature for this filament we want it to be molten and flow good but we don't want it too hot that it's going to ooze so let's get rid of the retraction tower test and let's work on this guy so let's look at this temperature tower script it has a starting temperature of 220 degrees well it turns out that's what it says in the temperature tower and then it says it increments at minus five so it's going down five degrees at each level and that's what it's showing on the print so that matches then it says change layer at 38. so let's verify that so i'm going to slice it and then we'll look at it under preview but i sliced it at 0.2 millimeters because i think that's what it's going to match up to so let's scroll down to 38 and there's 38 and sure enough there's the level that's where it's going to change temperature so the next one should be 76 so there's 76 and it matches so if you do a different layer height you'll have to adjust that number but 38 matches the 0.2 layer height and then this thing will change all the way up to the top so let's print this and see what is the best temperature and here's the print and unfortunately the camera just cannot pick it up as easily as i can see it but at 180 it's just not bonding as well there's spots where it's just not flowing and then at 185 it gets a little better but still not great at 190 it starts to look a little better but you can see it's just not as smooth as you know you would want 195 it starts to look pretty good and then at 200 it's looking really good and then 205 to me is the best and any of these could work 195 to 205 but i like 205 at 210 215 and then 220 i can just see it's starting to ooze too much it's too soft so i'm gonna stick with 205 for the retraction test i think that'll be the best so here's the retraction tower and it's got numbers on it as well one two three four five representing the retraction distance of one to five millimeters so let's load that script retraction tower let's get rid of the temperature tower and now we have to select from the drop down we can do speed or distance i'm going to do distance that's to me more important so the starting value is 1 the value increment is 1 so we're going to go from 1 up to 5 and the layer change is 38 again and you can display it on the lcd it won't work in a v2 but if you have a regular ender this would work i'm going to use a 0.2 layer height again i think that'll work with that level setting that was in the script and i'm also going to make sure i'm set to 205 which we found with the temperature tower so everything will print at 205 so let's slice this guy and it says 44 minutes so it doesn't take long to do these tests so you can easily do this with various filaments and let's look at the preview and make sure i got that transition point right so let's go to layer 38 and there it is there's the bridge perfect so if i go to 76 it should be the next bridge and it is so this is working perfect so 0.2 layer height seems to work perfect for those scripts so now let's print this guy and see what results we get and here's the results you can see with a one millimeter retraction the stringing is horrible at two it's still not great at three it starts to get better but they're stringing here it's hard to see but it's there at four they're still stringing at the bottom and at five it's perfectly clean which is interesting because my profiles i have it set to six which works but kira has five so i think i learned something here this filament which is my filament friday red filament works better with five there you have a very systematic way to figure out the best retraction for the filament you're using try it out and let me know how it works for you in the comments below if you like what i'm doing here maybe check out some of the videos that are popping up and if nothing else click on that chef logo and subscribe i'll see you next time right here at filament friday

Channel: CHEP

Views: 575,186

Keywords: cura settings for ender 3, cura settings for ender 3 v2, cura settings explained, cura settings for ender 3 pro, retraction settings 3d printing, retractions, retraction 3d printing, retraction test 3d print, retraction test, retraction settings 3d printing cura, retraction calibration, CHEP, Filament Friday, Creality Ender 3, ender 3 v2, ender 3 pro, cura plugins, cura plugins chep, Calibrate Perfect Retraction Settings Using a Cura 4.8 Plug-in

Id: 6LjbCIGCmd0

Length: 7min 48sec (468 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021