Home JGAurora A5 & A3S Getting Started & Troubleshooting

Cura Profile for the A5 and explanations for the individual settings

ProkktorProkktor Posts: 146🌟 Super Member 🌟
Hi,

I own my A5 for just under a month but it did in excess of 300 prints by now with 10 spools of PLA from 4 manufacturers, and 2 spools of petg. I printed large numbers 3d printing test to test most settings in Cura and I am finally able to print most stuff in the first try, including detailed 28mm DND knights and moving parts like the "print in place iris box" so Samuel asked me to share my profile so here it is.
If you are a beginner, I hope this helps you understand Cura faster, if you are a pro it would still be nice if you read it and correct my inevitable mistakes^^

Lets get to it:

Prerequisites:
Before you start you should:
- upgrade the firmware of both your printers boards to the current community editions... this is essential and you can basically skip everything i am going to write if you refuse to do that
-  do a mesh bed leveling with at least 4 by 4 points (better 5 or 6) while the bed is at printing temp (50C)
(go to Youtube and watch Da Hai's JGAurora A5 videos to learn how to do that)
- print yourself a new part cooling duct (I use Da Hai's Blowhard 3000, but there are many others on Thingiverse)

Hint:
- at the start of every print you will print a skirt (sometimes even a brim) use your displays baby-step buttons to correct the nozzle height, the filament needs to be a squished flat line about 0.5 to 0.6 mm wide behind your nozzle
- if you find you need to baby-step too often with every print you can use Pronterface to manually correct your mesh with G29 S4 ZX.XX    X.XX is in mm, negative values move the nozzle downwards. One babystep is 0.025mm so if you need and average of 12 babystepps you can enter: G29 S4 Z-0.25 and do the last 2 babysteps manually if necessary. You could do the full 0.3mm but I do not trust this Z endstop switch to be that precise, so better safe than sorry
- dont forget to have M420 S1 after G28 in your Start GCODE if you use any kind of software bed leveling be it mesh or any of the automatics

Cura Settings:

Quality:
This explains itself mostly you can use "Layer Height"s from 0.1mm to 0.3mm with the standard nozzle, for the first layer i do a little less. 
"Line Width" is at least your nozzle width, some people use a little more but I did not have big successes with that.
Actually this should be called "Minimal Line Width" because Cura will print every wall from 100% to 199% of the "Line Width"s thickness in one line and only once the wall is 200% or more of your "Line Width" it will consider more than 1 line for the wall.
"Skirt/Brim Line With" I go with 0.6 because when I baby-step I need to see those lines better^^
Shell:
"Wall Thickness" should be a multiple of "Line Width", I normally go with 3 lines there. This has major impact on the sturdiness of your print, often times more than infill density...
"Compensate Wall Overlaps" I was told this makes surfaces ugly and I never printed with this active.
"Print thin walls" allows your printer to print lines that are less wide than your nozzle width, thats always active for me because otherwise Cura skips those walls
Infill:
"Infill Density" should mostly be between 10% and 40% depending on what you print. Beware: When using to much infill your parts tend to warp more and even a little over-extrusion tends to flow over the walls making your print ugly!
"Skin/Infill Overlap Percentage" (5 to 15%) if you have gaps between walls and infill/solid layers it could be under extrusion, but if the solid layers look fine otherwise it is not and you should rather increase overlap than flow rate! I use 8% and 11%.
Material:
"Printing Temperature" Low printing temps makes you parts more prone to breaking (less layer adhesion) and high temperatures let you print faster but you loose fine details because the filament does not harden fast enough if you go even hotter you start to see stringing and after that your material simply fails) I print my PLA between 190C and 200C because I like beautiful prints.
"Printing Temperature 1st Layer" is incredibly important for your print to stick to the bed, my PLA's do not stick to the bed below 210C, in excess of 230C they stick even without squishing the first line, but you get elephants feet and other problems. I recommend 210C and increase in 5C increments until the parts sticks to the bed. 
"Flow" there are many tolerance tests on thingiverse, I tested this for days and finally decided to go for 80% flow... that sounds crazy low and maybe its special to my printer but now it passes tolerance tests of down to 0.15mm. If you have problems with moving parts. holes that are to narrow or other stuff that does not fit, this can be your solution: lowering "Flow" and raising "Overlap Percentage" a little did wonders for my print quality
"Build Plate Temperature" again as long as it sticks less is better, I go with 50C and all PLA's print fine on that. This is the main power consumer in your printer! Printing on very hot beds actually multiples the electricity bill of your printer and probably shortens its lifespan.
"Retraction" this printer has a long bowden with a very wide ptfe tube, so it needs massive retraction: 7mm at speed 70 is my preference
"Retraction Extra Prime Amount" if your walls have small signs of over or under extrusion (little lines or gaps of a few mm visible) it could be that after this massive retractions the filament is not in the exact same state as before, so here you can add or subtract to the re-retraction to compensate for that, I use 0.1mm. 
Speed:
"Print/Infill/Wall/Layer Speed" I usually print 40 to 50 with half that for the outer layers/walls, depending on how detailed(large) the object is.
"Initial Layer Speed" Here I use values between 8 and 15 depending on the shape of the first layer. 
"Skirt Brim Speed" Since I manually baby-step I need this slow to have enough time, I go with 10.
"Number of slower layers" Since I dont use much fan for the first layers I raise this when the bottom of my object is rather small.
"Equalize Filament Flow" I have this on, but never saw much difference.
"Acceleration/Jerk Control" I use 300 and 5, because I saw that in a video and it seems to work fine.
Travel:
"Combing Mode": This makes the printer skip retractions and instead move the nozzle quickly through infill or non outer solid layers. This makes the inside of your print uglier which is sometimes visible and it may occasionally be responsible for the nozzle knocking something of the build plate. But turning it of makes printing much slower, so I leave it on.
Cooling:
"Regular Fan Speed at Height" The fan will gradually increase in speed until it reaches max at this value. This is useful because using too much cooling on the first layers leads to more warping. I usually go with 3.5mm but if I print something with a very small base like a ball, I use full fan from layer 2 onwards...
"Minimum Layer Time" If the time needed to print the current layer is shorter than this, it will slow down the print. Very useful because the part cooling fan is not that strong. I recommend something between 6s and 10s.
"Minimum Speed" When it slows down because of "Minimum Layer Time" this ist the minimum it can use. Very important, if you print to slowly your nozzle heats up the previously printed plastic and everything starts to look ugly. I recommend 10.
"Lift Head" If slowing down is not enough because of "Minimum Speed" then move the nozzle away from the print and wait until "Minimum Layer Time" is reached. This is extremely important, always keep this on!
Support

*to be continued*



Post edited by Prokktor on

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