New to 3D printing and new to octoprint

Hey all, I am completely new to 3d printing and I jumped right in. I bought a Prusa MK3S Kit (I built it over a couple days and working great) and a CR-10S Pro.

The CR-10S Pro has been a little bit of a problem, first one had many issues, really bad warped bed, auto level would not work/hold settings.. the sensor sucks and was not consistent and it would lock up mid print over and over, powering off was only way to get it going again. It was purchased via Amazon Prime so return was easy, replacement printer worked great for 1-2 days but then the sd card stopped reading cards. Tried 3 cards I already had (reformatted many different ways) and ordered 2 new ones, none worked.... ordered a replacement CR-10S Pro from amazon which will be here Thursday. So the sd card issue brought me to octoprint as I was googling stuff.

I had a raspberry pi 2 lying around already I was not using so setup octoprint on it.. it is working great with both printers, very nice.. I like it very much.

I am learning about 3d printing and trying to learn fusion 360 as well (tinkercad is nice and simple, using that a lot also). I see people talking about gcode commands, for one how do I just send a random gcode command to my printer and where do I learn what they all do exactly? Is there a good beginners guide somewhere on gcode?

Right now for instance.. my cr10s pro is printing.. I want to adjust my nozzle a little bit, maybe up a little bit (just to experiment and see how it reacts while its putting down layers, also I am having stringing issues pretty bad atm, lowered nozzle temp some as of now). How do I do this in octoprint while its printing? I know how to adjust temps but not seeing a place to do tiny adjustments to the nozzle. I normally could do that on the cr10s pro screen while it printed but when the job is sent via octoprint I don't get the same screen up on the printer.

Also, how do I slow it down, if I had it set for 60mm and wanted to reduce it to 40mm, is that feed rate I adjust?

Also I noticed when I started the job on my cr10s pro through octoprint it did not run through the auto level routine like it normally would.. how can I set it up so it will do that before each print (after it heats up bed and nozzle)?

thanks for any input!

I'm going to throw some comments/replies at you in no particular order (hope that's okay).

  • It's in your best interest to spring for two Raspberry Pi 3B computers, one for each printer.
  • Make sure that your serial cables have internal metallic shielding or at least a ferrite core.
  • Make sure that each Raspberry is powered with a bonafide 5V 2.5A power adapter (rather than a charger).
  • The website I always use to "go to school" on gcode is RepRap.
  • The command to trigger an autolevel routine at least on my printer is G29.
  • The Terminal tab in OctoPrint is where I would issue raw gcode commands but I usually would toggle the three filter checkboxes so that heat-related commands aren't bothering me.
  • The Control tab in OctoPrint has a pair of sliders at the bottom for controlling the speed of the movement (under the axes jog controls) and the magnifier for extrusion/retractions (under the extruder jog controls). Recently while switching a standard PLA job to flexible PLA I had to drop the left slider to 90% and increase the right slider to 110% or something like that until the layer was printing perfectly. I just let it remain that way for the remainder of the job and it turned out great. This would be necessary since I don't print flexible filament as the first layer on my bed since it really doesn't want to come off.
  • The Temperature tab in OctoPrint is where you might tweak the temperature. To the best of my knowledge, the Offset on the right works if you set it before the beginning of the job. Say, if I've sliced for PLA and I've decided to use carbon fiber—infused PLA instead I would set that to 205 - 190 = +15, then start the job. That's what it's good for (adjusting something without editing the gcode file). If you want to adjust the temperature in realtime, use the setting in the middle. Add two or three to the current setting while carefully watching how this plays out. You can easily then back it down again or add a little more. This will run until another temperature-setting command is seen in your gcode file which doesn't happen for me.
  • You might try just toggling off (the controller's) SD support in OctoPrint's settings if that's giving you troubles.
  • I like Autodesk Fusion 360 and have created many designs already. I fear the day when I might have to actually pay them monthly for this (which frankly will not happen). So make sure to download the actual object files once per quarter.
  • I use the stand-alone version of Cura to slice and always use the Relative Extrusion feature. You can adjust things so that your first few layers print slower if that's what's causing difficulty. While you're still new at this, I'd suggest including a raft (bed adhesion).
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