Lots of filament oozing during timelapse park

[gray crane]

I'm trying to setup timelapse in mainsail, and at the moment I'm using the park feature with the coordinates set to X=centre of bed and Y=maximum in order to move the print head out of the way of the object being printed and to get a stabilised/non-jerky timelapse by having a consistent position.

However, when the print head does the parking procedure and takes the photo, it oozes a lot of filament throughout travelling to, from and during the park position even though it only takes about 2 seconds total. This is even though I have tried various different retraction settings (3-5mm, 30mm/s-100mm/s) that are similar to the normal settings I use in my slicer (2.2mm 100mm/s), and I am also using the minimum temperature recommended by the manufacturer for the filament (230C, PETG).

This means that prints that would normally come out fine (left of photo) end up with lots of strands of filament ooze stuck to them due to the timelapse parking (middle and right of photo).
Is there a way to fix this, or do I simply need to give up trying to use the parking feature and also reposition the camera in order to see the print even when the print head is covering it?

[dense violet]

Yes find your setup, we gave you everything you need.

[gray crane]

Do you mean the timelapse settings?
If so here are some screenshots of a few of the sections

[dense violet]

Yes of coarse and you do not need to ping in post where I answered as I see it in my list when you answer

#i-made-a-timelapse message

That is a before and after we optimized the sequence

I would retract more than unretract

And yes Timelapse coasts print quality, we can not do fancy stuff like wipe as done in slicers

I know the settings I defined them …

[gray crane]

Ok, I will try that next.

Also to be more specific, I can see from observing the printer that it does succesfully retract then travel, then park, then travel back and then unretract. However, almost immediately after the retraction and the printhead starts moving away from the print towards the park position, filament is oozing from the nozzle. This occurs regardless of what retraction distance or speed I set.

I have also tried setting timelapse retraction distance to 0 and instead using the slicer "retract on layer change" setting, which includes a wipe, then retract then layer change sequence, and set the TIMELAPSE_TAKE_FRAME in the after layer change g-code instead. However this still has the same oozing problem.

So it seems even with a wipe and slicer controlled retraction the problem is not able to be solved, so other than your suggestion about retract more than unretract I'm not sure how to solve this.

[dense violet]

I never seen that, but I also print 99% ABS

And yes

1. retract
2. picture
3. move back
4. unretarct
   Is what we doing

Do you use relative or absolute extrusion?

If you use absolute may slice a gcode relative

[gray crane]

I use absolute extrusion, with the slicer resetting the extrusion periodically with G92 E0

[dense violet]

I checked also absolute but not tested it for around 2 years.

[gray crane]

I will try slicing relative as you asked, will need to change my start g-code to M83 instead of M82 of course though

[dense violet]

Send me one of that gcodes. In absolute we need to restore the E position and maybe yours shows an error we did not found until now

But that will take a few days

[gray crane]

Ok, here is an example of my default slicing (absolute) using superslicer

[dense violet]

I do not see many people using absolute, any reason for that?

[gray crane]

It is the default for superslicer as far as I am aware

[dense violet]

Nope

[gray crane]

Or at least the default for the ender3 profile that I based mine on

And the profile is from superslicer

[dense violet]

The common recommendation I know would be absolute position and relative extrusion

That’s completely nonsense’s

[gray crane]

Here is the tooltip that says default false like I was saying earlier

So I didn't feel the need to change it since it was default is my reason basically

I can try relative as a test as you asked though

[dense violet]

I believe you I stopped using SuSi a year ago as every version is a wonder box introducing new “features”

[gray crane]

Do you use PS instead nowadays?

[dense violet]

Yes try relative and report back

[gray crane]

I've been considering switching due to the lack of updates, but the dev has recently released a new version

[dense violet]

I use PS and test Orca from time to time

But PS does the most important for me -> constant good results regardless what (released) version I use

With 2.7 you get native Klipper exclude objects, yes SuSi has much more options but that mostly a source of error then a help

[gray crane]

Yeah I don't mess with the really advanced options of SuSi unless I know exactly what they do, but I have found some that are helpful that aren't present in PS yet, such as single perimeter on top and bottom layer for aesthetics (PS you have to manually set a height modifier to do the same for every single print, instead of a checkbox). But yes I agree PS is probably more stable.

Also just as an FYI, SuSi also has native klipper exclude objects since v2.5.59.2 which has been out since March this year 🙂

[dense violet]

I know what SuSi can do, my issue is more that we see a few versions in the past that really screw up formally running perfect features. As said every SuSi version is a new miracle box where you need to find the “ops” and either go a version back or need to find a workaround

[gray crane]

I see

[dense violet]

But as said set it to relative and see how it looks

I will modify your gcode (temps, print_start) so that it matches my needs and then print it without Timelapse and then make a Timelapse

[gray crane]

Ok, I would say though that I am currently only printing with petg rather than abs, so it may be that petg is causing the extra oozing and so you may not be able to reproduce with abs?

It could also potentially be my hotend, but I have made sure to tighten everything properly and some of the components are upgrades or replacements such as a new nozzle, so the nozzle should not be worn or have particular issues with it.

[gray crane]

Relative extrusion did not help unfortunately

[dense violet]

Then I assume it is your hot end

I will do the test as I need to insure that we do not have an “unseen” issue in absolute

[gray crane]

Ok, so I took off the nozzle, cleaned out excess plastic from the heatbreak, hot tightened the nozzle again with a torque wrench to 1Nm. Then I re-tuned retraction and flow and lowered the hotend temp all the way down to 210C which is far below the suggested min of 230C, but I still get ooze with this petg that I print directly from an electric filament dryer.
So I don't think there is anything wrong with the extruder etc, the problem is just that this material is too oozy to simply park the head and then return it to the print, even with a lower temp.

So instead I did a bit of searching and one suggestion that I saw was that if you could trick PS/SuSi into adding a wipe tower, you could put the wipe tower in the park position and then have the printer "park" on the wipe tower when it takes the timelapse picture

That way it will only have a small bit of ooze from the travel back to the main print object (if there is any ooze)

But my question is, how would you trick superslicer/prusaslicer into adding a wipe/purge tower when you're using single extruder single colour prints?

Obviously I don't want it to actually try to switch extruders, or load and unload any filament, I just want it to print the wipe tower for the purpose of wiping the ooze off the nozzle and getting the nozzle out of the way of the print to take the picture

[gray crane]

Just as an fyi if you or anyone else finds it useful, I managed to solve the oozing during timelapse park problem by:

1. Set the number of extruders to 2 in SuSi (it should copy all the extruder properties from your 1st one)
2. Set a tool change to extruder 2 on the top layer of the print. These 2 steps turn on the wipe/purge tower and make it the full height of the print.
3. Set the wipe tower width to 9mm. This makes it roughly a square shape, rather than a 60mm wide really thin rectangle.
4. Set the load and unload volumes for both extruders to 0. This minimises the area of the wipe tower.
5. Drag the wipe tower right next to the object being printed (leaving a few mm gap between the two to allow for the wipe tower brim). This makes sure that there is no further ooze on the return from the wipe tower to the main object.
6. Set up 2 g-code substitution filters:
   Find:
   ; custom gcode: tcr_rotated_gcode
   Replace with:
   ; custom gcode: tcr_rotated_gcode\nTIMELAPSE_TAKE_FRAME

This takes a timelapse frame at start of the wipe tower on each layer (as well as once more at the end of the print), so you should have number of layers + 1 frames which is what I want in order to cover every layer including the "0th" layer (i.e. when the bed is empty at the start).
This is needed so that the toolhead parks and starts oozing just before it has printed the current wipe tower layer, and so when it un-parks, it returns to the wipe tower rather than the main print, wipes the ooze off on the tower, and then re-primes the nozzle via the wipe tower.
If you put the TIMELAPSE_TAKE_FRAME before or after layer change, the toolhead would return to the main print object instead, which negates the purpose of wiping on the wipe tower.

Find:
ACTIVATE_EXTRUDER
Replace with:
; ACTIVATE_EXTRUDER

This simply commments out any ACTIVATE_EXTRUDER lines, because we do not actually have more than 1 extruder, so klipper will throw an error if we try to switch to the 2nd one.

And so in this way I can now get ooze-free prints when using timelapse, by using the wipe tower as a sacrificial piece to wipe the ooze on, instead of wiping it on the main model.

The wipe tower with the minimum dimensions that I set earlier only uses about 1g of filament for a 20mm tall print object, so it's not that much of a waste, but allows me to use the timelapse with parking properly.