The filament came out during a print and I don’t know what layer it came out at. I’ve spent a lot of filament on this print, so is there any way to continue it?
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Instead of using a caliper, like the others have said, you can measure the distance with your printer if you don’t have such a tool.
Just go into the “Move axis”-mode, and move your nozzle from the home position to the top layer.
Let’s say your coordinates are now X0, Y0 and Z49,3.
You can then move the object in your slicer by just changing your Z axis to -49,3.
Just make sure you:
- Get a good first layer, without getting an elephant’s foot.
- Don’t use too much glue. A good choice is acrylic glue, but it will alter the surface if it droops out or is too far outside.
- Don’t mechanically stress the object too much. It won’t be as strong as before.
Measuring with the printer is an excellent idea. When in jog mode, mine displays the nozzle coordinates right on the screen.
I was considering that a truly dedicated nut could figure out which layer the print failed at (possibly approximately) and hand edit the gcode for the print to just replace all the layers up until the failed one with Z axis move up to that height. I think that would be problematic, though, because on my machine at least the model still being on the bed would definitely be in the way of the print head homing at the beginning of the print, and I don’t know if there’s any way to force it to skip that part of the procedure. Failure seems likely, and the penalty for failure is high.
Just printing the remaining half of the model and supergluing the parts together seems like a better idea.
Do you have a pair of calipers that you can use to measure print height? If yes, don’t take it off the bed. Measure the height of the print, delete those layers out of the gcode (it’s just a text document after all), and reset. Note that the gcode and printer setup might require some fiddling to get right, but I’ve resumed prints like this without problems before. They don’t all look perfect at this layer, but they’re certain better than nothing. Once the print loses its hold on the bed, all bets are off.
depending on where in the layer it failed, this could cause more problems. It’ll try to print the layer from the start it may get messing (especially if you’re missing perimeters, or printing over partial-layer perimters.)
The other issue is that homing may be slightly off; that would depend on the printer. (most are okay, but you might find a visible layer shift in the seam,)
Agree that the result won’t be a perfect print, but I personally prefer this route over printing the other half, sanding the first half flat to account for a partial layer like you said, and then gluing.
I guess it comes down to what you goal is. 90% of my prints are functional and I don’t really care if they’re a bit ugly at times.
I suppose you could take it off the bed, measure very precisely the height, print just the remainder (by altering the model and re-slicing) on the bed, and glue it to what’s already printed. It would almost definitely still have a visible seam and aside from that, I can’t think of a way to save it.
this is what i was thinking.
most slicers will let you just move the model down in negative z, saving the need to cut or alter the model. (it then slices only the mesh that’s on or above the plate.)
Thanks, I’ll probably just try to restart in that case.
