Brace yourself, as they say.
And so it begins
One 25p4 brace down. And one 23p4 - oops - thanks for embedding the size on the inside, rather find out now than wonder why the %#^# pipe won’t fit months from now 
50% infill, grid pattern. .32 layer height, 4 walls. 3 hours 36 minutes.
Seems quite strong…
At this rate, will have everything printed by some major holiday!
@Ryan , hey did anyone try cutting these out of say a 1x6 yet? These look like they would cut faster than print.
Cutting is fine for the outline, but getting the horizontal holes in exactly the right spot is more difficult. I thought of that and even designed a little jig to place the holes 68mm apart, but then you lose the captive nuts for the one side, and that makes assembly so much more difficult… Printing really is a better solution.
Core print stopped.
Anybody else see this on their cores, only an hour in, didn’t want to waste time & material with a defect this early.
Too late in the morning to start another core, no worries, as long as I got the blue loaded, going to run some captain america things for the kids
I only ask because on my braces, every single one has a line artifact in the same layer.
I used different infills and different printing speeds, no difference, same line in same place.
Does NOT affect usability at all.
That does not look straight, looks like you have a warping problem.
It’s straight, photo might look off, what bothered me was the gap on the 1 side…
If it was a bulge, I would guess warping too. It doesn’t have to be much, but if it lifted, then the next layers get squished. I get that sometimes.
A gap (which is what it looks like in the pic) could be extrusion issues. Maybe heat creep? Maybe something is binding (does the spool feed easily?).
Hmm, dunno. It was just that 1 layer on the right side of the print.
Who knows? I’ll be retrying on Sunday…
Don’t try this at home kids! An hour after printing the one on the right, I printed the one on the left.
It started ok, but… I said what the heck, nothing has changed, maybe I should raise the temp a bit, as I had turned on a ceiling fan in the room. It got a little better, I then boosted the temp another 10.
After it was done and headed for the trash, I happened to look at my slicer settings. In between prints, I had intended on switching to a larger nozzle, and sliced it with new settings and then got interrupted, and forgot all about the change.
This is what you get when you attempt a .44 layer with a .40 nozzle, can’t blame the ender for this, it tried. They appear pretty strong, just look like doo doo, in the end, not worth chancing over a buck in filament. 
I’m taking my prints super slow - shipping delays are a bit of a blessing in this case, I’m usually rushing to print them as fast as possible then run into issues when the machine is assembled!
Core, 3 hours in.
Well core finished. To make a short story long, it came out being a cross between pretty & ugly. In other words, pretty ugly. And my comment earlier in the day was going to come back and bite me firmly in my Tuchus. With yesterday being a work day, although the printer was 6 feet from my desk, I really wasn’t focused on it, other than to look over at it now and then. By the time I noticed the problems, I figured what the heck, might as well finish, boost the temp, slow down a bit, let’s see what happens, what’s a little more wasted corn starch. Besides I wanted to hold in my hands what many have said is a fantastic piece of engineering. They were right.
Like most catastrophes, a simple issue the other night, lead to the demise. While printing something goofy, that needed supports, even though the designer said no it didn’t, my heat sock got knocked off by the spaghetti. Now mind you, my first ender had no such thing to my recollection, so after trying to put it back on, only to have it fall off again, I paid it no mind. Wrong answer kemosabe.
17 hours in, and 20 minutes from completion, I got my first ever in my life thermal runaway warning. After shutting down, and restarting, the print finished (wasn’t expecting that, thank you professional firmware), flaws and all. I tried flexing it a few times, no pop, crackle, snap sounds, “seems” solid, I told myself. I tried to break it, really I did, couldn’t, maybeeeeee it will be ok. This morning I went searching for answers, with the knowledge that no, it won’t be ok you idiot, and yes, we will be trying this experiment again. Shout out to @Ryan over how many cores must you have printed while developing the LR3, patience of Job, that man.
A rubber sock? Most of this can be attributed to the darn sock? (or so I hope). I must admit that after the thermal error, I backed off the speed by 10% and sent the temp back to what it was, and the print looked a tiny, tiny bit nicer and a whole lot more uniform, either that, or I am good at lying to myself. Thanks to amazon, new socks and nozzles (going up to .5 or .6) will be here today. I’m telling myself I really didn’t want a blue core anyway, and everything is going to be all right. Nothing wrong with learning a lesson and a dry run. Anyone want a deal on a never used, might be ok, probably won’t, core?
I think it will be okay.
Teaching tech has a good section on checking maximum flow rate of your extruder. Have a look at that. I was surprised at how close I was to the max just by guess and check. You are clearly over it. Once you have a number you will be able to adjust for layer thickness and nozzle diameter confidently.
I think it might be ok too, honestly. And I know I pushed the Ender a bit too hard, harder than I ever have, shame on me. But every time I look at it, I see the flaws. And I know going forward, I will be looking at it a lot, other than take a torch to it to try and smooth it, I’ll just redo it and use the better of the two. Besides, I would rather look at it and marvel at it’s engineering than look at it and say, that there is ugly.
I want to try a new nozzle size, my old Ender printed the LR2 parts with .6 and .8 nozzles, never really got .8 dialed in, but I’m thinking .5 or .6, slow it down a bit, watch the temp and flow and what could go wrong, this is fun for me 
New nozzle, new sock, went back to the drawing board with the Cura profile and a temp tower.
Looks much better to these far sighted eyes, want to run out some small parts, ever so slowly increasing speed, before we try the core again…
Well Core attempt 3 starts today!
I had attempted Core #2 last week, but that required a filament change. One of those where you lie to yourself and say “Yea I think there’s enough”.
Well mid way, let’s just say the two filaments - same brand, different color, same %#$@ everything! Well, they bonded as well as the Hatfields and the McCoy’s, and I ended it soon after the swap. I believe that’s what happens when you forget to purge between filament changes and wind up with a gap 
I decided to wait for a fresh full roll, and off we go. It’s fitting…Core 3.0 for LR 3.0.
4.26mm in as I write this, guidance is internal, all engine running. Lift-off hopefully in 13 hours!
3 Hours down, 10 to go!
I do a ton of filament changes and it is by far the most likely place to get an issue. There are so many odd things that can go wrong. Yesterday I had to take my extruder apart and un-jam it. For some reason, a tiny piece broke off and jammed it up during a swap.
I can feel it, this one will work for you!
** level up sounds **
Those under extruded layers I can relate to back when I still had an E3, man do I not miss those days. With the common .6 nozzle usage anyone running the default Mk8 hot end should be aware it only safely moves about 12mm3/s which is pretty easy to hit with such wide lines and the .4 layer heights that only takes 50mms to reach. Upping the temp of course increases the capacity tho not by much, glad to see the final print came out good!
