Flat Failed Print Day.
Here are 3 pictures of 2 of the failed prints. There were two earlier prints that looked very similar. I have modified the bed height. Changed the nozzle. Increased the flow rate.
Nothing helped.
I cancelled the prints as it just petered out at the 3rd layer. I can’t help but think after 5 months, that it’s the printer.
Does the nozle extrude well manually? i am curious if it is blocked…
Is the extruder reliably feeding if you go manual feed over a period or start a print way above the bed and see a smooth continuos stream?
I think I have heat creep up the nozzle. I have lots of jams where the filament just blocks up. In these prints it just seemed to dry up
So you need to unjam between prints?
If I start printing above the bed the filament comes out. I can’t say if it’s smooth or not, it’s the way it’s always extruded and I’ve tried a variety of nozzles.
I need to un-jam during the print! I could never leave a multi-hour print to run I’d have to un-jam at least twice during it.
You should get a pile of constant size plastic , I expect it dries of as you suggested due to heat soak. Do you have a fan on the nozzel body to help prevent it?
If you print say a 15mm cube does it look ok till it stops feeding?
@Rex_Bigger Try extruding like 50mm of filament, in the air, measure a few spots along it with a caliper.
I will try that. But tomorrow I think. Had enough for one day.
@Rex_Bigger what is your bottom layer height? What type of extruder are you using? What type of hot end?
If it jamming also check the filament size is correct for the hotend, if too small it will feed back up the tube when molten from the melt zone and cool then jam
Bottom/top thickness: 0.8mm
Layer height: 0.16mm
Initial layer thickness: 0.3mm (not sure it achieved that)
Bottom layer speed: 20mm/s
Bed temp: 50
Nozzle temp: 190
Rex, I have the same issue and still can’t seem to resolve it. I haven’t been able to touch my printer in a while cause I’ve been buried with work. But your output looks exactly like what I’ve seen where it looks like it’s under extruding or jammed. I’ve completely disassembled everything and checked extrusion rates, etc. And I still can’t get rid of it. My conclusion was just as you mentioned in that it looks like there’s this heat creep up the nozzle cause when taking everything apart, I’ve seen where it appears the filament balls up partially in the extruder, which causes the starving of the extruder. I ended up slowing the printer, increasing the temp, and increasing motor current. Everything that seems count-intuitive.
+Peter L - Strangely until this set of prints I’ve always been able to pump out a 20mm cube quite successfully. Nothing much better than that.
I am assuming .4mm nozzle. that should be good.
@Camerin_hahn yep, 0.4mm nozzle (although the last print today was with a random nozzle that came with the printer which supposedly was also 0.4mm). Also the Z steps at 40 microns so it all should work out.
Why I asked if something small is ok to confirm that the setup is mostly correct as it has not yet had tim to jam, the jamming needs to be addressed, as I said check the filament size and cooling.
Initial impression is that the nozzle is too close to the bed and you may be over-extruding. When the filament stops feeding, stop the print and remove the filament. If the filament is straight, but has notches carved into it, your extruder is stripping filament from the back pressure. A quick way to see if this is the issue is to let the print continue for a layer or two (air printing as it goes) and then assist the feeding of filament by pushing more filament into the extruder – if printing resumes, let it run for a while.