Hello there everyone, so this is a super weird issue I am having on

Hello there everyone, so this is a super weird issue I am having on my print, essentially channels and what looks to be clumps of excess filament on the print. I am not entirely sure what is causing this. It hasn’t happened before and all my settings are very well tuned and I have been getting really great print results. However this is really not the results I would like to be getting. Any thoughts on causes of this? I have never had issues with over extrusion, and my extruder/extruder settings have been preforming wonderfully. For some context, I am printing PLA on a Printrbot Simple Metal. I have adjusted the printing temp from 195 C to 205 C then leveled it off at 200 C to see if that changed anything (it didn’t). Printing speed is set at 45 mm/s. Thanks in advance!
Edit/Update: Cancelled the print because of the stress it was putting on the hot end. It appears as though there is some layer shifting happening which means I’ve got some form of a problem with the printer, so I am going to investigate that as well.

i think that would be your hotend is to close to bed. if I’m correct that is a printrbot simple metal and I had the same result which I corrected by readjusting my hotend a bit, also it could be caused by an uneven print bed but that is unlikely.

@Matthew_Del_Rosso I thought about that however if I were to put it higher the filament wouldn’t be able to stick to the bed, at least it would start to be a little sketchy. I had the same issue you see there with the first few solid layers of my prints which were corrected by changing my z - offset, I haven’t had the problem since. As for the uneven print surface, I have auto bed leveling with my bed probe so I don’t think that would be an issue but I will check just to be sure. I appreciate the advice.

Irregular filament diameter…?

@Jim_Christiansen I am using Printrbot brand PLA, and I have never had any issues with it, I also switched filament around halfway through to see if it was anything related to the filament. The blue filament had the same issue as the red, so I don’t believe it has anything to do with the filament. Also I doubt there would be the same inaccuracies in two different spools of filament purchased at very different times. (The red is a few months old, the blue is over two years or nearing that at this point.) However I guess anything is possible! :stuck_out_tongue:

This looks like a problem with your bed being out of plane with your head movement. Did you get a skip or bind in Z on one side or the other or both? If so the damage will bias towards the low side. In this case it looks like it completely spans it. The interference would have likely caused the skip. Also looks like the problem started with the color change. What was the process there for changing the filament?

Are you printing on a raft? The first layer perimeter looks good so i suspect it started out following the bed contour just fine.

Check your hotend, see if its fully anchored in its mount and not shifting at all, had that happen once with similar results. Was just loose enough to shift slightly every dozen layers, or so. Drove me nuts. :stuck_out_tongue:

Check your set screws on your Z couplers… Maybe it’s loosing Z steps

Thank you everyone for the suggestions! I will go through everything this evening and see what there is to see… Hopefully a solution is found!

Update for everyone, I took apart my printer and gave it some much needed TLC. Cleaned linear rails, lightly oiled the bearings, now X,Y,Z axis are moving much smoother with very little resistance. I then tightened all my belts and made sure they were all inline and nothing had shifted improperly. After a close inspection of my bed everything appears level and in great condition. Hotend was removed and inspected for any possible damage, then reinstalled in the printer and secured properly. Then I retuned my extruder. I also moved and calibrated my z probe. I then did a few test prints with a few different types of filament (by types I mean varying ages, one being close to 4 or 5 years old). I have ordered new filament since all of my PLA is quite old and admittedly I have not stored it properly. I have also tuned down my flow rate. All of this together has seemed to alleviate the problems I was experiencing. Once I have my new filament I am going to continue calibration and hopefully have everything dialed in and running smoothly once more! Thank you everyone for the help!