If it’s the filament that came with the cheap printer : use real filament
@Marc-Antoine_Lavoie This doesn’t apear to be a filament problem. At least not solely.
Hi Adam , let’s break down the problem to simple steps . Firstly , it’s likely you are seeing several problems in one cube from varying sources within the printer.
The first suggestion is to print a good first layer and inspect it for accuracy of size and height . If you get a good 1 st layer print 2 or 3 layers next . The way to print the layers is either watch the printer and switch off after the desired layer or download a cube that is very thin.
Once you have the settings for that you can build up the calibration and settings as you get deeper into the prints.
As per above , start small but at least it seems the printer is basically working ,it’s all about setups and calib now.
Things that will help us help you :
Gives us an idea of how proficient you are with mechanics and electronics , first time build or ?.
Give us lots of detail but do it in small steps ( read above ) so we can guide you ,there is a big community willing to help.
Some initial checks :
check the base doesn’t wobble on its springs .
Recheck calibration for extruder
Check there isn’t loose mechanicals and that the axis don’t flex easily with lateral hand force applied
Thanks, I like to consider myself competent in mechanics and electronics. The calibration for all the axis are perfect which surprised me. I believe the problem to be in the extruder motor. My two difficulties in recalibrating it is that first, when I’m connected and send a “M501” the printer responds the extruder value in two rows “00:08:57.200 : X:0.00 Y:0.00 Z:0.00 E:52.43
00:11:55.904 : X:0.00 Y:0.00 Z:0.00 E:82.03”.
Additionally the extruder will “twitch” or try to turn when I print but it just snaps back to where it was before. Did I put to much pressure on the gear? Thanks
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+Adam if your belts are properly tight and your zscrews are properly secure and reasonably parallel you should be hitting theoretical values, so know we can assume everything is tight.
Your extruder clearly needs further calibration. As for the dancing issue, you may have the tension set to tight, you may need to bump the voltage on your stepper, and given this is a cheap kit, this may simply be a cheap motor incapable of supplying the necessary torque. It might be beneficial to remove your hotend while adjusting tension, voltage, etc.
once you determine these settings don’t put it back together yet, there will likely be some firmware adjustments needed to properly dial in your extruder.
@Adam_Potter I’m not sure because I haven’t used direct g-code on a dual extrusion printer but it looks like your M501 command is returning two different sets of values because it thinks you have two extruders. I have no idea why else it would send two returns, I guess I’m speculating a little. Are you sure you have it configured for 1 nozzle in the slicer? And try the extruder calibration instructional video I commented with earlier.
Small steps Adam . When you advance extruder manually to calibrate 100 mm of pla ,do you get the right length extruded ?
Please recalibrate extruder and detail your steps .100 mm should be sufficient to test. I assume you know how to calibrate extruder ?
Yes I can calibrate the extruder, perhaps new PLA would help too. Is the 15 dollar PLA from Microcenter any good?
@Adam_Potter Decent apparently but I’d recommend Hatchbox from Amazon for $22. Worry about filament later.
@Adam_Potter the microcenter stuff is all I use. Go get the 18.99 stuff from there. It is US made toner plastics and is good stuff
Thanks, I’ll let you know when I fix the extruding
This is the only PLA I’ve used, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_dp_s_web_16310091?ie=UTF8&field-brandtextbin=3D+Solutech&node=16310091
I used it for my current printer build and was quite happy.
I messed with some settings in slicer and re-assembled my extruder and the prints are looking a lot better, I’ll tinker a bit to get the perfect solution, but thanks again to everyone that gave input.