I finally have PLA figured out. I have been fighting PLA for a month. I would always jam around layer 30 or 40.
The trick was a good propane burnout of my E3D, and running filament dripped with Canola oil through the E3D back and forth while cold and off the printer. Now I have run half a spool of the same PLA with zero jams. I can crank the print speed up to around 100mm/s with good results.
I also moved the spool mount from on top of the printer over to the side. I used a $2 garage bike bracket and a few feet of 1/4" nylon tubing to guide it to the extruder carriage.
Lastly I tried my first print with support. I still have lots to learn about improving Cura support settings. But I feel it is not too bad for a first attempt. Cura seems to do a much better job limiting supports than Slic3r. When I looked at the support code from Slic3r it would have been a bear to remove it.
Can you describe your canola oil trick a little more?
Also I found my E3D was a lot more jam prone if my idler was too tight, causing the filament to get more chewed and cause more friction in the chamber.
@Nathan_Ryan mine is direct drive 5:1 nema using an ezstruder. I would always get jams and stripped filament. I pulled my E3D off the ezstruder. Torched the heat break and nozzle with a propane torch to confirm it is clean. Then I dripped canola oil (not normal vegetable oil) onto a chunk of filament. I ran it back and forth through the heat brake, heat sink, and nozzle. Then I reassembled and brought it up to temp. Then cooled it down and added another drip of oil down the E3D making sure never to get oil on the drive gear. I fired it back up. Extruded 100mm of filament to push out excess oil and have been printing ever since.
@Karan_Chaphekar for flow calibration I marked the filament then extruded 100mm at temp with nozzle on at my print extrusion speed. Then i measured the length change and changed the values to match. Retraction is at 1.5mm. Wall is 1.2mm on the dragon print. Nozzle is 0.4mm.
@Ashley_Webster I had to play with the expert setting in Cura for offset of supports in x/y to get supports to look the way I thought they should. Check out the support offset settings when you try it in Cura.
@Melvin_Chen I like corexy over hbot. But long term I think I will be switching to a Cartesian setup. The reason is my circles still have issues. Before I change I will be trying new linear bearings (igus instead of pbc linear frelon) because I saw @Tim_Rastall had similar issues with his linear bronze bushings causing circle issues. But if that doesn’t do the trick I will make the change.
