My prints have gone from decent to horrible - original printrbot with bed leveler.

Agustin_Sevilla · July 3, 2013, 5:18am

I have noticed these pointed deformations at the top left and bottom right edges. Where do I start? X axis?

Brian_Evans · July 3, 2013, 5:30am

My guess would be either really loose belts or the first layer is too high… hard to tell from directly overhead.

Chris_Horton · July 3, 2013, 5:50am

Agreed, check your belts and that your gears are not loose on the motors shafts.

Stephen_Baird · July 3, 2013, 5:58am

Yeah, it looks like first layer adhesion problems. The circles turning into polygons like that tends to mean the filament isn’t sticking to the print bed, so it gets dragged along with the print head for a while, giving you funny shapes like that.

Agustin_Sevilla · July 3, 2013, 6:28am

Thanks for all the tips, everyone! Awesome advice. I had already tightened the x axis belt - I made sure that the Y axis belt is nice an tight. @Chris_Horton thanks for that tip - double checked all motor gears, many were loose… Thanks to the tip +Peter van der Walt on looking at those belt clips - they were loose indeed! @Stephen_Baird - I definitely think I need the revisit my extruder calibration for this new batch of filament (and the insane humidity of the north east US right now) - I am trying to sort this x/y weirdness prior to moving on to the extruder and z… does that sound like a good order to go in?

Richard_Betel · July 3, 2013, 12:56pm

Can I suggest you invest in some locktite? Or, alternately, some cheap nail polish. Paint screws with it, and then tighten them, and they won’t come loose very easily.

Agustin_Sevilla · July 3, 2013, 2:21pm

+Peter van der Walt - do you have a source you recommend for belts and pulleys? I found this on Amazon: http://amzn.to/18vD2a4

Thanks for all the advice!

Agustin_Sevilla · July 3, 2013, 4:41pm

Yup, it’s a original printed one. I have the wooden extruder and a set of extruder gears I had made at Shapeways. Nice project on Thingiverse you have there!

I wonder if those pulleys will fit ok on my steppers and all.

Brook_Drumm · July 4, 2013, 4:27pm

Check for loose pulley set screws too. This looks like loose belts / pulleys and a z - endstop screw adjustment.
Cheers
brook

Agustin_Sevilla · July 8, 2013, 1:42pm

Hi Brook! Thanks for the tips - I am going to work on the bot tonight - I’ll post my results!

Agustin_Sevilla · July 18, 2013, 4:36am

Guys - Thanks again for all the advice! I got some t2.5 belts and pulleys, took apart the whole bot, tightened everything up, used Josef Prusa’s awesome calculator ( http://calculator.josefprusa.cz/ ) and the Printrbot is better than ever!

Bonus: I only had to do the whole calibration process once to get everything working great!

Cheers!