Troubleshooting a sudden infill problem and thought I’d see if any of you had some ideas.
So I’ve been printing happily for a month or more and printing a lot (a whole tantillus case, almost two and then the other day my infill started doing this. The first two photos were sliced with Cura and should have a diagonal fill, the third was sliced with KISSlicer and should have their default squiggly fill.
As you can see the resulting fill turns into something like pillars or a brush
I’m using the same slicing settings, same firmware, same host/controller and same brand of filament (different spools but the problem started with the original on that worked great for so long).
Strangely this doesn’t affect shells or solid layers, and I don’t detect any filament stalls, etc. by watching fans listening carefully to the printer.
I have experimented with changing speed, temp, etc. without any luck so far, but like I said the original settings worked great for a ton of prints so I think those parameters are tunes correctly.
The one other change I made was upgrading the hot-end heater wires, I had a crimp come loose and burn up the end of one wire so I replaced them with something a little beefier.
Looks almost as if the filament is jamming and coming out in very regularly spaced blobs. Does the effect change for different layer heights? It might also be something to do with the filament itself. Have you seen the same results from a different spool?
Thanks for the note @Michael_Hohensee . I’ve seen the same effect with a couple different spools. I might try changing the feed path for the filament, maybe there’s too much drag. Wouldn’t that have the same effect on the shells/outside as well?
It’s hard to tell from the photos, but I thought that the perimeters might have looked a little thin as well… Did anything else in your print environment change? Ambient temperature or humidity? Is there no effect from changing the layer height?
Are you sure your head is really clean? It happened to me once, when I think something harder than usual acted as a floating valve (or so?). This showed suddenly only when full throttle was required, like with faster and thick infills, without much impact on the finer outer surfaces :s Disappeared with thorough cleanup
How high up does it misbehave? Recently, I found that my Monoprice ABS filament seems to have 2 different melting temperatures of which the lower melting temperature stuff will ooze out of the nozzle well below the main melting temperature. That will leave a “plug” in the nozzle that will misbehave on the original layers and the starting infill.
Is this ABS or PLA? Did you bake your PLA lately? Is the temperature in the room different from usual? Is there a draft or convection air current nearby? If PLA, is your fan on your hot end’s heat barrier still working? How is the weather lately ? I ask about the weather because I would not be surprised if humidity and air pressure could affect printing.
How’s is it when you manually try to feed the filament…does it push through decently?
It sounds like you’ve tried the things I’d consider, but I did have similar prints a few weeks ago and could hear my extruder skipping and had under-extruded prints. The perimeter’s were fine but infill was ugly. I slowed the infill down and slightly increased the temp. I think the difference between the sidewalls and infill was also affected by the retraction. So if you’re struggling with good flow and you’re retracting I think it exemplifies the issue (?).
Still working on it @Jeremie_Francois , making progress but I don’t understand exactly what caused/is causing the problem.
I increased both the nozzle size setting and the wall thickness extremely (.9 up from .35) which is improving the infill, but I’m sure the nozzle isn’t .9 (a .5 drill shaft won’t pass through it), so the underlying problem isn’t the nozzle getting reamed out, but I don’t know exactly what the problem is yet.
@Jason_Gullickson When you just connecty to the printer, heat up the hotend and press extrude a couples of times, do you see the filament going down straight or is it curling back up to the nozzle?
@Jason_Gullickson Mmm… keep upadating us then… how about extrusion multipler maybe you would have changed it by mistake? Or did you made any change to the firmware? I guess not but it may worth to ask
and then the other day my infill started doing this. The first two photos were sliced with Cura and should have a diagonal fill, the third was sliced with KISSlicer and should have their default squiggly fill.
