Starting over with config.g
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Here's the thing that stumps me the most, and it occurred to me as I was re-reading your reply…
I know it would seem to be a temp issue like you said, because logic states that if the plastic isn't hot enough it won't weld to itself. But last night I set it up to what I thought was an extreme. 255c with no fan at all. I was expecting to find a melted blob on my hot bed. But it turned out nicely with exception of the areas I pointed out. Every other part of the model was shiny and strong. Just the thin parts. But with the temp so high and no fan to cool it wouldn't that have had an opposite effect?
Shouldn't the thinner parts have been completely deformed, but melted together instead of separating?Lets say for Pete's sake that my thermistor isn't reading correctly and my temp is lower than it should be.
Shouldn't the thicker part of the model be effected and not the thinnest?
I am wondering if it's the mother of all coincidences and my filament is the cause? I am 2/3 into a 1kg spool.
Could the last 1/3 be off badly? I measured its diameter last night before starting the print in question and it was only .01 off from when I measured it new.
But is the problem underextrusion? I could pose the same argument about the thicker parts being effected more than the thinnest.
Btw, its Hatchbox PETG. I know its cheap but I have always had good luck with it.
I am tempted to come off some money and buy a roll of premium stuff just to see the differences. -
Maybe try printing a temp tower to see if you get similar lamination issues.
Are you using the same layer height?
I guess it's possible that your PETG has taken on some moisture from the air. Has it been a long time since printing with it? Do you hear any hissing or popping sounds or see any steam at the nozzle? Tossing the roll in the oven at the lowest temp for a couple hours to dry it out might help if so.
Hatchbox may be cheap, but that doesn't mean it's bad. You've had good results before on the same roll so I wouldn't jump straight to blaming the filament.
Getting your retraction tuned up might be a good start. Too much retraction can lead to under extrusion at the start of the next print move which can look a lot like delamination because there is an entire layer high gap where nothing was extruded. One way to investigate that would be to examine the tool path in your slicer in those specific areas to see if layers are starting there often. That particular section appears to be the inside of a curve, so the slicer may be trying to hide the seam there leading to a higher concentration of layer starts there.
M204 won't set separate acceleration based on print feature, only the fact that it's a print move versus a travel move. So it won't help for small features like holes. That's up to your slicer. Slic3r has a setting to slow down for small features like that. Cura currently doesn't unless you create a modifier mesh manually. I don't know what you use for a slic3r but if you're printing a lot of parts that have small dimension holes for bolts and things, I recommend slic3r PE for that reason.
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Sorry for not replying in so long.
Don't you hate when silly things like, say your job and various life responsibilities get in the way of the important things?I still had time to tinker with my machine and I don't want t say it's fixed, but I have learned a few things and I have some suspicions.
I pretty much started over from scratch regarding my slicer settings. (S3D)
And I made some mods to my printer frame to accommodate a new location for my extruder drive.
I shortened up my bowden tube a bit, though I don't think it was too long to begin with but I wanted to try and get it as short as I could so eliminate that as a culprit.
I have printed several temp test towers, but have had varied results. None of which showed any real adhesion troubles.
I only noticed it on things like the image I posted earlier and the separating I was having with the model.
So with that, I made my own test that was comparable to the parts of the model that was failing.I printed one at the usual 240c @.2 layer height and though there was not any separation, the layers were very easy to see.
I did 2 more test, one at 250c and 260c and the results were much better.
This one was printed at 260c and is my favorite by far, as I have always had to print at a lower layer height to get such clean results as this.
So I am suspecting that my temperature readings are not correct. As I am sure you know, 260c is way out of the normal printing range for PETG and I though I have never printed anything this hot and attempted to "scald" filament I would assume that under normal circumstances I would have cooked it in the hotend if my temp readings were correct.
I have a small ir temp gun that doesn't seem to be accurate enough to read the hotend correctly. The best I have gotten with it was 150c.
Though when reading my hotbed it is spot on accurate, as it matches what the readout has for it.I printed a project this past weekend in PLA +, which calls for higher temps than normal PLA. I did a test print in the normal range and sure enough I was getting a small amount of separation. And since one model was a 20 hour print and another was about 6 hours I upped the temp to be safe. The max temp recommendations for it is 225c and I printed at 240 and they both came out nice.
If you were wondering what these are, my daughter requested these for a school project.
They are animal cells.
She will paint them up in the appropriate colors and present them along with an essay in hopes of getting an 'A'.So I dunno.
Until I can find a way to accurately read my hotend's temperature I guess I will shoot from the hip and just tack on a few degrees to my hotend from now on.
I am still baffled as to why this happened out of no where. The only real benefit I have gained from how well it was printing before the failed FW upgrade attempt, would be discovering how much smoother .2 layer heights look with PETG at higher temps.
And I print PLA+ a lot and wasn't having any separation at the normal recommended temps.
Maybe the temperature has always been too low and I have just been lucky.It is indeed a great mystery.
Though I will admit, I am not ruling out "Operator Trouble" as a cause. -
I have found that temperature in the room requires me to adjust the print temp a little bit.
Specifically, as winter happened this year, I had some layer separations that I've never experienced before. 5 or 10c bump in print temps fixed them all.
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I did have this kind of experience with weak PETG some time ago, as far as i could deduce it was cause by a slight mix with another type of plastic (PLA i think) normally the PETG parts i print are really strong but this one part came out so weak i could bend it slightly and at the bend every single layer line would delaminate, could almost pull out the extrustion thread like unraveling a sweater.
The top of the part was nice and strong as i think by that time the PLA was all cleared out, some hotends keep more plastic then others in the nozzle, even just a tiny amount might cause you issues. Something to keep a eye out for perhaps if you get this again after a filament change.
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Thanks, Kezat.
Actually the first troubles occurred after a firmware crash. I was well into a fairly fresh roll when it happened.
And I have always changed out the nozzle and heatbreak when changing to a different type of filament.
I only print PLA or PETG and as you suggest, I learned its good practice to start with a fresh nozzle.
And I even changed the nozzle/throat when this first happened as I thought that the bad adhesion was coming from a clogged nozzle.That's not to say I haven't thought it being the filament. But I experienced the same problems with a brand new roll of PLA.
Admittedly the PLA didn't fail like the PETG did, but I did get a little separation. Upping the temp seemed to eliminate it.Danal,
I am not married so I get to keep my printer inside my climate controlled home.
The temp doesn't vary much. -
Have you considered a PT100 temp sensor upgrade?
Or to verify the temp of the hotend get a multimeter with a thermocouple probe. I've found that the shiny surface and small area of the hotend makes it very difficult to get accurate readings with an IR laser probe.
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Have you considered a PT100 temp sensor upgrade?
You're referring to the E3d temp sensor for the heat block, correct?
I have that already. -
Now we're getting somewhere. It would be unusual to have such a weird temperature discrepancy with a PT100.
In your config at the top of the thread it doesn't look like you have the PT100 setup. Do you now have a it properly bound to the right channel on the daughter board?
Are you using a 2 wire or 4 wire harness?
What temperature does it read right after turning the printer on? It should be dead close to room temp.
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Phaedrux, I just committed a huge faux pa with David in another thread concerning the correct terminology on 3D printer parts.
I called a simple Mosfet an SSR. I know better now.With that, I have told you that I have a PT100 sensor installed on my hotend.
For the sake that I might have given you bad information as well, I am going on the fact that the E3D site calls the little cylindrical cartridge I have installed on mine, a PT100 sensor.
I purchased it as part of a "Sock and Block Upgrade" on Amazon.
Other places that advertise it are calling it just a thermistor cartridge.
I see other upgrades for this such as an amplifier, which I do not have.Just to make sure I haven't mistakenly called something else what it really isn't, here is a picture and it's description that I found on the E3D site, but as mentioned everywhere else calls it a thermistor…
It has 2 wires, both of which are the same color, and I have them installed on the 'E0 VSSA Thermistor1' pins on my board.
The temp reading seems to correct at 22c.
It's identical to the bed's reading as well.If I truly do have a PT100 sensor, and you stated my config settings are wrong for such a thing, that has to be the problem.
Or if it isn't a PT100 sensor, maybe I have no business meddling with electronic devices and I should look into botany as a hobby. -
PT100 sensors are great, but require a small amplifier board to function properly.
See here: https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Connecting_PT100_temperature_sensors
I'm not 100% sure how well it would function as a regular thermistor. From what I can gather it looks like it could be possible if you set the tables for it correctly but it won't be very accurate at higher temps. At room temp it may only be 1c off, but at 200+ it could be more than 30c off. Maybe someone else can chime in about that.
Best bet would be to switch back to your old thermistor for the time being and obtain the amplifier board found here: https://www.duet3d.com/DuetAddons/PT100_DaughterBoard or from Filastruder in the USA: https://www.filastruder.com/collections/electronics/products/temperature-sensor-boards-for-duet
In the config file, to use a PT100 sensor you have to tell it which amplifier channel to look for it on.
From my config:
M305 P1 X200 ; Remap P1 to PT100 channel 200 (Hotend)The amplifier board has up to 2 channels to use (200, 201), and you can stack another amplifier on top of it to get 2 more channels (202, 203). Depending on how the PT100 sensor is wired, (either 2 wire or 4 wire), you can use up both channels to gain higher accuracy. Using 4 wires with twisted pairs allows it to reject more electrical noise and give a more accurate reading. David has posted some more information about that here: https://miscsolutions.wordpress.com/2016/06/25/more-delta-printer-upgrades-wifi-and-silence/
In my case I'm using 4 wires, so I'm using up 2 channels, but you only need to tell it to look on the first channel since there are physical jumpers on the amplifier board that dictate if you're using 2 wire or 4 wire.
I suggest reading the wiki page above on the PT100 and then ordering the amplifier board.
Don't get discouraged. If 3D printing was easy, everyone would do it. What fun would it be if they just worked all the time? Doesn't sound like a fun hobby to me. Gimme something complicated that breaks and I'll be happy. Swearing sometimes, but happy.
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The E3D thermistor cartridges and PT100 sensors look the same, except that I think the wire colours are different. If you have a multimeter, measure its resistance. A PT100 measures about 100 ohms at room temperature, a thermistor measures about 100kohms.
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Phaedrux, I wanted to drop by and update you on my little problem…
I am almost positive that I don't have a temp problem.
It was my extruder feeder.
I hadn't realized it but my filament has been slipping causing the adhesion problems.
Upping the temp only helped it to not slip so much making me think the sensor was not right.I had always thought that the extruder feeder would always pop when it slipped but not in my case.
It would pop at higher speeds, but at slow rates it would just slip.
I found this on Thingiverse and opted to give it a shot before I bought a new feeder.https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2289203
It is a double drive with a 3:1 ratio and it is the bees knees. I discovered that I need Pressure Advance enabled to tame this thing because it was a mess on the first print after I installed it on my printer.
I can see Pressure Advance doing its thing now and when I make a change in the config file, as before I never really noticed much difference. It helps amazingly well, and I am shocked out how much better my prints are with it now, than they were before. And I was pretty proud of what I was producing then!I haven't gotten all of the bugs out yet, because I think my retraction settings are conflicting with PA just a little….I think.
The reason why I am thinking that is now I am seeing some new behavior with PA enabled.
For example, pausing for a second or two during the print, especially at slower speeds/smaller prints.
I don't know if it is normal or if I indeed have something out of whack but it doesn't seem to make an impact on the print.
I have Pressure Advance set at .2
I tried higher and lower values and .2 seems like the sweet spot.I plan on researching it more on the forum and the wiki.
I just wanted to let you know how things were going and another big thank you for yours, and David's help.
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Hey that's awesome you got it sorted out.
That extruder looks pretty cool. Like a diy bondtech.
With pressure advance you can usually dial back the retraction a little bit. It has also been said that your extruder jerk value should be at least 600. Higher acceleration and top speed as well just so you're not getting pauses.
Cheers
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Thanks so much!
I will lower it now!!
