I was just going to ask if anyone else finds differences in surface finish between PLA brands when all other slicer settings are the same?

Is PLA made with different precursors that could cause it to melt differently or are companies selling plastic as PLA that is not 100% PLA?

I've found a couple brands like Solutech 3D that seem reliable, but every once in awhile I'll buy a roll of a color I like from a different brand and it doesn't print the same. From what I can tell, Solutech 3D is 100% pure PLA.

@wyvern

Lowered some of my settings to the following:

M201 X1000 Y1000 Z100 E2000
M203 X9000 Y9000 Z300 E6000
M566 X600 Y600 Z50 E600

Ended up with 0.6 Pressure Advance, the settings above, print speed 60mm/s with outlines and perimeters set to 60% and 70% of that. Retraction had 0.05mm of Extra Restart Distance in Simplify3D and with those settings, everything looked pretty good.

@wyvern said in Underextruding After Travel - E3D Volcano Hotend:

acceleration/jerk/speed is too high

What were your config settings for those if you don't mind posting them?

I dialed pressure advance up to 0.1, which left gaps, but 0.06 is pretty much perfect. It still leaves the same small under-extrusion after travel though - but I think it's set correctly.

I'll paste my config block below of the settings I used for accel/jerk/speed:

M201 X1500 Y1500 Z500 E3000
M203 X24000 Y24000 Z2000 E3000
M566 X600 Y600 Z700 E1000

@dc42 said in Underextruding After Travel - E3D Volcano Hotend:

Pressure advance deals with under extrusion at the start of a move and over extrusion at the end of a move.

I came very close to a perfect top layer with 0.1 pressure advance, but at the cost of tiny gaps in retraction in the side wall (0.06 or 0.07 is probably the correct value instead of 0.1, so I plan on lowering it).

Do printer acceleration, jerk, and overall print speed settings calculate into this as well?

I'll have to check the settings later, but I was thinking I should raise the extruder acceleration as a start.

Retraction was set at 0.4mm for the Volcano, so I don't think I'm retracting too much. I may also try a little bit of extra restart distance and see how that works.

@dc42 Perfect, I guess I had my understanding of it backwards then.

A 0.05 setting didn't quit work, but I will bump it up and see where I get to.

The Volcano is a strange hotend to print with, but I do like the larger melt zone - it seems to print more consistently at lower temperatures.

I'm using a new E3D Volcano setup with a Bondtech BMG direct driver extruder and a 0.6mm Volcano nozzle - previously I've only had significant printing experience with a standard E3D.

Usually the Volcano underextrudes after a travel movement.

This is a minor imperfection for the most part, except it leaves small gaps in the top layer which would be perfect otherwise.

I'm using Simplify3D and could use some ideas on what order to troubleshoot. I plan on trying to keep retraction on and add a positive extra restart distance - but further ideas are welcome.

Is there a way to tweak priming the extruder after travel in firmware based on travel distance?

From what I understand, pressure advance would deal with the reverse of this problem and it looks like 0.05 pressure advance does make it the slightest bit worse.

• Thanks

I'm using an Apple Airport wireless network setup and one of my printers works fine with the local name (it is the Duet wifi version).

The ethernet Duet printer will find the custom MAC address I configured and assign a custom IP address from a reserved list in the router settings, but strangely it doesn't assign a local network name (printername.local never returns anything).

Am I missing something? This is fairly low priority as I can type in the reserved IP address and it pulls up fine.

Posting in case someone has solved a similar problem

Relevant Config copied below:

**; Communication and general
M111 S0 ; Debug off
M550 PPrusaOrange ; Machine name and Netbios name (can be anything you like)
M551 Preprap ; Machine password (used for FTP)

;*** Networking
M552 S1 ; Turn network on

;*** Mac Address
M540 P0x00:0x00:0x00:0x00:0x07:0x04 ; MAC custom address

;*** Ethernet networking: Adjust the IP address and gateway in the following 2 lines to suit your network
M552 P0.0.0.0 ; (0 = DHCP)
M554 P192.168.1.255 ; Gateway
M553 P255.255.255.0 ; Netmask

@dc42 Thanks, I'll bump it back down to my standard 0.8mm settings and try again. Maybe I need a bit of coasting or negative restart distance to get rid of the small defects near retraction points.

I ran something like 0.8mm retraction on a standard E3D, but now I'm using a Volcano with a 0.6mm nozzle and have no idea where to start testing retraction settings. I've read 4mm to 7mm, but that seems quite high.

Does anyone have a similar setup and want to share retraction details?

@dc42 said in Symptom of Heat Cartridge Slow Failure?:

Have you checked that the screws in the E0 or E1 terminal block and the VIN terminal block are still tight?

No, but I will definitely add that to my troubleshooting list. I could imagine with the printer rattling during several weeks of printing they could loosen.