Posts made by saffi

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.

Well, I retuned the hotend and it seems to be working fine so far on 12 hour prints.

I may simply add tuning the hotend to a weekly or monthly schedule as regular printer maintenance.

The problem seemed to be the hotend slowly drifting down in temperature, so perhaps there's an unknown factor (like an aging but still working heater cartridge) that the tuning from a few months ago did not experience.

I'll post if anything changes. I plan on putting one of the new premium heater cartridges from E3D in the old one's place anyway, so perhaps those will be more reliable. I had to four wire most of my wiring on my PT100 after some strange readings, but once upgraded it hasn't skipped a beat, so the extra $10 for a premium heater cartridge may be a good investment.

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

fitting a silicone sock

this could be it, I can't remember if I tuned it with or without the silicone sock, but I'll retune the hotend with the sock removed and then try printing again with the sock added for extra insulation.

Also, is there a way to tell the hotend to use a little more power when keeping temperature just to avoid temperature drops due to fluctuations like having fans at 100% or having the silicone sock removed?

I did observe it dropping while printing, it was struggling to stay above 213C and never crossed 215C and then dropped down to 210C before pausing due to heater fault. I ordered a new E3D premium heater cartridge and I'll see if that helps.

I'm kind of interested in seeing if it changes the glossy / matte texture of a specific print effect that seems to show up when I alter slicer settings mid-print.

I keep bumping up my print temperature and it seems the cartridge has trouble staying at temperature even though auto-tuning was done at 260C.

I'm printing PLA at 215C (which seems too hot) to prevent delamination, but I suspect my heater causes the temperature to fall during a print such that even a 205C print falls enough to delaminate standard PLA.

I thought I may have misclicked a recent print that delaminated, but recently it happened at 215C, so my guess is the heater slowly fails but the machine manages to finish the print - just hot enough to extrude PLA. In raising the print temperature, I may be adjusting for a failing heat cartridge.

Could there be another part going bad that I'm overlooking or does this sound like a heater cartridge failure?

@dc42 Thanks!

Can I set my Baby Step Increment to 0.02mm permanently in the config file somewhere to keep that as the default after a reboot?

Are these worth adding to a printer build or are people running into issues having them run reliably?

I couldn't find the Duet filament sensors being sold and it seems people are using different solutions, so these aren't quite ready for mainstream printing?

I'm thinking it must be interference. It seems to randomly trigger within ~1-2 seconds of the bed moving, but if it's close enough to the homing position, it homes in under a second and is fine.

The switch is fixed to the bottom of the moving bed now, so I may separate it out and place it on the printer body and have it fixed so the bed bumps into the stationary switch.

Thank you for the help, this forum is a lifeline for printer tinkering.

@dc42 said in Y Endstop False Triggers?:

What type of Y endstop switch are you using? If it is a microswitch, are you using the NC or the NO contacts?

I had an engineer build this printer, so I had to look at the switches up close and it looks like X Axis and Y Axis are both NC. I could pretty easily rewire to NO if that is recommended. The Y Axis switch is using blade terminal clamps (? guessing at the name here), so I may look at that as well, it could need a bit of solder on the actual switch.

Is the default recommendation for NC or NO switch wiring?

So I have this strange glitch with my Y Endstop homing not always working. Copied and pasted below is my homey.g file (350mm Y-axis)

G91 ; relative mode
G1 Z2 F1800 ; raise head to avoid dragging nozzle over the bed
G1 Y-355 F3000 S1 ; move up to 240mm in the -Y direction, stopping if the homing switch is triggered
G1 Y3 F600 ; move slowly 4mm in the +Y direction
G1 Y-10 S1 ; move slowly 10mm in the -Y direction, stopping at the homing switch
G1 Z-2 F1800 ; lower the head again
G90 ; back to absolute mode

If the bed is already close to the Y endstop, it homes fine, but if it's finished a print or moved too far away, it moves back slightly and acts like it's triggering the endstop when it is not near home.

My endstop is attached under the bed and the thermistor, bed heat, and endstop wiring runs together. Could there be some kind of interference causing a false trigger?

I've been disabling the motors, pushing the bed all the way to the home position where the switch triggers and then re-homing it (which does work). I can play with settings more if anyone has suggestions.

Update / Edit: I did this strange homey.g check using G92 to fake set Y350 and then move it back to home without relative positioning, but the false endstop trigger (or whatever seems to be happening) did the same or a similar thing.