3D Printing dosnt exist.... atleast for me

after a billion years( thats an exact number) and countless test cubes, of trying to get my printer working, i thought i has succeeded, i started my first project. i printed 3 parts just fine ( in PLA).. the 4th kept jamming the filiment after about 2 hours of printing, due to over heating ( all metal e3d V6)... ever sense i uncloged it, nothing will print properly.... the first layer i can get to print 90 to 100% perfect... but after that, or maybe 3 or 4 layers, the layers become bloby and gappy... after a few layers of this, it starts playing air guitar( pretends its printing).... here is the list of everything ive tried, and failed with over the past week.

-all nozle temps in 5 degree increments between 185 and 225c ( first 3 sucessful objects were 210 or so)
- all bed temps between 60 and 95c
-variety of bed surfaces ( bare glass, hair spray, hair spray with microscopic glass bubbles, printer paper, tracing paper, consteuction paper, sanded down versions of these (sanded construction paper works amazing, as do the glass bubbles)
- variety of spacing between bed and nozzle ( from touching, to extra big gaps, everything in between, tracing paper is the most successfull spacer, and what i used on sucessfull objects)
- lowered all speeds
- Z spacing offset
- slicer, pronterface, cura, kissslicer
- variety of settings in the above programs
- updating and/or reinstalling these programs
-multiple calibration guides.
multiple objects from different users, of different shapes and sizes.
- every idea i see listed online

the onlything i havent tried, is setting this mutihundred dollar , self warming paper weight on fire, and peeing the flames out.....cuz thats the only idea i have left.....

You haven't provided any information about your printer; but perhaps the extruder stepper driver chip is overheating after you have printed a few layers?

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

here s a pic of some of the fails ( the warping is cuz i just ripped them off the bed in anger, they actually stuck flat while printing)

i have a MakerFarm I3v 12in with a ramps board and marlin..... 0.4mm nozel, tempered glass bed( soon to be frosted/etched on one side), e3d V6 all metal hotend, Maker Farm PLA........ no settings were.changed untill it stopped printing properly..... before this i printed test cubes, a hexagon spike thing, a herringbone gear , and 3 parts to the 11th doctors sonic screwdriver .... part 4 is where problems began....

Quote
PARADOXICLES
i have a MakerFarm I3v 12in with a ramps board and marlin..... 0.4mm nozel, tempered glass bed( soon to be frosted/etched on one side), e3d V6 all metal hotend, Maker Farm PLA........ no settings were.changed untill it stopped printing properly..... before this i printed test cubes, a hexagon spike thing, a herringbone gear , and 3 parts to the 11th doctors sonic screwdriver .... part 4 is where problems began....

So you've got a RAMPS board with plug-in drivers with those awful pots. Are you sure the pots were set properly in the first place?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2015 04:49AM by dc42.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

yes, i am 100% sure my pots are set right, i fallowed multiple calibration guieds... and as i type this it is "printing" ( gappy blobs) but none of the hear sinks are even slightly warm.... i also have a extra fan i added to make sure they stay that way.... plus, it already printed other objects just fine before this, nothing changed...... here is what this print looks like.

Only skimmed the thread, but have you cleaned the nozzle? You said you had an E3D hot end, is the extruder fan on all the time?

yes, nozel is clean, i checked it after unclogging, and before each print, i hit extrude in pronterface and it will push out plenty of filiment with ease. and yes the fan is on all the time, both my extruder fan, and the in blowing on the ramps board are both connected directly to the power supply so nothing can ever overheat ( and so i still have room for a second extruder once i get the money for it)

i have also tried the tensioner on the extruder, tried lose, tried tight, tried in the middle, tried different springs.

ive literally tried everything i can think of.... but i just cant get anything to print again.

It looks like you are underextruding to me.
Do you have the filament diameter listed correct in the slicing software? I made that mistake once.

Recheck e steps per mm by measuring and marking 100mm of filament, extrude 100mm and measure the actual extruded length adjust e steps accordingly, then do a single wall test cube and calibrate the extrusion width using multiplier in the slicer. then calibrate the z offset by measuring the perimeter height, it should match first layer height.

It looks like the temperature might be too high too. Make sure the hotend temperature is accurate using a dvm with thermo couple.
If all else fails, replace the nozzle or hot end. e3d v6 are very reliable. Use a 0.4 nozzle. It's good balance between accuracy and ease if printing. Smaller nozzles tend to clog up faster. Make sure the filament is dust and debris free.

Don't let a hotend sit heated without extruding for too long. It will clog up.

Make sure the filament isn't slipping and the extruder isn't skippping steps.

Make sure you're not printing too fast or acceleration is too high. Also see if retractions are done properly.

Good luck!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2015 04:23PM by imqqmi.

I spent exactly a billion years and 3 months figuring out more or less the same issues, and it now works perfectly. So don't despair. I did find a whole ot of things that interacted and caused the same symptoms that made it really difficult to diagnose. I'd actually fix a fault, but the same symptoms would be caused by another fault, so wouldn't know I'd fixed anything, and switch back to the faulty configuration.

Some things that contributed to the difficulty of diagnosing the cause...

Uneven/unlevel bed that led caused higher back-pressure on some parts of the bed... to take this out of the mix, try extruding in midair, about 5mm above the bed. You'll waste the filament during the test, but it's probably going to be wasted anyway...
Bad position of spool holder, which led to wear and jamming of the filament in the guide holes in the extruder.
Cheap (Chinese) filament of varying diameter that sometimes caused jamming due to over-extrusion.
Insufficient pressure on the extruder which led to slippage and grinding of the filament... if your extruder motor doesn't click when the filament is jammed, there isn't enough pressure.
Insufficient current to the extruder motor... it wasn't pushing as hard as it could, so any slight backpressure would stop the extrusion.
And then later... too much current to the extruder motor... after a few minutes/hours of continuous printing, the motor would overheat and begin clicking.

You don't say if yours is a genuine E3D V6 or Chinese/eBay "clone". I have several "clones" and they're not all alike... I conclude that they're all (except maybe one, but I don't know which one) misrepresented when they say they are E3D V6s. The root cause of the problem for me was my "E3D V6" all-metal heatbreak. I proved this by pushing filament into the hotend by hand. So long as I kept it moving it was fine. If I stopped for a few seconds and then pushed again, it jammed. My interpretation is that there's some heat flow back up the filament or heatbreak... so long as the filament is moving faster than the heat flow, it's fine. When the filament is moving too slowly (or stopped), it swells and softens and jams. When I replaced this with a (Chinese) heatbreak that incorporated a PTFE liner, the problem was finally resolved.

Frank

yes, filiment is 3mm and so is my settings.... whenni first got the filiment i measured it with calipers, and it was exactly 3mm,....i agree though, it seams to be under extruded, but why?

i already did shit tonse of test cubes, which i measred with calipers, and were perfect..... this problem came after multiple sucessful prints of lots of cubes, and the first few parts of my project

m pretty sure my filiment isnt slipping or jamming xcept once it over heats after long prints.... when i hit the extrude button, it extrudes with no noticble problems,

the thermister , both hotend, and bed, is indeed accurate, ive been using it as a room thermometer for the whole time ive had my printer, and have compared them to other themometers around the house ( consistent average of 23c on both therms)... i can check it with the laser themometer once i find it, but im sure it will say the same.

all speeds have been turned down to 30, except bridging, left that at default.... my acceleration is also decressed to 2500, both these settings worked fine for the successfull objects.

Just try to rule out the things you can. Following Triffid hunters calibration guide is an excellent first step. keeping a log is also a good idea if you run into the same problems again. As Frank said this is the most complex stage to get things working, and you'll learn the most. When you add things like auto bed levelling and good quality parts printing will become easier and more reliable. There's always room for improvement. The advantage if a diy kit is you can keep improving it by your or others redesigned or completely new parts.

the bed is as level as it can be by hand leveling it with the bullshit nuts and bolts.... i will soon be ordering metal shim guages to replace the "reccomended" paper method...which sofar, tracing paper has given the best results... also, ii plan on printing a auto bed level kit, if i can ever print again....... i dont know why auto bed leveling isnt standard as part of the kit... it should be....

spool holder.... that might be part of it..., but cant be all...i replaced makerfarms shitty single spo holder, with a seperate one i made for multiple rolls, it sets behind the printer..... even though it has more then enough spin, the filiment still wants to spiral back up as it is pulled off the roll, for being soo stiff, ifmt has alot of spring back, and wants to coil up again.

clicking extruder? no mine dosnt click, it rotates smoothly.... please explain more on this

power, i could try turning up the pots to give the extruder more power, its about as low as it can be.... neither the heatsink(any of them), nor the motors ( any of them) get even slightly warm when printing..... but how could i have printed before this if they were too low?

i said my hot end is an e3d V6......thats what it is, bought directly from e3d.... if it was a clone, i would have said so.... also, the filiment is from Makerfarm as stated in other replies, and meauered exactly 3mm with calipers...... i leared the hard way to not buy cheep shit when i got my prusa i3 that was, and still is, nothing more then a paperweight..... the same place this makerfarm is about to end up......

and i willnot use any plastic parts, not even ptfe in my hot end........ ever..... not only did my first j head melt, but the idea of heat and plastic is retarded to start with.....

i dont understand how it could work perfectly, then not at all, when nothing changed......

Well, firstly, something did change. You just don't know what it was.

Having the spool holder behind the printer was what caused wear in my extruder. PLA is abrasive, and gradually ground the sides of the holes until they were out of round enough for (a) the filament to come right off the toothed drive gear, and (b) the filament to occasianlly catch on the burrs around the hole. It also adds bends and friction to the filament path, and means that Y axis moves change the tension and friction in the feed. Moving my spool to above the extruder simplified my situation so that I could diagnose the other problems.

When there is too much resistance, the stepper motor can't turn. Instead it makes a loud click. If there isn't enough power going to the stepper to make it click when it skips a step, then you don't have enough power.

Another thing to look at is the stability of your temperature. If your hotend wiring isn't supported well (i.e. it moves near the nozzle), then the wires to the heater and/or thermistor will eventually break (but continue to have intermittent contact, meaning poor temperature control), or your thermistor might even pull right out of the heater block (which I'm guessing was the cause of your J-head meltdown).

Finally, describing things that work perfectly well for other people, and are the results of lots of effort and trial and error by talented and hard-working designers, as "retarded" and "bullshit" and "shitty" says more about you than about your printer. If that's really your opinion, then I suggest that you go and do your own pioneering and share a better design with the rest of us.

the noise you mention, i know what you mean now, no, the extruder has never jammed like that, but when my x or y tries to go to far on the end with no stops it makes the noise

i have not printed very many things, just a bunch of 10mm and 20 milimeter cubes, and a few other asorted parts, so i doubt anything has had time to wear out.... seams normal as far as i can tell..... but i plan on reprinting the extruder any way once im able to print again.

the spool holder itself seams to work fine, its only about 8 inches be hind the printer, rolls smothly and what not, the filiment its self was what i refered to, it wants to stay curly like it on the roll, even when its not.

my tempature is pretty stable, dosnt fluxuate much, like +/- 3 degrees at most. i just re wired the thermister today cuz i deceided to check it, broke it, the fixed it..... also, i realized the flaw long ago with the thermister design, and i have had it soldered to a curcit board, and the plug wires soldered to the other end.... this might not work for higher temp materials, but right no all im using is plà..... sense fixing it, no improvement

as for my comments about shitty things... if things are shitty, im gonna call them what they are... and despite some obvious flaws in the desings, i was refering to the quality of the printer, not the quality of the design....aka, the low quality printed parts, the cheap acrilic bed, bent threaded rods, j head with an angled, miscut top instead of flat.... circits not straight enough to connect.....and so on....... it was indeed shitty, and i stand by my statement but yes, i do ineed have my own designs in my head... if im ever able to print again, i will be printing the printer

and last, today i played with both the e pot, and the extruder multiplyer..... the pot made no noticable difference and the multiplayer made things worse when adjusted even slightly in either directions..... when i put it back to 1, i got about 1/4 my object printed, the most sense it stopped, but still the problem continued.... the stuff that didnt mess up was looking like one of the best things ive printed, untill it got gappy again..

So your extruder stepper isn't skipping. Yet it seems it is not pushing filament through. Can you check that when the extruder motor is turning, the filament is actually feeding? Is it grinding away the filament when it jams?

Can you post some photos of your printer setup? Long views showing filament path from spool to extruder, close-ups of the nozzle & hot-end.

+/-3 degree fluctuation in temperature is a lot. Have you tried tuning it?

Your filament sounds perfectly normal to me. But what is the path of the filament from spool to extruder? Could there be friction there?

Did you try printing in mid-air? i.e. deliberately set the printer up so that it prints with the nozzle a few mm above the bed? Does it continue to extrude after 3-4 layers? The point of this is that it rules out any interaction with the bed.

Reading back on this thread, you initially said

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the 4th kept jamming the filiment after about 2 hours of printing, due to over heating ( all metal e3d V6)

Can you say some more about this? The hotend shouldn't be any hotter after 2 hours printing than after 1 minute. So, when you say "over heating", how do you know that was the problem? What exactly happened? How hot did it get? I'm thinking that as a result of this, there may be some residue in the hotend.

Or maybe, when you reassembled the hotend after unclogging, you've got something not quite right.In particular, its really important to have the heatbreak screwed down hard against the nozzle, inside the heater, but with a minimum of heatbreak inside the heater block. The proper way to do that is as below. All this has to be done with the heater block up to temperature (i.e. with the heater on). Don't try to put torque on the heatbreak... it will break.

1. remove the heatbreak from the heater block
2. screw the nozzle all the way in finger-tight
3. back the nozzle out by about half to one turn
4. screw the heatbreak all the way in finger-tight so that it touches the nozzle inside the heater block
5. tighten the nozzle hard against the heater

Be careful not to twist/break/pull the wires to the heater & thermistor. I had a lot of trouble with this... I'd unclog the hotend, and in the process damage the heater wires, or knock the thermistor loose, so my next test would also fail, but for a different reason. Eventually I protected myself from this by putting a little collar (1/4" ID al tube, about 8mm long) around the end of the heater cartridge and the heater wires, held in place by Kapton tape and wire around the heater block.

yes, it is indeed turning an feeding fliment..... the first few layers print perfectly, and when i use the extrude button in proterface, it extrudes a nice string that begins curlin around itself if not touching the build plate.... if touching, it makes a nice sized blob

yes, i can get you some pics, but its gonna take me a bit to edit them down to fit this sites size limit and what not, might not happen till later tonight, but i can forsure get you some pics

the 3 degrees is when its at its worst, once i heats up it settles in and is pretty much the same temp the whole time, but maybe i could refine it more....but really, that seams like a pretty small difference to me ( thats the range of difference it takes an anerage person to even be able to feel a change in tempature)


no, i have not tried printing in air, but once it prints a few of the gappy layers, it starts printing in air, but dosnt extrude much when doing so.... it pretty much plays air guitar at this point.

when i say overheating, i simply mean that it gets warm enough to sofen my filiment (pla) to the point that it sticks in the cold end of the hot end, and clogs before it reaches the nozel, at this point the heat sinks are still cold enough to comfortably touch, just the threaded tube inside is warm enough to sofen the pla..... to fix it i simply removed the heat sinks, let the tube heat up, then push out the filiment, then reassemble it, let it cool, and then put the filiment back in, and test it with the extrude button in pronterface..... the filiment i remove when clogged has a bit of a glob on the end that is whats stops it from moving.

your description of how to assemble the hot end is exactly what ii have been doing

i dont know what and ID all tube is.... but i hate the design of the thermister, ive broke a few, and because of such, i soldered it to a circutboard, with the plug wires on the opposite end, this way those excessivly fragile wires for the therm, dont get bent, snagged, and break again.... i doubt this will work when i switch to higher temp materials, cuz the circut board was white when new, now its brown and toasted, but still solid.... i will put this in the pics...... my eventual plan is to make a ceramic board to do this same set up with, instead of the pcb board.... or, if possible, just design my own hot end from scratch.

here are the pics you aked for, hope they work for what you wanted.... the quality might suck due to the super small size limit of this site ( had to reduce down to about 10%)

Thanks for the pics.... quality is ok.

A couple of comments: Tie your wires to the hotend with a ziptie or similar. You want the flexing of the wires to be spread evenly along the length of the wire as much as possible. You don't want any movement of the wires down at the hotend... that movement will concentrate on the weak point, right by the heater, and break the wires. The position of your spool looks OK, although if it was me I'd try and move it the other side of the wooden frame, so it's right above the hotend & bed, rather than feeding at a diagonal.

Just for completeness... What is your extruder doing when the hotend is clogged? Does it keep turning? If not, it ought to click as the motor skips. If it doesn't click, then there's a problem... the motor probably isn't getting enough current. If it does keep turning, does it grind away at the filament? If not, then you don't have enough tension on your extruder. Note that turning up the extruder tension will probably switch you to the non-turning situation.

+/- 3 degrees = 6 degrees range, which might be enough to cause problems. But if it settles down to +/- 1 degree then I think it's OK.

What you are describing in terms of the softening of the PLA is exactly what I had happening with my all-metal hotend. You don't want to go the PTFE route, so the only thing I can suggest is to improve the cooling of the heatsink... a bigger, more powerful fan perhaps. I had a 40mm fan, but still had the problem. YMMV. Maybe try moving your fan just a bit lower, so that it blows directly on the exposed section of heatbreak? Or try some kind of mica/asbestos heat shield on top of the heater block? I did also find that some objects would print just fine, basically those where the filament kept extruding pretty much constantly. If there was stop-start extrusion, it would jam. I also found that fiddling with the retraction settings improved things sometimes, although I never found a complete answer that way. You already tried different temperatures, otherwise I'd suggest to try lowering the temperature by 5 degrees.

The tube I talked about was aluminium tube, 1/4" Inside Diameter. Any kind of heat-proof tube would do. The aim is just to stop movement of the wires right next to the cartridge. I didn't break any thermistors, but I did go through a few heater cartridges.

Thanks for the pics.... quality is ok.

A couple of comments: Tie your wires to the hotend with a ziptie or similar. You want the flexing of the wires to be spread evenly along the length of the wire as much as possible. You don't want any movement of the wires down at the hotend... that movement will concentrate on the weak point, right by the heater, and break the wires. The position of your spool looks OK, although if it was me I'd try and move it the other side of the wooden frame, so it's right above the hotend & bed, rather than feeding at a diagonal.

Just for completeness... What is your extruder doing when the hotend is clogged? Does it keep turning? If not, it ought to click as the motor skips. If it doesn't click, then there's a problem... the motor probably isn't getting enough current. If it does keep turning, does it grind away at the filament? If not, then you don't have enough tension on your extruder. Note that turning up the extruder tension will probably switch you to the non-turning situation.

+/- 3 degrees = 6 degrees range, which might be enough to cause problems. But if it settles down to +/- 1 degree then I think it's OK.

What you are describing in terms of the softening of the PLA is exactly what I had happening with my all-metal hotend. You don't want to go the PTFE route, so the only thing I can suggest is to improve the cooling of the heatsink... a bigger, more powerful fan perhaps. I had a 40mm fan, but still had the problem. YMMV. Maybe try moving your fan just a bit lower, so that it blows directly on the exposed section of heatbreak? Or try some kind of mica/asbestos heat shield on top of the heater block? I did also find that some objects would print just fine, basically those where the filament kept extruding pretty much constantly. If there was stop-start extrusion, it would jam. I also found that fiddling with the retraction settings improved things sometimes, although I never found a complete answer that way. You already tried different temperatures, otherwise I'd suggest to try lowering the temperature by 5 degrees.

The tube I talked about was aluminium tube, 1/4" Inside Diameter. Any kind of heat-proof tube would do. The aim is just to stop movement of the wires right next to the cartridge. I didn't break any thermistors, but I did go through a few heater cartridges.

i dunno how well you can see, but my wires are all tied with twist ties, cuz zip ties are one time use , and just create more plastic waste... and its also tied down to an open part part of the extruder so it dosnt bend below that point, so i know its not any kind of connection issue.... i also have a twist tie wrapped around the therm wire for similar reasons, and to create a buffer incase it touches the end while hot

the over heating only happens when i use high temps, before my problems occured i was trying to find the highest temp i could get, for better layer bonding, but not go too high to burn or cause other problems... ill find the sweet spot eventually, if i can print again .... but i never did think of having it blow on the gap between the block and heatsinks, i will try it if i get overheated again

.... but sadly, all this tinkering and i cant get it to print more then a dozen or so decent layers.... the base layer has been coming out perfect on my mix of microscopic glass bubbles and white elmers glue ( i ran out of hair spray, but the glue works better any way)... i dunno if its a setting change, or the glue, but i keep gettin about 1/4 my print done( about 2 or 3 mm thick) when before it was messing up earlier ( like 1mm of layers).

whenever i have problems with other projects, is something so obvious i miss it.... im guessing this problem is similar... but i dunno what.

OK, my comments were just passing on what I've learnt.

My approach is to print at the *lowest* temperature possible... inter-layer bonding in't so much about heat as accurate placement and adequate extrusion. (Paradoxically, over-extrusion can also lead to poor layer bonding, because the over-extrusion causes jams and blockages). I print at 190 without any inter-layer bonding issues.

I don't have trouble with PLA sticking to the bed (or actually to painters tape). No heated bed, no glue, just tape, wiped down with alcohol before printing. I'd guess that you don't either... if the first layer sticks to the bed, then the job's done. Things that happen 1 or 2 or 3mm higher aren't anything to do with glue or hair spray. So I wouldn't worry about improving the glue and bed if I was you.

Again, my diagnosis is too much heat in the hotend... so try printing at a lower temperature.

I dunno if you ski or skate or surf or whatever, but it's the same kind of thing when you're learning those. You've got to lean, and bend your knees and shift your body weight and keep your head up and get your arms in the right places, all at once. Until you're doing *everything* adequately, nothing seems to work, and you do a lot of falling. Of course, having faulty equipment doesn't help. Once you've got the basics, you can start to experiment with one variable at a time. But lots of people give up before they get to that point.

You say the material is curling back on itself it should not do that. you might have debris or a rough edge at the very tip of your hotend. i bought one of those drillbit kits off of ebay and ran it through the hole of my tip and it cleared it out. after that manual extrusion comes out straight and hangs there.