First print issues

So for the past few months I've been building a Huxley from an old Techzone kit that someone else failed to get working.

So far I've finished the kit, replaced the old electronics with RAMPS 1.4 (repetier), and upgraded the terrible bowden tube retention system.

I still plan on replacing all the printed pulleys with metal ones, upgrading to a jhead extruder, and switching from XL belts to GT2.

On to my issues, I've printed a number of 20mm, hollow test cubes and the sides come out encouraging, some z banding but otherwise respectable, but the top never quite adheres to the walls and sort of floats.



I figured, fine, this printer sucks at bridging, I'll address that soon. Then I printed a part for my printer and found some interesting results.

First, the circles are all oblong, I assume this is due to the printed pulleys introducing some error.
Second, the Y axis seems to have shifted near the end of the print, not sure why that happened, further investigation needed.
Third and most important, the walls on the left are misplaced while the walls on the right are much better. All the walls fail to adhere properly to the infill.









Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/16/2016 12:36PM by Adler.

It all may be caused by stepper motor drivers overheating. Place a fan that will cool the mainboard and try again.

I can see how stepper driver overheating could cause the shift in the y axis near the end but how could it cause the delamination of the walls or the misplaced wall?

How much play is there in the nozzle position? It looks to me like something is loose.

That makes sense. Almost like its off by 2mm depending on the direction its coming from.

I checked and there was some play in the x axis (not the carriage the whole axis which floats on the z). I tightened it up but now my z axis pulley fell apart . I was planning on replacing those anyways but now I've got to wait at least a month to get a pulley from china before I can even test if I've fixed the problem.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/2016 07:27PM by Adler.

When I have seen the walls separated from the infill it has bee from under extrusion. I had it a few days ago from accidentally bumping the flowrate slider in repetier down to 80%.

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Newbie with Folgertech 2020 i3.

Is it pla you printing? What temp is the bed running on print and have you a fan running?

I notice mine was like that on one side but perfect on the other side, first I suspected was the fan duct not blowing at some part of the model, and it turns out that was the case, resulting one side of warmer than the other, making that side of the model softer and curl up resulting a delamination effect, adjusting the airflow fixed my problem

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/19/2016 06:39PM by deaconfrost.

Interesting. It IS PLA I'm printing but I don't have a heated bed. I do have a fan but its not ducted, I haven't had enough success printing to print myself a duct. My fan is a 140mm pc fan blowing over the whole print but it may be affecting one side more than the other. Do you think I'd be better off with no fan?

140mm is a mighty big fan! Do you mean 40mm?

Looking at the photo, I'd say there's some step skipping in the Y axis, particularly about 1mm or so from the top.

The gaps between infill and perimeters I'd put down to play in the X and/or Y axes... each time the axis reverses direction when printing the infill it will leave a gap.

You might also want to look at your speeds and accelerations... over-accelerating can cause the same kind of thing. I'd start with slow speeds and only speed it up when that's working OK.

To get started, you could just make a simple duct out of folded cardboard and tape. It's only got to hold together for one print. When printing a duct, it doesn't have to be perfect. You can always tape over the holes and hot-glue it in place whilst you print your next duct.

Certainly wouldn't be any better without fan I imagine.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/2016 02:34AM by deaconfrost.

Quote
frankvdh
140mm is a mighty big fan! Do you mean 40mm?

Looking at the photo, I'd say there's some step skipping in the Y axis, particularly about 1mm or so from the top.

The gaps between infill and perimeters I'd put down to play in the X and/or Y axes... each time the axis reverses direction when printing the infill it will leave a gap.

You might also want to look at your speeds and accelerations... over-accelerating can cause the same kind of thing. I'd start with slow speeds and only speed it up when that's working OK.

To get started, you could just make a simple duct out of folded cardboard and tape. It's only got to hold together for one print. When printing a duct, it doesn't have to be perfect. You can always tape over the holes and hot-glue it in place whilst you print your next duct.

I figured that without a duct I would use the shotgun approach to cooling. 140mm fan over the entire build area.

Please ignore the mass of poorly maintained wires I promise to tame them once I am sure of where everything will go.

Alright. All pulleys and belts are now aluminum GT2. The hotend has been replaced with a 0.35mm jhead.

The results are much improved, still not perfect.These were printed super slow at 35% feedrate and 115% flowrate in repetier.





Next step is to print something more complex.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/27/2016 10:40AM by Adler.