print head catching

Back in april I bought a folgertech prusa i3 kit and put it all together. alot of learning experience hours later I was starting to get some small prints to work. I have since the printed a few small upgrades for the printer to get my tensions in place and all. So I decided to start going to some bigger prints.

I have so far been able to get 1 decent larger print to work and it was a simple case. But I think i got lucky with that as I am trying to print some other objects and I keep having the same problem. The print head inevitably will catch on something, causing the print bed to stop for a moment. The print head moves once the whole bed starts to vibrate from the motors still trying to move it and it lets go and resumes printing, but now the whole thing is shifted and ruins the print.

I have tried changing my temps and my speeds. I have burned through about half a spool of pla now trying to get my printer working stably.

Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

What does it catch on?

---

Newbie with Folgertech 2020 i3.

ha, sorry that would probably help huh? I used to think it was catching only on drips that were happening, but I have fixed that issue so I can only imagine its catching on something from the previous layer. I can print the 20x20x20 cube no problem. The first few layers all look good so maybe as its getting higher up away from the heat bed maybe the previous layer is too cool? or the hot end isn't hot enough?

Thanks!

What are your stepper driver voltages? I suspect an overheating driver or motor. also when you move the Axis's by hand, is there anything that they catch on?

---

My creations/2020 aluminum parts/FolgerTech i3 upgrades [www.thingiverse.com]

Ill probe them when i get back home. Would overheating cause the motors to skip?

yup

---

My creations/2020 aluminum parts/FolgerTech i3 upgrades [www.thingiverse.com]

I used to have this problem. Sometimes, if your printer is over extruding, bumps of these over extruded materials (more prevalent on solid infills or top/bottom shells) are lumped higher than the current z height. If given enough time to cool down and harden, the head could get stucked on those "bumps" if it needed to pass over it when moving to other area.
I needed to fine tune my extrusion to minimize this. And to be safe, i configure my slic3r settings to use Z-Lift on retract. Setting this to 0.15mm - 0.2mm is quite reasonable and additional incurred time is more acceptable than failed prints.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2015 10:20AM by wderoxas.

I did one thing that seems to be helping, i still need to check my motor voltage and what not, but I did find that I was getting a slight drip from around nozzle head. I found some references that you can use some teflon tape (semi permanent, but I have extras) and that seems to have stopped that tiny drop. That may have been contributing. Seems much less strings and blobs. I ran a test print after doing that and everything was fine up to a point and then it shifted a little bit but I was monitoring and did not hear anything catch so I will check all the voltages just to double check