Branching? Oozing? Overextruding?

[thegeewz]

So I've spent the past 2 weekends trying to calibrate my hot new Stock Rostock Max V.2
Everything is by the book stock, with the exception of the peek fan, it printed to big to fit, and a LED ring currently connects to its wires. I followed all the links in the manual for all the software and firmware last weekend. I am using Mattercontrol to print via USB.

All of my prints have little pimples on the inside corners for ABS, or pimples making branches on PLA. Seems to happen mostly on Y axis travel. (going right to left) Watching it, the hot end seems to deposit just a bead to much, pick it up right before traveling over a void, and drop it off on the next printing area. On these triangles this gives me 2 clean corners and 2 ugly corners. Larger prints it just ruins details until it builds up to the point that it eventually snags hard enough to pop the print off the bed.

I've been going through the forums here trying everything I find and nothing seems to change this. Tried no retraction, 10mm retraction, z offset 1mm, triple checked extruder calibration, sliding speed multiplier up to 2, sliding it down to .5, I've calibrated pretty well, and am actually under-extruding .5mm to rule out over extrusion. Print surface is about as level as I can get it. Seems perfect.
I've gone from 210 all the way down to 80 degrees on my glow in the dark PLA with no change.

I found a thread mentioning this could be caused by the bowden tube moving on retraction, my little plastic pieces just before the fingerscews had been all out of what after all my prints, so I went ahead and zip-tied both ends. It was exciting to think I HAD to have found the problem, but no.... still ugly.

I'm printing off another triangle now at 180 nozzle, 60 bed, 10mm retraction, 110mm retraction speed, 0 extra length on restart and 1mm z-lift. Still pretty ugly. Enabling the Z lift produced a ton of strings. Whats left to change? What really causes this?

Is this the limit of what this printer can do?

[Windshadow]

in your shoes I would go back to printing ABS until you get a PEEK fan housing you can use. you do need to keep the PEEK plastic fins cool. if it is too big to fit use the percent control to reduce it a bit.
do you have you layer fan working? those parts you are practicing on are designed to be quite hard to print but if they are what you want to start to work with try printing 3 of them at the same time.

And this post from the chief Guru Hackney
http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=7361" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
is a great starting point to build skills step by stem... I am about 1/2 way through and doing much better since I decided to follow it. and get each step just right.

lastly no those blobs and strings you are having problems... that is not what he printer is capable of and in fact you are doing those open pyramid things far better than I did when I also tried to do them too early in the learning process.

[Xenocrates]

I've heard that glow in the dark filaments often give trouble, so maybe try fixing your settings for ABS of PLA before working with the glow in the dark stuff. I'm also thinking that your filament diameter might be off, which is a slicer, rather than a printer, setting. Have you dried the PLA (I hear that the glow in the dark stuff is really moisture sensitive from some of the people I know)

Also, PLA at 80 degrees? I'm thinking that's a typo, but if not, I suspect you accidentally mounted a winch motor to your extruder instead of a stepper, and somehow are managing to extrude a solid.

[thegeewz]

Thanks for the fast reply guys!

Yeah, that's a typo on the temps, 180 for the PLA. Hatchbox spool says temps from 220 to 180. I'm afraid to go any lower.
I'll spin the ABS back up and start doing little roses for the lady. Thanks for the tip!
I did the triangles figuring the distance between the posts might help me determine where the branches are coming from. Back to square one with ABS then, those long waits for the bed to reach temp are killing me.

I would pick a tough first roll of PLA... glow in the dark seemed so..... neato.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around what all these settings do for me... so many of them seem to change nothing on my output. I'm going through Hackney's awesome post now.

I'm already eyeballing that E3D all metal hot end I keep reading about.....

[Xenocrates]

The E3D hotend is really nice. Hatchbox filament less so. I've had one roll that was a little finicky, one that wouldn't print at all, and one that I haven't opened. These are all ABS mind you. Funnily enough, I made some ABS roses recently (well, pre-christmas. I keep meaning to get around to doing a what are you making post one of these days, but there's always another project that's almost finished.) as well. Which STL are you using for yours?

But just so you know, E3D's have issues with jamming using PLA. It's not too terrible, but it is a thing. Most all metal hotends have that issue.

[Sonrisa3D]

This article should help: https://www.matterhackers.com/articles/ ... -to-oozing" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[thedoble]

Have you calibrated your filament diameter and e-steps? If these aren't correct, everything else won't work either.

[thedoble]

Hang on, you don't have a PEEK fan?
That's essential

Also a layer fan will help

Also also, try 5mm retraction at 30mm/s

[thegeewz]

OK! I've got my weird blobs and oozing squared, after another week of fooling with settings I set -1 mm on extra length on restart and that seemed to have done the trick. My E3D v6 all metal kit is here, I've just got settle on a mounting technique. There seems to be a host of options. Those of you who have installed it.... did you design your mounts yourselves, or find a download set with compatible fan shrouds? Above or below the effector plate is the big question I guess.

I got the PEEK fan installed right after Windshadows reply. Thanks for the encouragement guys! I would have been pretty pissed if I melted my new robot!
That article is pure gold Sonrisa3d, I started getting some pretty bad stringing when I fooled around with the z lift, I've adjusted z lift back down and lost the strings, but I will be running through that entire process just to dial in perfectly after I get the new hot-end installed.

Speaking as an inexperienced operator, I cant say I've had problems out of the Hatchbox stuff so far. I don't really have a point of reference, though I did pick up a roll of designshop black ABS that have not opened yet. I sprung for a roll of taulman 618 nylon to give the new hot-end a whirl once I've installed it, I've already got the engineers at work requesting bids for parts. (EXCITING!) To bad I cant do ABS M30 and ULTEM. Baby steps.

Calibration of filament diameter and e-steps was one of the first things I did, I'm pretty confident I'm about as close as I can get with my Chinese calipers.

I almost don't want to tear it down to install the new hot-end, its working so well now.

I'm still having issues with major layer-shifting seemingly at random, every 5th print or so, I hooked up a rpi and IR camera to monitor it and oddly haven't seen it happen since, and the setup looks like johnny-5. Octoprint seems neat, but I'm only using the webcam feature for now, seems like a whole new can'o'worms.

Thanks for all the replies guys. This forum is some seriously big medicine for a rookie such as myself.

Settings as of now are for a roll of Hatchbox silver PLA and working GREAT. Still no layer fan, I will print it as part of the mount set I settle on and hopefully have it all going by Monday for another week of calibration evenings.
Sorry no pictures this time, surface pro camera is shit.
Bed= 61
Noz= 189
extrusion multiplier 1.0
retraction 5mm @ 110mm/s
Z-Lift 0
Extra length on restart -1
min travel 20
min extrusion before retract 1.5mm
no wipe
Sliced with Matterslice via Mattercontrol 1.4
speed multiplier 1.25 (cuz I can ;D)

[jram]

Regarding the E3d mount. I purchased one of the alumnum mounts from travelphoog on this forum. It's a rock solid mount and mine is mounted above the effector plate. You'll love the E3d, it prints ABS beautifully! Also prints PLA nicely, I've been going for at least 400 hours with no jams from either PLA or ABS on my E3d v6. The one time I had a major problem was due to my nozzle coming loose (my fault).

[Xenocrates]

Interesting that you've got a roll of black designshop ABS. I ended up with two. The first is working nicely so far. (although not as well as the SeemeCNC roll did). 9 hour print with no issues beyond stringing (haven't gotten around to adjusting to fix that on that yet). If you work at a place that works with ultem, even occasionally, see if you can't get a 310mm disk. Ultem is the same stuff as PEI, and is wonderful as a bed material. Almost effortless to work with and print on.

Also, I second the comment on travelphotog's mounts 713maker.com. They're very nicely made, and I say that as a person who works with CNC mills a lot (I am not a machinist by trade, but it's part of the CNC programming course at my school to operate them and make actual parts, so you know how conventions go and why (I would get a job as a machinist, but time and liability are issues for me))

[thegeewz]

OK, I was on the fence until I saw the sexy anodize color choices AND cf spacers. The price is right. Multiple endorsements... whats another 35 bucks next to a three armed robot? Thanks for the link. Did you guys do standard or bowden lock ring?

Has anybody fully printed a mount though? does this cause issues with the heat from the hot end warping or melting the mount in some way? I've settled on printing -
http://repables.com/r/338/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; from ABS with 100% fill. This should get it squirting at least until this sexy ass machined aluminum arrives right?

[Xenocrates]

We use standard rings, the bowden rings are for things like J heads which don't come with a connector for the bowden tube.

I do know that many people have printed mounts successfully, and considering how far it is from the actual heated portion, ABS should be fine, and the standard infill patterns ought to work, especially short term.

[IMBoring25]

A lot of Cartesian designs have ABS (or even PLA) x-carriages into which the hot-end fan exhaust gets directly blown. As long as you have a reasonable distance from the heater block and heat break you should be fine as far as staying under glass transition temperature goes. It is worth mentioning that plastics near the hot end have the potential to raise the stakes if you ever have a thermal runaway.

[thedoble]

I almost don't want to tear it down to install the new hot-end, its working so well now.

I'm still having issues with major layer-shifting seemingly at random, every 5th print or so, I hooked up a rpi and IR camera to monitor it and oddly haven't seen it happen since, and the setup looks like johnny-5. Octoprint seems neat, but I'm only using the webcam feature for now, seems like a whole new can'o'worms.

Yep you will need to re-tune things for the e3d

Layer shifting can be caused by speed settings being too high. IMO the defaults are way too high for the rostock. Try lowing travel to 200mm/s and lower your acceleration to 1500 and travel acceleration to 2000. Doing this got rid of my 'ringing/echoing' and mild layer shift problems.

[rehabmax]

I have also had the problem of extra little strands of plastic that seem to be on prints at points where the extruder has to skip a point. Printing multiple pieces simultaneously is more problematic when the printer skips from one obiect tot the other one. The retraction is set at the default settings. i did slow the travel speed down to 100mm/sec as i was having problems with the print head falling off on a part that has a thin edge. The quality is good but these little strands make it look less than ideal. I have little nippers, scissors and chisels to clean things up. Is this just the nature of 3D printing? An injection molded piece would look far better but not practical. I am using the stock extruder with the .5 mm nozzle. Before I go changing out nozzles and tweaking retraction settings I am trying for a quality that is just not possible? PLA or ABS does not seem to matter.