Hey guys, I work at a Media Center at my University and we have 2 UM2's, both have extreme under extrusion, I've been working with them for about a year now and have done as much research on the forums as I can but can't seem to find the root cause for our under extrusion, it seems to change on a daily basis. Sometimes it prints great, sometimes it's horrible.
Things I have done:
Atomic method / cleaned nozzle, looks perfect.
Adjusted the spring on the feeder at the back (It's at the top but have experimented with other placements with no effect, or worse)
Adjusted printing settings several times based on recommendations on the forums
Leveled build plate
Changed / tried different color filament
Oiled up the machine
Updated firmware/Cura
Other Observations and Notes
Material stops coming out completely when machine retracts for about a full second (causing huge gaps in the prints)
The material tends to "curl upwards" when it initially starts coming out and grabs on to the nozzle, sometimes i have to use a piece of PLA to get it off the nozzle.
EVERY time I abort a print I have to remove the bowden tube and cut the end of the PLA off as it gets thin at the end and can't push through the nozzle
Has only ever used PLA (Specifically from UM), never ABS
As these printers are for University use they both get extreme use (roughly 72 hours a week), I wonder if maybe they are just being used far too much and we're wearing them down really quickly. We've had the print head on our original UM2 which we got around September 2014 changed and it's working fairly good, it has problems right now but I suspect it's just due for some basic maintenance.
Our new one is experiencing extreme under extrusion though, the only way I can solve it is by cranking the temperature to 250 or above. Anything lower has extreme under extrusion. I only printed this high for testing the Ultimaker Robot print, it usually runs at 210-225 max. I'll give you the printer settings and cura screen shots, but the files we put on the SD cards are handled by multiple people on multiple machines so I can't guarantee everyone's settings are the same (Perhaps we should ensure we all use a default go to setting for average prints and only change upon need).
I've suspected it could be the Teflon insulator, but the machine is fairly new, how long do these usually last before needing to be replaced?
Here are my cura settings
Here are some prints - For the robot on the left I adjusted the printer up to 225 (from 210) and that's the result. The one on the right (which is still not as good as I'd like) was tested at 250, which is way too hot to be running for PLA let alone for 72 hours a week.
This was also printed at 225 and came out horrible no matter how many tries and adjustments made.
And here is one that printed about a month ago with the exact same settings which looks pretty decent for a low-normal quality print. We don't use high quality settings as it's for students to use and if we made every print high quality it would take forever for students to get their prints.
Any and all help is appreciated!