Weak prints

[Kendall Baker 0]

Hello,

 

I have been having print issues when printing anything more complex then a pipe. Below is an example, the pipe printed which looks perfect to me. But the cone is shows a lot of imperfections through.  The cone is mostly mostly hollow, it is a part for a spool holder. I am pretty new to 3d printing and I am having trouble finding the issue. I have tried leveling the bed, checking the gantry to be square, and cleaning the whole extruder assembly. 

 

I am using Cura 3.2.1 and a Hictop ( creality) cr-10s.

[gr5 2,230]

That's severe underextrusion.  I don't know the CR-10 so I don't know what would cause it.  The most common causes is simply printing too cold or too fast.  Too fast might mean simply the layer height is too thick - when I talk about printing speed I multiple nozzle width X speed X layer height.  The higher the temp, the less viscous the plastic is and so you can print faster (but quality goes down).

 

Anyway the first thing to try is to print at 1/3 the speed.  Another possibility since it seems fine on many layers in a row is that your Z axis is dropping suddenly for no apparent reason.  Maybe the Z driver overheats and the bed falls?  Does the CR-10 have a bed that goes up and down?

[Kendall Baker 0]

Thank you for the suggestion. The cr-10s has dual threaded rods for a z axis. The gratry moves up and is the x axis. The bed is on the y axis. I upped the flow rate to 160% in cura and reprinted the same object. It was still a little off but it was much better. I am going to look up doing a esteps calibration to correct it. Thank you for the quick help!

[yellowshark 153]

Following on from @gr5 my first question is, comparing the two prints, did you use EXACTLY the same settings for both prints, i.e. printer speeds, layer height, extruder temp., fans. Are you using PLA? Am I right in assuming that both prints are using the same filament? Just so you know, bed levelling only affects the first or first few layers; so it would not be the cause of the pproblem you are seeing.

[Kendall Baker 0]

Hello yelloshark. Yes it is the same filament, same model and the exact same settings except for changing the flow rate. I had cura still up from when I last printed it still and just changed flow rate.I am using PLA.

[gr5 2,230]

160% will usually chew up the filament and cause a print failure.   You should never go above 120% and if you are going above 110% you are compensating for some issue that you should be fixing instead.

 

I'm still confused because you have some layers on the cone that look pretty good (not underextruded anyway) and other layers that are heavily underextruded.  Something is intermittent.  I would check your nozzle temp during a print to see if you have widely varying temperatures.  The underextruded layers might just be too cold.  

 

Also my idea about the bed falling doesn't make sense since your bed doesn't go up and down.

 

Also maybe you are getting filament tangles.  Sometimes one loop gets under another and you get a problem "forever".  The fix is to remove the filament from the printer, unspool a few feet and correct the tanngle, then without letting go of the end of the filament, reload the filament into the printer.