Printer stops printing

[spiderheiney 0]

Hi all

I am going to try and get support from all you users since there is no response to the support tickets i created last month.

I orderderd the ulticontorller wich worked fine using the sdcard but after about 5 a 6 times inserting the card it stoped reading it all together i had to fix this myself after hearing nothing from the support team ( why do they have a support page if they won't respond to the emails ).

This is a shame because the printer itself is pretty good.

but i digress.

my problem is this sometimes when i start a print there is no extrusion from the printhead wich leaves gaping holes in the print itself when that happens and the printhead comes to about 0.5 mm height it stops extruding completely and starts printing in mid air.

this has ruined more than one print.

I hope some of you have had the same problem and know a solution.

 

[gr5 2,235]

Sorry you didn't get a reply from support. They were all in new york city probably around the time you wrote the tickets and they got swamped but they are responsive now. Anyway it sounds like it's too late.

This is common and can be caused by many things. For example, filament can be tangled, extruder issues, hot end not hot enough, or a partial clog.

0) What temp and speed and layer height were you printing at? For example 200C at 100mm/sec .2mm layers is too fast and too cold to do both at the same time. Whereas if you change that to 240C or instead change it to 50mm/sec there should be no problem (either or).

1) Nozzle temp - it might be reading high and so it might be actually at 160C when you think it is at 220C. So set it to 105C and make sure touching it with water boils.

2) Nozzle clog - this is a pain to fix, maybe look at this last. Are you in a dusty room? Dust can cling to filament and get inside nozzle. If room is dusty, put a piece of tissue paper around the filament with tape so it gets cleaned as it gets fed into extruder. If you do remove nozzle, heat to 180C first, unscrew very gently (it's easy to break brass). Clean out with gas flame on stove or similar. Make sure you can see throught the hole.

3) Extruder not working right - it should be able to pull 22 pounds with no load - so pull back the filament so it doesn't reach the hot end, then turn big gear with one hand and fight it with all your finger strength in the other hand. If it seems less than 22 pounds, maybe test with weights. If it is less than 10 pounds send us photos of your extruder both open and closed.

 

[anthonyt 0]

my problem is this sometimes when i start a print there is no extrusion from the printhead wich leaves gaping holes in the print itself when that happens and the printhead comes to about 0.5 mm height it stops extruding completely and starts printing in mid air.

this has ruined more than one print.

 

0.5mm height is pretty big. For me it was usually only the start of the first layer. The cause of that problem was that some filament drained out of the extruder head nozzle after the last print.

I just had to extrude a bit more extra filament before the print started to "get the flow running". In Cura on the Start/End-GCode tab, I changed this line:

G1 F200 E3 ;extrude 3mm of feed stock

to this line:

G1 E14 F300 ;14mm at 300mm/s

I found that 14mm seemed to be enough in most cases, but there were times when I was playing around and aborting prints before they start, then more filament drained out. I suspect it would not hurt to change from E14 to about E20.

 

[spiderheiney 0]

0.5 mm is not the layer height it's aucualy the height that the printer sometimes stops printing.

i think i got that working now but a new problem has occurred.

When i made a model for an iphone case in solidworks but when i print that model the printer won't print the walls of the model just the bottom and the infill.

i'm using flexible pla at around 200c to 220c.

it's driving me crazy

 

[gr5 2,235]

First of all I hope you used layer view before wasting all that time on the printer. The layer view will clearly show what is going to be printed and what is going to be ignored.

I suspect the width of the walls of your iphone case are less than .8mm. But cura won't print anything thinner than 2 passes. So you can:

1) Make the walls of the case at least .8mm (preferably 1mm if they are curved or angled or .8mm exactly if they are vertical).

or

2) If the walls are only a little thinner than .8mm - say .7mm, you could lie about your nozzle width, and say it is .35mm and it will come out okay - not perfect - but it will mostly work out okay. Cura will underextrude but at the same time make solid infill lines closer together so overall it should work out.

ALWAYS LOOK at your model in layer view before printing.

also: How did you resolve that problem where it suddenly stopped printing? Why leave us in suspense for 2 days???????

 

[spiderheiney 0]

thanks for the response the problem with the printer not printing at a certain height might have been caused by loose pully belts.

I have to print a few more prints to see if the problem is gone.

the layer view displays the walls but the printer does not print them wich is weird.

my guess would be a problem with the solidworks design but i could not find a setting in solidworks to make a wall or solid object.

the reason i responded after 2 days is that i was busy with work so i could not try the suggestions.

thanks from the quick respones.

 

[gr5 2,235]

the layer view displays the walls but the printer does not print them wich is weird.

 

Blue lines are movement (non extruding). That's probably what you got confused about.