Trouble Printing with .25 Nozzle

[jyanna 0]

I have a 2+ and it prints great with all nozzles but the .25.  I have never been able to get the .25 to work.  I've tried a couple different brands of PLA.  Here is an example.  The brim printed OK (it often doesn't), but then it fails to print correctly.  I was using 195 degrees, but have tried other temps a bit, with no success.  This heart is one of the examples included with my machine.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks!

[gr5 1,371]

First of all - you can't just print an existing gcode file with a mismatched nozzle.  You need to slice specifically with a 0.25mm line width.

 

So I'm guessing what happened is it was trying to cram too much filament through that tiny nozzle and eventually it ground down the filament at the feeder.  That's one theory.  Another theory is that the nozzle was too far above the glass plate.  If filament isn't sticking to the glass plate, try pushing up gently with your finger on the bed and if it starts working then you can just turn the 3 screws CCW (looking from below) 1/2 turn or so to raise it a bit.

 

In general you want to print really small things - usually things smaller than 1cm (half inch) with the 0.25mm nozzle.  You can do line widths down to 0.2mm and still get decent quality.  Usually I have to print 3 or even 7 objects such that each one has time to cool while printing the others.  You might want to lower the bed temp to around 50C if the prints are coming out a bit blobby.  And print slow - like 25mm/sec or even slower.  You want max possible fan - it might help to have a desk fan blowing some air into the front of the printer.  And print on the cool side - lower nozzle temp by 5C or so versus normal.

[jyanna 0]

Thank you!  I appreciate the help!

[gr5 1,371]