material not extruding after nozzle clean

[benny22 0]

hi - hope this is the right spot for my question. i have a fairly new S3 (less than 6 months). Both extruders do not print out. Tried hot and cold nozzle clean, they ome out good, but when i tried to print, material comes out only at times and in very thin strips, sometimes vanishes at all. i played with the feeder tension screw - no help there.

I even replaced nozzles,,,, nothing😢 i'm lost. Please help!!!

[gr5 2,172]

You want feeder tension screw at the midpoint.  If you fight the printer you should be able to pull with at least 10 pounds of force on the filament and it shouldn't slip.  This is a good test of many things at once (did you close the feeder with the lever - did someone assemble the feeder wrong - is the feeder defective, etc).

 

Have you done "move material" option on the S3?  Try that.  You should be able to get a stream of filmanet coming nicely out of the nozzle.  If you put a kink in the material you should be able to get the kink to reach the build plate within about 10 seconds.

 

If that's working then please show a picture or video of what you mean by "very thin strips".  It could be a leveling issue or something completely different.

[benny22 0]

thanks for the info. where can i find the "move material" option?

Had a friend look at the printer, he fiddled with the temrature settings of the nozzle, increasing it from the default to around 240 for regular PLA and that did the trick.  I'm curious as to why isnt the default temp. good enough? why should i change it?

[gr5 2,172]

From top level go to:

MATERIAL/PRINTCORE

MATERIAL 1

MOVE

 

It will automatically heat up.  You can separately just heat up a core in the PrintCore 1 menu.

 

I recommend learning what all the menu items do at some point.  Just try them all maybe?  At least the ones that don't sound like they will take several minutes to do.

[gr5 2,172]

240C is damn hot for PLA.  It will change the material characteristics a little.  Probably not a huge deal.  The print will look a bit different - maybe more matt and maybe more stringing.  What speed are you printing at?

[benny22 0]

ohhh sorry - busy week. havent seen your reply till now.  printer is at my friend's place. will look into it at the weekend. thanks for your patience!

Edited January 21, 2021 by benny22

[benny22 0]

OK -SO TEMPERATURE WAS SET TO 220 AND SPEED TO 40. DEFAULT IS 60 (RIGHT?)

WHAT ARE YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS?

thANKS !

[gr5 2,172]

It's a tradeoff between quality and speed.  Usually if I want to print "fast" I don't increase print speed but instead increase layer height and nozzle size.  This prints a faster volume of plastic per second without the print head moving faster.  Highest quality I do is at 25mm/sec.  I usually print at 35mm/sec.  I've printed at 300mm/sec (really - it works) but when you go above a certain speed you have to worry about underextrusion.  PLA is more viscous (thicker) at lower temps and it gets harder for the feeder to attain the forces necessary.  S3 can push with about 3x the power needed for the table below.  So you should just barely be able to print 3x below speeds for .4 nozzle and .2 layer or 6x these speeds if .1 layer but don't push it so hard! Try thicker layers instead.  Also note that Cura has about 7 printing speeds (and some non-printing speeds) and you need to check them all.  I also recommend that all 7 or so printing speeds be the same.

 

Here are top recommended speeds for .2mm layers (twice as fast for .1mm layers) and .4mm nozzle:
20mm/sec at 200C
30mm/sec at 210C
40mm/sec at 225C
50mm/sec at 240C

 

A 0.6mm nozzle can print at about double the volume of plastic per second and a 0.8 can print 4X the volume of a 0.4 nozzle.

 

Again - you get the best qulaity if you do your speed increase using thicker layer heights and without increasing print head speed.