Temperature Tower Gaps Failure using manufacturer recommended temperature. Normal?

[Speckles 1]

Bare with me, I am still new to this. 
I am getting bad layer adhesion with this filament
So recently started trying to tune temperature for my Formfutura volcano PLA. The manufacturer settings recommend between 220 and 255. I set up this temperature tower:
cube 245 at the bottom is temperature 220 since the first layer I wanted to print the lowest temp to ensure a stable base like the maker who made this tower reccomended. 
You can see it is by far the best at 220 , I had hoped to print a tiny bit higher to get better layer adhesion like I have read online, since when I printed a test part it felt a tad brittle (I am printing spiralize)

I am printing at a layer height of 0.1. I considered printing more shells to help with the part I want to print with this in mind, but I was super surprised how gappy the print was based on the suggested range. Even at 220 the lowest range I am getting gaps.....but oddly the 245 cube (actually 220) does not have the same issue as the top 220 cube.

Any ideas if my settings are the culprit? here is my 3mf file to hopefully show I am not doing anything out of the ordinary? Cura defaults settings for 0.1.

I did find it odd cura sets the line width to 0.35 by default. I thought it was meant to be the nozzle size usually? I do notice underextrustion on the second and third layers (first looks mostly ok but that might be due to the first layer height at 0.27?)

At a loss what to try next. Too inexperienced to know why this happens

UM2E_DiyProJames_Temp_Tower_PETG_220-245.3mf

Edited July 24, 2021 by Speckles

[Speckles 1]

and here I tried changing the line width to 0.4 and the initial layer height to 0.3 which made it worse on the first two layers badly unextruded. I did run this cylinder test (not 100% sure what it means but another user suggested I do this when I have underextrustion. This was at 220 temp

[GregValiant 1,110]

PLA+ would be around 225.  Regular PLA I would think to be 200-215.

For a non Ultimaker printer - you have calibrated your E-steps?

The filament diameter in Cura is correct?  (1.72 is not the same as 1.75).

Typically when I use Spiralize I push my line width to 0.6 for a .4 nozzle.  

I would want to fix the under-extrusion first.  It may be easier to troubleshoot and the flowrate through the nozzle effects the temperature.

A line width of .35 is what Cura typically defaults to for an "engineering" profile.

Quote

 

Edited July 24, 2021 by GregValiant

[Speckles 1]

3 minutes ago, GregValiant said:

PLA+ would be around 225.  Regular PLA I would think to be 200-215.

For a non Ultimaker printer - you have calibrated your E-steps?

The filament diameter in Cura is correct?  (1.72 is not the same as 1.75).

Typically when I use Spiralize I push my line width to 0.6 for a .4 nozzle.  

I would want to fix the under-extrusion first.  It may be easier to troubleshoot and the flowrate through the nozzle effects the temperature.

A line width of .35 is what Cura typically defaults to for an "engineering" profile.

 

Hey, so I am on an ultimaker 2+ extended, I haven't calibrated e steps. my filament diameter is set to 2.85. and it is a confirmed 0.4 nozzle.  I will try thicker on the nozzle for sure. 

[GregValiant 1,110]

@Torgeir is a U2 guy.  He may have some ideas.

 

Torgeir, take a look at the square print.  I think the problem is carrying over to everything.

 

 

 

Edited July 24, 2021 by GregValiant

[Speckles 1]

Ahh Torgeir helped me initially when I found out I actually had a 0.8 nozzle in my machine when I bought it which was a cause of major underextrusion... and the under-extrusion was super bad. It's super interesting though,  I just printed another cube without spiralize and don't have a single under-extrusion on the outer wall. I would say the bottom layers it laid down still had a tad of under-extrusion though

[Torgeir 228]

Hi @Speckles

 

You made the flow test good, I could see, -if there was a feeding problem, you would not be able to finish this test.

The speed also increase for each flow setting up to max 10 mm³ /sec.  This is why you have a this acceleration/resonance

shadows that's worse in the upper flow rate area, but this result is quite normal for an UM2 types of printer.

This is actually a good test to confirm that your UM2+ flow is up to standard..

My best advice would be to test with standard PLA, with printing temperature (200-210)deg. C., as this is more easy to handle -and will show you what is possible to make by printing with thermoplastic.

 

You have chosen on of the "exotic" brand of PLA (FormFutura Volcano PLA) and this is not a good starting filament to learn from. For this filament there is so many parameters to handle in order to have a quality print, so -much more fighting before the fun can begin.

 

When looking at the first layer of the project file you attached in here, I can see the first layer is not squished as it should be, the layers would normally be "glued" together to a solid flat figure(s) that's holding your object to the bed during the whole printing process.

 

So never go higher than 0.27mm (default for 0.4 mm nozzle) height for this nozzle size.

Do the nozzle height adjustment a several times, using a tiny ATM note, you should only feel that the note barely touch this note. I'm only making this adjustment after nozzle change or when the bed have been out for cleaning.

Also, make sure that the bed is "super" clean without any fingermarks etc.

 

A little more about this test object, the first segment (20 mm) is printed with low temperature (220 deg. C.,?.)

The highest segment (from 100 mm and up) is printed with 220 deg. C.  So here the 245 deg. C., is missing.

This is done by using "post processing" script, in order to adjust the temperature with the gcode file during printing.

 

Before printing with other filaments, make sure that the nozzle is free of debris from old filament, clean using "atomic Bobs" method using same type of filament lastly used!  This is important.

 

As UM2 type printers have manual temperature control, the Ultimaker2 "flavour" have no implemented temperature control. 

 

However, by changing setting for the printer in Cura to "RepRap" flavour like this:

 

 

Here is the setting for filament with Ultimaker2 flavour:

 

This with RepRap flavour:

 

This way give better handling of the temperature during printing and you'll have a little better support by the profiles made for your printer.

 

Thanks

Torgeir

  

Edited July 25, 2021 by Torgeir
Missing text.

[Speckles 1]

Hello @Torgeir and thank you for coming to respond to my thread 🙂
Yes as you can see my machine is performing a lot better now after fixing the nozzle size. 

The first layer square you can see, I did change the settings to something you said in the more recent post not to change to.... the first layer height in that test was 0.3 instead of 0.27 so it made the issue worse. 

I do think you are right about needing the nozzle closer just a fraction perhaps? judging on the brim of the temperature tower which is definitely more rounded and less squished. 


For the temperature tower, I actually manually changed the temperature myself in cura modifying the G code in post processing. I set cube 245 to be 220 degrees since I knew from previous test 245 was way too hot and made the gaps worse in the Formfutura Volcano PLA. It is true I have not done this exact tower in regular PLA, I will try it and post results.

However I really want to tune the Volcano PLA. It is going to have many useful benefuts for me in future projects thanks to its low shrinkage when anneale. I am annealing because I need a high resistance to temperature, after my previous "regular PLA" prints failed when left in the sun. 

I printed a few things using the volcano PLA at 220 with mostly no horrible issues, except that it didn't have the best layer adhesion. Which lead me to try the temperature tower on spiralize, which lead me to these sad looking results. I read that a slightly higher temperature will help with the layer adhesion, which I do achieve even with the bad gaps. I try pulling the layers apart and 225-230 degrees feels much stronger, I just wish I knew how to remove those gaps.

I have done an atomic pull before I changed to volcano PLA, and is a brand new nozzle as you know.

I will go print the regular PLA temperature tower tomorrow and show you. I just find it very interesting that the 220 mark on the temperature tower has gaps, but the 245 one (that is set to 220) does not have gaps. They are the same temperature are they not?  and the test prints I have been running on 220 never had gaps like the spiralize, then again, you are the expert so I am very happy to listen to anything you might suggest 🙂