Ultimaker S5 Very frustrating and confusing print quality/extrusion/unknown issue.

[jsw 19]

Ladies and gentlemen, hopefully the collective wisdom can point me in the right direction, because, even though I'm no beginner to 3d printing, I am totally dumbfounded as to what is going on.  Perhaps someone has seen something like this or has some insight into what is going on.

 

I have a ca. 2020-ish S5, the version with the 'U' on the side, which until last weekend was a flawless performer.  For lack of a better expression, it's gone 'all to $#!+', and although I think I'm usually a competent troubleshooter, this one has me totally baffled.  Any insight would be appreciated.  I've enclosed a few photos to illustrate what is happening.

 

Last Saturday, during a run of very ordinary prints, one very simple one (a flat piece) started failing on the first layer.  It looked like the extrusion simply stopped midway in the print.

 

However, prints of a circular peg were always successful.  I would do 2-3 pegs, which came out perfect, then try the flat piece again with the same results.  This is plain vanilla Hatchbox PLA, and I stopped to give it a good dry-out in the air fryer just in case it had picked up moisture.  (No effect.)  I did cold pulls, no effect.  I have three good AA print heads, all gave the same symptoms.  Good on the peg, failed first layer on the flat piece.  I switched one of the AAs over to the right side, no difference.  Good on the peg, failed on the flat print.

 

I did clean out the feeder on the #1 side, thinking that it may have gotten clogged with filament debris, but it was fairly clean.

 

Then, all of a sudden, no mucking around on my part except for swapping assumed-to-be-good AA assemblies and assumed to be good filament, it started the prints in mid air, a fraction of a MM above the build plate.  The one photo shows the nozzle above the build plate and a small tangle of extruded filament to the left of the nozzles.

 

I did the partial reset from the front panel, thinking that maybe something was internally corrupt, and at first it seemed like the print of the peg (the black one) was starting normally, but after several layers it went into what looks like underextrusion, although it felt like the filament was being pulled in from the rear at more or less the normal pace.

 

I do have another printer ('brand P')  😉 so I am not dead in the water, but any guidance as to which way to proceed.

 

TIA!

 

[stu_le_brew 42]

Looks like a bed leveling issue to me, my suggestion would be to try re-leveling the bed

 

Good luck

 

You could also try moving the part to a different place on the bed

Edited December 6, 2022 by stu_le_brew

[jsw 19]

That's one thing I thought at first, but things changed when I did the (partial) reset.

[MeepleForge 0]

Thats strange, I'm having what looks like the same issue after months of no problem at all.

 

I've not changed any settings - not updated firmware recently either.

 

Now every print I try to do stops extruding after a few minutes - usually on the first layer - looks exactly like yours.

 

My printer is a S3 so I also tried printing with extruder 2 in case there was an issue with extruder 1 or with feeder 1.  this made no difference and the printer stops feeding PLA after a few minutes.

 

It can't be a bed levelling issue or I would still see PLA being extruded from the nozel.

 

could it be a temperature issue? not sure what to check next.

[MeepleForge 0]

here's the latest failed print

[MeepleForge 0]

Just finished another test print and it seems to be working again now.

 

Only thing I did was a factory reset. so maybe it was that.  fingers crossed for a larger print overnight.

 

[jsw 19]

Meeple, that failed print looks extremely close to one of mine.

 

Here's an update.

 

As a sanity check, this afternoon I tried printing an extremely trivial item, a thin flat plastic washer for the same project, which I was printing several-up on the Prusa.  This is 10mm in diameter and .4mm thick.

 

The first few came out perfect.  However, as I printed more of them, they got rougher and poorer with each print.

 

I then shut the machine off, powered it down and let it thoroughly drain.  Powered it back up and printed a single washer which came out perfect.  Rinse-repeat.  Power down, wait, power up, print washer, perfect.

 

Then I powered it down, let it drain, and printed that vertical post (which failed miserably this morning), and it came out perfect. There were no changes other than power cycles between the failed vertical post pictured above and the recent successful one.

 

It's now powered down and draining and I'm about to walk over to it, power it back up, and try the flat piece to see if it prints ok right after a power-up.

 

Film at 11.

[MeepleForge 0]

Mine has failed again after I got the successful print yesterday.

 

i will try a power cycle and see what that does. (obviously thats one of the things that the Factory reset did earlier which begs the question did the factory reset do anything or was it the power cycle that did the trick?)

 

I've tested with 2 different print heads, bowden tubes and filfment feeder units with exactly the same results, so I gues this is something further up the chain like maybe the controller? maybe the controller is causing the print heads to lose heat after the job has been running for a few minutes and that causes the filament to stop feeding?

 

 

[jsw 19]

My optimism was a bit premature.  The flat piece failed, almost exactly like yours and my previous one.

 

However, power-down, wait, turn on, print the vertical post, came out perfect.

 

This is not making sense.

 

I'm wondering if this may be software related, and it might be a good idea to version the box as a next step.  I'm currently running 6.5.2, what are you running?

[MeepleForge 0]

I'm running an S3 with firmware v 5.2.11

 

there is a newer version 5.3  and i'm going to upgrade but I'm not holding out any hope that it will fix anything.

 

in other news my print core 2 now has filament stuck in it that just won't pull out. 😞   so thats now out of action and I'm back to print core 1

[MariMakes 198]

Hey @jsw,

This looks like a leveling issue to me aswell. 

There is a diagnostic test that you can do to check if there is something wrong with your sensor.

https://support.makerbot.com/s/article/1667410781005

If the noise level number is higher than 8, something is broken and you can contact support to help resolve it. 

You can create a ticket here: https://support.makerbot.com/s/contactsupport

Hope this helps 😊

 

[MeepleForge 0]

1 hour ago, MariMakes said:

Hey @jsw,

This looks like a leveling issue to me aswell. 

There is a diagnostic test that you can do to check if there is something wrong with your sensor.

https://support.makerbot.com/s/article/1667410781005

If the noise level number is higher than 8, something is broken and you can contact support to help resolve it. 

You can create a ticket here: https://support.makerbot.com/s/contactsupport

Hope this helps 😊

 

 

If it was a bed levelling issue I would expect to see lots of speghetti filament as the remainder of the print gets extruded ?

(there's no spaghetti on my prints not sure about JSW)

[MeepleForge 0]

Following my upgrade to the latest firmware 5.3 I have now completed 2 successful prints without having to reboot.

 

Fingers crossed I will be able to complete the largest print overnight.

[jsw 19]

I ran the bed leveling test and it passed.  Ditto with the sensor switch test.

 

I'm currently downloading 7.0.3 and will version the box as a next step.

 

If the issue persists I'll probably phone or write Dynamism support tomorrow and I'm sure one of the first things they will ask is if it is running current firmware.

[jsw 19]

Another update, I just updated to 7.0.3 and there was a yellow (!) warning suggesting to update to 7.1.3 as it fixes a bed leveling issue observed in the field.  Downloading 7.1.3 now.

[MeepleForge 0]

Hope your FW fixes the issue then.

 

My printer seems to be behaving at the moment. the overnight print completed successfully.

 

I will keep printing but that was a wierd issue.

[jsw 19]

Unfortunately it's about the same.  The vertical post prints perfectly, the small flat piece loses extrusion shortly into the first layer.

 

[Carbon 28]

Have you looked at the nozzles themselves? You using an AA0.4 or AA0.8?

 

Try cleaning them and trying again, if it fails again, I'd look at the feeders....

 

Failing all of these and the print glass is level, next would be to look at the guide bars above the print head.

[jsw 19]

I have used three different known-good AA .4 print heads and one known-good AA.25.  One of the .4 ones was cold-pulled and needled to be sure.

[jsw 19]

Also, this is currently losing extrusion, not printing in the air or printing squished against the build plate.

 

One of the areas where the extrusion is poor on the flat piece is dead-center, where the successful print of the post occurs.

[Carbon 28]

3 minutes ago, jsw said:

I have used three different known-good AA .4 print heads and one known-good AA.25.  One of the .4 ones was cold-pulled and needled to be sure.

 

I think it still could be the nozzles, as the printer is printing the "walls" ok but struggling on the "in-fill". Strange....

Edited December 8, 2022 by Carbon

[jsw 19]

And I just did a good cold pull on one of the other AAs, same thing, loses extrusion midway during the first layer.

 

I'm going to contact Dynamism support on this, as I am totally stumped.

[Josnoww 15]

@jsw I am sorry to read you are having troubles printing. I can imagine this must feel quite frustrating. It is hard to diagnose the problem just by looking the pictures. Could you share the logs, in combination with a picture of the failed print. 

 

Best regards,

 

Jos

[jsw 19]

Thanks, which logs, specifically (IIRC, there are many files) do you want?

[Josnoww 15]

If you save the logs to a usb drive from the diagnostics menu you will end up with a zip file, that zip file contains all the logs I need :)