Wish there was some marker letting people know when they had .35 and .4 nozzles. Is the SD timestamped, or just that serial number on the back?

Regardless, the change in slicer will take one second to test.

If that is not the case (and like Ian said, if that was the problem, then your wall thickness would not be any good) I have one lat thing to offer: Double check your EEPROM settings in Repetier for steps/mm. There is something in the firmware that reloads defaults, so maybe your steps/mm on the Z got switched back? That would also take one second to rule it out as a possibility.

I think the nozzle diameter could have been my problem. Changed the nozzle diameter to .4 and kept all the other settings.
Retraction
Length: 1.5
Life Z: 0
Speed: 50 mm/s
Extra length on restart: .3
Minimum travel after retraction: 1mm
Retract on layer change "Yes"
Wipe before retract "Yes"

Extrusion Multiplier: .8

All extrusion widths set to .42

Measuring the single walled cube I get .4 for my wall width so it looks like I can now calibrate my nozzle correctly. There were some sparse parts on the single walled cube but I think they have to do with my retraction settings. See below:

You can see it looks like I'm retracting too much, so I switched off retraction setting for a print I'm running now. And here's a picture:

There isn't any sparse parts any more with no retraction on, and the vertical band where each layer starts isn't particularly visible here, at least not when it's at the corner of a square. Things are looking much better! The picture above is from turning off retraction and setting the flow rate from .8 to .84 so now I'm doing another print with everything the same but flow rate changed from .84 to .82 and I'll check the wall width after that.

Edit: That print finished and two walls gave me .44 and the other two gave me .43 so I'm going to change the flow rate from .82 to .815 and see if I can get it perfect.

Edit2: The .815 flow rate print finished and I'm getting .42 on the best walls, that's good enough for me! Going to try a print at .1mm layer height now to see how that fairs without messing with any of the other settings.

Thinking back it seems to make so much sense that my nozzle size was off, since it seemed like the extruder wasn't moving x, or y amount enough per line it laid down. However having the nozzle size wrong just never occurred to me.

Regardless, the change in slicer will take one second to test.

If that is not the case (and like Ian said, if that was the problem, then your wall thickness would not be any good) I have one lat thing to offer: Double check your EEPROM settings in Repetier for steps/mm. There is something in the firmware that reloads defaults, so maybe your steps/mm on the Z got switched back? That would also take one second to rule it out as a possibility.

gettingbored wrote:

Did anybody see the video of the extruder play? Does it seem normal to rock a little bit like that or is that more play than there should be?

Solidoodle gantries tend to have a fair bit of play in them, so rocking like that is pretty common... it doesn't look like the looseness is between the carriage and the rods, though, so that's good. You can try some combination of shoving a shim between the motor and the carriage and further tightening that cable tie to reduce the amount of play but it doesn't look significant enough to be the cause of all of your problems.

Rocking like that may give you a bad surface finish on prints, especially at higher speeds, but shouldn't be enough to cause what you're seeing.

Actually the play does seem to come from between the carriage and the rods. Like there's a .1mm gap between those white plastic bushings(?) and the rod. Not sure how much of a problem that would cause, but I'm not sure how I would fix it. Is there a way to snug up the bushings?

I looked on the back of the machine and saw on the board it reads "Sanguinololu Rev 1.3a" but on the chip on the board it reads "Solidoodle Rev 1.3c" so I'm not sure which nozzle my printer would have... By default it was set to .35 but maybe it's a .4 nozzle. Either way my extrusion width is set to .42 so maybe I could just try changing it to .4 and see what happens...

Did anybody see the video of the extruder play? Does it seem normal to rock a little bit like that or is that more play than there should be?

Solidoodle gantries tend to have a fair bit of play in them, so rocking like that is pretty common... it doesn't look like the looseness is between the carriage and the rods, though, so that's good. You can try some combination of shoving a shim between the motor and the carriage and further tightening that cable tie to reduce the amount of play but it doesn't look significant enough to be the cause of all of your problems.

Rocking like that may give you a bad surface finish on prints, especially at higher speeds, but shouldn't be enough to cause what you're seeing.

The SD now ships with a 0.40 nozzle. You have an updated aluminum bed and heater on yours, so there is a good chance you may have a 0.40 nozzle. If you set the nozzle for 0.35 in slicer, you will have problems.

I have no idea how to confirm what nozzle size you have, it depends on when you bought it.

Is there a serial number or version number on the system somewhere that might correspond to the time it was made? Not sure if the time we got it in the office it was new or not.

Also,
Did anybody see the video of the extruder play? Does it seem normal to rock a little bit like that or is that more play than there should be?

I have no idea how to confirm what nozzle size you have, it depends on when you bought it.

My filament tends to curl up in a ball when it's extruded.

Assuming the nozzle starts clean (i.e. there isn't a bit of leftover extrusion sticking to the nozzle or something like that) curling extrusion like you describe tends to indicate a clog in the nozzle. I went through fairly similar issues with my stock SD2 hot end until I finally gave up and bought an E3D to replace it, because I just couldn't print anything with my stock hot end anymore. Luckily yours doesn't seem to be in as bad of shape as mine, though.

One thing, looking at the difference between the MK5 print and the cylinder print, I think at least part of your issue has to do with retraction settings. Try printing the 0.5mm-thin-wall.stl from this calibration set: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5573/.

With a single-wall print like that you'll be able to see exactly where the layers change and, with that, see the effects of your retraction settings. If you end up with little gaps in the wall after each layer height change you know your retraction setting is a bit high.

gettingbored wrote:

and I believe I have a .35mm nozzle.

That. Right there. You have .42 for width manually set (a good thing) and if you set your nozzle for .35 when its actually .4, you will get exactly what you have been seeing.

Also, I would still like to know what you set your Z steps/mm after switching your rod out. The wrong setting would mean the Z stepper could be dropping more than 0.3mm each layer (which would also possibly be the problem).

I set the z-steps per/mm to 6400. Based on 3200 steps per rotation and a .5 pitch on the M3 screw.

Also, I believe my nozzle setting is set to .35, and my extrusion width to .42 but I'll have to double check tomorrow. Is there a way to calibrate the extrusion width, or is there a specific with determined by the nozzle diameter and the flow rate?

I did take the barrel out of the PEEK when I took it apart but I twisted it back in pretty well, fairly sure I had contact with the PTFE liner inside. Are there any recommended setups for cooling the PEEK?

and I believe I have a .35mm nozzle.

That. Right there. You have .42 for width manually set (a good thing) and if you set your nozzle for .35 when its actually .4, you will get exactly what you have been seeing.

Also, I would still like to know what you set your Z steps/mm after switching your rod out. The wrong setting would mean the Z stepper could be dropping more than 0.3mm each layer (which would also possibly be the problem).

It still seems like a partial clog or some kind of jamming.  Even though you get a consistent 100mm going in, measure the strand coming out a bunch of times and see if the lengths are consistent, or if there is some variance.  You can also run a finger along them and feel if they are smooth, or if there is any bulging along the way.  Try a couple of difference speeds since extruding into air isn't the same as printing.

You can also try cooling the PEEK with a fan and see if the problem is too much heat creeping too high up.

I did have a major problem with clogging a while back, and ended up taking apart the entire hot end and cleaning it out by soaking it in acetone and basically scraping it out. I thought I got it pretty much fully cleaned out though but maybe there's some remnant left in there that's causing problems.

Do you have any tips on extruding the single strands? My filament tends to curl up in a ball when it's extruded.

You can also try cooling the PEEK with a fan and see if the problem is too much heat creeping too high up.

Your first layer is too flat. It is pushing filament out the sides. It also looks like under-extrusion between layers.

OK. The first answer you neglected: Is you Extruder Steps/mm set correctly? By this, if you manually command the extruder to move 100mm, does 100mm of filament get moved? The SD gets shipped with a default value of 138, and is usuallly wrong. You need to measure 100mm on the filament, and then command 100mm movement and measure the difference. Then you can calculate what the steps/mm needs to be and save it to EEPROM using Repetier.

This is done first, before you can adjust your flow rate.

Second, level your bed. I only say this because it is required before the next step, and considering your extrusion in the videos, your level is probably getting knocked out every time your nozzle hits a high bump.

Third, fix your Z height screw so that the first layer is about .3 to .25 thick. If you squish too much, you will have problems.

Fourth, now you can check your flow rate with the single wall cube. If the first three calibrations are not done correctly, this calibration will not be right.

Fifth, the X and Y belt tension calibration will help with the corners.

Lastly, I wonder more about the filament you are using. It helps greatly to do all of these calibrations using really high quality filament you can trust. Especially since all of the calibrations do not need to be altered when changing filament types/brands except for flow rate. I save filament configurations based upon manufacturer.

Must have missed it, but I answered the extruder calibration question in post #5, I tell it to pull in 100mm and it pulls in exactly 100mm. I followed the instructions from Solidoodle.

Yes the first layer is pretty pressed into the bed, but it tends to not stick if I don't extrude that low. Maybe it's worth looking into a glass bed and some hair spray or something. I'm not exactly sure how the first layer could effect every other layer above it in the way my print is effected, but I'll try backing off on the first layer a bit.

After I calibrated my extruder, I did print the single walled cube to calibrate line thickness, but the only way I could get accurate line thickness was by bringing the flow rate down to .8 which basically resulted in the gaps appearing between layers.

I have the line width set to .42 and I believe I have a .35mm nozzle. Is there a reliable way to tell?

Yeah there are still some separation issues with the higher temps, the pictures in the first post are with higher temps and you can definitely see those little gaps all over the place.

I tried to print some more with the lower temps and the extruder started skipping, which made me think the temps were too low at 180. I'll try going to 195 first layer and 190 for the rest to see how that works.

Do you have a recommended place to buy filament from, or one that you know ships consistent stuff? If I know a reliable distributor I'd like to get something that would be more "standard" so to speak, that way I can eliminate that variable.

Yeah getting rid of those banding issues was a huge relief, was probably the most annoying problem with the printer ever since nothing but swapping the threaded rod fixed it. Now I have 2.7 meters of M3 threaded rod I'll have to find an interesting use for.