Rocketman wrote:This penholder print I did looks good for the most part, but the layers seem a bit spotty in parts. I am using Octave Red. Does that usually require a higher temp or lower? Or are the breaks in layers symptom of something else?
looks like a partial clog in the nozzle to me. try cleaning out the plastic dust from the filament drive wheel on the extruder stepper first, but if that doesn't solve it, you may need to clear that nozzle. not hard to do, just have to be careful not to bust the thermistor when you take the hotend apart. its a good idea to go ahead and order up a secondary hot end for instances like this, because clearing a hotend with acetone soak can take a day or 2, depending on how bad it is.
one thing you can try first, if the drive wheel cleaning has no effect, is to disengage the hotend from the extruder, but leave it plugged in to the printer, remove the peek and hold the hotend carefully by the threaded barrel with some pliers (not tight, just loosely held so that the pliers leverage against the top of the heater block), then turn the heat up to around 150, and gently start tugging on the filament sticking out of the barrel, and turning the temp up a few degrees at a time until you get some movement. you can sometimes get it to come out in one large lump, bringing the burnt garbage with it if your careful not to pull too hard and break it off in the barrel before its soft enough.
edit: important to leave some filament sticking out for this to have any chance at working. lol