Pla success and fan mount request

Which brand of PLA, may I ask?

I'll have to try flipping the fan around on mine.

I'd managed to create a model of the existing extruder shroud in SCAD and was in the process of making modifications based on it.  Unfortunately I had to RMA my printer so I kind of dropped it but I've been meaning to put everything up on Github.    I'll try to remember to do that tonight.

You're right that the tolerances are very tight all around the extruder at the extremes of the X and Y axises, I was exploring replacing the mostly useless cooling fan on the extruder with a blower and then create a shroud that ducts that output to the nozzle or even back over the heat sink.  Since the shroud is easily removable, it would be simple to swap them out based on need.

Sure, I'll give it a try.  Did you have any success with it?

Thanks!

Here's my first "real" PLA print.  It's far from perfect, but i think it's pretty good:

Here's the same print I made with ABS:

...

Why is this printer not compatible with PLA?  And frankly, why didn't solidoodle just add an extruder fan and make PLA the preferred filament?  I really don't understand.

can you show whit a photo please ?

I just tried that same green PLA filament at 195 degrees (and a few tries a little lower) and I'm having no luck getting it to extrude.  My fan is also flipped around the opposite of the way it shipped.  I can get a little bit to skoosh out but that's it.  I rethreaded the filament into the extruder several times to remove any deformed softened blobs but still didn't have any luck.  Any other tips?

Another print, this time with Hatchbox "purple" PLA that looks very pink.

I actually just extruded PLA through until it was flowing smoothly without any ABS remaining.  Pushing it through by hand is what cleared out the bit of ABS clog I had.

I've switched back to ABS without any problems by immediately heating to 240 and feeding abs after removing the PLA.  I didn't want to leave any time for the PLA to get burnt-in.

I think I'd try raising the temperature a little bit and see what happens.  Having the fan blowing into the heat sink seems to really keep things cooler.

The only other things I can think of that I changed that could possibly be related are:
1. I calibrated the extruder steps/mm to around 100. (I don't remember the exact value, and I'm not at the printer right now.)
2. I adjusted the stepper driver potentiometer to reduce moire.  I did it "by ear" and suspect I may have it set too high.  I plan on revisiting this at some point with a volt-meter, because I do get some moire when printing, though that might also be because I increased my print speeds quite a bit over the solidoodle defaults.  -- maybe increasing this voltage gives the extruder a little more power to push the filament through?

Once it does start printing, I have been using an 80mm fan to just blow air across the entire bed... I haven't had any luck figuring out how to make a mount to just blow air on the extruded plastic.   There are lots of designs on thingiverse, but all those printers have a lot more clearance around the print head than the Press does.

Make sure your nozzle is clean to reduce backpressure. Playing with your temperature and extruded width might affect it too. You can also gamble on modifications: Someone speculated the E3D nozzle might fit. E3D thinks their nozzle profile gives better results. You can also switch to a 0.9 degree stepper of similar specs (near as I can tell, the extruder stepper comes from a line of 1.8 degree steppers.) You'd need to change your e-step to match.

Have you adjusted the other three trimpots? I have not adjusted mine yet but will soon, I have mine completely torn down at the moment.
Just reading on one of the stickys.
E = 1.5V
and the remaining three at 1.0V

Did you have any issues on your unit, loose or missing screws and bolts any of the other problems that have been run into?

Sorry for the late reply.  I haven't checked for missing screws but I saw some threads discussing screws that are apparently missing and were intended to support the bottom of the Z axis rails?  I wonder if they were removed intentionally from all Presses as part of their "retooling" delay, although I can't imagine what issue they were fixing by removing those support screws.  I'll have to check mine out.  I do have quite a bit of bed bounce while it prints, and it did occur to me that the bed bounce might be a factor to the moire since a nice harmonic motion like that would cause the bed to repeatedly get slightly closer to and further away from the nozzle, rhythmically squooshing the melted material slightly as it was extruded.  So moire might not be solely dependent on the trimpot.