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Topic: Not printing inside small areas

I have a SD2 that I've been using and printing with for a long time now with basically no problems. It was all setup and printing rather nice in my opinion. Then I ran out of filament and purchased some new filament. Since putting the new role on my printer all the prints look bad. I've tried to recalibrate everything with no luck at all.

It seems to be printing fine, until it stops to change positions and then starts printing again. The plastic doesn't come out right away and after a second it starts coming out. This becomes a huge problem when it tries to print in little areas or tries to print supports. Basically no plastic comes out.

Attached is a picture of a part I printed. The sides are suppose to be filled in, but there are only little bits of messed up plastic in them. I have messed with every setting to all extremes and it hasn't fixed this. I've also cleaned out the nozzle(which was clean) and nothing changed.

What am I missing here?!?!

http://soliforum.com/i/?kR9SHz3.jpg

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Re: Not printing inside small areas

When you say "a long time" how many rolls and what type of filament are you using?

Printit Industries Model 8.10 fully enclosed CoreXY, Chamber heat
3-SD3's & a Workbench all fully enclosed, RH-Slic3r Win7pro, E3D V6, Volcano & Cyclops Hot End
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Thanks to all for your contributions

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Re: Not printing inside small areas

I have had the SD2 for probably 1.5 years. When I bought the machine I also bought 2 rolls of filament from solidoodle. I just ran out of the last roll and bought a new roll. I didn't buy the new filament from SD this time, but from another company.

Oh, and I'm using ABS.

Could this be from bad filament? I would assume I have a setting wrong somewhere, but I'm not a 3d printing expert or even close to it. The filament that I bought was sealed up air tight when I bought it and printed like this the moment I opened the package.

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Re: Not printing inside small areas

kyle79914 wrote:

I have had the SD2 for probably 1.5 years. When I bought the machine I also bought 2 rolls of filament from solidoodle. I just ran out of the last roll and bought a new roll. I didn't buy the new filament from SD this time, but from another company.

Oh, and I'm using ABS.

Could this be from bad filament? I would assume I have a setting wrong somewhere, but I'm not a 3d printing expert or even close to it. The filament that I bought was sealed up air tight when I bought it and printed like this the moment I opened the package.

What brand is it?

FuseBox 1.5 CoreXY - e3dv6 - Graphic Smart Display
Solidoodle 2 - e3dv6 - Hobb Goblin - e3d Titan - lawsy carriages - Direct Drive Y Axis - T8 Z axis - OctoPi

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Re: Not printing inside small areas

This is the filament that I bought.

http://www.suppliesoutlet.com/ProductDe … de=PFABSBK

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Re: Not printing inside small areas

I would look into slicer settings before anything hardware related. Try messing around with extrusion width and view the sliced gcode and you should start to see some differences in how it fills in these small gaps.

Former Solidoodle employee

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Re: Not printing inside small areas

The gcode looks fine when I slice the object. All the gaps are filled and looks great. It messes up when it comes to printing what the gcode shows. The extruder moves in all the ways the gcode tells it to, but the filament doesn't come out right.

Once it stops printing to move to a new location, it takes a second for the filament to start coming out again.

I normally have the filament retract 2mm when it relocates to a new position, but this still happens even when I don't have the filament retract when it moves location.

It seems like, when the extruder moves to a new location to start printing, I need the extruder to extrude 4mm before it tries to print the actual object. That way the filament will be at the tip of the extruder ready to come out.

I'm stumped.

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Re: Not printing inside small areas

I would try some different filament before going down too many rabbit holes. Octave ABS has never done me wrong.

As for the delay in extrusion make sure "extra length on restart" is set to 0 in Slic3r's Printer Settings tab. Also make sure the flow rate slider in Repetier Host under the manual control tab is set to 100%. It may also be a partial clog.

I see some Z banding in your print as well, but bad filament can do that too.

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Re: Not printing inside small areas

Thanks for the help.

Extra length on startup is set at 0mm, and both sliders are set at 100% And I took apart the extruder and it was totally clear.

It sounds like it might just be the filament I bought. I just hate to buy new filament since I just purchased it.

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Re: Not printing inside small areas

I tried changing the extra length on start up to 2mm and it didn't print any different. Still the same old problem.

I know what to do now. I still have a little bit of my old filament left. I will print a small piece and see if it comes out right. That will tell me for sure if it's the filament or a setting. lol. Why didn't I think of that before.

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Re: Not printing inside small areas

Ok, I changed out the filament for some of my old filament that I had left over. Now it's printing even worse! At least this rules out the filament as the problem.

I'm going to take the extruder out again and clean it out, just in case I missed something. But the tip was totally clean when I took it apart the first time.

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Re: Not printing inside small areas

What temperature and speed are you printing at? If you are using a low infill (<20%) it could contribute to a problem like this. Have you tried changing slicers?

Solidoodle 4-Mostly stock running off headless Raspberry Pi with Octoprint

13 (edited by jagowilson 2015-05-22 21:40:52)

Re: Not printing inside small areas

EDIT: I just noticed you said old filament. Swapping possibly bad new filament for year old Solidoodle filament may not be enough to eliminate filament problems. When is the last time you printed successfully with the "old" filament?


My original suggestion:
Time for an e3d? I'm thinking you may have damaged the nozzle during cleaning or have some other sort of partial clog. Delay in extrusion would seem to indicate that.

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Re: Not printing inside small areas

I normally print at 195 degrees and that's worked great in the past, but I've tried 195 - 220 and no luck.
Infill is 100%.

The old filament printed great the last time I printed, then I order the new filament and it printed bad. The time between the old and new filament was about 2 weeks.

I didn't damage the nozzle when cleaning it because I didn't even do anything, it was already totally clear. There was a lot of plastic in the threaded tube that connects to the nozzle. Is that normal? I would guess it is since the filament has to melt and fill this area before it can come out the nozzle. I didn't clean this out, but maybe I should have. That's the only thing I can think of.