Solved Noob Needs Help! Prints failing halfway through.

Hi all, I'm new to the printing scene and just got my printer last week. I printed a few small parts that came in the library, (calibration block, calibration ring, whistle..) all turned out great! So I moved on to one of the longer parts and set the included vase file to print before I left for work. When I came home it had only made it a quarter of the way up the part before it failed and just started printing blobs. Pics below. I proceeded to clean off the bed and send the printer home, when the x axis reached its end it kept going and gave off a grinding noise and the drive belt jumped around a lot. That's when I noticed the z axis nut on the left side was out of its slot. I put it back in the slot and tried again, no problems. So I tried to print another part, and when it went to home itself on the glass it couldn't find it, only traveling up and down a little bit in the air, then moving to do its pre-printing calibration in the air, and print in the air. I did a little more investigating and noticed that the whole thing looked slanted, and indeed on of the thread rods was higher than the other. I've since got the thread rods back at the correct corresponding heights and tried printing the small calibration block again and this time it was indeed able to find the bed during its initial calibration and print the part, however it seemed a little more sloppy than the first one I printed with holes in the top, pictured below. I went on to print another set of parts, which seemed to do fine until about halfway up the part where it failed once again, and just started printing a stringy glob. Not sure what to do now, any help is appreciated, thanks!

 

The beginning reminded me a lot of a problem I have run into a couple of times, but I would usually catch it and fix it before it wasted that amount of filament, so I don't really know how it would react if left running. Basically what my printer was doing was that the filament was getting tangled at the spool, causing the spool to stop giving it filament and the carriage to climb it like a rope toward the top. Someone provided me the following link a while back and I haven't run into that issue much since then:

http://www.toybuilderlabs.com/blogs/news/13055029-untangling-the-filament-spool

In my opinion, that is what happened to your vase. As for the grinding noise when homing the X-Axis, the switch isn't registering that it is being pressed. Move the X-Axis all the way to the right, then tell it to home. Press the switch located on the far left of the X-Axis smooth rods and see if it thinks it has hit it. If not, shut off your printer before it reaches it or the same grinding will happen. If it does, make sure you properly home it before printing or it will think whenever you pressed the button is as far left as it can go. If it stops with your finger, home it using the home command. If it grinds again, quickly shut off the printer and see what you can do about ensuring the bolt on the carriage is pressing it to the extent it needs to be pressed. Some ways to do this could be unscrewing and reseating the switch, slightly bending the switch (be careful), or possibly adding a longer screw to the carriage to press it. If your thumb does not stop it, check the connection to the arduino board, it's probably loose or unplugged.

What software are you using? I forget the details, but the recommended software has an autolevel feature. When I used to use that, if the autolevel feature was enabled, it would cause my prints to print in the air like you described. To make sure it's not the slicer acting up, send me a link to something you want to print out on thingiverse or upload the STL here and I'll run it through Simplify3D with my settings that haven't been giving me any issues and upload the gcode here.

TL;DR: Make sure the filament isn't getting tangled. Try to home and press the x-axis switch with your finger. If it stops, ensure the screw on the carriage is able to firmly press the switch. If it doesn't, check connections. The other weird print issues may be related to settings in your slicer.

EDIT: For historical interest, @jbigler1986 posted in the shoutbox that when prints fail at that height, it's usually due to the ramps board overheating. Ensure that the fan underneath the printer is plugged in and operational. The holes in the top are called "pillowing" and can be resolved by adding more layers to the top or bottom of the print. I personally print with 3 on the top and 3 on the bottom, but this is with Simplify3D and he notes it may vary depending on the slicer you use.

 

3 layers is usually default. Change it to 4 or 5 layers. If using cura it's different. Let us know what slicer you are using. Also are you printing from SD card or USB?

 

That it does. Once you get it figured out though, these things are AWESOME! Luckily I didn't have too many major issues, so it didn't take that long to start getting recognizable prints, but even then, it still took a while and there's still a lot more that I could do if I were really worried about getting the absolute best print quality.

 

Ok thanks for all the info!
I'm just using MC with matterslicer, via usb connection printing pla.
I'll be sure to change the layers, but I think that part is getting to hot and its not adhering correctly, causing it to fail. I'm going to try putting a second fan in courtesy of shank!

 

Well I was still having all of my parts fail, or have severe deterioration in them, until I switched from the filament that came with the printer to some new hatchbox I ordered. It was immediately a night and day difference and have since printed several parts with little to no problems!

 

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that was probably my problem then haha.

 

The regular robo filament is much better and is the same manufacturer as the Octave brand. I use both quite a bit and never really had major issues. The translucent Red PLA was a bit finicky though