Solved Troubleshooting help, out of ideas

I have an R1 that is running a E3D v5 extruder. I use MatterControl 1.5. Right now I am using black 1.75mm PLA from ROBO 3D.
Some of the settings I am running
220* extruder
45* bed temp (I was getting elephant foot)
1.05 extusion multiplier
Print cooling fan at 85% max
Speed for infill is all factory from MC.
High quality print (.1MM layers)
E3D 3mm nozzle

If you could please help me troubleshoot what is happening with my prints it would be greatly appreciated. I have tried moving the print temp up since it looked like I was running into issues and that helped only so much. I moved my extrustion multiplier up, but that just caused the extruder to bump up and down on the cooled plastic and cause a mess. You can actually see what I am talking about on the calibration ring. What you see in the pictures are the stock calibration circle and calibration cube from MC. I have done all sorts of reading on troubleshooting prints, but the recommended changes do not see to be doing anything positive for me.

 

I can easily try dropping the temp down and try again, but I was getting a lot of stringing when printing the test circle. I moved the temp up and that went away.

I do have the nozzle at .3. That has been verified.

 

Sorry if that came across wrong. I didn't mean it to. I am all for you guys pointing out the blatant stuff, since I am out of ideas. So I just dropped my temperature down to 200* and ran the calibration cube, again. It started out perfect, but then ran into another issue I was going to bring up. After several layers the hot end starts to ride along the cooled down previous layer. The noise is horrible and it completely destroys the print. I had this problem before only to discover the case fan was unplugged, once I plugged it back in all seemed fine. But now it is doing it again. It's like the z-axis is not moving up. Could this be caused by over extrusion? My next step is to calibrate the extruder, just saw another post by you, Mark, and plan on going through that process. Thank you everyone for the help so far. It is greatly appreciated.

 

I worked through the video that was posted and my extruder is now spitting out 100mm of PLA when I advance it 100mm.

I have the R1, not the beta or +. Are you talking the firmware for MC? Or firmware for the printer? Even though I have owned the printer for a long time I am really new to all of this. I have been reading as much as I can before making this post, but I am running into not knowing what to search for.

As for upgrades, I have nothing. I the only thing I have are the stands for the spool to sit on top of the printer. Upgrades are hard for me since I have a hard time just using the stock printer.

Thank you for taking the time to answer such beginner questions.

 

Guys I don't know how to thank you. I updated the firmware, changed the extrusion multiplier, and re-leveled the bed and my prints are so close to being right. The cube below looks so much better than the first one I showed you.

I am going to go through the troubleshooting guide for printing and make the final adjustments to get it perfect.

 

I went through and made a couple of slight adjustments, while running multiple test prints from stuff pre-loaded in MC, and they seemed to be printing really nice. I then went to try and print a file I downloaded from Thiniverse and it failed miserably. I double checked I had the settings the uploader recommended and it still didn't work. The z-axis wasn't going up in anything I tried from Thingiverse. It would reach row 10 or so and then just stay right there and try to print the rest of the file.

I have been reading about this for a couple of hours now and I am not quite sure where to look. After work I am going to take the bottom of the printer off and build some makeshift stands to see if that helps drop the temperature. I am also going to look at the configuration.h file and look at the settings to see if they line up with the downloaded file and verify I didn't mess anything up, but after that I am not sure where to look.

 

I know I said it once before, but thank you! I have an autistic boy that discovered fidget spinners a little while ago and has desperately wanted me to print him one. I offered to buy it, but he wouldn't have anything to do with it. While this one is just a test run and not 100% perfect, I didn't set 100% infill and it is a little brittle, he is going to be over the moon. Not sure how often people thank you on behalf of their kids, but let me be one of them.

I ended up checking the fan and it was working perfectly and I then looked at the heat sinks. So I pulled the bottom off, put it on temporary legs and I ran two prints. The first was the brace for the threaded rod and it came out incredible, so I ran the fidget spinner and you can see the results. I can officially say my issue was completely related to heat