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Solved Everything is a little big or under filled

Discussion in 'Troubleshooting' started by Stephen Capistron, Feb 4, 2015.

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  1. Stephen Capistron

    Stephen Capistron Active Member

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    When printing straight from MatterControl using any of the slicing engines my prints either seem to come out a little fat or under filled. By this I mean if I have a wall in my solid model that is 3mm (X direction) it comes out anywhere from 3.2 to 3.4mm. Point to point resolution is generally also the same. That same wall is supposed to be 23mm (Y direction) it will actually be 23.2 to 23.4mm. Everything in the Z direction is fine. It is a little difficult to measure but the first few millimeters of the print seem to come in at the desired dimension.

    If I cheat and knock the extrusion multiplier down to 80% the bulk of everything comes in spot on, but also under filled and the first few millimeters are a little skinny.

    I have done the extrusion calibration and 100mm only extrudes 94mm so I have made a correction for that as shown below in my brief setup description below.

    Are there any other calibrations I should try?

    Setup
    R1
    PLA
    Nozzle: 200
    Bed: 50
    Z-offset: .9
    Extrusion Adj: 106%
    .5mm chamfer on base to eliminate the elephant's foot.
     
    #1 Stephen Capistron, Feb 4, 2015
  2. Mike Kelly

    Mike Kelly Volunteer

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    Got any pictures?
     
    #2 Mike Kelly, Feb 4, 2015
  3. Ben R

    Ben R Active Member

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    most seem to be running around .9 on their extruder. S3d comes with that as a preset.
    sounds like you're just poorly adjusted. But .. a picture is worth 1000.
     
    #3 Ben R, Feb 4, 2015
  4. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    You might try checking the size of the extruded filament if you really want to be covering all bases. I had a 0.4 nozzle that ended up being closer to 0.5... setting it to 0.5 actually improved the results.
     
    #4 mark tomlinson, Feb 4, 2015
  5. Stephen Capistron

    Stephen Capistron Active Member

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    [​IMG][​IMG]

    The camera on my phone is not very good. I will also add that ambient temperature by the printer is about 12 today.

    I'll measure some extruded filament.
     
    #5 Stephen Capistron, Feb 4, 2015
  6. Mike Kelly

    Mike Kelly Volunteer

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    That looks really good. I would say it's probably measurement error. There's a few off layers there but nothing to me says anything is wrong with that print.
     
    #6 Mike Kelly, Feb 4, 2015
  7. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    You might also want to sanity check the extruded length (measure this on the incoming, not the outgoing filament).

    However...Looking back at the original numbers... that may well be within the tolerances of this style of printer.
    The Z is fine simply because it is not going to have any drive lash -- or very little (the belt is another story).

    Now, granted, if the belt is tensioned correctly this should be minimal, but less than what you saw?
    I don't know.

    If you want I can test print a small model and do some measurements to give you something to compare to.

    Overall I am with @Mike Kelly on this -- that is a good looking print.
     
    #7 mark tomlinson, Feb 4, 2015
  8. Stephen Capistron

    Stephen Capistron Active Member

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    Now that I am looking at the full size images. The right hand side of the top image is the bottom of the part and it kind of fades away.
     
    #8 Stephen Capistron, Feb 4, 2015
  9. Mike Kelly

    Mike Kelly Volunteer

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    Reduce your bed temp. That's generally what that means.
     
    #9 Mike Kelly, Feb 4, 2015
  10. Stephen Capistron

    Stephen Capistron Active Member

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    Filament is extruded at 0.43mm so i will make that change.

    Mike, I had read on another post last night where you had suggested the same thing. I'll give it a try. Seems to be a fine line between elephant's foot and skinny feet.
     
    #10 Stephen Capistron, Feb 5, 2015
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  11. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Good luck. You should be able to fine tune it even further.

    Also, be prepared to make fine temperature adjustments (extrude temp) between spools. They are not always the same 'sweet spot' for extrusion.
    I keep a little label on the spool with my current number for that spool.
     
    #11 mark tomlinson, Feb 5, 2015
  12. Stephen Capistron

    Stephen Capistron Active Member

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    I'm going to switch this over to resolved.

    If I increase the delta between the extruder and the bed the skinny feet goes away. I caution that having this be too large will lead to elephant's feet.
    My parts are coming in a lot closer to size with the nozzle* diameter set to properly reflect the actual diameter and having the extruder adjustment set lower. I still need to mess around with the different slicers and other settings to build a level of comfort with positional accuracy and parts coming out true to form. Speaking of which what is a reasonable expectation for this type of printer? ±1%? ±0.05mm?

    * Any suggestions for replacement nozzles? I like having spare parts. Or is it just better to get an E3D head as the "spare"?
     
    #12 Stephen Capistron, Feb 6, 2015
  13. BrianFraz

    BrianFraz Member

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    I am currently using the E3D nozzle on my Hex hot end. I did buy the whole E3DV6, just haven't installed yet.
     
    #13 BrianFraz, Feb 6, 2015
  14. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    IMHO the E3D is a better hotend, but not hugely so.
    The E3D nozzles will fit the Hex (as @BrianFraz noted).
    If you are in the US try @Printed Solid website (he was carrying them) or E3D directly.
     
    #14 mark tomlinson, Feb 7, 2015
  15. Printed Solid

    Printed Solid Volunteer Admin
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    yup. we will continue to carry nozzles and hot ends.

    Those prints look pretty good to me...

    Just a note here, but your accuracy doesn't really have as much to do with matching your extrusion width to the actual diameter of the nozzle as you might think. Extrusion is calculated on a volumetric basis. So, if you've got a .4 nozzle and you tell your slicer you have a 0.5 nozzle with a 0.2mm step height, it's still going to push out that amount of material. Beyond a certain point this gives ugly results, but it's not so touchy that being off by a small fraction of a mm matters so much. Check out the bible of calibration here. http://reprap.org/wiki/Triffid_Hunter's_Calibration_Guide
     
    #15 Printed Solid, Feb 7, 2015
    3 people like this.
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