Unresolved Quality suddenly gone...

Hi, I've been printing for about a year now, mostly just printing ABS spheres for 3D laser scanning.

I'm using the R1 plus. For ABS I'm printing at 235 C for the extruder and 105 C for bed. I also have built an enclosure to keep drafts out. Ambient temperature in the enclosure gets up to 110 C. This has drastically reduced warping, but not eliminated it. I always print with the highest quality of 0.1mm per layer.

Starting with print example 1. This is the quality of print I've been getting.
Print example 2, is how it prints now. It was literally night and day. One day Print example 1, the next Print example 2.
Print example 3, shows a blue PLA print. Curious that the first 3mm print great, but then when it goes above this initial "bottom layer" the print quality drops off badly.
Print example 4 is from today. Again, the base layer is fine, but when it started printing the rest of the cylinder, the quality is bad.

I read a little and it sounded like an under extrusion problem, so have played around with the EEPROM settings. Actually just the E: value. It was 723.38, and after about 4 hours of 100mm extrusions, I was able to get it to push exactly 100mm, and settled on the 761.00 value.

 

Fair question Geof. Yes, fans are off for the first 20000 layers for ABS. I'm using MatterControl 1.5 and connected via USB.
I can't deny that the surface does look "wind swept", so I'll double check in the morning to make sure.

 

you may have been referring to the slicer engine. That is set to CuraEngine (other two options are Slic3r and MatterSlice).

 

I can confirm the fans do stay off after the initial base is laid down. I watched it as it transitioned from doing a nice smooth base to laying down "blobs" of material around the perimeter. See photo. It looks like for some reason, the nozzle stops pushing out a smooth flow of material. Another guess is for some reason the material is not adhering to the base. Is it possible that the nozzle is making a jump up in the Z direction which is causing it not to adhere smoothly?

 

One other possibility is that the heatbreak cooling fan is finally dying after a year of regular use.

You may want to try locating one and swapping it in for the stock one to make sure heat creep (gradual thermal heat overpowering the hotend cooling fan and allowing heat to travel up to the drive gears and weaken the filament so that the extruder has trouble driving it) isn't becoming an issue.

To reiterate, this is not the fan that normally blows on the printed part, this is the other one that should be running continuously on the hotend itself whenever the printer is on.

EDIT: Also, ambient temps of 100C+ can cause steppers to weaken over time. Depending on the reference source you use, the motors typically used in the cheap 3d printer builds hobbyists play with (class A) will lose half of their life cycle any time they go over 105C, and will begin losing torque during operation at 80C.

Also, proper IP65 Nema stepper motors are generally rated for 10,000 hours of use before they have to be replaced. That's between 4-5 years, but that assumes perfect operating conditions and that the temperatures the motors function at never exceeding 80C.

If you've had good functioning for a while with your slicer settings, odds are more toward there being a hardware issue than a software issue. Even if it's as simple as a corruption of the SD card/data stream from the computer running your printer.

 

Geof,
Good suggestion, yes, I'll try a different slicer.
Daniel,
You raise some good issues that have been weighing on my mind after I built my enclosure "oven". I'll give the new slicer a try first. What doesn't make sense to my novice mind, is why it fails in such a disciplined and predictable way; ie directly after the base layer is down.
Thanks guys, I have some homework to do this evening.

 

OK, installed Cura for Robo 3D. Two problems. First it says "The printer is not connected". Everything is plugged in as far as I can tell. I tried adding a printer again, but it still can't find the printer.
After I can figure out why it won't connect, the second issue will be where does one preheat the bed and extruder? I like to be able to preheat the extruder especially if I need to switch to a different filament.

 

unistalled cura for robo and re-installed it. This time it connects. Still don't see where to preheat the extruder and bed. maybe it just doesn't have that feature?

 

not really sure what to do now. only option with the cura for robo is to hit print and let the software take over. It started trying to print, but it was off the build area and just started grinding the extruder nozzle against the build plate. not sure if you're supposed to be a g-code expert to set all this stuff up.

 

Well, 3d printers are literally CNC machines. So neglecting to learn what G-code is and how it works does a great disservice to being in the hobby.

 

Oops, did I just get excommunicated from your hobby club? Standard g-code for both slicers should work just fine for simple prints. And I have in fact inserted some lines of code to get over 500 hours of successful prints.

 

I appreciate everyone's input. After printing so much stuff for work, my latest client is put out that I can't make her a simple glow in the dark lampshade. I don't like letting my youngest daughter down, so forgive me for getting defensive. I'll let you know how it goes, even if it means some new parts in the end.