Solved Z Ribbing Caused by Extruder Calibration

Well I changed that back, before I printed out that calibration cube. Top and bottom were closing up after I changed the firmware to hold the Z motors.

 

Yea, I saw it in the yellow too, that why I wanted to do the extruder calibration. But it made it worse

 

Makes sense if it was underextruding before. Try reseating your helical couplers and/or adjusting the position of the motor in the seat

 

May have found the issue. Upon arrival to my house, I took a gulp of my energy drink and began the disassembly of my printer and when I went to remove the nuts on the Z rods, I notice they were difficult to move. Upon further inspection I notice that my RC diff lube had been applied to the rods...50k weight DIFF LUBE! -_-

Cleaning it now, apparently my friend thought the squeaky Rods needed lube, so she found the closest one.

 

Still needs a touch of calibration, but the ribbing is pretty much gone. Especially considering that this is at 810 E-Steps

(right:left ::300:100 microns) Thanks for the help!! The Printer is awesome and the community is too!

 

Yikes. Could have been worse, like WD-40. That stuff ought to require a license. People use it on electrical equipment, but it was originally intended as a water displacer for missiles, with a service life of maybe a few hours between application (prior to fueling with cryogenic fuel/oxidizer) and destruction of the missile. Long term effects were not weighing heavily on their mind.

I have been getting very nice results lately. I had a similar issue, and solved it without really focusing on that, but focusing on getting the Z height correct. Initially I was printing at 16mm high for a 15mm object with the default Z steps per mm.

I calibrated the filament extrusion, then from reading a bunch on here, set my layer height in "fine" to 0.098mm to avoid rounding error, and adjusted the Z steps per mm (2547 on my machine) so that my Z height is now off by 0.01mm at 15mm. I will print out some other test objects to check at multiple points, but I noticed that as I was walking through this process, the ribbing I had seemed to be going away.

My vertical walls are now "textured", but not ribbed like they were.

FWIW, the lube that I am using is "DeOxit" This is a fine oil used primarily for improvement of electrical connections: http://www.caig.com/ You can believe what they claim, I've been using this stuff since '82.
I use it on any electrical connector that has any insertion force due to the electrical contacts rubbing, like USB connectors. It doesn't get thick over time, like WD-40 does.

 

hmm wd getting thick?

I like gun lube for things like this. corrosion resistant, supposed to be resistant to gumming. thin... usually available in a needle applicator.

 

I've been a huge DeOxit fan for years, it's great for treating the IC sockets I use at work. It works wonders for cleaning noisy potentiometers, too. I've never used it as a lubricant, though! Worth a shot...