I put down a pattern to print overnight and got these very strange results in the morning. It was still in the middle of printing but I stopped it. You can see near the bottom where it started off fine but then...what the heck? I'm not even sure how to describe this phenomenon.
I did just update Z-suite and the firmware on the printer RIGHT before this print though...never saw this before and I've done many prints. So issue with firmware? maybe...but hope not.
Has anyone seen this before?
EDIT: I did a thorough investigation but didn't find much. But then I caught this when I tried to start a new print: the little gear feeder to the extruder seems to be slipping. That's probably what caused print failure. Although its never happened to me mid-print...I only remember it happening once long ago but that was when I was loading new material. Its never had any issues until suddenly mid-print last night apparently...maybe it was some oddity in the ABS filament at that spot in the roll....
Is this the filament diameter thinning out or is the gear twitching back and forward?
I'm mid-roll on the filament...so it should be fine. It was the gear twitching back and forth. I cleaned the extruder gear and reloaded the filament. I tried to print again...it would start off fine but mid-way through making the raft, the gear started twitching and slipping again.
So, now I'm guessing something downstream is blocked...the nozzle or hot-end. I've removed both and am cleaning with acetone. Will update when I try to print again...
Run an extrude command without any filament and see what the gear does when you let it free spin, while doing this move the ribbon cable around some and see it anything changes. you can do this while you wait for the acetone to work on your nozzle.
Run an extrude command without any filament and see what the gear does when you let it free spin, while doing this move the ribbon cable around some and see it anything changes. you can do this while you wait for the acetone to work on your nozzle.
-NS
Free spin is fine. I just assembled the clean hot end, clean nozzle and clean extruder (gear). I tried a print and the gear starts slipping and twitching again at the beginning (during raft creation), causing filament to not feed in properly.
Now it's even twitching and having trouble moving the filament during the material load step.
I'm out of ideas...what else could be causing the extruder gear malfunction??
I just checked and tightened all the cables. They are fine...they haven't been fiddled with very often at all...so they should be fine. I re-cleaned the nozzle and extruder. I also replaced the ABS roll with a brand new one.
The extruder gear still looses traction when the plastic gets to the nozzle. It stars out loading fine, but when the plastic melts and gets down to the nozzle and starts to come out of the nozzle, the gear starts to slip and twitch. I removed the nozzle to see how it the extruder handles loading the filament when it doesn't have to work against pressure...and when the nozzle is not on there (just the hot end) the extruder has no problem smoothly sucking up filament. So, it definitely seems that it has trouble pushing the filament against any sort of pressure.
At this point, it looks like for some reason there isn't enough force available to push the molten plastic through the nozzle at a steady rate. I'm guessing this is due to a defective motor or the mechanism that pinches the filament against the extruder gear? I can't see anything other obvious stuff that could be wrong...ugh!!!
EDIT: Just measured hot end temperature with the thermocouple and it reads about 235 C after its done spinning up the hot end temp.