What is your retraction speed set to? I have noticed on the Hexagon with PLA if your retraction speed is too high it can plug. PLA is an odd material, kinda like silly putty, where it gets really hard when hit hard. If your retraction speed is too fast it can cause a temporary plug that will cause the stripping.
With PLA try slowing retraction down to 25mm/sec and see if that stops your problem. If it does you can try using Kisslicer that allows different speeds for the retraction and restart. You can have a super fast retraction, but the restart needs to be way slower.
Sorry, I don’t have any direct experience with PLA on the new hexagon hot end. Is your small fan blowing? I’ve seen that some people have had issues with the small fan not working and it causing a similar heat creep problem.
BTW, I’m just a helpful noob who is reading everything I can about 3D printing and trying to share what I’ve read. I would say if you have tried everything you can think of, maybe consider calling the Aleph Objects support line. They are very knowledgable and want to help. You can also try to get the attention of mhackney. He seems to be an invaluable source of expert advice.
Thanks, I think I’m in the process of solving my issue. I tried to calibrate the extruder using the 100mm @ 100mm/m in pronterface, and found that not only was my esteps # way off, I inadvertently overtightened the hobbed bolt when I first took it apart for cleaning.
I’ve loosed that and the extruder seems to moving a lot more freely (Yeah, DUH).
Anyway, I’ll try another part and see what happens. My next call is to Lulzbot. I have been in contack with mhackney, and yes he is EXTREEMLY helpful., but this seems to be all of my own making.
hi everyone!.. i’d like to share my experience if i may in the hopes that perhaps someone can also help me with an exact problem i am having with my TAZ 5… i’ve had mine for just over a week now and i must say it’s been very challenging so far with 95% failed prints… my TAZ could not even finish the first Octopus test print… at the beginning i didn’t lose heart since having been a user of Makerbot Replicator 2 and 2x for the last year and half years so i am not unfamiliar with the the nitty gritty gorilla warfare that is desktop FDM 3D printing… so these early failures with the initial Octopus test print i put it down to beginner’s learning curve… but after mastering bed leveling, z height and good 1st layer i quickly moved onto what i had originally purchased this printer for- to print some prototypes of my product design ideas (these are large prints 10.5" x 10" x 3")… but again and again the prints were fails to my utter dismay
fast forward 72hrs
while these were printing with various settings and tweaks (brim, raft, z height, filament thickness, temperatures etc) i read up as much as i could in the forums on “filament striping/grinding/chewing” and i stared to deduct that perhaps it maybe something to do with this issue called “heat creep” and so i placed a 6" desk fan directly blowing onto towards the hot end heat sinks while the printer was printing…
Day 5
i began to make some progress in the fact that the prints went further along… so encouraged by this progress, i ordered a small blower fan to rig up air flow to the heat sinks as others have done with funnel attachments etc. at this time i also contacted Lulzbot for help and Ray from their help desk was kind enough to reply promptly… he suggested i go back to the basic and just go with basic settings and print but with additional 5 degrees more heat in the extruder and the idle screws tighten down to 4mm between washers… unfortunately it resulted in a fail also
Day 6
… but at this point i was pretty sure it had something to do with the “heat creep” issue so with the same settings suggested by Ray i reprinted… BUT with the 6" fan and low and behold it printed out!.. so i repeated 2 more times, just for confirmation
Success!
Day 7
the blow fan arrived from Amazon so i quickly made a temporary rig out of Styrofoam and attached it to the front of extruder housing and directed air towards to heat sink… this setup is only working when the heated bed is not turned on… presumably the fan is just blowing hot air which is rising from the bed… i may have to flip the fan so that that air is being sucked from above.
Day 8
so far prints are doing ok although i haven’t made long prints… however a new problem i hadn’t really noticed before a couple days ago is this bumpiness i get on the print surface… have tried entering larger diameter in the filament size- upto 3mm… have tried less and more flow rate… different print speed, retraction and various height and shell thicknesses… no difference in the bumps/pimples effect although layer qualities were effected…
Day 9
so that’s my story so far… Ray is not acknowledging the “heat creep” issue and have instead keep telling me to tighten the screws (increase feed pressure) and raise hotend temperature (decrease backpressure) but these combinations have not work without the fan so we will see what other ideas he has… i have also contacted the re-seller for help who have been very nice to see if they can give me a swap with another new TAZ 5 or even swap with a used perfectly working TAZ 5 from their office (they don’t have any)… they also admitted that yes they have heard of similar issues and since this machine is a new release there could be some quality control issues with parts… so if tonight’s more test prints are not addressing the 1) the “heat creep” issue and 2) bumpy surface issues then i am going to either take up on the swap offer of a new machine or ask for my money back depending on how frustrated i feel… oh and i have also ordered the Type A Machines Series 1 to see how that one will work out… i truly hope it will be a better experience… i just want it to work… no fans no tweaks no messing with this and that!.. at least if nothing else my old faithful Replicator 2 was a joy to use!.. and that’s saying something! if anyone has ANY remedies/ideas please i would be eternally grateful, thank you in advance and apologies for the diatribe and length…
Don’t discount the advise from Lulzbot (Ray for me as well)!
After a week of nothing but frustration trying to get larger print to succeed, I did what was told to me, which is basically the same as what you were told; to tighten the idler screws slightly and add 5 degrees until I got things printing right. Well I’m very happy to say that last night I did a 10+ hour print that is PERFECT!
All I did was tighten the idler screw slightly and increase my temp to 215 (PLA) and viola’!
I can’t believe that it was that simple.
Thanks sain, i printed out the tall cones with basic (“normal quality print”, PLA) using Cura and they came out fine, no stings across from each cone to cone although i cannot see the surface since the print is too small
i have downloaded kiss and getting familiar with it first and i will try but do you think it’s a slicer issue?
as for my previous large test print last night with the blow fan rig attached to extruder it failed but it looked good which is some consolation - no spider web tangles mess or detachment from bed which is some consolation, sad as it is… however i did noticed that i only tightened the idle screws to about 6mm so that might have cause the flow stoppage…
so as of now im going to try one more time with everything double checked…
muggs, yes i have tried to vary those two parameters of idle screw tightness between washers from 8mm to as tight as the spring fully clasped which is about ~4 mm and temperature have varied from 180 all the way to 220 (the max that the tech from reseller has advised not to go over)… he also suggested i should open up the hot end to check the thermoster (?)… said in some the “sleeve” is out of place and needs to be put back in place… i really don’t want to go there…
Hello,
I had a round with insanity when printing at 70 microns, and trying to print a 100% solid part.
Z offset was the culprit, but the symptoms were not pointing to this. With such a small layer height it was hard to tell if the Speed, idler tension or temps were causing the filament to continuously strip on the first layer.
eSteps were correct, very accurate!
\
Thinking back to the first lesson for the Taz: proper z offset.
First layer height at 120% aha?
It finally occurred to me that the extruder was too close to the bed and not being to extrude properly. Nothing else, not high temps, not 100% infill or acceleration or differing print speed and movements.
I used Matter Control to do the leveling . The Taz 5 is very well calibrated. 10 clicks down to the bed and zero offset. the 11th sets it too low. My problem was that the Bed was too perfect. I started printing at .14 layer height and gave the z offset a .2 offset and then I tried it at .35 relative to the Nozzle diameter. Theoretically this should be too much, but it has worked very well for my assembly prints in Abs or Pla.
This is a little off topic because of the filament type, but I HOPE this helps someone.
ThANKS
Gremiln
- no spider web tangles mess or detachment from bed which is some consolation, sad as it is… however i did noticed that i only tightened the idle screws to about 6mm so that might have cause the flow stoppage…