WHAT is going on with my prints???

I thought I finally had it all dialed in. I’ve been printing ABS, PETG, and PLA.

Good results, sometimes great! The PETG was eSun, the others, Lulzbot.

So I just picked up a couple of grab bag Makergeek PLA and PETG.

My PLA is simply not printing. I get ripping in my extrusion. I thought, maybe heat creep. The stuff prints hot, 230!

So I gave up on the PLA for now and threw on the PETG. Also prints hot, 260!..rips the same exact way!!! Help!!!

That pattern can indicate extruder small gear slipping or motor issues. Try carefully and safely putting your finger against the small gear barrel edge while it is printing and apply light pressure (gloves recommended) and see if that is enough to stop the gear from moving. If not, check the gear for missing teeth, clean the Hobbs, and make sure the idler tension screws have 8mm or less between the washers on either side of the spring.

I haven’t used their PLA, I don’t do much PLA in general as I find PETG just as easy to use and stronger overall. I have used their PETG and just received an order from them. I find it prints well, has good layer adhesion, etc… It does seem to like running on the hot side compared to eSun, but after adjusting a bit I get good results. I haven’t seen a pattern like that before, so I am mostly posting to mention that it does work well on a Mini. I suspect piercet has the right things to look at for you. Particularly with multiple filaments having problems.

I did the grab bag as well, got an interesting medium blue PETG that I need to print something with as I like the color. Hopefully the color looks good printed. Also got a roll of Pink, didn’t know they even made pink PETG. :slight_smile:

HA! I got the same colors! The Blue is a bit of an aqua marine. Kind of interesting.

@Piercet: Well, I did the monkey dance around my printer, sacrificed a lock of filament to the printer gods, and checked all moving parts. Seems to be in order, so I went to 237, slowed my infill, and cranked the tension screws down a couple of turns.

I’m making progress. Current cube is ~50% complete, so I’ll update the post once I have it nailed.

So strange to have such a high temp PLA.

I KNEW the monkey dance would work!!

We had trouble with PLA clogging, jamming, and grinding. The root problem turned out to be heatsink cooling. The little blower works OK for ABS, Nvent, etc. but it just doesn’t keep the heatsink quite cool enough for PLA. I built a new duct for a 25mm muffin fan and that cured all my troubles with filament clogging, jamming, and grinding. (Similar to the E3D heatsink fan and the Taz6 heatsink fan). Seems to cure the PLA problem.

Here is the link:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1461335

Bill D.

Yup. Saw that. I had built it already, but silly me got the 12v fan rather than the 5v. So a new one is on it’s way from Amazon. Should be hooked up by the weekend. I think that might be part of the problem.

After printing the cube successfully, I tried to print a planter that I have printed in ABS and PETG before. No go. I get good bottom layers, but when it gets to the sides, they start to chew up. Its not an easy piece to print (at least, through S3D) because the thin walls have infill. The model was not designed for a .5 nozzle.

So, after that blew up, I went back to fighting with the Makergeek PETG. I journey unto itself.

Really, I had no such issues with eSun. I don’t understand why Makergeek is such a challenge to get right.