I’ve been running the machine for a little more than a month now and having a blast! So much to learn!
I’ve been experiencing issues printing with PLA filament that is not a solid color. I am able to reliably print large jobs (20 to 30hrs) with white, black and gray filament. The black was from Snapmaker and the other colors were from Sunlu.
When I use the translucent filament or the “silk bronze” filament from Sunlu, I can rarely get a completed print. The main issue is that the filament stops feeding. There are other threads in the forum on this topic where users were having the same problem (i.e. the feed wheel has ground a “notch” into the filament and cannot feed.) I do not have this issue with the other plain colors.
The second issue is the colored filament literally welds itself to the table. I’ve damaged 2 plates so far trying to remove the residual PLA. Isopropyl alcohol 70% does absolutely nothing to remove it.
To try to resolve the two issues, I’ve tried printing with a higher nozzle temperature and a higher heated bed temperature. Neither yielded successful results. I have 2 more spools of colored filament I’m afraid to open until I can figure this out.
I can’t imagine it’s the spool tension, because it’s the same brand of filament from the same supplier.
Silk is a little harder to do than regular, it is stiffer.
Usually it needs to be hotter… yeah. if your filament is grinding out its probably because it needs even more heat than you gave it (there suggestion on the spool may not even be sufficient).
Also, do you have retraction enabled?
Finally, do yourself a favor and get some magigoo or something, it will keep your sheets safe due to its ability to pop your parts off, and also has the benefit of helping hold it during the print.
I also would recon theres a good chance you have at least a partial clog.
May need to raise your offset a little. Might need less squish and that’s what’s contributing to clog.
Temp tower can help you figure out what temp you should be printing at.
I increased the nozzle temperature to 235 and applied painters tape to the bed. I also calibrated the Z axis with the calibration card so that it barely touched the card. I had 3 very successful prints with the silk bronze.
I switched to a marble colored filament with the nozzle set to 235 and had 2 unsuccessful attempts to print something. Both times, the print stopped extruding at the same layer (about 5 to 10 layers into the print. I thought it might be spool tension, so I made sure there was plenty of slack during the print. No luck.
I then switched to plain white and brought the temp down to 205 and had a perfect print. So unless I’m mistaken, that tells me no clogs.
Make sure you transfer to SM and run it from there. Some people have reported having problems with temp towers, even with supplied ones. Not sure why. (A lot of people just download one from Thingiverse and don’t realize that you have to edit the goode or use a macro in cura) Just watch the temp readout and make sure it’s changing.
Please let me know if they don’t work for you.
-S
I printed 5 different colored temp towers (the temp tower from @MooseJuice), verifying at each step that the nozzle temperature changed… See photo.
This is kind of what I expected in behavior. The white, silk silver, and translucent printed all layers. The white & translucent were rock solid from top to bottom. I have no problems printing white, but I have had some problems with translucent. But I’ve had fewer problems since kicking the temp up a little.
The other 2 colors clogged before finishing the last layer or two. Those towers do indicate the more optimal temperatures to print.
I’ll try to print @sdj544 temp towers after my current print job completes.
Thanks again for the tips. I very much appreciate your help.
Since I can’t actually buy you drinks, I’ll do the next best thing and send you a martini glass I designed.
The original gcode is 7M and this website says it’s too big. I scaled it down 50% so the gcode file could be uploaded. Just scale it back up to actual size and should be good to go. Takes about 6 - 8 hours to print.
thanks hehe