Fillament cuts out during long prints.
Hello,
My name is Martijn, and i'm completly new to 3D printing.
I bought myself an adventurer 3 a few days ago, which as I understand is ideal for beginners.
(English is not my main language, please be patient with me)
After a first few succesful prints (the stock square box, and a Benchy boat) I wanted to try something I've wanted for a long time, the Eiffeltower.
Most factory made models of the tower are rather basic, as where the Thingyverse one has (almost) all the edges and struts and so on... beautiful.
So I calibrated my bed in the 9 required steps. Put in some in grey fiilament, and sent the code to the printer. And the printer came to life.
It would take 11 hours to complete, so I went to my work. Via IP camera I watched the printer. My wife was sitll at home, handy for in case of an emergency.
After approx. 8 hours, it stopped giving out fillament. The extruder and printbed are still making print movements, but the extruder is about 3cm higher than the printed project.
Once I was home I cancelled the print.
I did some research and learned about clogging and cold-pulls.
So i perform a cold-pull by heating up, manually putting in white fillament, turn off heating whilst fillament is coming out of the nozzle, then once it's cooled pulling it out the top of the extruder.
This gave some grey residu on the white fillament. I repeated this 3x untill the fillament cold-pulled out white.
I didn't have the feeling it was clogged at any time, the white fillament came out the nozzle just fine.
Then I set up to print the tower again.
This time I scaled it up and cut it in two parts, maybe it was the small details that made it go wrong I thought.
Now the print wil take 32 hours to complete... I have no idea if a printer is capable of such a task, but here we go.
I swapped the grey fillament for a silver fillament.
But again, now after approx 12 hours it;s the same again. De extruder is printing in thin air way above the already printed parts, but no fillament to be seen.
So again I perform everything that I am able to do with my knowledge.
Cold-pull procedure, printbed 9-point calibrated, fillament feeder cleaned. I saw nothing alarming anywhere.
I am convinced that everything is good as it can be at this point so I start up the print from the beginning.
But unfortunatly once again the same story...
After approx. 24 hours it stopped the fillament, and is still making print moves.
Now I'm not going to start the tower up again. Clearly i'm doing something wrong.
I do have a replacement nozzle now. i read that the stock nozzle is not the best. Allthough the replacement looks the same.
With the new nozzle I have now succesfully printed some othter things, without any issues.
But again, when I print the Eiffeltower it stops giving filament at some random point during the print.
What should I do or check to get it to finish a long print?
I also have some dummy questions;
1. When he's "printing air" well above the object without fillament. Is it possible to resume the print job after fixing the error, and let him resume at a specifiable layer? That way I don't have to throw away a lot of hours waiting.
2. Whilst printing for a long time, is it advisalble/possible to pauze printing, perform a cold-pull, them resume printing? Maybe that could solve my problem.
Martijn.