My Second Print! Still needs some work...

[Carrot_or_Stick]

Good idea, ill check that out tonight.

This may be a dumb question but is your extruder tight to the X cradle? If it is loose at all, that can cause a little play in the X/Y direction.

[dunginhawk]

thats what i meant by slop. the belts can be perfecly tight, and still cause issues.
x carriage issues - just grab the x carriage and move it around, and see if there is any play at all. do the same with the y bed. i found most of my slop was on the X axis motor area where it went up and down. those bearing wheels were not tight to the bars.

[pgx3s]

By the way I printed the same knop and it was also to big.

[Carrot_or_Stick]

I tightened up my X carriage and the Y bed though I still think the Y bed has some play in it that I can't get out with the eccentric spacers alone. Currently printing this knob for the printer and the layers are better defined but i'm still having issues with them not lining up along the Z axis on the lower portion especially.

I think i'll try to tighten my idlers some more to see if i can get rid of more slop. Is there anything else I should be trying to improve my prints?

IMG_0835.jpg

EDIT - Print just finished. The top looks considerably better than the bottom. I think i'll try a thin wall cube next to see how the printer does.

IMG_0836.jpg

[dunginhawk]

its coming along. there is still a lot of room for improvement. dont settle for less than great. this printer is capable.
best advice i ever got was change 1 thing at a time.
dont monkey with a ton of things, because you will never know what/if its resolved. it will take a LOT longer but change 1 thing (in slicers etc) print a test. change another, test, change another, test etc.

[Carrot_or_Stick]

Got rid of all the slop in the Y bed and tighted down all the other idles while I was at it last night. Re-leveled my bed and ran a few thin wall cube prints. They are better but i'm not sure what else I can do to improve them any more. Should I check out the calibration thread and start going through the software? Or is there more than i should be doing on the hardware side first?

Thin Walled Calib.jpg

its coming along. there is still a lot of room for improvement. dont settle for less than great. this printer is capable.
best advice i ever got was change 1 thing at a time.
dont monkey with a ton of things, because you will never know what/if its resolved. it will take a LOT longer but change 1 thing (in slicers etc) print a test. change another, test, change another, test etc.

[dunginhawk]

is that ABS or PLA? are you using a cooling fan?

[Carrot_or_Stick]

PLA (1.75) no cooling fan yet. I wanted to get my prints into better shape (which I feel i've reached now) before I started printing fan shrouds, new end stops, brackets, etc..

Only fan I have is the extruder fan

is that ABS or PLA? are you using a cooling fan?

[jasay]

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but on the layers where the plastic sticks out farther on the outside of the part, does it also stick out farther on the inside? If so there is there is either too much plastic on those layers or the layer height is shorter causing the plastic to squish out in all directions more. If not, there still may be some mechanical misalignment.

Variable amounts of plastic might be due to the filament you are using (varying diameter along length, voids/air bubbles inside, etc.) or if say the extruder gears are oval they might move different linear amounts per degree of rotation.

Choice of layer height can be important in getting consistent movements. You don't want to stop in a microstep since the motor can't hold that position as well as it can a full step. 0.2mm works well for out 5mm threaded axis. 0.25mm does not.

A really interesting article that covers this better: Taxonomy of z-axis artifacts

[Carrot_or_Stick]

From looking at my prints it seems that the layers will both expand and contract equally around the object. What I have noticed is that when I'm leveling the bed while it is heated that when the relay clicks on (begins heating) the glass will dip in the middle quite a bit (over 1mm), and when the relay clicks off (stops heating) the glass will come back up towards the nozzle. My nozzle is right at 0 in each of the 4 corners, its the middle that gives me issues.

Since this dip and retraction happens many times during a print I think that may be causing my issues with the layers "poking out". I've been heating my bed to 65-70C when printing in PLA so someone recommended trying a lower temp (around 40-45) to see if I can reduce the movement of the glass in the middle.

If the lower temp doesn't fix my issue is there another type of glass I should try or maybe use a spacer in the middle of the bed?

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but on the layers where the plastic sticks out farther on the outside of the part, does it also stick out farther on the inside? If so there is there is either too much plastic on those layers or the layer height is shorter causing the plastic to squish out in all directions more. If not, there still may be some mechanical misalignment.

Variable amounts of plastic might be due to the filament you are using (varying diameter along length, voids/air bubbles inside, etc.) or if say the extruder gears are oval they might move different linear amounts per degree of rotation.

Choice of layer height can be important in getting consistent movements. You don't want to stop in a microstep since the motor can't hold that position as well as it can a full step. 0.2mm works well for out 5mm threaded axis. 0.25mm does not.

A really interesting article that covers this better: Taxonomy of z-axis artifacts