Need Help with Problem

[SpragClutch]

Hello everyone,

I have a Flashforge Dreamer and I am having a problem where at the start of every layer / start of an infill the extruder does not extrude enough plastic. This leaves a gap at that location. Once the plastic starts to flow everything seems good. It just does not flow right away.

Thanks for any help

[SpragClutch]

Hurray!

I've solved this problem. I've been having this problem for the past six months. It would leave gaps randomly at times at the start of a border or at the start of an infill. It, at the time was not consistent. And the rest of the print was perfect.

I tried cleaning out the nozzle, this made no difference.
Tried different extruder temperatures and printing speeds, no difference.
I tried different retraction and restart distances settings and it too made no difference.
I tried different slicers such as Flashprint, Simplify3d, Craftware, and this too seemed to not solve the problem.

And today I finally found the solution.

It does have to do with retraction. It was not the retraction length, speed, or restart distance. Those were fine. This makes sense as this problem seemed random and the rest of the print was fine. A problem with these would be consistent across the whole print.

I finally looked at all the different settings in Simplify3d. And I noticed in the advanced tab there was a checked mark in "Only retract when crossing open spaces" And bam it all made sense. Every time there was a gap, it was when the extruder came from inside the model. It was not doing a retract because it was not in an open space. Because it did not do a retract, it also did not do a restart distance(or prime). I'm guessing during the time it took during the travel, some of the melted plastic dripped out and created an air gap in the nozzle and hence why there was always a gap at the start of an outline or infill when the nozzle moved from inside the model. This problem was no longer a random problem.

The Solution was simply to turn off "Only retract when crossing open spaces" in Simplify3d. Not sure what the solution would be if I was still using Flashprint.

Feels good to finally be getting good prints again.

Happy Printing!

-Sprag

[Ward]

Thanks a TON for posting the solution!

I also use S3D and just looked at that setting.
I think if you turn that off, the print head will retract a lot more often and that will slow down printing.

Oddly, I just received a replacement printer because the one I bought 2 weeks ago (FlashForge Creaor X Clone) had a themister failure so it went back.
The odd thing is that the other one printer like a dream and I'm having trouble getting good prints out of this new one so far.

What is your DEFAULT print speed set to? Mine was 3600mm/min but that seems too fast.

Did you carefully level the platform lately? I know if mine is off it get's sloppy.

[SpragClutch]

The DEFAULT print speed is set at 3600mm/min (60mm/sec). I usually print at 2400mm/min (40mm/sec) or 3000mm/min (50mm/sec). But now that I got this gap thing figured out I may try higher speeds. I level the platform every now and then, but I don't do it as much as I use to when I first got the printer. I now have a glass bed and I believe this is the reason why I don't level very much anymore. I usually take the glass bed out to remove prints, so I don't disturb the original bed. And a glass bed is much more level and distorts less when heated.

If you don't have a glass bed, I recommend it a lot. You can buy one from Flashforge USA for 19 dollars. And it will be correctly sized. Or you can search around the web and maybe buy one for cheaper.