The sock sucks!  

Re: The sock sucks!

My experience with the sock has been excellent. I'm actually able to run the hotend at 250C and keep the part fan going at near full speeds without it bringing the hotend temp down and causing a thermal fault. I like to keep my pla dry and print it hot with lots of cooling, for some vase-mode prints that don't have features that cause the stringing/drooping issues that you would usually expect when trying to print PLA that hot.

I did do PID tuning at 235C (a compromise between the pla and abs/pet temps) when I installed the sock.

Re: The sock sucks!

I think the sock is amazing. You can just run the fan at 100% when printing PETG at 265 degrees celcius (if your part is big enough, otherwise the print bed will cool too fast). Also 100% fan with printing TPU. For PLA the fast preset in slic3r works so much better. And filament no longer sticks to the heater block, so no cleaning.

However, I have not printed ABS, so it might be different for that?

Re: The sock sucks!

I have been printing with RigidInk Orange ABS. My prints always seemed over heated and had holes in the top layer. I dropped the temp in stages starting at 250 deg C to 220 deg C but still the same. I then removed the E3D silicone sock. And used 220 deg C. Perfect ABS prints now. PID tuning needed I guess.

When you alter how the hotend retains heat, you really need to do a PID tuning so the control loop knows. Since yours did not, I am guessing it overshot a lot and created your issues. The issue was not the sock. The issue was you didn't tell the control loop you had a sock on. Try it with a PID tuning.

Re: The sock sucks!

Thanks all for the replies. I will do a PID tune with a new silcone sock.