Any response from Prusa on the inconsistent extrusion?  

Re: Any response from Prusa on the inconsistent extrusion?

Pretty good actually. I've reached out to my buddy who's going to print the same object on the CR10. That would be awesome. Seeing them held stacked under identical light would be ideal. Side-by-side tends to emphasize lighting on one or the other.

The best comparison I've found is the Thingiverse example I posted earlier in this thread. There's a clear difference, but the lighting could be better. I never realized what a pain in the backside lighting is with photography until I started trying to get up-close snaps of 20mm cubes.

Re: Any response from Prusa on the inconsistent extrusion?

Pretty good actually. I've reached out to my buddy who's going to print the same object on the CR10. That would be awesome. Seeing them held stacked under identical light would be ideal. Side-by-side tends to emphasize lighting on one or the other.

The best comparison I've found is the Thingiverse example I posted earlier in this thread. There's a clear difference, but the lighting could be better. I never realized what a pain in the backside lighting is with photography until I started trying to get up-close snaps of 20mm cubes.

I noticed it by touch before I saw anything (tilted & could then see the weave pattern)

Same object I have been printing on the mk2 hundreds of times came off the mk3 feeling rough, mk2 felt very smooth. tried it on my 2nd mk3, same very rough surface finish with the weave pattern. Hearing rumours of a new extruder design & possibly other changes coming, I really hope this is only printed parts needed, takes far too long for Prusa to get their act together for hardware shipments. I've had the mk3's since December & not been able to use them for products to sell, mk2 has been working non stop to make up for it

Mk3's have been a waste of time & money for me, bad print quality compared to the mk2, new features that don't & will never work reliably, no mmu option & still no textured beds available, its almost 8 months I have been waiting

If the new parts don't fix it I'll be selling all mine & moving to Creality printers, the competition has caught up (& you could even argue overtaken)

Re: Any response from Prusa on the inconsistent extrusion?

If the new parts don't fix it I'll be selling all mine & moving to Creality printers, the competition has caught up (& you could even argue overtaken)

I agree with your argument there. A 3d printer should deliver safety and quality printer before all of the other convenience features. To me, it seems that Prusa's main focus was to pack in as many features as possible to sell more printers.

I'm gathering that the fix, that will be announced when ever Prusa releases the news article, will be new gears for the extruder.

Re: Any response from Prusa on the inconsistent extrusion?

Pretty good actually. I've reached out to my buddy who's going to print the same object on the CR10. That would be awesome. Seeing them held stacked under identical light would be ideal. Side-by-side tends to emphasize lighting on one or the other.

The best comparison I've found is the Thingiverse example I posted earlier in this thread. There's a clear difference, but the lighting could be better. I never realized what a pain in the backside lighting is with photography until I started trying to get up-close snaps of 20mm cubes.

I noticed it by touch before I saw anything (tilted & could then see the weave pattern)

Same object I have been printing on the mk2 hundreds of times came off the mk3 feeling rough, mk2 felt very smooth. tried it on my 2nd mk3, same very rough surface finish with the weave pattern. Hearing rumours of a new extruder design & possibly other changes coming, I really hope this is only printed parts needed, takes far too long for Prusa to get their act together for hardware shipments. I've had the mk3's since December & not been able to use them for products to sell, mk2 has been working non stop to make up for it

Mk3's have been a waste of time & money for me, bad print quality compared to the mk2, new features that don't & will never work reliably, no mmu option & still no textured beds available, its almost 8 months I have been waiting

If the new parts don't fix it I'll be selling all mine & moving to Creality printers, the competition has caught up (& you could even argue overtaken)


Would you mind trying a little experiment? Try driving your MK3 using your MK2 control board and see if that fixes the problem. Perhaps that will narrow down the true source of the problem.

Re: Any response from Prusa on the inconsistent extrusion?

[...] Same object I have been printing on the mk2 hundreds of times came off the mk3 feeling rough, mk2 felt very smooth. tried it on my 2nd mk3, same very rough surface finish with the weave pattern.
Any chance you could post up comparison pics of the same model on the Mk2 & Mk3? I'd really like to see the same surface stacked under the same light. It's surprisingly hard to find good comparison pics, and often the "good" part is at a different angle or slightly out of focus. Thanks!

Re: Any response from Prusa on the inconsistent extrusion?

That would be awesome. Seeing them held stacked under identical light would be ideal. Side-by-side tends to emphasize lighting on one or the other.

The best comparison I've found is the Thingiverse example I posted earlier in this thread. There's a clear difference, but the lighting could be better. I never realized what a pain in the backside lighting is with photography until I started trying to get up-close snaps of 20mm cubes.

I noticed it by touch before I saw anything (tilted & could then see the weave pattern)

Same object I have been printing on the mk2 hundreds of times came off the mk3 feeling rough, mk2 felt very smooth. tried it on my 2nd mk3, same very rough surface finish with the weave pattern. Hearing rumours of a new extruder design & possibly other changes coming, I really hope this is only printed parts needed, takes far too long for Prusa to get their act together for hardware shipments. I've had the mk3's since December & not been able to use them for products to sell, mk2 has been working non stop to make up for it

Mk3's have been a waste of time & money for me, bad print quality compared to the mk2, new features that don't & will never work reliably, no mmu option & still no textured beds available, its almost 8 months I have been waiting

If the new parts don't fix it I'll be selling all mine & moving to Creality printers, the competition has caught up (& you could even argue overtaken)


Would you mind trying a little experiment? Try driving your MK3 using your MK2 control board and see if that fixes the problem. Perhaps that will narrow down the true source of the problem.

Not possible (well not just a case of switching the boards), firmware is hardware dependent & the boards use different voltages for the fans, heaters etc

Re: Any response from Prusa on the inconsistent extrusion?

Not possible (well not just a case of switching the boards), firmware is hardware dependent & the boards use different voltages for the fans, heaters etc

Yep, and the MK3 is not equipped with end stops too.

Re: Any response from Prusa on the inconsistent extrusion?

Guys, most of the stuff you're discussing here was already discussed and tried many times. Feel free to go through issue log and join the discord channel, if you want to keep up on it:
https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware/issues/602

Re: Any response from Prusa on the inconsistent extrusion?

Guys, most of the stuff you're discussing here was already discussed and tried many times. Feel free to go through issue log and join the discord channel, if you want to keep up on it:
https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware/issues/602

I was on the discord server and left it because the mod team would not take away permission to use the @everyone tag. Kept getting pinged senselessly with notifications and when I asked them to stop they made fun of me and continued to use it to mock me. I know you can just turn off notifications but I wanted to be notified when someone made a breakthrough.

Re: Any response from Prusa on the inconsistent extrusion?

I have the feeling Prusa's new video isn't going to satisfy a lot of folks.

Edit: Ah, more here.

Re: Any response from Prusa on the inconsistent extrusion?

...

Here you go. It's just something I quickly modeled with fusion360.

STL: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kntarsrbw0gtlex/Test%20Object.stl?dl=0

GCODE: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j339uwpq51fa5ii/Test%20Object.gcode?dl=0

I printed these with the gcode and also sliced my own. I tried rotation +90 and also plus 45. Next I made my own model and put a very slight arc to the part. I can possible update this post later with pictures (they are a lot more work and time).

for now let me say they are pretty boring because they show what others have posted many times. In a light gray filament there is a very consistent moiré pattern and with the right lighting this can look like basket weave. I've seen enough testing that I don't see how this could be related to any particular X or Y axis factor. To the naked eye what I see are diagonal patterns.

I've done some other parts in a gold colored filament and they looked fantastic. Possibly that filament can absorb this anomaly so I may check that later.

note; for all these my extrusion linearity adjustment was 1.03 and I may try doing another check of that using Prusa's instructions.

Re: Any response from Prusa on the inconsistent extrusion?

The response is "they all have it". but fail to say to what degree... since the mk3 compared to the rest, including it's predecessor; is worse.

it would be nice to get all those close up images of prints on those other machines.... why make a post without posting result data too.

Re: Any response from Prusa on the inconsistent extrusion?

The response is "they all have it". but fail to say to what degree... since the mk3 compared to the rest, including it's predecessor; is worse. Not exactly. He stated that they did some objective testing -- nothing in isolation -- using a collection of different printers printing the same model with the same material and subjecting it to the same light. They even included an anonymous photo lineup of results they got from a variety of printers:

At this point, this is the most objective comparison of actual printer results I've seen. I've gone scrounging for other results and noticed this MakeAnything YouTube comparison of two low-cost competitors (CR-10 and AlphaWise U20). In the midst of his praising of the quality of these two printers, I managed to catch these:

Do those examples pass for the quality he describes?

I've been only been able to find a few other examples of actual comparisons, and those aren't great. Prusa is showing 7 prints of the same model on 7 printers using the same filament under the same lighting. That's showing that they've done some homework. Same model. Same filament. Same lighting. Anybody else can do the same if they doubt the results. I found it interesting that Prusa narrowed down blue as the color that best makes it pop. They're giving us at least a partial methodology for doing objective comparisons.

Something is clearly there, and I don't doubt folks that say they can discern a difference, but I think Prusa has done a pretty good job of showing that it's a common problem, even if (perhaps arguably) more noticeable on the Mk3. What Prusa also said is that -- unlike any other firm I'm aware of -- they intend to keep working on it. To quote the blog post (emphasis mine):

So our latest lead is that it is caused by the nature of the drive gears everyone is using and how toothed they are. We and some other members of the community are working on this and we will share more later. [...] All in all, if you are looking for extrusion inconsistency, you will find it on every printer and I am sorry it got out of hand and once you see it you cannot unsee it. It is present even on our brand new Ultimaker 5S. :-/ I am glad we are on this case, as I don’t see anyone else working on it. But for now, it is not an issue, just a property of all FDM machines. But that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to improve it.

Prusa, true to the open source credo, is researching it and will share their results. That's commendable.