Help! Extruder flow stopping mid-print
Hi there,
I've had my i3Mk3 for a few months now and had great success with some prints. But recently it's developed the annoying habit of failing mid-print more often than not. The extruder flow just seems to stop, and either it warns me to unload and change filament (and fails right after), or continues anyway and goes through the rest of the gcode without actually printing anything. This happened on a 12 hr print the other day 🙁
The weird thing is that sometimes it fails at the very beginning, other times it takes hours to fail. There seems to be no consistent failure point, and sometimes, prints of 4hrs + come out just fine. It's a 70/30 failure to completion rate right now.
I've done many cold pulls and am making sure to clean the bed, adjust first layer heights to correct level and so forth. Unsure what to do next.
Details of most of my prints are as follows (with small variables)
Slicer: Simplify 3D set to Prusa i3 mk3 standard config
Layer heights: 0.1mm to 0.2mm
temp: 200 deg c
Filmaent: Prusament Grey
Outer walls: 2
Infill percentage: 10% - 20%
I've attached a few photos of some of the failed prints. As you can see some feature a bit of stringing, but think that's just where smaller amounts of filament aren't adhering to previous layers.
What next steps should I take? I'm pretty new to 3D printing so am unsure of how to proceed. Any advice much appreciated!
Thanks!
Justin
Re: Help! Extruder flow stopping mid-print
Sounds similar to what I am experiencing: https://shop.prusa3d.com/forum/others-archive--f66/clicking-filament-extruder--t6976.html#p115053
Unfortunately I too am new at this and out of ideas at this point…
Re: Help! Extruder flow stopping mid-print
raise your temp to 210 on the nozzle see if that helps.
Prusament Filament:
PRINTING SETUP
Nozzle
210 °C
Heatbed
50-60 °C
Re: Help! Extruder flow stopping mid-print
I do not have a solution because this is what I am experiencing very, very... very often. From my observation it is the problem of Prusa + some filaments vendor. Especially I am almost sure my print will fail using Fiberlogy HD PLA. No matter what temperature I use, no matter what is the bondtech gears tension, what retraction I use. I have 4 spools of it and almost nothing successfully printed. The poor MK3 extruder uses shitty stepper motor, what is insanely overheating, so there is a theory it is melting the filament in the gears. Probably some filaments are more sensitive to this. I have almost no this kind of problems with PETG spools. I am going to replace the motor with a stronger one to see if the theory is right.
Re: Help! Extruder flow stopping mid-print
So I've tried upping my temperature to 210. Still having prints fail like this. Might up it to 215 and have a go as well. Is there anything else I could try or other issues that spring to mind?
J
Re: Help! Extruder flow stopping mid-print
Thanks for the help those that responded. The problem has resolved with a little but of fiddling on my side with the first layer calibration (think I was a little low) and also upping the temp to 210.