Troubleshooting - looking for ideas
Hello everyone,
I'm trying to get to the bottom of a recurring problem with my Core One and hope to get some ideas here. My printer has a stringing problem and under-extrudes when printing at coarse 0.28 Draft quality (see photos).
TLDR; I suspect that the Nextruder or another piece of hardware might be the problem, as both the stringing issues and some under-extrusion (only at coarse quality settings) occur. Please correct me if I am wrong. Maybe I am even overlooking something obvious.
What I have already tried in detail:
The problems started to occur some time ago. The stringing is particularly annoying with very small and fine prints and requires a lot of post-processing to make the parts usable.
I have already performed a basic printer maintenance, cleaning and lubricating all moving parts. I also checked and corrected the tension of the belts. Neither of these measures brought any improvement.
My filament does not seem to be the cause either. I have the problem with both PLA and PETG. Regardless of whether the filament had been open for a while or was brand new out of the package.For all filaments used (Polyterra and Prusament), I printed a temperature tower beforehand to make sure I was printing in the correct range. Interestingly, there is hardly any stringing on the towers (again see the photos). I have also performed a cold pull - again, no improvement.
To rule out the slicer as the problem, I sliced the same model in Prusa Slicer and Orca - same settings same result. In addition, I stumbled upon several pre-sliced benchies that came with the printer. I tried printing one of them as well right away, and the stringing was noticeable there too.
I read somewhere that printing more slowly can reduce stringing. Since my printer is in the living room, I always use stealth mode for printing by default. This reduces both the volume and the printing speed. In other words, I already print slowly and still have stringing.
printing in progress. very visible stringing. resolution is 0.11 layer height.
this is how it looks finished
same model, different filament - same problem
the tower looks fine. only expected stringing at certain temperatures.
slight stringing as well. the outer wall is not perfect but within acceptable parameters.
another print but at 0.28. visible under-extrusion.
RE: Troubleshooting - looking for ideas
Well, it *is* called "draft" mode. I'm not sure what compromises have been made to speed it up. It's probably the wrong choice for multiple parts and certainly not what you'd want for a finished part. On the flash drive that came with the printer there's "benchy bonkers" or something like that. It's an 8-minute benchy print where the printer really flies. It would be interesting to see how that does in comparison. I'd look at the all the profile parameters between draft and one of the "balanced" profiles to see what's different. AFAIK, "balanced" were optimized for the Core One.