Print Quailty Got Worse Somehow
Looking for some wisdom on this, as I'm new to 3D printing. I have the Core One and it was printing great for a month. Now, prints are not turning out. Its like the layers are messed up. I've tried this on Prusament Galaxy Black PLA, and Inland PLA, bith do this now. Up until this past weekend I've never had this issue. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the Prusa Slicer, and removed and cleaned the nozzle. I've tried using print settings for Prusament PLA, as well as generic PLA for the Inland brand. I have the original 0.4 HF nozzle, and I've tried bith .15 and .20 print settings. I've re-run all the calibration on the printer. I can't seem to resolve this, so I'm not sure where to evenstart. Any suggestions would be very much appreicated!
Best Answer by Diem:
Those are not *bad* benchies, at one time we would have called them excellent, but they could be improved.
I looks like both cooling and belt tension need some attention. Check that your fans are clean and that no whisps of stringing are tangled around the hubs.
There are plenty of threads here about belt tension, follow Prusa's procedures before getting embroiled.
Cheerio,
RE:
One thought, but I may be wrong:
The core one aligns its three Z axis spindles via the mechanical endstop at the bottom during "Z axis calibration". It neither seems particularly repeatable nor well defined (with people designing variable shim sets to fix it for one specific printer).
Try to align Z-axis motors manually. Run up the table via controls so it almost touches the nozzle with a well-defined gap (e.g. using a piece of thin cardboard, like a business card or from a corn flakes box). Move the head around carefully and check that the distance is equal near the three spindles. Manually turn spindles until the distance doesn't change with head position. Or use the depth gauge from standard calipers against the gantry, if available.
The hypothesis is that the table is skewed between the three spindles.
Additionally, the threaded sleeves may apparently get misaligned with the table so it's not perfectly perpendicular. People are printing tools to help with the alignment (not completely sure myself where the "degrees of freedom" come from but it seems a popular print).
And finally, the question whether or not to lubricate the Z-axis rods. Not sure what is the official verdict nowadays. I came across instructions "not to lubricate" but did it anyway as it was obviously noisy otherwise.
A month old, time to work through:
https://help.prusa3d.com/article/regular-printer-maintenance-core-one_829710
How are you drying your filaments?
Cheerio,
RE: Print Quailty Got Worse Somehow
Thank you both @mnentwig and @diem for your comments. @mnentwig, I haven't tried to manually align the z-axis motors yet, i'll try that next. @diem, so I went through the maintainance and cleaned the nozzle, cleaned and lubed the y-axis rods, and also the z-axis threaded rods. I then did a homing and z-axis calibration. the homing I had to try a few times, as it failed the first couple of times I did it. For my filament, I haven't done anything for drying it yet. I've only recently realized the importance of dry filament, so I plan on getting a filament dryer. In an attempt to rule out the filament, I did try printing with Prusament PETG, I've attached the pictures. It looks better, but also not nearly as good as my other prints I did before. To rule out the Prusament PETG, I also tried a complety different Inland PLA. I used this one a week ago and made a great looking Benchy. Now, it too has this issue.
Those are not *bad* benchies, at one time we would have called them excellent, but they could be improved.
I looks like both cooling and belt tension need some attention. Check that your fans are clean and that no whisps of stringing are tangled around the hubs.
There are plenty of threads here about belt tension, follow Prusa's procedures before getting embroiled.
Cheerio,
RE: Print Quailty Got Worse Somehow
Hi @diem, I did as you suggested. Fans look good, so I ran the belt tuning on the Prusa app. Wow! Both belts were in the 70's. I tuned them according to the directions and got them both so the app says they are good. I just ran a test benchy and it's a night and day difference! Not only in the quailty, but my gosh, the sound! I guess I never noticed my printer was steadily getting louder and more rickety, but it must have been. Its super quiet now and the benchy came out exactly how I expected it to for a great print. Thank you for your help!