Cubex SainSmart 1.7mm PLA filament flow issues

[Peter Gregory]

I'm trying to get SainSmart filament to work in my Cubex.

A caliper measurement gets the filament size from 1.8mm to 2.0mm

I know this is really thick for a Cubex.

Specifications:

1.82mm PLA +/- .1mm

Roundness: +/- 0.07mm

Temp: 210-250

It feed into the heads OK.

Here are my material settings:

Using the print jet controls, I can heat the heads up to 230 and test the filament flow.

I can go up to 6rpm from start as it has melted filament in the reservoir  

I can only get 2.0rpm continous before clicking starts  - a slow stream comes out

Using the Cubex PLA (1.6mm) I can get 8.0rpm and a good amount of material comes out.

Is the filament just too thick?  Is that as fast as the Cubex print head can melt the PLA at this thickness?

Can I set Kisslicer to work with the limits of this material?

[A. Elias]

I would email sainsmart and tell them your filament is too think for your printer.  They advertise 1.75mm and some tolerance. But 2mm sounds way too large.

I've used their ABS material with little to no problems.  

Adam

[Peter Gregory]

Could be my measuring too - I'm reading 1.78, 1.8 in most spots - I think I was measuring at an angle on some of my earlier measurements.

I'm getting better results - I adjusted the max mm^3/s from 10 to 4.  It now prints without getting filament flow errors.

I still hear clicking from time to time.  I had one section where the filament wouldn't flow and constant clicking.

I pushed the filament in and got past the problem.  It must have lost purchase on the filament and pushing helped get past that point.

I still need to adjust settings to get the print to look good and not have any clicking.

After it finishes a loop, it jumps to a location and prints a drop of filament - making a dot and stringing a hair while it moves to the next line.

What causes that?  Is that de-stringing?

Notice the vertical line up the side of the print - I scraped off the "hair" from the vertical line.

The horizontal lines are where the filament almost failed to flow and I pushed enough in to get past the problem (twice).

However, above the horizontal line is weak and will break off easily.

I infilled as hollow and if feels a bit flimsy and flexible - different from the Cubex filament.

I'm going to try solid and turn off de-string.

[toranarod]

Yes. The problem is 3D systems filament is 1.7 and the there is no adjustment for any thing else of a different size.  It is a pain. I am think at some point to change the extruder drive.   
1.8 is to big

[Peter Gregory]

I've given up on SainSmart 1.7mm filament - it just won't work.

I got the temp settings correct.

I limited the flow to reduce the clicking.

It would jam up when it hits a wide spot.

I could push it through and it would continue, but it won't work unattended.

I've heard MatterHacker 1.7mm will work with Cubex.

I'll give it a try.

Has anyone out there found a good 3rd party supplier of PLA that works with Cubex?

So far, I haven't found a supplier that goes below 1.7mm.

[toranarod]

I don't know what country you are in, But this stuff is usually 1.6 to 1.65  sometimes almost 1.7mm

But maybe not close enough to you.  

http://lybina.com/

Email them and ask for 

Jeremy Gray - CEO

LYBINA P/L inc. ISLEX P/L, PLASTRUDE P/L. www.lybina.com

P. +61 (0)3 9761 4070

F. +61 (0)3 9761 6017

M. +61 (0)421 171 471

SKYPE: lybina-jeremy

[toranarod]

The other thing is there plastic is great quality my print are very good in ABS and PLA.  on both my machines CubX and 3D touch 

[hugues]

Hello,

Colorfabb filament works great, i printed to 0.05 mm layer hight with it.

[Peter Gregory]

I just tried matterhacker 1.75 filament.

It is the same size and melts at the same temperature.

I'm able to print at normal speeds.  No clicking.

It jets just like Cubex filament.

Here is another filament supplier that works with Cubex.

[toranarod]

the clicking you mention what is that being caused by? I have heard it on the occasion with my printer but it prints fine.  

Oh boy you really do need to get the diameter correct for the CubeX, with Filament its so hit or miss.

cheers 

[Peter Gregory]

The clicking I mentioned was explained by bikejunky98:

My best guess is that you are running into a heat traveling issue.  The head, while pretty, is the weak link.  I have disassembled many, and replaced many.  Every failure I've seen has been caused by insulating action inside the portion wrapped by the heating element.  The filament is traveling inside a ptfe tube (about 1 inch long) that is supposed to contain, and allow preheating of the filament until it hits the metal nozzle at the expected flow temp.  If the pressure gets too high, the liquid filament gets forced under and outside the tube and backflows up the head insulating the ptfe tube, and causing heat to build and travel up the head to the heat sinks further compounding the issue, while filament temps inside tend to be too low to melt at the expected rate and thus the clicking noise and jammed filament.  This could be why the cubeX software heats the head to much higher than industry standards for PLA...

[WarrenE]

In addition to ColorFabb, which I find works great, I found a nice,semi-translucent PLA material that works great from Bootsindustries.com.  It is a company in Canada.  I can print directly on a heated glass build plate at 50 degrees C without any warping.  It works especially well for vases.

Warren

[toranarod]

Thank you for the explanation. Didn't mean you to write war and peace so Thank you.  

If I understand your post correctly I am to expect a nozzle failure?   Then what do I do.   What I did for my 3D touch was to replace the entire hot end.

With mostly your basic makerbot reprap MK 8 nozzle.  and 0,4 makes for a finer printed object.

 

How hard is it to work with the filament feeding monitoring system they got built in. The 3D touch doesn't have this.   

[Peter Gregory]

There isn't really a monitoring system for the Cubex either.

A worm gear feeds the filament into the extruder.

If you run it too fast, you get the problem and the clicking.

If you run it too slow, bad filament flow and poor prints.

A lot of the Cubex relies on software timing and assumptions that everything is working as expected with no feedback.

[toranarod]

Please correct me if i am wrong.  Up on the extruder carriage is PIC processor connected to a daisy wheel.  this chip monitors the rotation of the filament drive.  The same way a automotive traction control system works.  not as sophisticated but simpler concept.

I suspect the processor send a busy signal to the processor down blow.

The question is how intelligent is the system .     can it be fooled with some simple rewiring or does it transmit a code.   dose it just detect stop and go or is it sequentially linked to the known mm/s of what its expecting to see.

I could generate a false signal so it see what it want while running a after market extruder system.   This is what i have planed for the CubeX. its hot end is crap.  great printer in other areas.    

what about something like this?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ALL-METAL-STATE-OF-THE-ART-3D-PRINTER-EXTRUDER-1-75-FILAMENT-HOT-END-REPRAP/171203633804?rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222002%26algo%3DSIC.FIT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D261%26meid%3D5140106026925596701%26pid%3D100005%26prg%3D1088%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D5%26sd%3D171171782943%26

[Peter Gregory]

Wow, that's nice.

Now that you mention it, I was wrong.

Cubex has stepper motors to pull the filament and encoders attached to the rollers to measure the flow.

When it clicks, the filament slips and no longer rolls over the rollers and filament flow failure occurs.

It does have a feedback system.

Replacing the heads would be very nice if I could get the feedback to match the control board's expectations.

I think I'm stuck with the heads that ship with the unit.

The Matterhacker filament is giving me problems now.

The spool started out great, but I've reached a part of the spool (after about 6 hours of printing) that is too thick.

It is now clicking during the initial purge and I have sub-optimal flow.

I think my problem is getting the "regular" filament rather than the "premium" filament.

The tolerances are are +-.1mm for the regular.

The premium spools are +-.05mm.

I've sent some emails to a few filament suppliers here in the US to see if they have anything that will work within Cubex tolerances.

[Peter Gregory]

I've made some progress.

I was using a newer beta version of KISSlicer (1.2.01.20130625a).

It handled the supports better that the official release version (1.1.0.14) but may have introduced other variables.

I went back to the official release version, reset all the parameters to suggested Cubex settings.

It is printing now without bombing out, but it still clicks sometimes when printing fast supports.

I think what was killing me in the beta version was an acceleration factor that speeds up the print as it grows in layers.

I'm closer to getting the settings working with this filament.

I'm 8 hours into my build.  I see a few layers that look weak with filament flow issues, but it wasn't enough to abort the print.

I'm not sure what would be best to tweak to get the flow working better.

Diameter of the filament?  (Currently 1.7)

Gain on the Material?  (Printer/Extruders/Gain) (Currently 0.0225)

Speed settings?

It is close, but needs to be better to remove the weak layers & clicking issues.

Thanks everyone for all the help!

[Peter Gregory]

Better is not good enough.

My last print will struggle along for 11 hours out of 22 before it reaches a point of filament flow error.

It has problems with short loops.

I suspect it is sucking too much and can't replace the filament with the prime.

I noticed a few voids in the lines after printing support structures.

The same print worked fine with KISSlicer and Cubex filament using settings published for that filament.

I'm sure it is my settings, but I'm not sure what to tweak.

It would help me greatly if people could post the 3rd party filament they have used AND the KISSlicer setting that make it work.

Either screen shots, text descriptions or attach the ini files.

Thanks again for all your info and support!

[hugues]

I've lot of success with a standard PLA from http://www.imprimante3dfrance.com/, the filament diameter is 1.7 mm. Their ABS is a little more thick, near 1.74 mm but works great.

[Peter Gregory]

Thanks Hugues,

Do you use the same settings as Cubex PLA?

Where there any tweaks / differences in your material settings or printer settings?

[hugues]

No, i change the extrusion width to 0.4 and that all, temp is the same and the initial SP in the cubeit v4 works better for this PLA than the cubex one.
I bought the white and i will try the black tomorrow. I also bought a hips from the same manufacturer, i will give a feedback soon.

[hugues]

This is a pic of the test frogs made with this PLA. The big one is printed in 0.1 mm height and the small in 0.05 mm.

[Peter Gregory]

I finally got MatterHacker's filament to work well with my Cubex.

I'm using the mac version of KISSlicer 1.1.0.14 + CubeItModNet.app for post processing.

I'm not hearing any more clicking and full speed printing works.

Here are the material settings I'm using:

[ivan.mon...@gmail.com]

Hi Peter,

I will try these settings and let you know. I have struggled a lot trying to use Matterhacker PLA Pro.

Cheersm

[Ryan]

Try buying filament from Ultibots website.  Filament is made by Village Plastics & looks like the same filament as Cubify spools.

[ivan.mon...@gmail.com]

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for the recommendation. Have you tried this Ultibots filament and what settings you used?

Cheer,

[Ryan]

Nah, just found it yesterday.  It looks like it is manufactured by the same people that make the spools for our CubeX.  I was using 1.7mm for that.  I am using Boots Industries Super Premium filament atm.  I have had good results so far.  Only 1 flow failure after about 32 hours of printing parts (1/2 - 2/3kg probably).  I sent them an email telling them that roll was out of spec & they are sending me a free roll!  I use 1.77 mm in my settings for this. 

[Peter Gregory]

I've given up on SainSmart and I'm currently trying ProtoParadigm green PLA.
I've done a few prints with no problems. This is about 40 hours of print time so far.
However, I have also removed the feeding tubes and mounted the spool of filament about 2 feet above the Cubex feeding directly to the heads.
I thought the filament might be kinking up when I was feeding from the top to a spool mounted on the table near the machine.

[ivan.mon...@gmail.com]

Hi Peter,

I tried you settings for Matterhacker PLA and still getting flow error. I will buy a ProtoParadigm PLA, and let you know.

Cheers,

[Peter Gregory]

Here are the settings I use for that filament:

KISSlicer Mac OSX version 1.1.0.14 with CubeItNet 4.0 beta: