Best way to remove ghost looking spider webs on prints

[Cory Jorgensen]

After I print, i have a lot of spider web looking stuff in the holes... I printed the Mac Trash can that has lots of small holes in it. Anyone have a clever idea how to clean these holes and remove the web looking material. I tried a toothbrush but with no luck.

[David Ballard]

i've used a blowtorch (a couple feet away from the object and for only a second) sweeping it across the object-

dave

[Jetguy]

Well, step #1 is to not create such a mess. Since you didn't say what machine this is, most likely, you have a 5th gen.

 

If you have a 5th gen, best of luck. Basically, you can try editing the profile and dial in more retraction but that's about all you can do.There are some fundamental design changes in the 5th gen compared to previous machines and a huge tradeoff is that retraction doesn't work with the giant melt zone in the hot end that is roughly double the amount of constantly melted filament compared to a Replicator 2.

Because there is this huge and long zone of melted filament, there is nothing to keep it from dripping out the nozzle. In a good extruder with a shorter melt zone, you can retract the filament up and pull nearly everything back into a cold zone. On the 5th gen, you pull back too far, you will jam it.

 

On Tuesday, September 9, 2014 1:31:35 PM UTC-4, Cory Jorgensen wrote:

[Jetguy]

Sorry if that came off as me bashing a dead horse but again, if this is a 5th gen, why do we put up with these problems?

 

Why would a 5th gen be LESS tunable, less reliable, and produce worse quality parts than the previous Replicator 2?

 

I know why, it's called they think we all are stupid and fall for this.

 

Again, sorry, but I consider such a cleanup of threads and strings a lost cause. The whole goal is to never make them in the first place.

On other machines that are more tunable, you simply lower temperatures and 99.999% of the time, the stock profile in Makerware would never make such strings.

If your machine is say a Replicator 2 or 2X, and you recently updated to Sailfish firmware, and you failed to follow the setup instructions, then you might have left Deprime at the default of 16 steps rather than the required 0 steps. If so, if that's wrong, I highly suggest you go through the entire reset to factory defaults and calibrate the machine. Again, that process is only for non-5th gen printers.

[LB engg]

I have a 5th gen, and reduced the amount of spider webs significantly by reducing the extruder and travel speeds.  I am still experimenting but it is getting better.  I usually use and box knife to clean the webs out of the holes and fingers to remove webs along a surface.