My problems with clear PLA... any suggestion?

[Pascal POECK]

Try to print the extruder upgrade from whpthomas... without any success :(

Makerware 7 + firmware upgrade

Infill 100%

Number of shells 1

Feedrate 80 mm/s

Travel Feedrate 150 mm/s

Print Temperature 230°

Put paper to make my plate more rigid

Put a little bit oil on my fillament

For the moment I had succes with the Mk8-Upgrade-Pin-v2.stl : yes so small that it was pretty easy but no luck with Mk8-Upgrade-Arm-v2.stl (try 3 times and the best shots is the picture below)

Any advice or suggestions?

Thank's ;)

[Dan Newman]

The filament feeder is clearly jamming from time to time or otherwise failing
to feed in filament. Hence the gap in the print with later resumption onto
air or missing sections of the prior layer.

Since most folks have serious problems with the MBI clear filament, try the
other PLA spool which was provided with your Rep 2 (assuming it's not clear
also). [With my Rep 2, I received the small spool of clear and a second
spool of translucent green PLA. I'm assuming that you also received two
spools of PLA.]

And, if you haven't already, follow the directions from MBI on adjusting
the plunger tightness on the stock Mk8 extruder which you have,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOJN_8AAC9U

Dan


> Thank's ;)
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> <1.png><2.png><3.png>

[Pascal POECK]

Well, lucky man, I received only one spool of clear PLA, no translucent green.

I have already adjust the plunger tightness severall times and now I can print some small things so I'm pretty sure that it is a clear PLA problem.

I have ordered a new spool of black PLA, hope it will be fine with this one ;-)

Thank's for your response Dan ;)

PS: will try with ReplicatorG, just in case :)

[Dan Newman]

On 20 Jan 2013 , at 9:44 AM, Pascal POECK wrote:

> Well, lucky man, I received only one spool of clear PLA, no translucent
> green.
> I have already adjust the plunger tightness severall times and now I can
> print some small things so I'm pretty sure that it is a clear PLA problem.
> I have ordered a new spool of black PLA, hope it will be fine with this one
> ;-)
>
> Thank's for your response Dan ;)
>
> PS: will try with ReplicatorG, just in case :)

There's always printing it *slow* and hope that the extruder can handle
that better. E.g., a feedrate of 30 or 40 mm/s.

Dan

[Eighty]

Dan, you're probably the only customer that got an extra spool gratis. And to be honest, they owe you a lot more than that...

Even with other colors, I have had occasional issues with extrusion gaps for a few layers. It usually picks up again, so I end up with a "holiday" in my print. Oddly enough, it only happens with Makerware, not RepG. Visual confirmation on the slices shows no issues. Still haven't figured that out.

I agree with Dan, though. Slowing down can usually solve this.

Now for the bad news. Your choice of black probably wasn't a good one, if you're looking for easy-breezy-beautiful. I, as well as some others on this forum, have found that curls...a lot. Consider yourself forewarned...

[funmakerBart]

about the plunger problem: why do you use oil on the filament? To have less grip? Never saw that. Isn't that causing your problems with the extruder missing steps?

I have printed a lot with transparent PLA, things I found:

• the output extrusion according to the measured diameter seems a little more off then other filaments: I print several calibration cubes to tweak the diameter setting to the wanted output. You can't use the standard settings for that, you have to make a custom setting.
• transparant PLA can be printed at a little lower temperature than other PLA colors. Even 180 degrees. I use 210 though. Just the temp it's not oozing that much (what you have looking at the pics, which is normal at 230 degrees.) I think you have to edit your startGcode for that (it's in the same folder under "my things" // profiles // the profile you just made.
• Transparent PLA seems to be more flexible when still warm. Because of this the object is moving under extrusions, resulting in a bad print: to prevent that you can:
• slow down printing. 80mm/s is way to much for those little objects. It's more like 40 perimeter and maybe 60-80 for the rest, or:
• make the minimum layer time higher, also resulting in slower speeds at the small parts of the object. I use 8 seconds for PLA
• cool your object during printing. You don't have a heated bed I suppose, but I set mine on 60 degrees (with the hairspraymethod). I additionally have a 120mm fan blowing to print, and I have reversed my extruder fans to cool the print as well.

I added some screenshots to clarify.

Hopes it helps.

Bart

[Pascal POECK]

To clarify the "oil story", I just saw that ont this group...severall post are talking about canola oil and a lot of people seems happy with that so i give it a try...

Regarding the fact that a black spool is probably not the best choice to avoid printing problem, any suggestion of a good color? Maybe white? Red?

It seem's to be a lot of small things to configure and that everybody has it's own method... not so easy to find "mine"... ;)

I will try your tips Bart, thank's for sharing ;)

[Clinton Hoines]

Best PLA I have ever printed with so far is the Yellow, it has never done any air printing and printed successfully at 50 and 10 microns. I went through 2 rolls then hit a bad spot in one roll which wrecked a print but it was a flaw in the filament (chinese no name) not the printing or PLA itself.

 

Clinton