PLA oozing out on its own

[nrud...@gmail.com]

I just installed a Pico (1.75mm 300c) into my Q3D Twoup and I'm having an oozing PLA problem.

I have calibrated the PID values and saved them in firmware, used vegetable oil on the filter, attached the fan 30mm from the fins (no shroud) and I am able to extrude. My problem is that the Pico is oozing PLA out on its own uncontrollably. It doesn't look like black sludge necessarily, but rather there's built up pressure inside and its releasing by oozing? I've tried lowering my temps (all the way down to 170), which seems to slow the rate of ooze slightly, by when I got low enough for it to just be a slow creep, the Pico jammed. I also tried retraction at various increments with no luck. Could it be too much oil? I added 4 drops to the filter, gravity dripped from a straw.

I originally set my temp for 200, and lowered by 5s and 10s to 170 with no stop to the ooze. My filament is cheap Inland PLA from Microcenter, though many people have had success with it. It suggests printing between 190-220.

How do I stop this oozing?

Overall, I'm loving the build quality of this thing! The stock hot end (Anubis, which is a knock-off version of the Ubis) had virtually no thermal barrier and I was unable to extrude at all because of jams. I have yet to print anything on my printer, so I'm hoping that someone will be able to help out! I have to say, I'm extremely impressed by the B3 presence on this support forum!

Thanks!

[B3]

Thank you for posting up on here and thanks for the compliments!

We have been using Micro Center's Inland PLA and I gotta say, it's been very cooperative for us and Pico so its successful for us too. We print the PLA at 207 C with using the oil on the filter. (And that's using the thermocouple that came on the PowerSpec, not a thermistor...so temps may vary because of our setup). Oozing has been manageable. We have seen times where it oozes more than usual and times to where it does not. Mainly at the warm up stage it oozes. This particular filament seems to ooze more than usual and also in our other printers with their OEM hot-ends as well.

That being said, a few factors that contribute to ooze are the temperature (which you have touched base on), if you retract after extruding and the brand PLA (which you touched base on as well)

What we have noticed is that if you retract after extruding (you only need 0.5 to 1mm of retraction) then that should help control the ooze a little bit as well as printing with the correct temperature. The retraction could be done after warm up, sitting idle, and during printing.

Some good practices to work around oozing:

We do see more ooze during warm up, but our G code warms up off the side of the print bed and then purges off the side of the print bed with a wipe. Thats helped a lot.

Make sure you use retraction.

Avoid where possible letting PLA sit for a long-time at melting temperature. This goes for all hot-ends and all printers. PLA degrades quickly at printing temperatures and is not meant to sit idle at printing temperatures.

And finally, for dual setups, program wipes in your g-code.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions. I'll be glad to help where I can!

Mike

The B3 Team

-print on, printers!-

[nrud...@gmail.com]

Thank you B3 Team! It has been several months since you gave this advice and it has helped! I haven't had a single jam using this PLA filament with the Pico! I've been using vegetable oil on the filter and printing usually at 220. I've made many successful small prints and upgrade parts for my printer using this hot end!

I recently upgraded my printer to have a heated bed (to combat warping on large PLA parts), and I am still having trouble with the PLA warping up from the glass. I've been playing around with Pico temp settings and bed temp settings, but I've been unsuccessful with prints sticking on corners or coming loose completely in the middle of a print.

My bed is a rubber silicone heater (200x200) wired directly to my RAMPS and a PC power supply on a Q3D TwoUp. It is sitting on an MDF base, with plain picture frame glass on top (the 2.5 mm stuff from home depot). I am cleaning the glass with rubbing alcohol between each print.

Typically, I set the bed at 60c and the Pico to 220. I've tried some prints at 210 to try to eliminate oozing and stringing, but with no luck (I only recently realized that my travel moves were 16.7mm per second... oops! Changing this has helped with travel oozing).

If I'm printing directly to glass, should I modify these temperatures? Any suggestions for printing with the Pico with this Inland PLA onto heated glass?

Thanks for all that you do!

[B3]

Thank you very much for sharing your positive feedback and experiences with Pico!

We like to print on blue painter's tape and/or Extreme Elmers glue stick (Extreme type only). These have yielded fantastic results for us in addition to heating the bed at 60 Celsius.

The first layer height and perfect bed level are also very important factors as well. The first layer should squish wo where it flattens a bit and is not perfectly round. A good way to test is if you can pick away the first few strands after the extruder has put some lines down, then it is not squished enough (using blue tape with the glue stick). It it is not easy to pick away the first few lines of print, then you have a good setup.

Hope that helps!

Mike

The  B3 Team