E3D V6 constantly skipping?

[add1ct3dd]

Wondering if anyone else has got the same issue as me, if I start printing slow stuff, where the layer time has to be increased, often the EZStruder will start skipping, and before you know it it's ground a mark in the filament and then just gets stuck.

For normal faster pieces its fine, but seems utterly rubbish for slower ones - anyone else found the same?

In all honesty hugely disappointed with it as a hotend so far, tempted to just go back to stock, I got much better results...

Just had another print fail the last 5% (5 hour print), because the layer time had to be reduced. Annoyed is putting it lightly. I may speak to E3D and see if I can get a refund, not happy with the hotend at all, even considering I had no issues at all with my V5.

[KAS]

What's your retract set to?

[heathenx]

When I was using my E3Dv6 I had to up my temps on all types of material by 10C at least. Skipping went away. Unfortunately I couldn't break past the sparce extruding so I reverted to a stock hotend.

[DavidF]

Things i noticed that causes what you are discribing was reduced air flow across the heatsink from being shrouded. Also the heat break needs to be exposed, you cant cover it up with kaption tape or too much heat is transferred through it. It also tends to do it if you have too much air blowing on the heated part of the hot end from layer fans mounted to the effector. My retracts are set at 2/20 and i have printed things that called for alot of retraction without issue.
How about a picture of how your hot end is set up to settle my curiosity? It would be interesting to find out if what i noticed with my set up is how yours is and if its causing your problems as well.

[KAS]

Things i noticed that causes what you are discribing was reduced air flow across the heatsink from being shrouded. Also the heat break needs to be exposed, you cant cover it up with kaption tape or too much heat is transferred through it. It also tends to do it if you have too much air blowing on the heated part of the hot end from layer fans mounted to the effector. My retracts are set at 2/20 and i have printed things that called for alot of retraction without issue.
How about a picture of how your hot end is set up to settle my curiosity? It would be interesting to find out if what i noticed with my set up is how yours is and if its causing your problems as well.

nozzle touching?

[DavidF]

Things i noticed that causes what you are discribing was reduced air flow across the heatsink from being shrouded. Also the heat break needs to be exposed, you cant cover it up with kaption tape or too much heat is transferred through it. It also tends to do it if you have too much air blowing on the heated part of the hot end from layer fans mounted to the effector. My retracts are set at 2/20 and i have printed things that called for alot of retraction without issue.
How about a picture of how your hot end is set up to settle my curiosity? It would be interesting to find out if what i noticed with my set up is how yours is and if its causing your problems as well.

nozzle touching?

Not sure what you mean, but there is supposed to be a gap between the nozzle and aluminum block when assembled.
Mine is correctly assembled. It printed perfectly over and over until i decided to change the mounting and cooling fans.
Then it printed parts with no retractions fine, but when parts had alot of retracts it would jam. I put things back the way they were before and now its back to normal. I mostly print pla, lots and lots of pla. And i print it slowly

[KAS]

oh sorry, yea that's was what I was getting at. I was researching the v6 before my purchase and saw that posted a few times, so I knew what to look for when building mine.

[add1ct3dd]

When I was using my E3Dv6 I had to up my temps on all types of material by 10C at least. Skipping went away. Unfortunately I couldn't break past the sparce extruding so I reverted to a stock hotend.

I have done this, went from 190C to 210C and still the same, and I'm now at the point where I can smell the PLA, so it's too hot imo, and temperature isn't the factor tbh.

Things i noticed that causes what you are discribing was reduced air flow across the heatsink from being shrouded. Also the heat break needs to be exposed, you cant cover it up with kaption tape or too much heat is transferred through it. It also tends to do it if you have too much air blowing on the heated part of the hot end from layer fans mounted to the effector. My retracts are set at 2/20 and i have printed things that called for alot of retraction without issue.
How about a picture of how your hot end is set up to settle my curiosity? It would be interesting to find out if what i noticed with my set up is how yours is and if its causing your problems as well.

The heatbreak is exposed, I have no kapton tape on it. I also have shrouds which stop too much air blowing onto the heat cartridge too Using default retraction settings so 6.5mm on move, or 10mm otherwise I think at 110mm/s speed.

I don't have any up to date pictures, but this is how it stood before I had finished printing my fan shrouds, and was using 2 temporary ones:

http://i.imgur.com/mFSXhbi.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I now have all 3, which direct the heat exactly to the bottom. I also only run them at 40-60% as they produce quite a bit of air, most of which I think is not required.

[Nareikuk]

Have you tried reducing the retract to something like 2mm rather than the default of 6.5mm? And reduce the retract speed to about 20-30mm/s?

[KAS]

What Nareikuk has suggested is probably the easiest idea to try first.

If you have small gaps or inconsistencies between the PTFE tube and the heatbreak inlet, it's possible to retract to much and cool right at that point which could allow for melted filament to conform to that shape and solidify. (see image below) I use 3mm, and don't have any issues. You might want to pull your PTFE tube and inspect the end. Trim it straight across and try a small taper.

Right at the top of M7x1 is what I'm describing.
[img]http://wiki.e3d-online.com/images/3/39/ ... -BREAK.png[/img]

[DavidF]

Back those retracts way down!! If that doesnt fix it cut back on your layer cooling.

[add1ct3dd]

Hey,

Sorry guys - thought I had posted.

I'm down to 55mm/s retraction speed and 5mm retract, seems to be a lot better and I can print most parts, get a bit of leakage still so I think I need to up it slightly (or reduce temp), though I still can't print this same part.

It seems to be no matter what I set it to, the amount of retractions it does just eats the filament regardless!

I sent a support message to E3d on Monday, yet to hear anything back yet. In all honesty. I'll probably just go back to the stock hotend, performed better with 0 hassle throughout the entire time I used it. The funny thing is, I'm not seeing any real improvement in quality either, so certainly a waste of money so far.


r.e. KAS: Yep I did inspect it, and made sure it was as straight and true as possible, and also forced it in as far as it would go, but what I also did this time was pull the fitting up, and then push it in slightly more, so that it does not have any room to wiggle about - this seemed to help a little more also, but again - still cannot print the same part, due to retraction most layers, and the layers are only a few seconds!

[Nylocke]

I go for 2mm retracts at 45mm/sec with ABS and Michael's recommended 20mm/sec 1-2mm retracts with PLA. Follow Michael's guide as to what temp you should be printing at. I normally extrude 30mm of material around 80mm/sec, decreasing by 5 degrees until the extruder motor starts skipping. Running around 230C on my Kraken with ABS. Haven't done much PLA since switching to the V6 blocks and nozzles, haven't had any jobs that have needed it, but it'd probably be 200C or less.

[Polygonhell]

As others have said E3D hotends do not like a lot of retraction, much over about 3mm and they are pretty much guaranteed to jam at some point. I'd start with 2mm.
I run 2mm at 30 mm/s

In my experiments there was little benefit to any more retraction or retracting any faster.

Also check your temperature with a a thermocouple, my thermistor was reading 20C too high, so 200 was really 180, easily fixed by tweaking beta values in the firmware.