what is happening with my prints?

[bplemmons]

The top layer of all of my prints look like this, I have tried 5 horizontal shells and it looks like it is only printing one thin one.
my extruder multiplier is set to .9 and the cube is 24.8 x 24.8....

[Flateric]

This very strongly looks like filamnent starvation to me. Your infill also looks a bit starved too. Try setting that .9 multi higher.

If you crank the speed of extrusion up to 300% at the end when it is doing the top does it help at all? Note, I do not mean the speed of print, but the speed of filament extruded.

Get back to use with your results.

One last thing, if you are using slicer, do not let it autoselect your extrusion width. Set it manually to the size of your nozzle for a starting point go from there.

[bplemmons]

How do you change the extruder width? in g code?

Bill

[Flateric]

Are you using slic3r from within Repetier host?

[bplemmons]

I have tried kiss as well, I did put the nozzle guide from here in the extruder and it is printing much better. Will post some pics soon...

Bill

[Flateric]

It also occured to me that perhaps you have not got your extruder steps per mm setup correctly in the firmware, maybe?

[bplemmons]

I have it set to 584, I have the rambo 1.1 (16 steps right?)

[Flateric]

Yes, that is the setting I was referring to. Ok, good. So have you made progress, how is it going now?

[bplemmons]

Here is the latest, a lot of it was not having the temp high enough, I'm running 190-200 now...

I am still getting some stringing on the columns but I have retraction set at 10, going to try 11....

Bill

[Flateric]

ABS or PLA? IF your running ABS I would say that this is even still too low a temp.

As far as retract goes this is heavily influenced by each and every build. Hard to recommend there, but I run my retraction at 5-6, with a 1mm lift. I also find that the speed of the retraction can be too fast (or too slow) and have more of an effect then the length of the retraction. Also as you go hotter you make the filament softer and then this can affect how effective speed and retraction amount work effectively. Eventually you'll settle into a butter zone though.

[bplemmons]

Sorry, its pla, I must say, I am running Cura now, It's like a different machine!
I will post a video tomorrow in a new thread....

Bill