Retraction settings with E3D-v6 - Slower is better
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2016 12:16 pm
I think I may have seen this mentioned somewhere else on this forum, however, having struggled for the last week with severe stringing with PLA when I upgraded my Rostock Max V2 to use an E3D v6 head I thought it might be worth mentioning again. It might help somebody else struggling with the same issue.
Just about all the advice you read about reducing stringing tells you to increase the retraction rate as much as you can. In practice, with this combination of a long Bowden extruder and E3D head, I found precisely the opposite to be the case! I got best results, way better than with faster speeds, when using a slow retraction speed of 30 mm/s or less. The 100 mm/s + recommended speeds were awful.
For now, I've settled on 2 to 3 mm retraction at 30 mm/s for PLA.
Note: I'm not doubting that for many machines increasing retraction speeds may be a good thing for stringing, but for my Rostock Max 2 wih standard Bowden and an E3D v6 extruder, it isn't.
Just about all the advice you read about reducing stringing tells you to increase the retraction rate as much as you can. In practice, with this combination of a long Bowden extruder and E3D head, I found precisely the opposite to be the case! I got best results, way better than with faster speeds, when using a slow retraction speed of 30 mm/s or less. The 100 mm/s + recommended speeds were awful.
For now, I've settled on 2 to 3 mm retraction at 30 mm/s for PLA.
Note: I'm not doubting that for many machines increasing retraction speeds may be a good thing for stringing, but for my Rostock Max 2 wih standard Bowden and an E3D v6 extruder, it isn't.
