Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

After many months of happy printing, the filament does not extrude consistently. See the attached photo. The photo is of the skirt for a 200 mm diameter model. It is the first loop of a two loop skirt. After the second loop, the gaps are not as noticeable but they are there.

Printer is Rostock Max V2 with original hot end. Software MatterControl 1.5.3

Filament is Tianse PLA Red 1.75 mm

Adjustments and calibrations done:
Remove old glue stick glue and apply new glue.
Calibrate extruder
Adjust Z height
Adjust X, Y, & Z Tower heights
Clean the nozzle
Vary temperature between 190 and 200 degrees.
Change heater resistors
Autotune PID
Adjust the heights again.

The gaps seem to be more pronounced at slow print speeds such as the bottom layer (layer 1). They are also pronounced if the layer has minimal area to be printed causing the print speed to reduce.

If the speed multiplier is set to 2x, the gaps are reduced but the layer does not adhere to the print bed very well.

Any suggestions are most welcome.

Hank

Loose hob gear on the extruder? Although I would expect to see it get worse at higher speeds if that was the issue. But, I'd check it anyways.

Thanks, rootboy.

First, I apologize for not updating when I was told about a potential fix for my problem.

Andy at SeeMeCNC asked: "Have you tried another spool of filament?" I hadn't. I was on the third reel of three reels of a filament from Tianse. The first two reels had printed fine. I changed to another filament called "add:north" from Sweden and voila, the problem was fixed.

I have since checked for a loose hob gear and it is tight but thank you for your input.

Just to let you know how fortunate people are to live in developed countries:

I live in Bamako, Mali (a landlocked African country) and access to filament or just about anything else that is a bit techy can be time consuming and expensive. FedEx and UPS cost $170 and take about a week for a 1 kg reel of filament. USPS will charge $80 and the last shipment took 56 days to reach me. On this end, I will pay about $18 for customs fees. $128 to $218 for a $30 spool of filament.

There are many aspiring Africans wishing to experiment with and develop businesses around higher technologies but they are faced with these same problems and they have much smaller budgets than I. The average YEARLY salary in Mali is $1,500. Not monthly, yearly.

Just venting a bit. Thanks for listening and happy printing to all.

Hank

You are more than welcome, and that's a problem that I have never seen.

Yeow! Ouch. And I thought that the tablet that I sent my niece in Mexico was expensive. Actually, that was about what I spent shipping the tablet. And then there was customs, $1400 Pesos, about $75 dollars US. But that was a one time thing.

Ever consider making your own filament?