What am I doing wrong?

shinegull · December 28, 2023

Recently I had an issue with my 3D printer. Today, I have a similar experience. Basically my printing kept failing.

Issues included but not limited to the following

- Print not sticking to board

- Print warping

- print clumping

- Filament is stringing

- Filament initial layer wall dragging

Following steps for trouble shooting was done

- Cleaning with soap

- Wipe down with alcohol

- Elmer Gluestick

- Re doing the levelling/calibration/z offset

- Redoing the design of the print

- Slowing down the print

Final last resort was switching out the nozzle and checking for clogs in the extruder, which ultimately resolved the issue

This is the second time I've had to replace the nozzle, as the first time I had an issue, the nozzle replacement fixed the issue.

I've had the printer for about a month

I've done an average of one print every day or 2. Print times range from 30 min to 12 H

Settings I generally customize (I don't think it should affect the route cause but who knows)

Infill percent (20 to 70)

Infill Type (Usually I use grid / honeycomb / cubic )

Build Plate adhesion is set to none

Support used is Tree slim touching build plate at 15%

On Occasion, I will use Enable Ironing

Printer used is an Ender 3 V3 SE

Please someone help me find out why my nozzle and only the nozzle is getting clogged enough that i should change it every couple weeks? Because that does not sound normal

TVwazhere · December 30, 2023

On 12/27/2023 at 11:35 PM, shinegull said:

Please someone help me find out why my nozzle and only the nozzle is getting clogged enough that i should change it every couple weeks? Because that does not sound normal

What material is the nozzle (Brass, hardened steel, ruby, etc) and what filament are you printing with? Some are very abrasive to nozzles such as any glow in the dark variant or carbon fiber.

shinegull · December 30, 2023

3 hours ago, TVwazhere said:

What material is the nozzle (Brass, hardened steel, ruby, etc) and what filament are you printing with? Some are very abrasive to nozzles such as any glow in the dark variant or carbon fiber.

Its whatever nozzle came with the printer. I kept with the creality nozzles still though

Didn't know glow in the dark affected it so much, since I went through a couple kg of that first before removing to white filament

It's all PLA or PLA+ though.

TVwazhere · January 3

On 12/30/2023 at 2:40 PM, shinegull said:

Its whatever nozzle came with the printer. I kept with the creality nozzles still though

Didn't know glow in the dark affected it so much, since I went through a couple kg of that first before removing to white filament

It's all PLA or PLA+ though.

Glow in the dark is heavily abrasive due to the additives they have to put in to glow.

Moisture does affect print quality. Depending on where you live, your relative humidity could be very high (equator and surrounding sun belts) however 30-50% humidity has not shown to be an issue for my openly stored PLA or ABS. That said, drying your filament might help some or many of these issues. There's a couple of ways you can do this, but the simplest one is using your printer and the box it came in.

shinegull · January 7

On 1/2/2024 at 7:54 PM, TVwazhere said:

Glow in the dark is heavily abrasive due to the additives they have to put in to glow.

Moisture does affect print quality. Depending on where you live, your relative humidity could be very high (equator and surrounding sun belts) however 30-50% humidity has not shown to be an issue for my openly stored PLA or ABS. That said, drying your filament might help some or many of these issues. There's a couple of ways you can do this, but the simplest one is using your printer and the box it came in.

Yea, no kidding on the heavily abrasive part

I've been printing with normal white filament for maybe a week or 2 now. i have had a couple really bag prints in giant clusters and clumps. despite that, print has continued to move forward. filament change seems to have done the trick.

Thank you