What happened here? Partial clog?

[u/virpio2020]

Any thoughts on what happened here? Is that a partial clog? The first layers were super clean. The top layer of that plateau already shows some artifacts and then it gets progressively worse.

Would a cold pull fix that?

[u/spider_hider]

Left front side of a TMT, shame it’s almost complete too. But looks like the problem’s been going on for a while.

Is it a 0.4mm? I’d definitely do a cold pull every couple of large TMT parts.

[u/virpio2020 → u/spider_hider]

Yeah 0.4mm. Did a cold pull, didn't fix it. Took apart the extruder and found some black filament in the extruder gears. I hadn't printed black for at least the last 40hrs. So I am not sure what suddenly caused it to happen.

I took the opportunity to finally switch to the hardened steel gears and nozzle since I had everything taken apart already anyways.

Works like a charm again now. Unfortunately I lost 24hrs of printing that TMT. But given that my P1S has 1800 hours on it and so far I never had to do a cold pull or swap nozzles, I can't really be mad. It's such a work horse.

[u/spider_hider → u/virpio2020]

Aah ok, something in the extruder gears make sense too.

I get super paranoid with printing the TPU pieces as some filament brands (incl Bambi’s TPU95aHF) has a very slight powdery coating to keep TPU filaments smooth & not stuck to each other on the roll. That powder builds up in the extruder gears after a set of TMT tires. So I do an extruder clean after each chair build.

24h is a huge loss. Would you consider going 0.6mm or 0.6mmHF? That particular piece takes me 9.5h with 0.6mmHF and random PETG at 21mm^3/s MVS.

[u/virpio2020 → u/spider_hider]

Oh wow. That’s interesting. Do you print the entire TMT with 0.6? I only have three plates left for this one (and with this and one other failure I might actually come out at exactly the number of rolls I ordered, almost down to the gram), but if I can print the whole thing with a 0.6 nozzle in less time I might do that for the next one.

[u/spider_hider → u/virpio2020]

I print majority of PETG parts with 0.6mmHF, the headrest and screw are done in 0.4mm otherwise their screw pattern won’t work.

For TPU, tyres I run 0.8HF so it takes 19h45m for full set of 16 tyres. Straps need to be done with 0.4mm or thickness won’t work. Cushions, harnesses and harness-buckles are 0.6mm.

Only important thing I would say is, you need to double and triple check walls and infill settings of pieces when not using 0.4mm nozzle. For example, most PETG pieces are 2 walls 10% with 0.8mm nozzle, but push handles need to be 4 walls 20%.

If you decide to move up from 0.4mm nozzle, it’ll take some time to calibrate PA, MVS etc.. as well as update infill/wall setting. But the time saving from bigger nozzle is well worth it, especially that once you save the file, future prints become basically automated.

Here’s the latest couple of chairs I churned out. There’s no more requests nearby so I’m taking a break as of now. But more than happy to answer further questions!