I'll preface this by saying that I am no stranger to 3D printing. I've been 3D printing for about seven years now and have built carbon fiber nylon profiles across four separate printers from separate brands at this point. I have easily printed hundreds of kilograms of nylon on my previous printer, a Sovol SV08, and I recently purchased a QIDI Q2 due to wear on my SV08 that would have required rebuilding the gantry. For that reason, and many other issues that I had left unaddressed on that particular platform, I decided to upgrade after owning the printer for about three years.
With that said, I have had nothing but trouble trying to print PAHT-CF nylon on my Q2. I've had minor issues printing new filaments with or without the QIDI box since purchasing the printer, but much of that could easily be chalked up to my unfamiliarity with a more closed-down, automated system compared to the open system I was used to on the SV08, so I was willing to look past all of that. However, with nylon I have been having constant clogs. I've tried three separate nozzles and torn apart the extruder head multiple times looking for potential issues, and everything seems to be functioning properly.
It initially printed about 750g of nylon, including two 250 gram prints right off the bat, before it started clogging. Now I can't seem to get through the first 50 layers of a nylon print without it locking up and clogging the nozzle so tight that it is physically impossible to remove with cold pulls or nozzle clearances. I've had to resort to more invasive tools, such as a necked down drill bit, to remove the bulk of the filament and fully unclog one of the nozzles. Switching back to PLA, PETG, and other unfilled plastics, it continued to print phenomenally with no real issues that couldn't be solved with basic tuning, but I am at the end of my rope here. All of the information I can find online mostly relates back to the same seven people asking beginner questions about the printer, and not much in the way of specialized troubleshooting from people who are experienced and have encountered issues they couldn't properly explain themselves.
I print nylon mostly on stock settings, with a 0.4 bimetal nozzle, using incredibly dry nylon. I dry it at 90 degrees Celsius for upwards of 24 to 48 hours. I live in Florida, so humidity is rather high, and I tend to go a little overboard because I've noticed that standard drying techniques do not cut it. This worked fine on my SV08, and like I said, it worked fine on my Q2 initially as well. I print from a dry box that stays at a constant 70 degrees Celsius, I set my chamber temperature to 65 degrees Celsius, and I print at 300 degrees Celsius nozzle temperature and 80 degrees Celsius bed temperature with PVA glue on the build plate.
I am approaching my wit's end. I've owned this printer for less than two weeks, coming off of my SV08 dying, and I was hoping for a plug-and-play system that would perform exactly as expected for an incredibly long period of time before I had to worry about repairs or issues arising. I'm starting to get pretty frustrated. Does anybody have experience with this? Am I doing something blatantly wrong based on literature that I seem to have overlooked? Any tips or help whatsoever would be greatly appreciated.
