Have your 3D Prints started to suck? Watch this!

so you've had your 3d printer for a while now and you've printed some amazing things but lately no matter how many times you pray to the 3d printing gods your prints have started to suck they're not sticking to the bed the layers look terrible and you don't know what to do you haven't changed anything have you does this sound familiar well it's happened to me countless times i've used 3d printers that started off fantastic and then slowly went downhill seemingly for no reason but like we know there is no such thing as 3d printing gods so this video i want to go through the top 10 reasons that your 3d printer is starting to suck let's get started [Music] how's it going guys angus here from makers news and welcome back to another 3d printing 101 now as i said 3d printers can start out great but over time things can go wrong things can wear out and your prints can start to suffer even if you're not changing any other variable things will start to creep in that will cause issues down the line and although regular maintenance can help there's some things that can be hidden and difficult to spot as a newcomer and i want to go over them in this video so you can get up and running again printing awesome prints and we'll start with number one which always gets newbies and that is a badly leveled bed and i already hear you saying but angus i already leveled my print bed and got my perfect nozzle height and i was getting great prints but here's the thing most printers have these springs the beds on a spring-loaded plate and as it prints and as it heats up and you know cools down and vibrates it changes it will actually go out of level over time so that means you have to regularly re-level and check your nozzle height that's why it's always a great idea to watch that first layer go down to check for any inconsistencies you'll see a layer is too close which really digging in or too far where you get a really thin wispy line or even it's a little bit wiggly because it's way too far from the print bed and you know something's up and you might be better off stopping that print and going back to the drawing board and re-leveling but how often should you re-level your bed well it depends how rough you are with your 3d printer if you're going after the parts and then trying to get them off the print bed directly and hitting them with a scraper and being rough with that print surface it's going to go out of level every single print pretty much and that's why i'm a really big advocate for removable print surfaces like the magnetic ones for example you take off and then pop the parts off but also why i've been using g10 or garalight so much recently because when the parts cool down they literally self-release and on that printer the longer lk5 pro i haven't had to re-level that for about six months because i put no stress on that print bed and i just make sure i take the prints off gently and i'm not going to push it out of level so number one before you do anything else go check that your print bed's level and the nozzlehead is correct even if you did it a long time ago it's probably changed reason number two your prints now suck is your print surface is probably dirty again with that handling of the surface after the prints are done you use your grubby fingers and you your fingers naturally have oils in them you'll pick up dirt from the environment and then every time you touch that print surface you'll transfer some of that oil and dirt onto that print surface and there's nothing more slippery than a dirty and oily print surface nothing will stick to it no matter how hot you get it you will have prints fail left right and center the thing is it'll be inconsistently dirty as well because as you grab your prints and be touching in different areas so some prints might still work but others will fail completely and others will be somewhere in the middle so make sure your print surface is always very very clean i like to wipe mine down with a little bit of isopropyl alcohol with a paper towel when it's cold because otherwise it'll just evaporate instantly and make sure they are as clean as possible and i do this quite often because where my printers are they're in a garage and when there's high winds it actually pulls dirt from the outside and it settles on the print surface which is really annoying i wish it was sealed but one day so i like to take a paper towel as i said with isopropyl alcohol and just wipe those surfaces every every couple of prints to be honest because it's really cheap insurance to make sure there's no oil or dirt on those surfaces to make sure that i have the best chance of success for that first layer sticking really really well and well if you're looking for a reputable source of all things 3d printing then look no further than this video's sponsor micro center you may be familiar with micro center for the huge range of electronics and computer parts but did you know they also have all of your maker needs covered too for this video micro center sent across these spools of inland pla plus to try out and it prints great i had no issues with stringing or extrusion at all using my stock ender 3. inland is available in a huge range of colors and is really competitively priced so it's definitely worth keeping a few rolls on hand in line with this video's theme they also have a huge range of parts to help you keep your 3d printers running and their friendly and knowledgeable staff are more than happy to help you find what you need however if you find yourself in need of a new 3d printer then i am stoked to announce that the 99 end of 3 pro deal is still going this 100 off coupon is for new customers in store only and it's while supplies last so definitely check it out there's links in the video description it's a pleasure to have microcenter sponsor another video here on makers muse so many of you guys have told me in previous videos you've taken advantage of the end of three pro deal which is awesome and with that let's get back to the video reason number three your prints now suck is worn motion components you might be noticing that your nice vertical straight walls are kind of no longer very nice you might be finding that they're very inaccurate you're getting layer inaccuracies where each layer is sort of off by a little bit and that means the print overall looks really really bad this is because 3d printers are very complex electromechanical machines they're moving in x y and z for hours or up to days sometimes for print runs and these constant movements will eventually wear out those motion components now some motion components wear out faster than others i found that the v-rolls that are very popular on like the ender style i3 printers will often wear down very very quickly and you need to make sure they are nice and tight without any flat spots because again they'll translate into your 3d print but you also need to be careful of the belts they'll often get stretched over time and become loose which means you'll have less precisional accuracy on those movements from the motor to the extruder head for example so you need to make sure that the belts are nice and tight they're not cracking or fraying or anything like that but that doesn't mean linear rod designs aren't immune to wearing out i've seen linear bearings seize up and lose their bearings because they weren't properly lubricated i've also seen the rods ship when they weren't hardened which means that the ball bearings left these deep ruts and grooves into the rods so make sure that all your components are nice and tight they're not wearing out and in some cases you might want to replace them after a long period of printing to basically refurbish your printer back to new so you can get those nice and accurate prints now this section is all about extrusion why your printer might be now extruding badly and i'm going to start with one that you might not have thought about and that is cooked ptfe so what do i mean by that well this only affects some printers but those printers that it does effect are quite popular because they have ptfe all the way down to the nozzle so i'm obviously talking about bowden style 3d printers like the end of three but some direct drive printers have ptfe down to the nozzle as well and this is a problem because ptfe while it is a very high temperature plastic will start to deteriorate at a certain temperature and not only is this kind of dangerous because it off-gasses some pretty nasty chemicals but it will also start to deteriorate and carbonize and no longer have the slippery characteristics that we actually want from ptfe but what does this have to do with your extrusion well as that filament is forced through down the ptfe tube into the hot end it'll melt down the bottom of that ptfe but if that tube is no longer nice and slippery but it's all carbonized and misshapen and rough well that's not going to have an easy job flowing further into your nozzle which will cause all manner of jams issues with retraction just a really really bad time and by far the number one cause for cooked ptfe is printing petg because that has to print at a higher temperature to pla and even abs it's around 250 degrees celsius or so give or take depending on the brand and i found that that temperature is just enough to really accelerate the deterioration of that ptfe in the hot end which causes all matter of problems so the solution here is to replace it periodically if you start to have extrusion issues replacing ptfe is really easy just make sure you buy it from a reputable supplier um the capricorn stuff is really good and i like this little tool they provide which allows you to cut it flush so it goes down and sits very well on the nozzle without having any gaps but again just any good reputable supplier is fine and i'd say this is how you should check as soon as you start having any sort of extrusion issues on known good filament when you haven't had that before make sure that you check that your ptfe isn't burnt but if your ptfe is good there could be a lot of other things going on and the next thing to check is a dead heat break fan a heat break fan is a critical part of your extruder assembly it stops the heat coming from the molten zone up to the cooler zone of the extruder which means that as the plastic comes through it can only melt right at the end and then extrude through the nozzle but if you suffer heat creep for example if your heat break fan isn't working well then that means the heat will slowly come up to the area and saturate it and that means the filament will soften too early then become soft and jam and it'll really jam up quite severely a failure of the heatbreak fan is a real pain to clear and what's really annoying is 3d printing manufacturers for ages have been using really really crap fans for their heat break and usually for their cooling fans they're part cooling fans as well unless they're a reputable brand some printers i've tested have had their fans start to die within a couple of prints because they're built to really poor tolerances and they have what's called a sleeve bearing which is essentially just a little piece of bronze it's a bushing and the tolerances are so poor that when you try to start them up they'll make this horrible horrible noise due to vibrations which sometimes settles in as they warm up but sometimes just stays like that and eventually they just won't spin up at all when that happens you get no cooling of your heat break you get heat creep and you get a pain in the ass jam so if you're hearing this noise replace your fan now you don't have to go crazy like noctua like on the prusa printers but at least just buy something half decent or if you're going to still be cheap buy a couple of cheap ones so you have them on hand for when they inevitably die and you need to replace them the next reason your extrusion might start to suck is because your feeder gear is worn out and again this is a consumable it's been used to print hundreds of hours of parts it's something you should consider replacing fairly regularly if you're just printing with normal pla plastic it's not going to wear very fast but if you start to print with anything that's harder or has abrasives in it such as carbon-filled materials or even glow-in-the-dark filaments have very hard particles in them you're gonna wear right through that brass feeder gear i would recommend having a spare on hand for when that feeder gear starts to wear or if you can you can also just move it because it's essentially just a gear on a shaft so you can just undo it and shift it just a little bit to essentially make it as good as new again but do keep in mind if you're printing with abrasive filaments like carbon filled anything then it's going to wear way faster than with regular filaments but yeah just make sure to do a visual inspection now and then to make sure the area is not just filling up with bits of plastic dust which can indicate you're having a extrusion issue further down the line such as a blocked nozzle you might think that a dodgy nozzle is easy to spot but it's sometimes really not like when a nozzle is completely blocked you can tell because nothing's coming out but when a nozzle has a partial clog it can be really annoying and take you a while to figure out that that's the reason your prints aren't working well so the best way to tell if nozzle has a partial clog or damage is to do a sort of pre-extrude and see what the filament looks like as it comes out of that nozzle if it comes down fairly straight or maybe just a little bit of a bend because of the cooling fan then that's fine but if it's coming around on a really sort of extreme curve and even curving up and touching the nozzle again and getting stuck then you probably have a partial clog where something's forcing that filament to an angle as it's coming out instead of coming down straight through this can be caused by debris in the nozzle or if you've had the misfortune of dragging the nozzle onto the print bed for an extended period of time and you've damaged the metal but it's becoming a lot more common these days instead to have your nozzles blown out and that is where they've expanded in diameter from what they should be and this will also negatively affect your print quality this is a lot harder to spot you can tell if a nozzle's being blown out because it won't be doing fills very well or the fills aren't very accurate you'll see gaps between walls stuff like that when you haven't seen it before this can be caused by bad slicing profiles but if it's creeping in now after a while then it's probably because your nozzle has been damaged and blown out and if you've been printing with anything abrasive then it's a guaranteed factor that a nozzle is going to get damaged a brass nozzle that's subject to carbon filled nylon for example will blow out during the first print you absolutely must print with hardened nozzles if you're going to print with anything abrasive but even just with normal filaments over a long period of time they will get damaged and they're consumable again they need to be replaced periodically if you want the best prints possible but you don't have to spend a fortune on nozzles just buy something half decent unless you again you're printing in abrasive materials in which case you do need something quite hard so it can withstand those materials okay now we're going to talk about your materials that you're printing with you might have gotten a roll of really nice petg for example and gotten some great prints off it but then you try to print with that roll six months later and the prints look terrible well in this case it's probably the filament that's that's at fault not your printer this is because some filaments can absorb moisture from the air they literally absorb water into the into the material so when you print it that moisture bubbles out which causes the material to bubble and spit and string like crazy as you print it the prints look awful but luckily there is a very easy solution i've been using a cheap dehydrator for my materials that are prone to moisture absorption for years now and it works wonderful i can rejuvenate pretty much any role i've had i just put it into this dehydrator and let it sit for six hours or or less sometimes and then print with it and sometimes for the really hygroscopic materials which again means absorbing moisture like nylons i leave it in the dehydrator and then i run it to the printer i've got a little like turntable bearing like a lazy susan in it to make sure it runs with very little resistance and it works great you can buy purpose-built filament dehydrators and spool boxes and all sorts of things if you want to do that go ahead but i've just found the cheap dehydrators work fantastic but yeah you absolutely must try some filaments to print with them i've even found that pla will get stringy with high humidity we've been having crazy weather in australia with like 90 humidity and that's caused some of my pla to actually start becoming really really stringy so i do recommend keeping your materials in an airtight box with some desiccant if you can but don't be too worried because you can rejuvenate filaments with a dehydrator okay our final two are on electronics and they're really important so if you're finding your print bed doesn't seem to be reaching temperature as fast as it used to this is really important you might have an intermittent connection or you may have a connector that is actually starting to burn so there was actually a batch of ender threes a while ago with a really poor quality counterfeit xt60 connector from the bed to the control board and what will happen is that connector will have just a little bit of resistance and the bed wants a lot of current to heat up that little bit of resistance causes heat to build up in the connector as that heat builds up it'll actually start to cause more resistance and it can actually start to burn that connector and that's a recipe for a fire there's been many cases of connectors on control boards having that sort of issue where there's a little bit of resistance just enough to cause heat to build up and then those connectors will slowly slowly start to char that means whatever they're trying to power like the heat beds they'll heat up slower because they're getting less power so if you're noticing anything like that where for example your hot ends heating up too slow or your heat beds heating up too slow definitely check the connectors because they either might be intermittent where they're not connected all the time or there might be something burning which is really really bad and i'm really angry that this is still turning up in printers in 2022. it's disgusting and it has to stop an intermittent wire fault can be trickier to spot and it could be triggered at a certain height for example i've had printers that print fine up to 100 millimeters but then anything beyond that it was enough to bend a wire just enough to break connection and then cause a fault and cause that print beyond that point to fail so definitely check your wires regularly for any sort of damage and if you get a failure like that where it seems to fail at a certain spot then that's very suspicious check very carefully do some diagnostics to make sure you don't have an intermittent wire fault because electrical faults can be really really dangerous and that takes us to the last thing which i implore you to check on your 3d printer that is thermal runaway you would hope that nowadays their runaway issues wouldn't exist but they do um there was a news article like recently about a kid who lost his life because he's 3d printed caught fire so thermal runaway is very very serious but you can check for it very easily and safely let me show you there are several ways you can test to see if your 3d printer has thermal runaway protection enabled but by far the safest and easiest is to simply heat your hot end to temperature and then blow on the hot end with a strong source of cold air to sap the temperature away faster than the heat cartridge can keep up which will then drop the temperature down and trigger hopefully thermal runaway protection if your hotend has any sort of insulation like these silicon socks and it's easy enough to remove then i recommend that then basically heat to temperature and then i use a hair dryer on the cool setting to blast the hot end and i watched the temperature drop lower and lower until finally thankfully it did trigger thermal runaway protection now if this wasn't enabled the heat cartridge would just keep trying to heat up this is a problem because if it becomes disconnected from the hotend and thermistor then it can actually burn and catch fire which is really really dangerous 3d printers must have thermal runway protection enabled like in the case of this ender 3 that i bought recently a big thumbs up it does indeed have thermal runaway protection enabled so thank you so much for watching and i hope you found this video useful i hope you get your 3d printer printing back to normal the way it used to be and again no the 3d printed gods are not out to get you because they don't exist i'm sure you can find the source of your printing problems a big thanks to microcenter for sponsoring this video here on makers muse and if you want to see future content then be sure to subscribe thanks for watching guys bye

Channel: Maker's Muse

Views: 595,388

Keywords: 3d, printing

Id: -cm1vIER_bk

Length: 20min 3sec (1203 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 22 2022