Comment on Ender 3 having issues with text
Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 3 months agoYou should only need to see a few layers to tell if there’s still a problem. No need to waste filament printing a complete failed piece.
Oh I should have mentioned in the previous post… if a cold-pull doesn’t make any difference, have you checked the nozzle itself? It’s a very tiny hole, easily damaged, so if the head smacked into anything it might have slightly crushed the tip (not something you would see by eye). You could also try clearing the nozzle with the long needle that came with the printer – if it doesn’t fit into the nozzle tip then it’s almost certainly suffered some damage. Always keep a bag of spare nozzles on hand!
kboy101222@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
The Nozzle’s recently been changed from one I managed to completely clog, as well as having been thoroughly cleaned. When I got this thing up and running again, I did everything shy of a complete reassembly for cleaning. I’m not sure about the crushed tip part. I’ve long since lost the needle that came with the printer, but I can run out to Walmart tomorrow and grab a new one to check.
I’m also just using these bottlecaps as markers that only I’ll be able to see, so their overall quality isn’t super important, I just want to improve future prints, and this lets me test out text quality. Figured I’d just knock out 2 birds with one stone!
Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 3 months ago
That works, just keep testing changes until you figure it out.
May be a stupid question, but are you hearing any clicking from the extruder while printing? If the brass gear gets clogged up it can start slipping. Or if there’s not enough tension on the spring it might not push the filament through reliably. For that matter have you printed an arm to change the angle the filament feeds into the extruder (if you still have the spool in the stock position on top of the printer)? There are many better ways to handle that issue, but original setup causes a lot of friction and you’ll actually see the filament cutting a groove into the extruder, and the arm is the easiest print to solve it. You pretty much want to check everything that might be causing the filament to drag or not allow it to feed smoothly into the head.
kboy101222@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
I’m seeing a few filament guides for the ender 3 on thingiverse. Would you recommend either of these?
www.thingiverse.com/thing:2920344
www.thingiverse.com/thing:2917932
Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 3 months ago
The second one with the blue arm is the style I was talking about. It changes the angle so the filament doesn’t get pulled into the extruder at a right-angle. It will help for now, but there are other models that use a ball bearing for a spinning wheel that the filament rolls over. And if you really want to make it smooth, there are ball bearing rollers so the whole spool spins more freely. That’s one of the things I love about this printer, there is such a range of mods you can print to make the whole machine better.