My Volcano Needs a Tune-Up

[jdacal]

I installed a volcano last night to try and speed up some of my production prints. I printed a 20mm x 20mm x 2.4mm cube following jsc's tutorial ( viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1964 ). I have the height at 2.4mm since I'm using a .6mm layer height with a .8mm nozzle. Width is set to 1mm. Everything came out pretty close after a few adjustments to the cube settings. So I then proceeded to try the first print. This particular print I usually do in pairs and they take about 9 - 10 hours to print. So I'm trying to cut the print time down to half to increase the amount I can make in a 24 hour period.

EDIT: Speed is set at 60mm/sec

Hotend is set to 240 Bed at 103

Anyway, here's what I got after the calibration with the cube when printing the first print. (Note: I didn't do any calibration to the infill settings yet). I remember having that issue when I first got the printer with my .35mm nozzle, but don't recall what was causing it.

Here's some pictures and a factory file if anyone gets a chance to comment. I'm sure you'll find lots of wrong settings as the larger nozzle size appears to require totally different settings.

Also, I read on the volcano site that Slic3r tends to be better with bigger nozzles than S3D, any truth to that?

Thanks!

2015-09-08 14.04.55_1.jpg (365.37 KiB) Viewed 11769 times

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2015-09-08 14.05.03_1.jpg (347.42 KiB) Viewed 11769 times

2015-09-08 14.05.11_1.jpg (430.64 KiB) Viewed 11769 times

[jsc]

It looks like the first layer went down fine, then the second layer wants to stop and drool every so often. The only difference would be the first layer width and print speed, so try extruding a fair bit in open air at your second layer speed and see what happens. Can it keep up with that much flow?

Your width-over-thickness (WOT) ratio is a little low, try .5mm and see if that helps.

Also, you just gave away the whole game with that factory file! Now I, too, can make millions on Amazon.

[jdacal]

It looks like the first layer went down fine, then the second layer wants to stop and drool every so often. The only difference would be the first layer width and print speed, so try extruding a fair bit in open air at your second layer speed and see what happens. Can it keep up with that much flow?

Your width-over-thickness (WOT) ratio is a little low, try .5mm and see if that helps.

Also, you just gave away the whole game with that factory file! Now I, too, can make millions on Amazon.

Thanks will try the open air suggestion.

LOL! There's a license attached to it on Thingiverse. Of course anyone is free to draw up a rectangle full of holes, its all in the marketing!

[jdacal]

Getting there! Still needs tweaking. My real concern was the holes and they are actually coming out great. Went from 4-1/2 hours with the .35mm nozzle at .3mm height to 1hr 50min with the .8mm nozzle at .6 layer height. That now means that instead of 5 per 24 hour period I can do 12! It's almost like having a second printer. This one was done at 8% infill, I'm going to add another solid layer to try to smooth out some of the kinks.

Well back to tweaking...

[jsc]

What was the second layer issue?

[jimc]

gotta love big nozzles lol. i have been running a .6 now most of the time. without the volcano of course. the .6 gives good prints and speeds things up. i do always find myself tweaking and fighting blobs etc. i am being critical though. most stuff comes out good but not like with a .35 or .4 nozzle. i recently special ordered some .5 nozzles which will still give me the layer heights i was using but a little added control. i found just the jump from .6 to .5 to make a huge difference in print quality and not slow things down at all. i have a .8 here that i tried a very long time ago and i found that to be really tough to control. all i can say with your .8 is....trial and error. it will probably take time and many test prints to really dial it in nice.

[jdacal]

What was the second layer issue?

I slowed it down from 60mm to 40mm and raised the temperature by 5 degrees. But I brought the temperature back down now, I don't think that had anything to do with it. Doing another set now after some other tweaks.

[jdacal]

gotta love big nozzles lol. i have been running a .6 now most of the time. without the volcano of course. the .6 gives good prints and speeds things up. i do always find myself tweaking and fighting blobs etc. i am being critical though. most stuff comes out good but not like with a .35 or .4 nozzle. i recently special ordered some .5 nozzles which will still give me the layer heights i was using but a little added control. i found just the jump from .6 to .5 to make a huge difference in print quality and not slow things down at all. i have a .8 here that i tried a very long time ago and i found that to be really tough to control. all i can say with your .8 is....trial and error. it will probably take time and many test prints to really dial it in nice.

I'll probably try the .5 tomorrow. I'm not getting great texture but a lot of that is due to the plastic I'm using. This Push Plastic has a great price, but it likes to pop about every 3/4 inch. Actually for this project it gives it a nice texture, but some of my other things I'd rather have smooth walls. I'm liking this .8 with the volcano, I tried the .8 with the e3D and I was going nuts. Seems to respond much better with the volcano, or maybe I'm just putting more effort into it since its a new toy.