As I might have mentioned in my previous blog post about 3D printing, I was having trouble getting my prints to come out half decently, especially with my newer filaments.
I think I mentioned having extruder problems - the print lines were often a bit thin. Some suggested a clogged nozzle, so I cleaned it, but that didn't help.
I watched a few videos on the subject, and took the advice to start by printing some heat towers to determine what the best nozzle heat setting is for each filament. Maybe temperature was the issue.
Here is the result of the gold, wood, and black Multicomp filaments from my printer:
The wood coloured filament came out quite nice, though it had some stringing. But the gold and black came out rather weak, and the towers fall apart easy. You can tell in the picture that the gold one has imperfections at pretty much every temperature. The black one was the same way.
All of them had stringing in the open areas, which I thought was due to retraction settings. The black tower was nice in that the very top of it gave me positive feedback that the temperatures did change over the tower! 
that top setting is the coolest, and a fair bit lower than the recommended temperature for that filament. I also checked the display as it was printing, of course.
Then at one point I came across a video where they mentioned that the Ender 3 extruder has a weakness in its design - the plastic lever part can crack.
So at this point I thought I may as well try a few upgrades - I bought a set of nozzles and a new metal extruder from Creality, for about $20 US total. Not a big investment for what I hoped might make for a bit better results. I heard the metal extruder would be a bit more grippy. At least it would likely last longer than the plastic. And with these nozzles I would be sure of the size of nozzle I was using - the one that was in there didn't seem to be marked. I assumed it was the standard 0.4mm but I had nothing to compare it to.
Installing the nozzle and the new extruder was quick and easy. The printer came with the tools, and thankfully I still knew where I had put them!
And it looks pretty, so there's that.
After I installed it, I thought I'd give the old plastic extruder arm a quick look - that video I had watched mentioned they sometimes get hairline cracks that can affect its ability to grip and extrude filament properly.
Well Theeeeeere's Yer Problem!!
That sucker is VERY cracked! The funny thing is, that this wasn't noticeable from above. Or maybe it was if I had looked much more closely. 
So I think... I hope! that this was the issue with my printer.
It makes sense - the white and wood filaments have a matte surface, which would be easier to grip, and would therefore give better results. The black and gold filaments are shiny and more slippery - those would definitely be much more likely to slip in a loose extruder. The slower more detailed layer heights would also extrude more slowly, which would be less likely to slip. This gives me hope!
So I think I'll try printing that little black cube again, to see if it comes out any better.
The heat test towers take like 3 hours to print, but I'll have to run those again to get a better feel of which temperature to choose - these firsts ones are too messy to be sure.
I see I can just stop the print early though - no point in printing the low temperature top end that's a definite mess!
Top Comments