This noise is coming from the extruder—I’m sure it’s coming from the yellow gear—but I took it apart and cleaned it, and there was nothing wrong there. I put it back together, made sure the filament tube was clear, and reattached the clips and other parts. I also think the filament settings are correct—I adjusted the temperature, maximum extrusion speed, and so on. It doesn’t seem like there’s a problem with the print itself, but this noise persists during filament feeding and printing. Could anyone with more experience or knowledge on this topic help me out?
That’s your extruder stepper losing steps, it’s happening because it’s trying to push filament into the hotend faster than it’s able to be melted and extruded - so the stepper skips.
This could be happening for a variety of reasons. Partially clogged nozzle. Very wet filament. Poorly seated hotend. Malfunctioning heater. Previous filament was higher temp and some still remains in the hotend. Etc.
One other thing -
It’s usually a bad idea to “do stuff” before truly getting to the root cause of an issue. The default settings work for hundreds of thousands of users in 99.999% of situations, and when you do find the actual root cause, the other stuff will usually lead to other issues or mask the improvement made by actually fixing it.
Thanks, I don’t think it’s because of the nozzle. I removed the nozzle and tried extruding; I slid the filament down from the top with my hand, and the noise was still there. But here’s what happened: at first, the noise was very loud, but as I kept extruding, it stopped, so I thought the problem was solved. However, it’s still happening during purges and prints—the noise comes and goes. I really don’t understand it; I’m confused.
By the way, I live in a humid city, and the relative humidity is around 25%. I use bambu filament, and before every print, I dry it to remove any moisture—the humidity drops to around 18–20%—and then I print.
This is probably irrelevant to the noise issue but (pet peeve alert!)… humidity figures are completely useless w/out a corresponding temperature. Hygrometer reading is relative to temperature, because temperature determines how much moisture air can hold. Heating up a filament dryer will drop relative humidity almost immediately because warm air can hold more moisture (the temp/humidity sensors will take some time to catch up). It doesn’t mean the filament got any drier.
-Max