I like to print a lot of magnets and stuff with faces down on a textured build plate. I always got great results by bumping up the default 0.98 flow rate to 1. Recently I noticed more gaps between colors and told layers looked like they were being under extruded slightly. Ran a calibration test in Orca and only the max +20 had a gap free to layer. That is a flow rate of 1.176. Nothing has changed, it is even the exact spools I used a month or two ago. Just took them out of their vacuumed sealed bags and loaded them into the AMS. Any ideas what would cause that change? I don’t think it is nozzle wear as that would make it over extrude not under. There doesn’t seem to be a partial clog.
My only other though would be extruder gears wearing out and the filament is slipping? Also, a worn nozzle would cause under extrusion. The bigger nozzle from the wear would need more plastic to extrude. Think about going from a .2 to .4 nozzle, the .2 physically can’t extrude as much filament.
Thanks for the reply! I replaced my hot end only a couple months ago, but I have a spare somewhere. I’ll install it just to rule it out. I’ll have to read the wiki about the gears. Not sure how to access them or if it’s something that needs to be replaced regularly. I did notice a decent amount of carbon build up under the hot end cover. It was on the board and wires. Just hit it with some compressed air. I’ll try putting the filament in a different slot too, just in case something is wrong with the first stage feeder.