Hello,
I have four P1S printers, one with about 7500 hours, two with 4500 hours, and one with 2300 hours.
The three highest print hour P1S have varying degrees of this awful looking outer wall, but its only really noticeable on prints that have straight walls (like a box). I have done a bunch of searching and reading about VFAs but they all seem to look a little different than what I am experiencing here. I initially thought it might be caused by infill, but after testing with just 2 outer walls and 2 inner walls and no infill at all, the artifacts still appear.
Is this likely a belt tension issue? It happens with all types of filaments and other speed settings on the printers that produce this.
My other P1S that is the newest of the four prints boxes perfectly fine (left print in brown in second image).
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Check belt tension and the two screws securing the hot end. Do you print a lot of glow filament or CF?
New nozzles? Cleaned the carbon rods? The carriages may be worn with is amount of hours. Do they seem loose compared to your low hour printers?
Yeah brand new nozzles, cleaned rods. I spent some time today looking closer at the XY belt and pulley idlers. One of them was actually missing one of the graphite bearings, so thats not good. I also cant get the XY belt to stay centered on the pulley idler no matter what I do with the adjustment (on a printer with all its bearings).
I might have to get new belts and idlers and see if that eliminates the issue.
I use almost exclusively Matte PLA. Hot ends are tight and idlers are tight as well. I feel like its probably a belt/tension thing based on how consistent the pattern is and based off of everything else I have tried.
Having recently done this on one of my high hour X series printers I did noticed a difference in print quality as the idlers had little bits of belt “dust” stuck to them that created bumps. It took a bit of time but cleaning them was worth it. I will warn you though Iif you haven’t changed belts before, make sure you’re in a patience mood as the belt wedges are troublesome and fiddly.
Thinking about this issue more, cleaning your pulleys will probably solve this issue. A pulley with a build up on it will change the belt tension each time it rotates and create a pattern.
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Really appreciate the follow up! I did notice quite a bit on the rear idler pulleys and a bunch of black “dust” below them. I ordered new belts and idler pulleys as at least one was missing one of the graphite washers somehow (never touched them so missing from factory it seems).
I will try cleaning them all first and do a test print, and then try the belts next if still flawed.
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Dude, your extruder gears are worn out. Forget the belts and all that–replace your extruder gears.
Is this a common sign of extruder gears worn out, or are you just basing on the number of hours? I haven’t got around to belts or pulleys yet so can’t rule them out.
