Looking for some insight because I’m at my wit’s end.
Background: My P1S has about 4,400 hours on it and has been pretty much trouble free apart from routine maintenance. Two days ago, the toolhead ran into a printed part and bent the nozzle. I threw that hotend away and installed a spare. Both 0.4mm. The “new” hotend is used, but barely, and when I swapped it in I ran some cleaner filament through it just to make sure it was good to go. I saw nothing else visibly wrong inside the printer.
The week prior to the nozzle getting bent, I had fully cleaned all the X, Y, and Z rods, and regreased all but the carbon rods. I also replaced the Z tensioner because it had started squealing and a little oil had not solved the issue. I then re-tensioned both belts. I had also taken the extruder out to clean it. I’m running hardened steel gears and they looked fine. All just routine maintenance.
The problem: The pictures are a part I have successfully printed with no issues over 75 times before with this brand of PLA, and some even this same color. I was about halfway through this spool when I started this print, and had used the spool in another printer that same day with no problems, so it’s not the filament. I had not changed the settings for the filament or the part in Orcaslicer. It should have just been a routine print of something I’ve printed successfully many times.
I am suddenly getting the problem you see in the pictures. The first layer prints perfectly fine, as does the solid infill on the first several layers and the sparse infill from that point on, but the walls are a disaster. I tried printing it again set on “Silent”, which I’ve never had to do before, but figured I’d see if that helped. It’s better, but not good.
I tried re-tensioning the XY belt again in case that had been affected by the toolhead impact and also tried printing from the external spool just to rule out the AMS as a possible cause. It made no improvement.
Again, I’ve changed none of the settings in the slicer so these speeds should not be a problem, but I include them just for reference
With 4,400 hours on the machine is this a sign that my extruder is dying? Had anyone else experienced this?