Hi, I currently own 3 printers and have been having a similar issue with all 3 lately.
I just completed a big order that took several weeks of continuous printing. I noticed some slight degrade in print quality towards the end of the order and figured maybe I should replace the hot ends on both, especially my oldest printer. (They still had the stock hotends). The main issues were noticeable underextruision even after calibrating the filament. Here you can see I tried to get around this by printing facedown, but you can still see the issue.
I replaced both with the hardened steel .4 complete hotend. I ran ironing tests on all of them and found settings that looked awesome on the test, but terrible on any actual file. I did a bed level print test and found a very slight issue in one of the corners. I could also tell one of the beds was off using a level tool, so I decided to manually re-level both following the wiki using the g-code file.
This didn’t improve anything either (in fact, maybe made things worse? See photo below. Ironing was turned on. )
All of the printers seem to print okay in terms of layer line consistency and bed adhesion, they will print, but flat surfaces look terrible with or without ironing.
This is a different printer, same file, ironing off:
Where should I start next? I did message support but they seem to be out for a few days on holiday.
Thank you for any advice, I’ve been printing since January but am still always learning. I am trying to not get frustrated considering these printers were printing and ironing prints beautifully just a couple weeks ago.
What material were you using and what build plate? Are you using BL filament or other brands?
The below are just observations I have wondered about.
My expectation is that with BL filament, they dial the settings in down to a set value whereas whenever I buy other brands of filament those companies give a range, not a number. It is to BL benefit to really dial in the settings because it enhances the “They just run out of the box” marketing .
There is zero benefit in doing that for other brand filaments. So that is on the printer owner to get from a 10°C range to a setpoint value.
BL does the polishing routine with their nozzles and I wish I knew just what the target is for that. My build plates have that rub mark and and it is quite deep on the plate I use the most. That would seem to also wear on the nozzle tip and how does that effect squish over time. I do not necessarily have an answer to those questions as much as an awareness that it may impact the print.
My main build plate is definitely not spring steel. They are thick, smooth and rigid. Whenever I degrease the build plate I also scuff it with fine grit sanding sponge.
I was at Harbor Freight a couple of days ago and saw a set of parallel blocks that you could probably check if the bed and nozzle are parallel.
Seems to be underextruding. You may need to do the flow calibration for each of the colors. It can vary, even if the different colors are the same brand and type of filament. Try running a flow calibration on the black filament, the white seems to be dialed in fine.
