IMALlama

Any suggestions before trying again after a reset? This is my first go round changing nozzle diameter. I went from a 0.4 mm nozzle to a 0.6 mm nozzle.

After the swap I checked my extrusion multiplier (no change needed) and tuned pressure advance (I had to decrease the value a bit, but it looks spot on now).

As part of the nozzle swap, I also bumped line width from 125% to 150% in Orca Slicer (should be around 0.9mm extrusion width) and increased layer height to 0.3mm. This should put me around 22 mm^3/s of material, which shouldn't be an issue for a Rapido 2 but this is the most flow I've pushed through it so far. Maybe I should bump temp a touch? I'm still at my fairly-low-for-ASA 230 that I was using with my 0.4mm nozzle.

The print didn't move on the bed and shows no signs of warpage. There also aren't any signs of curling on the areas that the nozzle must have hit to cause the layer shift.

The only thing that seems like a miss was having z lift turned off while troubleshooting a print quality issue. I had it set to only lift above 0.25mm (not on the first layer) and only lift below z 0mm (this probably disabled z-hop). Z hop when retracting is set to 0.2mm, which is less than my 0.4mm retraction length so it seems like changing the "only lift below below z" value would re-enable z-hop.

Our youngest broke his big brother's bumblebee. Three iterations later, everything fits pretty well and the older one is happy to have bumblebee back.

This part seems super niche, so no printables link. That said, if anyone needs a replacement for this VSO let me know and I'll upload it.

The sun was at just the right height to catch this deer trail on the edge of our yard.

Title. My bin overwintered pretty well in my Zone 6a garage, so I'm a happy worm farmer.

The printer is a Voron 2.4, the extruder is a StealthBurner, and the hot end itself is a Rapido MK1. I'm printing Polymaker ASA on a spool that hasn't given me any grief thus far (I last printed with it a few days ago) and am slicing with Orca Slicer.

The printer has about 700 hours on it. In that time, I've run 4.1 km of filament through it. These two prints are two of the three jams I've experienced in that time span. The first print failed on a very similar feature (internal bridge), but on a much much much smaller print. I've printed some pretty long (> 12 hour) parts on this printer with the same brand of filament, and similar settings, without issues although this is the first large "fairly normal polygon with big parallel faces" that I've tried to print.

For all three jams, I was able to release the extruder latch and pull the filament out of the heat brake. There was a blob at the bottom of the filament, which would be too big to get through the orifice in the heat brake (it's a very snug fit on a Rapido). I suspect this is from sitting touching the heat brake for the remaining hour and 50 minutes in the print after the jam occurred. Note to self: install a filament run-out sensor....

There's also always been a little bit of filament left in the hot end. The photo below is what came out after manually pushing it out with a metal rod I got with my i3 clone.

After the first clog on the small print, I reset and the print went off without a hitch. I didn't think about it again until the top print above failed. I decided to swap nozzles just to be safe and bumped my extruder temp up from 230 to 240.

It looks like I might have been under extruding a tad on the third print and/or I need to tune pressure advance. The OG nozzle was plated brass, and I had recently tuned, so if it was starting to wear out then some minor under extrusion with a new/fresh nozzle makes sense.

Here's what the slicer shows as happening on this layer. I am not showing the full layer so you can see it ends with the internal bridge on the lower left. There are a handful of retractions, but they're not very frequent. There is no retraction at the end of the internal bridge before the travel to the start of the next layer.

The next layer starts perimeters first in the lower right hand corner. I don't see evidence of the perimeters starting, so odds are the jam is happening between the two layers.

I have the slicer set to print nearly all features at the same speed, other than overhangs. This is potential correlation #1

I have the fan set to 40% with no cooling for the first 10 layers. However, for overhangs it's going to 80%. This is potential correlation #2

Looking at a graph of what was going on with the extruder, it looks like all is (fairly) well here, at least from a temp perspective. The min PWM value might increase a hair for this layer, but without calculating the average and/or smoothing the line it's hard to eyeball meaningfully. It does appear that the PWM falls off some once the jam occurs.

All ideas and tips welcome!

I've had a few pepper volunteers come up in my seed starts. They're happy little accidents, at least for the time being. Hopefully they wind up producing. Past results have been mixed, but I have the space so I separated them into their own containers.

I have no idea why, but my pepper leaves always turn black under my grow lights. They flip to green once they're outdoors.

Pardon the brim remnants. Not pictured: the many prior iterations. This started as a head on photo that I imported into fusion 360 and scaled after some measuring with calipers. It's not perfect, but it's rapidly approaching good enough. The square indent is to help with orientation - although the part obviously is not symmetrical, it's much harder to judge the home.

I think this is really two questions in one.

First, would you expect Austrian Winter Pea to be winter killed in Zone 6? Maybe I chose a bad cover crop.

Second, now that these things weren't winter killed, what should I do to kill them? I did cut some off at ground level, but it looks like they have leaves all the way down so I'm wary that they will grow back.

Thanks!

Very Specific Objects are a lot of fun, so here's another one.

If you find yourself purchasing a ~~cheapish Amaon RC car~~ Very Fancy DOUBLE E 1:12 Scale Large Remote Control Car Monster Trucks for Boys with Head Lights 4WD Off All Terrain RC Car Rechargeable Vehicles Xmas Gifts for Kids only for its spring perches to get broken one by one, well - I've got a solution for you.

Printables link if anyone thinks this object might apply to them.

While I acknowledge the expectations Ellis tries to set, all the youtubers out there have me chasing a dragon looking for better and better layer aliment on my z-axis. I suspect (at least) one of you will come out of the woodwork and say your printer has better aligned layers than mine too 😭 I'm certainly not alone, but even in that thread you can find some people claiming that not everyone experiences the issue

So far, I've been through three iterations on my CW2:

• BMG gears with a grub screw
• BMG Integrated Drive Gear Assembly (IDGA). Press fit gear = no more grub screw
• FYSETC CNC Pom w/ Helical gears, since evidently the BMG gears can still be somewhat offset

Results below with me hand holding my cellphone and moving a Pixar style desk lamp to be at a progressively steeper angle to the face of the cubes. Left = FYSTEC Pom (I also used Orcaslicer), middle = BMG IDGA, right = 'normal' BMGs. Note that the cubes are upside down.

Vanity shot with very soft and indirect light

Direct light, 90 degrees to the face of the cubes (basically perpendicular)

Direct light, ~45 degrees to the face of the cubes

Direct light, ~5 degrees to the face of the cubes (basically parallel)

At this point, I am going to shrug, give up, and print with fuzz (or avoid harsh light).

I've been chasing inconsistent top layers for a little while when my first layer also started going... very sideways. My printer uses the nozzle to home on a micro switch, which meant that something was probably loose. Initially I was thinking the end stop or carriage, but who would have thought that the printer had shaken the hot end apart over time.

Note to anyone else who runs into this: there is no mechanical stop for those screws and tightening them too far will mash the hot bits into the cold bits. This will cause the hot bits to crimp closed just enough to no longer let filament through. If you find yourself in this situation, find (or buy) a small punch - you can use the taper on a punch to reverse the situation. Don't ask me how I discovered any of this. Why there is no thread lock from the factory, who knows. If anyone reminds me, I'll be sure to let you know how well purple loctite has held up. There's also another screw that goes into the side of the heat break to hold everything in place. That one was loose too.

2.5 hours later: all better!

Lessons learned: multiple, but if you start seeing inconsistent behavior look for a mechanical issue and don't be afraid to tear your printer down.