There are a lot of potential causes for stringing, or spider webs. Some of the most common are poor retraction settings, poor temperature settings, and an improperly calibrated extruder.
Also, keep in mind that ambient temperature can affect stringing if you don’t have an enclosure.
The first thing that I do if I find that my printer is stringing is print a retraction tower, a temperature tower, and recalibrate my extruder. This takes 30 minutes and saves tons of time.
Banding, or horizontal lines in your 3d print, can come from many things. A few possible causes are:
Sometimes, the Bowden tube will pop out of the extruder. It can happen at either end, but I have found that it happens much more frequently at the extruder end.
This can be caused by two things:
I frequently get requests for help, or see help requests that are something like “my printer isn’t working right, how do I fix it?”
Such a vague description of what’s going on makes it very difficult to troubleshoot. It could be a setting, it could have something to do with the machine, it might even be your filament. For that matter, it might be the environment. When I first started I had my printer right next to an AC vent and it would throw off my prints every time the AC came on.
Most people in the help forums want to help you, but they need some basic information to be able to do so. What have you tried already? Provide some details about what is going wrong. Describe your machine, how long you have had it, any issues you have had with it in the past.
As far as some basic troubleshooting. Try a generic Cura profile (or other slicer of choice). Go through your machine and make sure everything is tightened and running smoothly. Make sure that your machine is calibrated and that your bed is level. Make sure that your filament is clean and dry. Doing these things will eliminate 75% of problems that you will experience with your printer.
You can get “bands,” or horizontal lines across your print for many reasons. Typically, it means that something is loose. It’s not always obvious where to start looking, though. I usually look at the roller bearings first. Then I make sure all the nuts and bolts are tight. Then I check the belt tension. Just keep going through your machine until you find something that wiggles more than it should and tighten it. It’s not a glamorous process, but you should be going through your machine periodically anyway.
Salmon skin, I’m guessing most people have seen this.
In a word, salmon skin is the result of vibrations. Your nozzle isn’t exactly where the printer thinks it is while it is extruding, which causes variations in the surface texture of the finished part.
To improve your surface finish, go through the components of your printer and make sure they are tight. Like many things, some parts of your printer loosen up over time. It’s a good practice to make sure everything is tight periodically anyway. Make sure all of the bolts and nuts are tight, make sure that your roller bearings are smooth. Make sure that your printhead doesn’t have any slop in it if you try to move it with your hand, etc.
Regular maintenance checks should get rid of most of the effects of salmon skin.
There are many reasons why your 3d print might end up with blobs and zits on the surface. I want to talk about one specific cause of this: power recovery.
While this may seem like a strange culprit to be responsible for the physical deformation on the surface of your part, it does happen. Here is why. The power recovery function frequently accesses the gcode files that are being read to create your print. If you are using a slow SD card or a slow processor, it can cause your printhead to dwell for just a moment. During this time it is still extruding. For this reason, I normally keep the power recovery function off.
I want to briefly talk about how a temperature tower is intended to work.
Every printer configuration and filament composition have a slightly different optimal temperature setting. The temperature tower is a method to find that optimal setting.
For PLA it’s usually between 195 and 205, so I start my temperature tower around 185 and finish around 215. You can apply the same logic to other materials. When you print it, let’s say that for the particular brand that you are working with that your optimal setting is 195 and you start your tower at 185. You will see a steady progression of improvement as your tower goes toward 195, then steady declining in quality as your temperature tower passes 195 and continues to heat up.
I get asked this, from time to time, or see other people asking this question in help forums.
My answer is that there are as many price ranges for 3d printers as there are people using 3d printers. Some questions to consider:
Clunk.
Clunk, clunk, clunk.
My printer is in the next room from where I work, and that’s what I heard one day. I watched it for a few minutes, but it didn’t take long for me to realize what was causing the noise. Every time the printer would move in Z it would clunk.
I’ve spent so many hours dialing in my settings, making sure that my table is level, etc but I forgot something important. Lube the Z axis lead screws. Make sure that they are tight in the motors and don’t spin unless the motor is spinning.
Someday, I plan on putting together a maintenance checklist. This will definitely be on it.
