Hi All,
This will be difficult to pin down, but getting pointed in the right direction would be helpful.
Purchased a FlashForge AD5X ~5 weeks ago. Worked great, one button calibration out of the box, I proceeded to do what everyone does when learning: print a bunch of stuff, mix success and stumble over the usual stuff. Ie: Learned why you clean the bed, learned how supports work, deal with filament breaks etc etc.
About a week ago I had a print fail, it looked like there was a broken filament that wasn’t being pushed. I do a cold pull on the nozzle, and was able to print successfully for a time (although there were some small features on some prints that seemed sloppy compared to previous prints).
After that though ALL my prints started to fail. Even after cleaning the bed, double checking bed/nozzle temp, I’d get bad adhesion. I’d also get the nozzle dragging through layers, as if the Z was off (even after running calibration repeatedly and before each print). There was some popping and oozing, which I put up to not storing my PLA dry (although ambient was only ~40%). However the problem persisted even with a freshly opened vac-sealed (confirmed seal was good) roll of PLA.
I ordered a replacement nozzle that arrives today, but can anyone give me some insight? I only ran ~2kg of PLA through, that seems like really premature wear; I must have done something wrong.
Thanks for anything putting me in the right direction.
Is the mini fan cooling the heat sink part of the nozzle working?
I had an issue with the adventure 5m pro where prints started to fail and the nozzle got clogged, it was the fan not working and plastic melting where it shouldn’t.
The customer support gave me another fan and a mew nozzle.
I highly doubt your nozzle is worn out unless you’ve been printing with any special tough filament (e.g. carbon fibre core). It’s completely different machine, but I have over 300 hours on mine and I haven’t had to replace the original brass nozzle yet.
Edit: Perhaps try printing a solid section of only the first layer (no need for the whole bed, but make is fairly large). See if the lines mostly all join up, then reprint without changing anything to check if it is consistent.
No special filament, other than <10g TPU. Interesting I’ll try the test. I think I’ll get the dragging though, as I was trying to do some business card type prints that were basically what you’re suggesting and got issues. Sometimes the first layer would be ok, sometimes not. It would wind up dragging it around and as it was warm, it would roll the layer into a “snake”
Popping and oozing is almost a guarantee that your filament is wet.
So that’s what I thought… Except for similar issu s with extended drying.
I building an enclosure with a rotary dehumidifier to keep things low, but despite the tell tale signs I think something else was going on.
Honestly the pla could have just been wet from the factory, I’ve had rolls from top tier filament companies come with condensation in the vacuum sealed bag, sometimes stuff slips through.
Sounds like there could be something clogged in the nozzle, I would try pushing through some filament or nozzle cleaner at high temps (300c ish) to try and burn things out. General advice is never use different materials on the same nozzle, but that doesn’t stop most of us.
This likely won’t solve your z axis shift but it may help things. I have no experience with your printer or even brand though, so I cannot comment about whether the software or hardware may be to blame for some issues, but it sounds like there’s more going on that a partially clogged nozzle.
I’m not sure if it’s the Z or gunk building up and dragging. Also with the new nozzle it’s been only PLA and no joy whatsoever.
Did you get the new nozzle in and issues have not changed?
correct. I initiated a return with amazon. I have had a 250g spool in the drier since about 10am today, and will try it this evening, but if that doesn’t work I’m just returning it.
In trying to do a cold pull (which you do in this machine by attaching the nozzle upside down and manually pushing filament in), it was oozing and popping with the remnants of the previous filament, which to me says very wet filament?
I had tried drying filament for ~8hrs yesterday with no good results. Is there something else that could cause the oozing issue? My friend brought up that maybe the temperature sensor isn’t working properly and it’s hotter than it thinks it is?
Thanks to everyone for the input, after drying a ~100g spool of PLA for 8 hours and having failed prints on the original nozzle and new nozzle I have initiated a refund.