Can't seem to get good lines on my prints?

Hi again to one and all,

So i finally got round to finishing the hot end on my repstrap, which more or less resembles a prusa/mendel, and i began running some test prints, im runnin a wade's extruder with the recomended steps per mm (which off the top of my head is around the 700 mark), with the pololu set to 16th steps.

As you can hopefully see in the picce, im not able to get decent lines, just globules every so often, would this be because im running on 16th steps? Thinkin about it, what has other people got their's setup to?

Ollie

Looks to me that your hotend has some jamming issues.

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with my wade's hinged accessible using the herringbone gears, my steps/mm are in the 850-860 range using 1/16th. that said, steps/mm isn't your problem. what are you using for a hot end? does it sound like the extruder is skipping steps? if you extrude into free air do you get a nice, solid stream of plastic?

looks like a hot end issue, try slowing down your prints or raising the temp or tightening the idler bearing.

what hotend are you using?

either that or your e-steps / mm are set too low

First Calibrate your extruder Esteps, and check your hobbed bolt is driving the filament smoothly, if not check if it's clogged up and/or tighten the idler.

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I may try ramping the temp up by about 10 degrees. And I'm printing at 10mm/s, although upon closer inspection of the tests I printed, they're pretty see-through for 100% fill :/

Oh, and the hot end I'm using is basically what I had lyin around and whacked it in my lathe. It's got a .5mm nozzle And pretty much resembles the Geared extruder nozzle on the Wiki, but With a slightly longer thermal barrier, wrapped in nichrome without the heater block.

Oh, I believe I forgot to mention that the filaments consistently going in, and no shavings are coming off.

I've just changed the pololu settins to 1/4 steps and it seems to be fairing a lot better

Ollie

By switching to 1/4 stepping you have tricked it into extruding more filament but with much lower resolution.

You would get much better consistency if you used 1/16th stepping and properly calibrated your e steps / mm in firmware. It would sound better too.

True, and I probably will at some point, but as long as it can get some parts off for a better printer, I'll use my favorite quote, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"