Requesting assistance in diagnosing a failed part

I am forever stuck calibrating my printer, it has been a month so far of printing only calibration parts. Last night i was finally able to move on to a new calibration part, the 50mm tower. About half way through there was a hole in one of the sides (see attached) and im not sure why or what may have caused that. Also if you nottice the corners of the tower are caved in, the infil was set to 100% for this and you will note that the top has giant holes in it (again this is only half, i stopped the print because of the side hole)

Any advice, input, or things to try/check?

-scott-

Maybe your idler is not tight enough against the hobbed bolt so the filament slips. Mine are so tight you can not pull them away by hand.

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I will tighten it up and try again, maybe that will fix the infill issue, but would would cause that hole in the side?

I find when it is loose you will get it to extrude for a little while and then it builds up pressure it slips for a little while and goes back to extruding again. This happens at a regular interval and could be just right to line up in one spot on an object (has happened to me). It is far worse if you have calibrated the extruder with a slipping hobbed bolt because once it stops slipping it will be pushing far more plastic through than before.

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I calibrated the extruder with the hot end removed so that there can be no resistance to cause any slipping, is this a good or bad idea?

I find sometimes you need the resistance of the hotend to get it just right as the hobbed bolt may not be as effective under load.

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Is there anything else i can try that may have caused that hole. I wont be able to test any changes for another 2 more hours but i would like to have as much information as i can.

I have seen bad filament that can cause similar issues.

It could be your hotend jamming (especially if it is home made).

Could be a poor combination of layer height and nozzle size (w/t). You want to be sure the width is at least 1.5 times the height. If you try and print to narrow the filament snaps when being stretched to thin and causes holes. The same thing can happen if you try and print to low as well but not on solid objects usually.

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Tantillus.org	Mini Printable Lathe	How NOT to install a Pololu driver

do you use a fan ?

what's your firmware/host ?

what's your configuration ? nozzle ? temp ? layer height?

it look like your perimeter layers don't stick together and your infill doesn't stick to the perimeters

seems there is something fishy with your configuration

if your hardware is compatible try to use pronterface (there is a windows distribution already compiled really easy to use with very little to do to configure the system)