PLA Viscosity Issues

So I've had a lot of success with Hatchbox PLA. Particularly the gray. At half the price, it prints nearly as well as UltiMachine's $40 stuff. However, some of the spools will have a short section of filament in them that makes all kinds of blobs, zits, and other artifacts I associate with over extrusion. Once that section has ran out, the stuff goes back to printing fine again. On my most recent roll, I got about a third of the way in and hit a bad spot and I can't seem to run the thing out. I switch to some sample PLA I have and it works just fine on the same exact gcode file, so I tend to think it has to be the filament. I've also tried the Amazon Basic's stuff (back when they were getting it from Overture) and did pretty good with a couple of colors, but their black pretty much behaved like this for the whole spool.

So, I would like to learn how to print with filament that is behaving in this way so I can run out these two spools of Amazon black and use up my Hatchbox when it starts misbehaving. It seems to me that that section of filament has different thermal dynamics. Like it's viscosity is runnier at the same temp the rest of it runs fine at. Lowering the temp does decrease the defects,.but doesn't eliminate them, even if I run the temp down to where E starts skipping. I then start playing with retraction settings, extrusion multiplier, and such but I haven't been able to find the right combination.

Any advise you guys have would be much appreciated.

... variations in batch receips aren't so uncommon ... especially with the cheaper ones

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You can try to dehumidify the filament, but really.. I wouldn't know how to deal with a variable that is constantly changing. If you can't predict it, it's basically very hard to use for a 3D-printer.

So if it's moisture, you could try oven-drying it, google that. If that doesn't help I would personally not use the filament or only do small prints with it.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/16/2020 02:45AM by Ohmarinus.

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