Problems printing with PETG

[nirfriedman]

Hi,

I started printing with PETG about a week ago. I read carefully Jules' post about PETG, and followed the settings he gave there. I got a set of wonderful prints with no errors and printed several days with the same spool with great success.

I guess my happiness was premature. For the last three days, the print starts fine and then at some point stops extruding. In all cases it seemed like clogged extruder, but after retraction, removal of the chewed up filament, and re-extrusion, it went back to normal.

Rereading the relevant posts I tried the following:

* Cleaning the extruder (with eSUN cleaning filament), several times,
* Re-checking the calibration (it is fine)
* Adjusting the extruder tension,
* Cleaning the inside of the extruder from any leftover fragments
* Slowed down printing speed to 50mm/s

After each fix it seemed like I am doing well, but then in a large print it will stop printing at some point. The strange thing is that I tried several models, and in each there was a more or less reproducible failure after doing several layers of relatively large horizontal surfaces.

Any ideas how to troubleshoot this?

Thanks!

-Nir

[Jules]

Every time i have had a problem extruding PETG it was the result of incorrect filament drive screw tension. Whatever you are using for for your PLA tension, you need to tighten the tension for PETG by about one fifth of a revolution of the screw. The tooth marks need to be just catching, but they do look like square tooth marks, not little triangular nips.

You're probably close, try slowing it down to 3000 mm/min, and increase the extruder temps by a couple of degrees. And check that tension again.

And just for the record, it's she, not he. (To my mom's great disappointment....she wanted a girly girl and didn't get one.)
Never outgrew that tomboy stage.

[nirfriedman]

Every time i have had a problem extruding PETG it was the result of incorrect filament drive screw tension. Whatever you are using for for your PLA tension, you need to tighten the tension for PETG by about one fifth of a revolution of the screw. The tooth marks need to be just catching, but they do look like square tooth marks, not little triangular nips.

You're probably close, try slowing it down to 3000 mm/min, and increase the extruder temps by a couple of degrees. And check that tension again.

And just for the record, it's she, not he. (To my mom's great disappointment....she wanted a girly girl and didn't get one.)
Never outgrew that tomboy stage.

Ooops, sorry for that..

I don't do PLA that much, so can't relate. I do get nice teeth pattern but not too deep. I will try these suggestions tomorrow.

And thanks again for the informative posts that really help!

[Jules]

My pleasure!

[nirfriedman]

You're probably close, try slowing it down to 3000 mm/min, and increase the extruder temps by a couple of degrees. And check that tension again.

Its working beautifully now. Not sure which of these did the trick, but for now I am happy enough to let it be.

Thanks again!