I do not get this filament. Or something.
It appears that, no matter what the first layer height is, the Hatchbox Blue ABS I have always creates a small puddle all around it as it extrudes during infill. I can tweak the height so that the bottom layer comes out right, but if the right extruder crosses over it, it pushes the bed down causing my left extruder to lift up about .2-.3mm, and it's as if it's extruding in mid-air which causes horrible gaps in the bottom layer which would otherwise be smooth. My PLA doesn't exhibit this behavior, nor does my Pink ABS(As far as I've observed). I tried lowering the extrusion rate, but to no avail (It only seemed to be cause gaps between infill and the perimeters), I tried lowering the temperature 5C to 215C but that caused it to not extrude right causing noticeable defects in the bottom layer.
This is puzzling me to no end. It this particular ABS just born to overextrude no matter what, causing a puddle around it that causes unusually high bottom layer heights at the ridges, which forces the right extruder up as it travels over it while the left tries to do its business? Or am I missing something?
The solution, as far as I can tell, would be to use this particular ABS in exclusively single extruder machines, but I only have one of those that's actually decent. (Hint, not my makergear, it can't do the thin column like features well. It's my other makerbot whose left extruder I screwed the height up on, so I used a washer to clear it out of the way which also rendered it inoperable, making the dual extruder machine a right-extruder only machine.) And, man, my profiles would start to get complicated with some colors left on this machine, and right on that machine. o_O
I swear this never happened before I tried systematically adjusting the bed level heights, but I'm starting to think I've never printed large objects in Blue before, so I never noticed this problem before as it never happened (The right extruder never traveled over the bottom layer on small objects, so it never forced the extruders up.).
Just confirmed my suspicion. Looking over my extensive print logs, I've only printed large objects in blue on these machines once, and it's likely it was not a big problem on that particular model. So, this probably has always been a problem, just that I never encountered until now.
Still, is there SOME KIND OF SOLUTION to reduce the extrusion on the bottom layer ONLY?
Wait... would decreasing the extrusion rate until it starts getting reasonable and then increasing the infill-perimeter overlap fill % to compensate would be a viable solution?
I'm going to try it.
(Edit: I'm noticing that it doesn't seem like it 'sticks well' to the bed. Which is odd, because the perimeters seem to stick fine, just that it doesn't during infill? Maybe it's not hot enough?)
Wait, maybe I need to reduce that percentage overgap fill thing to something, like, 10%? Or maybe 0? Is that the parameter for the distance between each line during infill? (The space between the lines)
Well, I tried everything above and even used the autosuggest extrusion width of .48. None could eliminate this issue. I think I'm just realizing that this is a core problem with double extruder setups and it's really unavoidable. I got my layers really flat but they were still causing the right extruder to bump up, thus lifting the printing left extruder. There didn't see be any mitigation in this core problem, regardless of whatever combination of settings I chose. I'm thinking that single extruders are really just the best for overall print quality; double extruders are just good for double-color prints (Which I never do), and makes it easy to keep one color with one extruder (Though it's pointless if you can't use it because the double extruder setup interferes with bottom layer print quality.). So, I think I'm just going to convert it to a single extruder setup. I'll just install a washer in the other one tomorrow and be done with it. If I ever want to use the double extruder, I'll just have to go through the trouble of removing the washer. As far as changing colors, I guess I'll have to go through the time consuming task when I need to. (Though, during heatup, it's usually not an issue time-wise and I'm often not switching colors on the printers on the fly. Still, I want to use the machine all the time, which would require switchouts between ABS and PLA, something I want to avoid due to the hazards involved.).