esun petg

[jimc]

the only difference i have found between the xt and esun stuff is that the xt seems a little harder while esun has a little more flex or impact resistance to it. its so marginal though that it might just be my imagination

[Vprints]

Well, today's been fun...

Step 1: Heat extruder to 215; retract & remove PLA
Step 2: Heat extruder to 245, hit 'extract 100' and feed in esun Ruby Red PETg
Step 3: Not be too surprised when it misfeeds (standard operating procedure every time I've swapped filaments, actually)
Step 4: Retract PETg -- except, it only goes a little, then makes the same misfeeding noise as Step 3, and won't come out
Step 5: Determine I can move it forwards & backwards 6 steps, but no further in either direction
Step 6: <forum spelunking>
Step 7: Try pulling even harder on the filament to get it out; it breaks off.
Step 8: I now know I have to take things apart. Figure I might as well swap in rsilver's replacement part while I'm at it. [Fortunately had one printed in ABS already, though I had to do some filing/cleaning/drilling to get it ready.]
Step 9: After a couple of "Wait, which fan is #1?" and "Where's this extra screw from?" adventures, get things put back together.
Step 10: Hit the 'retract' and 'extrude' buttons, and see nothing happening. Panic for a while, take things back apart, put things back together, finally decide that maybe it won't do that if cold.
Step 11: Once the extruder was hot, the motor spun and the filament eased right through. No catching. Wonderful!
Step 12: Calibrate. (Took two squares to get it, it was already pretty close.) No adhesion problems, goes down fine (bed at 90, I think? Extruding at 235? Don't even remember anymore.)
Step 13: Print the first part for a replacement tripod head. Opted to try without support -- and the bridging was by far the best I've experienced yet. It's gorgeous.
Step 14: Try to print the second part -- after realizing I forgot to turn the top & bottom layers back on , and doing so. (In a nutshell, this was why the first part printed.)
<insert several hours of poor adhesion, partial adhesion, "I've finally got it!" (until 3rd layer) failures, more forum spelunking, etc.>

Long story short: It's printing again. And it's gorgeous!

I've got a V3b extruder, .35mm nozzle. Printing on glass with old/used/burnished-with-a-razor glue stick -- it might actually have worked without, will try later. (Extrusion multiplier is .87, set to .40 extrusion width.) Z stop is set right at .005. (Again, initially forgot to reset it after the part swap; things were close enough I could get away with it on the slow calibration piece.)

S3D settings:
Retraction Distance: 2.00mm
Retraction Speed: 2400.0mm/min
Coast at End checked, distance .2mm
Wipe Nozzle checked, wipe distance 5.00mm
Layer Height: .2
Solid layers: 3
Outline/Perimeter Shells: 6 (I may boost this up a bit.)
First Layer Speed: 50% <--- don't miss this one!
Include Skirt, 1 layer 4mm offset 2 outlines
Interior Fill Percentage: 80 (I want this good and strong)
Outline Overlap: 25%
Infill Extrusion Width: 100%
Minimum Infill Length: 5.00mm
Print Sparse Infill Every 1 layer
Bed Temp: 100
Extruder Temp: 250
Fan Speed @ 100 on layer 2+
Default printing speed: 3200mm/min
<all> Underspeed: 60%
X/Y Axis Movement Speed: It's at 9000mm/min now (half the default I'd accepted for PLA & ABS) <-- I'll be dropping that way down too, still had some rogue stringing/pulling on the first layer's jumps but I let it go; what do people set this at for PETg?

[jimc]

youll get used to #4. when you get a misfeed and the extruder clicks you can never retract it. i instantly just grab my allen driver, zip off the filament drive and take an exacto knife and cut the filament right there at the bearing. i then pull it out the top and grab the lower piece with small needlenose and just pull that right out. toss the drive back on and im runnin again. ive done it so many times i can do it in about 30 sec flat.

[jdacal]

A couple of things that I've experienced:

If using the Viki board to control the loading of the filament. On mine the retraction works great. But when extruding it never works (when loading filament, when printing it works fine). I think there is a default setting wrong for that in the firmware unless I changed a setting accidentally in the past without realizing it. So for extruding when loading the filament I only use the Viki to get it started then I go to my Octopi and extrude it the rest of the way. It extrudes fine with Octopi or S3D but not with the Viki, at least not my Viki.

Aside from that problem I've never had a misfeed with PETg using Octopi or S3D. There are times it doesn't seem to want to go through but I just need to tighten up the bearing tension bolt to get it to grab properly, it needs a little more bite from the gear to go through than the PLA or ABS need. I then have to remember to loosen it up again for the ABS/PLA the next time I use those.

[PcS]

My viki sadly just got retired. But I used it all the time to change filaments without issue. I am going back to SD with an octoprint setup soon ! Had an issue with the card reader in my viki .If your printer is unplugged and you manually move an axis does your screen light up from back feed too ? Just wondered if that could have done my viki in ?

[jdacal]

My viki sadly just got retired. But I used it all the time to change filaments without issue. I am going back to SD with an octoprint setup soon ! Had an issue with the card reader in my viki .If your printer is unplugged and you manually move an axis does your screen light up from back feed too ? Just wondered if that could have done my viki in ?

Yes it does. I always try to move it as slow as possible but still ends up lighting up pretty frequently. My Viki is working, I'll have to look and see if I inadvertently changed a setting regarding the manual extrusion.

[jsc]

I've started running into some PETG layer bonding issues. I saw a wall crack as it was printing and stopped the print. When I took it off, I could separate each strand by hand, like a hank of hair. The only change is my new super powerful fan and shroud. So maybe PETG doesn't care for tons of cooling. I'll try it without the fan.

[jimc]

Yeah i dont run a fan at all with it. What temp are your running at? I keep mine at 250-255.


you know i was doing some plastic welding today at my shop and was thinking about this. i was sitting there welding some abs and acrylic with the smoke rising into my face. i was moving along nicely then my heater kicked on and was lightly blowing air across where i was working. no more smoke which was nice but it almost instantly cut my welding speed in half. it was cooling the tip so much that the heating element couldnt heat the tip up fast enough. what is probably going on in your case is that your fan is now cooling the nozzle tip so your not really printing at the temp you once were. the block is staying hot though. if you were at 245 before i bet in reality you dropped the nozzle temp 20 deg or so which is keeping the layers from melting together.

[jereywolf]

Extruder calibrated at .40mm, no change in filament diameter, no fan running, pinrint at 255°C, adhesion problem between walls.

Increased extrusion multiplier 10%, that problem goes away.

The first picture is how it should look, second picture is with lower multiplier (after putting a load on it), last picture with 10% multiplier increase (after putting a load on it).

So maybe I need to adjust my multiplier for a wider thread (extrusion diameter).

[rsilvers]

I printed my Carabiner in eSun PETG and I am pretty sure it would lift most people. Some very strong guys could not pull it open when printed at 2x size.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:737877