Hi! I’m new here. I have just received my first 3D printer a couple of days ago (second generation CTC printer with dual extruder MK8/7). Unfortunately I have run into an annoying issue. Now before I continue I want to mention that I have already searched for answers on fora for hours and hours on end and did not find anything that matched my issue exactly so I figured I would be better off making a post of my own. For now I have only used PLA at 215° and I have not removed the painter’s tape that the printer came with.
The main issue is layer shifts (see pictures). It seems to happen mostly during the infill phase, but only on prints with a larger surface. I suspect it is some sort of mechanical issue because it happens every time the carriage passes a certain critical point along the y-axis. There seems to be a connection with strange clicking sounds coming from the machine, but I do not have sufficient observations to be entirely sure of this. When trying to manually move the carriage along the y-axis there is some sort of resistance that seems to coincide with the critical point I mentioned before. I can move it all the way along the x-axis without any change in resistance but along the y-axis it is like a sinus function: it gets more and more difficult until the critical point, and after that it gets easier.
So far I have tried the following. I checked everything I could reach without taking things apart and tightened anything that was loose. During this check I did notice what looks like some sort of damage on one of the belts (see picture). I doubt it is connected to the issue, but it is concerning and I really do not want to be the person who doesn’t include information that turns out to be vital. I lowered both the printing and the travelling speed several times, down to the utterly absurd 10 mm/s. I tried changing the temperature a bit, heating the bed, not heating the bed and using a different brand of PLA. None of these helped at all. Does anyone happen to have any ideas or possible solutions? Thanks for reading!
