I have a prusa i3. it came with the basic ramps board which i used until my megatronics arrived.
I used the ramps board and after a bit of calibration i started printing a few things things just fine.
After the megatronics arrived i went to the person who assembled my printer and he switched the boards. came back home made some height adjustments and started printing a cube. Adhesion is not a problem (hairspray) and the first layer is fine but after the first layer the printer seems to not extrude enough filament. I use the same settings as when i had the ramps board.
The extruder is not clogged as the filament comes out at normal width both when i move the cog by hand and when i give it an extrusion command from the simplify3d machine control panel. I took out and reinserted the filament (no grinding signs on it) and it made no difference. I tried both increasing extrusion by 50% and slowing the speed by 50% but it made no difference. I looked at the settings but everything is fine. Temps, speeds, height is the same as before.
The reason why i think it’s an under extrusion problem is because i stumbled upon the ultimaker common problem section and i saw the picture for the under extrusion and the walls of my cubes look identical to the picture there along with walls not sticking together and the infills having holes in it.
I doubt the problem is mechanical as when i first got the ramps board i had this problem as well but it went away after i fidled with some settings but i can’t for the life of me figure out what is wrong.
2 Likes
If it is a systematic underextrusion, then most probably you have to calibrate the extruder, and store the correct params (e-steps) in EEPROM or reflash the FW with the corrected values.
If it is here and there, then it could be insufficient current through the extruder motor, so you would wanna check it.
but why only when i print? if i use the machine control panel and press the extrude 100mm it extrudes it just fine so i don’t think the motors have any issues.
Then we are in the second case, or any other, but not the first.Extruding in the air creates small pressure inside the nozzle hence the torque required from the extruder motor is quite low as well. Printing something is a completely different story from this perspective.
