My Prusa i3 Mk3+ lemon

[Gramps]

You didn’t do anything between the failed print and the last print that look really nice? I’m wondering if your hotend cooling fan is going bad? I had one that would run sometimes and sometimes not. I have heard of people having trouble with silk PLA bit so far what I have used has printed fine.

Most of the silk I have used is CC3D and Overture Ive printed it on my Ender 3 S1 Pro, Plus and now the Bambu X1C. I do know that Bambu has a silk profile.

I’m guessing you’re printing with a 0.4mm nozzle so as I understand it the layer height should be multiple of 0.4mm so the above print should be 1.6mm and not 1.5mm. Don’t think that would explain the good print, bad print , good print. I think I’d check both the hotend fan and part cooling fan and make sure they are running as they should. Maybe with the fans running wiggle the cable and see if the fan changes speed of starts and stops. I think your problem is intermittent.

[Pigjes]

Strangely enough, the printbed loves silk PLA, no matter the brand. I have plenty. I actually never had issues with silk before, besides some stringing, which was easy to solve by tweaking the temp a bit.

I just kept the values of PrusaSlicer in Cura. For some weird reason, the values are different than the 4-rule. Lowest is 0.07 layer height. Not allowed to use that anymore by order of the Prusa helpdesk “as it clogs the nozzle”. 007 is the reason why I bought the printer, as that offers incredible results on miniatures. Bummer.

Next is 1, then 1.5, etc, 3.5 is the highest PrusaSlicer offers. Going higher in PrusaSlicer gives an error. Why they differ from the standard that most printers using a 5-rule, I have no clue.

An intermittent fan failure could be it indeed. Next time this happens, I will check again. The moment I arrived and stopped that print, both fans were working. There is a fan test in the printer and it says it’s fine. That test just checks in the moment, of course. Silly me thought that a fan either worked or not, not flaky. Great tip!

Yep, this happened once. All 5 models from the same original design are now printed well.

[Pigjes]

I use silk because the printbed loves it. Never had any issues sticking with any of my brands of silk, unless a print starts way too high, which happens every now and then. I do a first layer calibration and that usually fixes it. Rarely I have to do a calibration again after, but even that happens sometimes.

Structured beds are made to offer more grip. The smooth PEI did not even print at all, worst quality PEI I ever had. When one roughs up a smooth PEI, that’s creating a textured bed. I know that trick, but the smooth PEI is the one I need to ship the printer back when I have to under warranty, and seeing how strict they already were last time, I am not doing anything to void my warranty or offering the a chance to find something to make me pay for repairs.

Since Prusament clogged the print (first print after repair by them) and the roll of Prusament I got with the printer was one of the worst PLA’s I had ever seen, with entanglement as well, despite that I always use tip of the finger to tip of the filament trick to avoid human error. I would never buy that.

I hope that one day Hatchbox PLA costs way less than 115-125$ for one roll here in Belgium and is available in more than 2 colors to try it.

I can’t do anything to the printer unless their helpdesks tells me to, to not void my warranty of a pre-assembled printer. My dealings with them made that clear. I fall under EU warranty. No way I can start doing anything to that printer unless ordered, until it’s 2 years old.

As I said, I am gathering ideas to be able to talk to their helpdesk again, offering them a full report on all that went wrong, to be fully prepared, as dealing with them was frankly not so great. Yes, they fixed the printer, but that lasted briefly.

There is also another reason why I use a structured bed. We have blackouts here on a regular basis. My printer is on a battery, but even taping a print down on a PEI sheet before the battery runs out, ruins the print, as I never managed to tape it down so well that I can continue. It never sticks after. I prefer restarting minimally. Energy prices are high and filament costs as well. I am disabled and my income is low enough to not mess about with tossing too much PLA or I am done printing for weeks.

I already print at 40-50 speed for most miniatures, 30-37.5 at startup. No under extrusion seen yet.

If you compare both pics of the succeeded print after the failed one, you see that it should not have printed a thick wobbly line, but a straight line. 1.5 because Prusa works in 5-increments instead of 4. Layer heights are 1, 1.5, etc, 3.5 max.

Thanks for the heat creep tip. Can you please explain where you see that on it and how?

[Pigjes]

Forgot to report back. All screws tested, only little loose here and there, but so mild, none of it could cause problems.

[Gramps]

This might explain heat creep better than I can

[Pigjes]

Thanks! One of my resources for anything 3D too. I looked at many pics of heat creep online, none I see rings a bell. That’s why I asked where it is shown in the succeeded print. I just don’t see it.

[Gramps]

When the hot end cooling fan failed on my Ender 3 v2 it all if a sudden started printing strange at times. The only way I figured it out was when it failed totally. It’s been so long ago I can’t remember off hand what exactly happened but I think it started melting the filament in the cool zone and caused a clog and the printer would not extruded the correct amount of filament.

It’s going to be interesting to find out what is causing your issue. Odd that is’t so intermittent. I’m not sure I could handle waiting on CS to figure out what is wrong with something or deciding what they were going to do. I’m more a dig in and figure out what is wrong and try stuff till I figure it out. However I do see your point in not wanting to touch anything to give them an excuse to not honor their warranty. I can’t believe Prusa doesn’t have an answer as to what is wrong. I wonder if the motherboard is getting hot and causing random issues? Did you check to see if the MB fan and the PS fan are both working? A fan needs a place to intake air and a place to exit the the same air. So I’d also check the inlet and outlet to make sure air flow isn’t restricted.

I’m just spit balling here in the hopes that something might just help with or fix your problem.

[Pigjes]

All the tips I get on here help me being prepared for interacting with their CS, so thanks a lot for trying to help!

I have had to deal with many CS’s over 37 years. Some countries just protect customers a lot better than here in Belgium, especially in the US. I can write a book about the things I experienced here in Belgium. It’s bad here, although it has improved a little.

I even pay 5$ a month to have CS insurance at my bank, meaning they take it to court for free if I need it to happen.

From a new house that started to fall apart, to falsified signatures on contracts, another new house built by drunken subcontractors, a toilet which exited in a chimney, appliance repairs that never happened, car breaks which were not replaced, a pink kitchen delivered instead of a pine one, partially wet wooden floor installed, etc, I can go on and on. I have had plenty of court cases in my life, 95% of them were instigated by a company against us and we never lost one luckily, because we were always extremely careful. Yet, we lost a lot of money, even if we won or didn’t loose.

I can give you a funny example. My washer did not work, and I had to pay the repairs, yet even it still being under warranty. The reason they came up with, was that I washed my bras without putting them in a bag first, and they showed me the “bra wire”, a whopping half of a 2 feet wide metal wire. I grabbed my breasts and said “I am not a cow, my breast size does not even come close to a third of that!”. They actually showed me a part of the wire which holds the door rubber in place. Still had to pay for it, as it would be way too costly to go to court back then myself.

[Gramps]

The washer story has me rolling on the floor washing. As if a bag would have contained a bra wire if it decided to go into the wild and explore the washer.

[Pigjes]

Update. Z didn’t drop anymore in the last 4 weeks. The warping on one corner persists, the blobs and drooling are still not gone although better than before, so that will go in the report to them, as will the possible intermittent fan failure.

I discovered that the incorrect start point was caused after a print abort. Hopefully they will give me a better firmware version to fix that, otherwise I just switch the printer off and back on to fix that, as I do now.

The rest was solved by using a different brand of PLA to print a brim or raft. Luckily, I am currently done printing candy colors, but so far I did not find an alternative for these colors in other brands to stick down on the Prusa sheet, which is a bit of a bummer.

So, the next upcoming weeks, I will keep an eye on it to see if other problems arise or if some get worse, before submitting a report to their helpdesk. The second reason for the extra time is that I just want to finish printing 2 ongoing projects, which I started 1.5 year ago. My crafting drawers are cramped with stuff to assemble so I can finally display both setups.

Anyway, thanks to your help and insight, I have been able to print with some workarounds. My Sylvanian aka Calico Critters town center is finally finished, that was one project I had planned. Yay! So, thanks again!