This will be a long post but I am generally asking for help for printing with PETG. I keep getting the Printer printing without extruding error.
I am pretty new to 3d printing and bought a K2 Plus with a CFS. Ever since I bought it, it has been working great and never had any issues with PLA. A couple days ago I wanted to print multiple things with PETG so I bought Creality Hyper PETG which is on a cardboard roll. I use Creality Print as my slicer and have only ever used the default profiles the slicer has up until before this whole issue I am having. For my first print with the PETG, which I put in the CFS, was completed but had an issue were I believe extra filament came out of the nozzle and ended up attaching small balls of filament to the print. After this point I had many many failed prints (about 30ish now) and only a couple more completed prints. The Things listed below are the trouble shooting steps I have taken to try to fix this issue in chronological order.
Gcode/Slicer fixes
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Re-sliced and repositioned parts - same print failed again in the same spot
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Updated Creality Print 6.2 to 7.1 - seemed to fix original same-spot failure but new failures started
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Re-downloaded model file - no change
Temperature changes
- Tried 240C, 250C, 255C, 235C - none consistently worked, 250C gave one successful 8 hour print
Speed changes
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Dropped speeds to 60/80/100/120 (outer wall/inner wall/solid infill/sparse infill) - gave one successful 8 hour print but inconsistent after that
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Tried increasing speeds to 70/100/130/150 - failed
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Set device speed to stable 50% - failed at 16%
Flow/Pressure settings
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Dropped max volumetric speed from 23 to 10 mmÂł/s - still failed
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Enabled pressure advance at 0.05 - still failed
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Flow ratio already at 0.98 - left alone
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During the print that I set to stable 50% speed I also enabled flow ratio calibration and auto pressure advance but it did fail at 16%.
Physical maintenance
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Cold pull nozzle clean - no change
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Dried filament at 65C for 6 hours - no change
One successful 8 hour print with 250C and 60/80/100/120 speeds but results were never consistently repeatable after that.
Never tried: Different filament brand.
The consistent issue is that once the print begins printing the layers are never smooth but instead look and feel very rough. It also seems that the issue that causes the printing without extruding error is whenever the printer is trying to do long continuous extrusion moves where the nozzle doesn’t pick up for long periods of time. The moves are usually the solid infill layers which means my failed prints rarely ever get past the first couple layers. Every time the error happens I have to clean out the clog in the extruder. The filament jams in between the extruder gears and looks crinkled. The only thing “wrong” with my printer is that the CFS slot I use for the spool of PETG has a little bit of a harder time rolling the spool because the gears got slightly damaged during the first failure I had. There is only a tiny bit more friction for that CFS slot compared to the others but I have not tried to use a different CFS slot yet so who knows.
All the trouble shooting changes I have listed above I also tried on a single part I wanted to slice with the same orientation on the bed. No matter the change I made the print always failed around 16%. I wanted to see if not changing the part I want to print and the orientation of it would help my trouble shooting process but I guess not. Whenever I wirelessly uploaded the gcode for this part for some reason it took longer to send then all the other prints I have tried to do. The file size is only 2.74MB which doesn’t seem bad but maybe that is the reason it almost always failed at 16%.
All the parts I have been trying to print have been successfully printed by many people before so the models themselves are not the issue. For transparency I am trying to print https://makerworld.com/en/models/1294480-lab-rax-10-server-rack-5u#profileId-1325352
What settings and profiles do you guys use to print PETG with your K2 Plus printers? Do you think that maybe I have just gotten a bad spool of filament? I ordered 2 Creality Hyper PETG cardboard spools at the same time and over this whole experience I have used about 1 and a quarter of the total filament so do you think maybe the filament is low quality?
Good luck