4
$\begingroup$

I was gifted a Creality Ender-3 and thus have begun my first foray into 3D printing. Things went well for the setup and first prints; I printed some of the 3D files that came with the printer, then some files I downloaded from the internet, and finally some files I made myself in Blender, all without issue. However, the last object I tried printing is causing problems.

The object is a spheroform tetrahedron, a type of surface of constant width (SoCW) that is essentially a triangular pyramid with curved faces and edges. I made the model in Blender, sliced it in Ultimaker Cura, and started the print job. However, about a quarter of the way up the vertical height of the model, the extruder became stuck to the back corner of the tetrahedron.

Photo of the printer stopped at the back end of a print with the nozzle stuck to the model

I wasn't watching at the exact moment it happened, but it seems like the print-head stopped moving horizontally (I'm assuming it stuck to the part, preventing it from moving in the x-axis or y-axis) but continued extruding filament for a few moments before the printer's software detected that it couldn't move the print-head and aborted the print job (building up the little ridge around the extruder nozzle's final position that is visible in the photo).

I did some searching online, and following the recommendations I saw, I re-leveled the print bed, did my best to clean the extruder nozzle, and started printing the same file. This time, it worked without issue, so I thought the problem had been solved.

To make the most of a SoCW you need at least three of them, so after the first successful SoCW finished, I immediately started another. Unfortunately, the extruder stuck to the back corner of the tetrahedron again — at a different Z-height than the first time, but in about the same horizontal spot. I re-leveled the bed and cleaned the extruder nozzle once more, but the next attempt also got stuck in the back corner.

Out of four total attempts, only one was completed. The other three got stuck at various heights. It seems significant that all the failed attempts got stuck in about the same (X,Y)-position, even though the Z-height was different each time, but I don't know what it means.

Does anyone know what is causing this issue and how to prevent it?

Photo of the above the model showing where the nozzle was stuck to the print

Photo at a different angle showing the point at which the nozzle was stuck to the print

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
5
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ When you state "it got stuck" ... could you please describe this a little better? Did it just stop moving right there and kept spewing out filament? Or did it just stop printing? Or what? $\endgroup$
    – Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2
    Commented Jan 10 at 19:33
  • $\begingroup$ @Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 It seems like the print-head stops moving horizontally (I'm assuming it sticks to the part, preventing it from moving in the x-axis or y-axis) but continues extruding filament for a few moments before the printer's software detects that it can't move the print-head and aborts the print job (building up the little ridge around the extruder nozzle's final position that is visible in the photos). $\endgroup$
    – Lawton
    Commented Jan 10 at 20:46
  • $\begingroup$ Have you tried to reorient it to not have point at the back? Are your belts tight? Is it easy for you to stop the print head from moving with your hand (should be kinda hard)? What happen if you do / try? $\endgroup$
    – Mołot
    Commented Jan 11 at 0:10
  • $\begingroup$ @Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 The belts seem to be tight. I tried rotating the model 30 degrees in the slicer so the corner wasn't exactly in the back middle, and the first new attempt completed successfully. Any idea why it was getting stuck there? $\endgroup$
    – Lawton
    Commented Jan 16 at 22:56
  • $\begingroup$ I don't know why it was stopping, other than there was something in the gcode which the printer couldn't compute and therefore stopped. This seems the likely culprit. I can tell you (and maybe you've already figured this part out) the reason there was a little funnel looking thing where the print head stopped at was because the filament continued to flow out of the nozzle. I stopped a print today because it lost adhesion to the print bed. Where the print head stopped at, there was a little funnel just like in your images. $\endgroup$
    – Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2
    Commented Jan 16 at 23:01

0

Reset to default

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .