Raising temps. Up to 245C. It still skips.
Slowing down print using the printer’s interface. Down to 30-50% of the speed I used to print at reduces skipping, but not 100%. (Still with temperature at 245)
Disassembled the extruder and filed the little step that was seemed to be rubbing on the gear of the extruder drive.
I increased the max current of the stepper motor using the potentiometer twice now. Stock was 1.38V on the potentiometer. Tried 1.5V. Still skipping.
I just tried another print at 1.75V. If I reduce the print speed to 40%, it works, no more skipping. If I try going faster (50-80%), it skips when it is laying infill (it prints faster).
I ordered a new 42-40 motor for the extruder, maybe that is my problem… I am getting a bit desperate. Honestly, this machine has seen very little use. Bought it brand new 14 months ago, and using it only from time to time. Very disappointing…
Thanks for the input. I increased the voltage. It is up to 1.75V instead of the stock 1.38V. It does help, but it does not solve the problem 100%. See my answer to Jason.
sounds like you have covered all the bases here on this one, I would tend to think at this point is a bent heat break, They are pretty easy to smash and make more than useless.
to find out though the only way to confirm is to replace it., I am suspecting at this point we have eliminated, Extruder, Heat, nozzle and steps. I am assuming at this point it’s not the filament as I am pretty sure you mentioned you had printed with it before so that would tend to rule it out.
The only thing left is the filament path in the nozzle, Usually, this means the throat. It’s honestly about the only part that will have that “gotcha” factor.
The only other thing I can think to look at is if you can do a little video of it while it’s printing. Look at things slowly line the filament roll, up to the extruder, down the bowden tube and finally over the hot end and to the nozzle.
Maybe we can see something that is causing you the problem. I hate being stumped by a problem.
I had a similar issue on my ender 3 max a couple years back. Everything worked good individually but when I started a print the extruder was skipping like crazy, I couldn’t even get a first layer down.
The solution I ended up finding was to replace the gear on the stepper motor, to this day I still have no clue why. The gear looks completely fine, but after replacing the gear everything went back to normal and even after ~ 1000 hours of printing it was still going strong. My best guess is that maybe the gear was slightly misshapen and after so much printing it finally kicked the can.
Anyways, not sure if this will work for you or not, just thought I would throw it out there!
Try reinstalling your slicer software by first removing the old. I find that strange things can happen when we make a settings change when poking around and finding what we did is almost impossible but reinstalling the software fixes all these unknowns. Worth a try.