These two pieces were printed
on two separate 3D Printers:
very popular printers,
you might have one of them.
One part was perfect and smooth…
the other one got these lines,
from bottom to top.
You can actually feel the lines with your fingers.
Do you know what happened here?
Do you know how to fix it?
Pause the video right now
and write your guess
in the comments before we continue…
By the way you will see this book
a few times during the video
I am not the writer,
but we will talk about it later.
So, I printed both parts in PETG
could be in PLA as well
that’s not important.
It is a functional part
that I designed in Fusion 360.
They hold these metal rails to the ceiling,
where I hang my Studio lights.
They don’t hold any weight,
quite the opposite:
they are constantly compressed by the nuts.
The actual load is supported by stainless steel rods,
chemically anchored to the ceiling.
I needed 4 of these parts,
so I used two printers:
an Ender 3 S1 Pro
and an Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro.
Both printers have been printing perfectly
for many months.
So, I got very surprised
when one of them got me this ugly part.
That very printer had just printed a perfect piece,
just one week before!
So, is it wet filament?
…No!
Why people always say “wet filament”?!
Drying your spools is important,
but both printers were using spools
that I had recently dried together.
It’s not wet filament.
The layers were so irregular
that I had to check for wobbliness…
Something might be very loose:
like,
the bed,
the belts,
the gantry,
the print head…
I checked everything:
all the wheels were tight as they should,
everything was moving smoothly with no play.
Maybe the nozzle temperature is fluctuating a lot…
In case you don’t know,
if the temperature changes between layers,
it doesn’t need to be a lot,
when it gets hotter,
filament expands and the layer gets wider…
So I did a PID tuning
It doesn’t matter if your printer
runs Klipper or Marlin,
you should run a PID calibration
both in your nozzle and print bed,
so the temperature is constant.
I did the PID tuning
and I printed a second part.
The result?
I got the same problem.
But, maybe, the thermistor,
the temperature sensor,
is failing…
it might be showing a constant temperature,
when in fact, it could not, who knows?
How can we rule out a faulty sensor?
That is easy:
in my hands, now I have not one,
but two ugly parts
and when I placed them side by side,
the line patterns were identical.
Temperature is fine,
it needs to be mechanical…
and I got pretty convinced
it was related to the Z-rods.
Yeah, it was happening on the Ender 3 S1 Pro.
It didn’t have lubricated the rods for a while,
so I cleaned the rods,
applied some lithium grease lubrication,
moved the gantry up and down a few times
and started printing the same model for a third time
and, sure enough,
nothing changed...
The layers were all weird, again.
Do you know the problem already?
I’ll give you a hint:
I fixed it with just one tool,
an Allen key that came with your printer too.
I noticed the Lead Screw Nuts
were a bit tight on both rods…
They were quite loose
when I started using this printer.
Anyway, I loosened their bolts a few turns
and the nuts now were moving sideways
much more freely, as they should.
Guess what?
It worked.
The problem was not exactly Z-Wobble
it was Z-Binding.
Oddly enough, it is not directly mentioned in the book.
But it is a very well known problem,
with many videos on YouTube.
I never though it could make
such an ugly print, out of the sudden…
As I told you, just one week before,
it was printing PERFECTLY,
NO SIGNS of it whatsoever…
...or was it?
I had to check that “perfect” part again…
and, when I placed them side by side by side
even though it was a different model
surprise, surprise:
it was already there,
the lines, the pattern,
it was already beginning to happen,
discretely but surely.
I am not throwing a rock at the Ender 3 S1 Pro…
Z-Binding can happen in ANY printer,
even when the Lead Screws seem to be quite straight.
So, let’s do an experiment.
I will put 3 printers side by side:
the Ender,
the Neptune 3 Pro
and a BIQU Hurakan.
They will be printing the same model…
By now, everything should be perfect so far…
And, without stopping,
I will tight their z-nuts.
I’ll let them print a bit more…
…and everything printed just fine!...
Better! So I'm recording this experiment
months after the problem you saw
and at the time we just
at the time we had just moved
I was printing like crazy
no time to look at the printers
to adjust anything
just printing, printing, printing
and putting things to work
on the house, in the studio
and now that I'm trying to reproduce...
...for the life of me
I cannot reproduce the problem!
In my head it was just a matter of
tightening the nuts and
that thing would happen again
and it didn't.
It printed perfectly!
I think that what happened there
was the perfect storm of a machine
that was too dry
no lubrication on the Rods AND on the Nuts
so it was starting to bind Dry
bind a little bit
and then release
bind again
and adjust again
so the layers were so irregular
but now that the machines
they are well adjusted, lubricated,
it doesn't matter
I can tight to the nuts
I don'teven see the wave patterns
I even replaced this the stepper motor
and the rod for a rod that was very bent
everything printed just fine!
By the way the nuts must operate loose
you should not tight those nuts
they are made it to operate lose
so they can move sideways and compensate
for rods that are not straight.
So, people are now buying the printers
that you don't need to do anything
they just print fine out of the box
all those machines are brand new
they will print super nice NOW.
Eventually things happen
so people will need to learn
how to keep them adjusted
how the printers work
learn how to troubleshoot your machine
sometimes there is lots of trial and error to do that
If you just bought a 3D Printer,
I recommend you to also buy this book:
“3D Printing Failures”,
by Sean Aranda
Sean might get surprised by my video,
I never contacted him.
The book is very nice,
it covers so many problems
you might encounter on you 3D Printing journey.
Photos are great,
fonts are big
which I am starting to appreciate.
Of course, no book is complete,
it doesn’t mention the binding of the nuts
that we just saw in this video…
But it mentions Power-loss Recovery Blobs
that I also covered in one of my videos
Watch my video!
Buy Sean’s book to fix your printing problems…
Link in the description
I’ll get a small commission
Merry Christmas everybody!
And Subscribe!
Thanks for watching.
Hoooo! Hooo! Hooo!