I have been using the Creality CR-10S to print some antenna parts this week and ran into a problem as I was replacing the filament spool. The new filament would not feed into the Micros Swiss Direct Drive extruder. After some troubleshooting, I found that the short PTFE tube that feeds into the hot end had developed a slight deformity preventing the filament from feeding into it. Fortunately, I had some replacements and had to partially disassemble the extruder to remove the old tube and install the new one. This tube has some small, angled bevels on the input that had worn out. After re assembly I have had to check the bed levelling sensor, manually level the bed corners and reset the z-offset. Looks like after running an XYZ calibration cube that I am back in business.
My upgraded Creality CR-10S 3D printer has been working flawlessly since April 2022. It was at that time that I detailed installing a Micro-swiss direct drive extruder and all metal hot end along with a TH3D Studios bed leveling sensor. Last week I had a print fail about halfway through. Filament just stopped coming out of the extruder. I usually address this type of problem by heating up the hot end and pushing through some filament manually. When I tried this nothing came out. Next step was to pull out the filament completely. This did not work either as the filament was stuck in the extruder.
Doh!
This was a very unusual problem as there was clearly a jam but I could not tell where it was occurring. I removed the fan cover and leveling sensor to gain access to the hot end. There was no sign of plastic leakage around the nozzle. I loosened the grub screw holding the titanium heat break to the heat sink and found the path to that point was clear. I figured the most likely culprit was a clog at the nozzle itself, so I removed it breaking off the bit of filament that was in the nozzle. the filament was still stuck! I removed the heat break from the heat block and cut off the remaining filament. Sure enough the bit of filament going through the heat break was jammed tight. Not sure if the material had melted a bit or if there was some imperfection on the filament itself. I managed to pop out the bit of stuck filament using a hex key and a hammer. Inspecting the inside of the heat break I noticed some plastic residue stuck to the inside walls. This proved difficult to remove without using a torch to soften the material first. After cleaning it off completely I reassembled the hot end with a new nozzle.
Now that the hot end and extruder were reassembled, I next had to relevel the bed manually and reset the z-offset. After having struggled a bit with this, I found the best way to do this was with everything cold. I printed several xyz calibration cubes and everything seems to be working great again.
I apologize for the long post on this subject but I hope this info is useful to anyone who runs into a similar problem someday and to remind me what I did if it happens to me again. I will likely also order a few spare parts incase something more significant happens. I have a spare heat break, heat block, heat sink and nozzles already but I should get a replacement set of heaters and thermistors.
I have had the CR-10S now since 2018 and printers have continued to advance in functionality and a reduced cost. Today, the CR-10S Pro V2 has all the features that I have had to upgrade to at about the same cost as my new CR-10S 5 years ago. Creality has just released their new K1 Max printer at a price point of $999 (the smaller K1 is $599).
This fully enclosed printer comes assembled out of the box and has numerous sensors built in to make the printing process about as plug and play as possible. It is also much faster to print than the CR-10S and with a 300°C hotend capable of more types of materials. It will be interesting to see what kind of reviews for this printer look like. 3D printing has come a long long way from my early days in 2011 with the Makerbot cupcake:
I installed a bed leveling sensor to the Creality CR-10S today along with an upgraded glass build plate. The process went very smoothly including the installation of the new Unified Firmware. I managed to print what may be the best 20mm calibration cube I have ever had after this upgrade. Next up is the installation of the Microswiss direct drive extruder and all-metal hotend which will allow me to use additional materials on this printer.
I am struggling a bit with the Ender 3 printer which I need to print some PETG Moxon parts. I recently installed several upgrade parts that changed the z-axis settings. After readjusting everything I started having problems with warping and first layer issues. Even a 20mm calibration cube was showing warping. After going through the setup and calibration procedures for the capacitive leveling sensor, I started noting that repeatability was way off when the printer bed was heated to 90°C. The TH3D unified firmware has a command called M48 which homes the machine, and then takes 10 Z- height readings at the same spot and displays the standard deviation of the 10 readings. A reading of less than 0.01 mm is expected with the bed at temperature. I was reading ~.4 most readings. I noticed that this worked fine when the bed temp was at room temp. I heated the bed up again and found the same behavior but then turned off the bed heater and repeated the M48 command and found it to be OK. It appears that the bed heater is causing some sort of interference with the sensor.
I am testing a fix now where I modified the starting Gcode to turn off the heater when ready to probe the bed. It doesn’t take long for the probing and the bed remains hot. I then turn on the heater and wait for it to get back to temp before starting the print. I have tested this on two cubes with a brim and found them to come out perfect. I am currently printing the fishing pole adapters so I’ll know if this is working the way I want in about an hour or so. So far so good.
UPDATE 12/2/2021: I did manage to print one set of pole adapters and they fit perfectly. Next time around I was not as fortunate with all sorts of 1st layer issues again. I replaced the EZABL sensor with a newer one I had waiting to install on the CR-10S. This time it calibrated perfectly and I had a .005 standard deviation with the heated bed on. Looks like maybe the sensor is faulty. Back to printing calibration cubes…
UPDATE 12/3/2021: Arrrgh! Despite getting good readings with the replaced leveling sensor I am still having severe issues with the 1st layer. I now believe the problem is that the solid bed mounts I installed leave the bed badly out of level. I ran several probing tests and found good repeatability between readings but the flatness of the bed was off by quite a bit. Here is a view of one set of readings with the bed cold:
I replaced the springs and manually leveled the bed. Here is the plot using the same scale:
Needless to say a big difference. So Now I need to heat up the bed and adjust the z-offset, level the bed and recheck the z-offset. I suspect this will fix my 1st layer issues as the sensor could not compensate for so much variation. I liked the idea of the solid bed mounts but their use would require a bunch of fiddling with shims. I think I will stay with springs. I have some stronger springs for the Ender 3 coming in as the stock ones are notorious for being a bit on the loose side.
I see some more calibration cubes in my immediate future…
The Creality Ender 3 started acting up yesterday as I tried to print the Moxon hub in PETG. The PTFE Bowden tube kept popping out of the hot end. I tried replacing the tube, the tube clip etc but nothing worked. The strange bit was that I could print a calibration cube just fine. As soon as I started the Moxon hub it would pop out after about 2 minutes. Frustration moved me to do something I had planned to do quite some time ago to the CR-10S. I installed the Micro Swiss direct drive extruder kit onto the Ender-3 and installed a fresh all metal hot end. So far it is mostly working. I have to set some new offsets and re-level the bed but I did print another calibration cube with the new parts. I’ll give this a spin for a while and see if this improves the situation. I have another kits coming to make the same changes to the CR-10S.
Adventures in Amateur Radio 