FT5 skipping layers after after a few milimeters

[FRFT]

I am having a layer skipping issue. The part is a truss and a lot of the details are at minimum wall thickness. What happens is it will print the bottom outline fine, do some of the vertical details fine, and then 3 or so mm up will skip and try to print 3 centimeters in the Y. It also makes a grind noise like the belts are slipping. I just retightrned them so they are tight.
I moved the printer to its new location in the basement and it is running of a power cord. Initial prints were done with back cover removed and now its back on.
Is this a AC power issue? (A incandescent lightbulb on same outlet wil fluctuate when bed heater is on) Power supply? Stepper drivers? Settings?

Please help me by pointing me in the right direction.

[Wyvern]

Is it that your nozzle is digging into the part? I just wasted 500G worth of material last night to have this happen- the problem with me is due to it having to go 280mm back and fourth, at 120mm/s travel torque is low, and even a little blob can cause it to grab and miss a step.

Check your voltages, this machine is shipped with drivers around .5V, the settings are (if I remember correctly) .6-.9V for X/Z and 1.4 for Y.

Check to make sure everything is nice and smooth with no binding, the bed is especially temperamental and took me over an hour to get it perfect.

best thing to do is adjust your voltages, do your preliminary checks of the machine and then watch/record it.

[carefudundae]

I am having a layer skipping issue. The part is a truss and a lot of the details are at minimum wall thickness. What happens is it will print the bottom outline fine, do some of the vertical details fine, and then 3 or so mm up will skip and try to print 3 centimeters in the Y.

can you post pictures/gcode? is it slicing properly? when you look at the sliced preview, does everything look fine, or does it have gaps?

It also makes a grind noise like the belts are slipping. I just retightrned them so they are tight.

this could be due to lots of things. let's start with accel settings, what are yours at?

[FRFT]

I'm away from the printer right now, but I started another print of that part before leaving that was much larger and failed too. This time the X layer shifted by the 3rd layer. I think when it accelerates over a large distance it skips steps and shifts layers. I will check accel numbers on these prints when I get a chance.
So I either screwed up the accel settings, or there is a power issue. Or both.

[FRFT]

I checked the settings and they are as follows:

Print Speed 60mm/s
Outer Perimeter 40mm/s
Infill 80mm/s
Travel 150mm/s

50C bed / 180C fillament
0.8mm walls/floor/top
Layer Height 0.2mm
L1 Height 0.3mm
L1 width 100%

Based on comparison to the stock FT5 settings these are in range.

Thoughts?

[Wyvern]

I would lower travel to 100-120 for anything that has large surface area or must zip back and fourth quickly (like dragon wings) this will give you more torque to overcome any snags- when turning on combing, I do infill only and avoid supports, Z-hop only when collision is unavoidable.

I have found anything lower than 190 too low for PLA, prints over 50mm/s are bumped to 210 and all the way to 230 for 80+ mm/s. 180C at least for my machine, starts jumping steps.

I have found the print bed bonds best at 70C or 60C for a wide first layer.

I have also put a larger stepper on X to prevent skipped jumps- slightly overkill, but why not when you have 2X Y steppers.

If I had to guess your snagging on the X axis during travel (no extrusion).

[carefudundae]

I think when it accelerates over a large distance it skips steps and shifts layers. I will check accel numbers on these prints when I get a chance.

I think you are onto something here. Could you post accel settings? If you are connected via pc, use M501 to show your firmware settings then look in the M204 section to see what you have for print and travel accel. If you aren't connected to a pc, you should be able to navigate to find the motion/accel settings using the provided smart screen. For this printer I recommend both of those be 1000 or lower. I run at 300-500 I believe.
Additionally, the driver voltages must be properly set, and if they are too low the motors will certainly skip steps. The manual has the correct values they should be set to, I can't remember exactly (wanna say X should be 0.8V, and Y 1.2V, but check the manual).

I checked the settings and they are as follows: Print Speed 60mm/s Outer Perimeter 40mm/s Infill 80mm/s Travel 150mm/s 50C bed / 180C fillament 0.8mm walls/floor/top Layer Height 0.2mm L1 Height 0.3mm L1 width 100% Based on comparison to the stock FT5 settings these are in range. Thoughts?

these are all speeds, and acceleration is what will likely be the cause of skipped steps

[FRFT]

I will get the actual values tonight. The values are stock from the R2 firmware. But the old printer location was a wooden dining table which was softer. New location is a metal tanker desk and is rigid.

[csorrows]

Print Speed 60mm/s
Outer Perimeter 40mm/s
Infill 80mm/s
Travel 150mm/s

50C bed / 180C filament
0.8mm walls/floor/top
Layer Height 0.2mm
L1 Height 0.3mm
L1 width 100%

All of your speeds are fine but 150mm/s travel can cause issues.
50c bed is kinda low. PLA gets 'sticky' at 70c. I use 60c or room temp.
You need more heat in your hotend. 180c is VERY low.
I am assuming the 0.8mm is extrusion width? You can not do that with a 0.4mm nozzle. Go down to at least 0.3mm.

[FRFT]

Sorry for the delay, life....

@csorrows: The .8mm refers to the walls on all sides, but that means 2 .4mm passes for the walls and 4 .2mm thickness passes for the bottom and top of part. A bit overkill but I like things symmetric.

To answer the accel numbers:
Velocity setting 300x, 300y, 5z, 25e

Accell 800
Accel retract 2500
Accel travel 800
Accel max 800x, 800y, 200z, 10000e

Jerk
Vx 15
Vy 15
Vz +.040
Ve 5

Also an update, I just did another print with a travel set to 120mm, and temperature at 190C/45C. The print speeds were set low to print 40mm, outer perimeter 20mm, infill 60mm, and infill to 15%.

Heard the grinding noise, about layer 2.3mm, so about layer 11. Sure enough the layer shifted and I killed the print. But at 190C the first layer stuck a bit better. (I think 180C was my attempt to fix the blobby corners of the test cube)

I will try to print another print with travel at 90mm and see how that goes, and report back. After that the back cover comes off, and I will measure the voltages on the PS when skipping occurs, and on the drivers. Hope that poking the driver trim pot during a print won't affect the driver board.

Getting a bit frustrated, and appreciate everybody's help.

[Wyvern]

Something isn't right.

Try re-flashing the machine (mine was doing some weird stuff)

Double check your voltages and if in doubt, swap the driver one at a time, use your spare!

[FRFT]

Update:
I tested the power outlet voltage when the printer kicked on the bed heater and the outlet voltage went from 120 to 118V as the heater kicked on. Not good, so I thought let's try this with better power.

Ok, here is my plan of action:

• Move printer to the outlet closest to the breaker panel and run printer.
• Print the hard prints I have been doing and then print something easier.
• verify if printer skips, if so check voltages

So, I moved the printer, it's on the ground in the garage, next to the outlet right by the power panel. Found that the set screws for the extruder temp sensor fell out. Found 2 spares, back in.

The printer has stabilized and did not crash on the small print of the structure. However something fell into the track and it only partially printed. I still see misaligned layers, but part of it could be due to the way this things is built so can't be sure if there is an issue. I checked it only a few times but it did not do the grinding noise.
So I moved on to print a larger version of the structure (2x) with the 120mm travel speed and got 5mm into it. Then I thought I would be funny and stress the printer power supply and put a 6" fan on the heat bed and blew from the side. 30 seconds later I get a thermal runaway message. $%*#$$$!!!!!!!!!

So two things changed in this setup: first, better power, second cooler air - probably 40F in the garage. Based on this I think I will add an outlet on a shorter power run in the basement and try again. If that does not work it might be an overheating issue???
In the meantime I will print out the backpack part cooler so I can get rid of the external fan. Then with the new outlet, and a cooler fan I can finish tuning the printer.

Still having trouble printing the first layer small features, It's like they don't want to stick to PEI or the extrusion is just "too slow". Based on the above comments I want to crank up the temperature but need the fan to handle the built up heat on the plastic because my initial prints with overhangs drooped. Will try to add gluestick to the PEI and see how it goes.

Off to print something easier.

[FRFT]

Kicked of the backpack cooler last night. Used a raft to make sure it sticks.
Looks like around midnight things went to crap.

I'm out of ideas.
Is printing this hard or did I get a crappy printer?

What do I even test next? Reflash? Rest driver voltages? Swap drivers? Swap PS? Swap board?

[carefudundae]

Maybe check this recent post. Does this seem to describe your issues?

FT5 R2 Random Movements "walkabout" - Solved

I have been looking for months about this issue! I have the exact same problem with my R2 as well. Sometimes it raises the print into the hotend and sometimes it simply moves to the x or y enstops and then collides with my print. I will have to try these chokes and hopefully they will result in a reliable printer so i can finally use it for more than an hour lol. Thank you for posting this!!

[Wyvern]

When that was on the bed, did X move over or did Y move over? that would give you an Idea what axis is giving you issues.

Try the choke fix or try temporarily using short LCD cables- mine would fly back and cause all sorts of failures.

It sucks right now, but give it time, the machine is great once it learns to behave- I finished a few 20hr prints and at first it would fail minutes into a print.

[FRFT]

That is the y axis. What is not visible is that the y axis behaved until it went rouge. While the x axis never went crazy, it created a wavy pattern from the get go.
Chokes will be here on Sunday. I will try to verify driver voltage tomorrow.
I will also try a print from the pc if I get enough time.

[Wyvern]

Are you contacting Folgertech? are you still within that DOA window?

[FRFT]

No, way past the window. It took me almost as long to assemble as the warranty window.

[Wyvern]

I hustled on mine because of that window, knocked it out in 3 days, would have been faster, but the extrusion nuts didn't allow enough toggle so were infuriating to seat. Wanted to get it together just in case I had some bad ACM parts... which I had a few, they worked, but they were ugly- but Folgertech sent me new ones along with square nuts that fit.

My chokes are also arriving sunday, I'm throwing the dice and have another 5 hours in a 10 hour print, so far so good.

[FRFT]

So an update.

I moved the printer back to the basement after getting a good print with chokes installed in the garage.
I finally droped a line from a less loaded circuit and plugged it in.
And I thought I would print the backpack cooler to test it out.

So I am seriously frustrated again. Couple of thungs went wrong from the get go.
First the brim peeled up within the first few layers. I touched the bed and it was supposed to be at 50C but it felt only warm to the touch. Need to verify the the thermistor, and temp, and not sure what else.

Second and most important the layers skipped on the Y again. What the hell? I thought there might be an obstruction but it did it several times so no idea what the heck.

Third there is waviness in the X axis, so I think I need to do the nut on the heatbreak mod that was mentioned recently.

Ok folks, I seriously need help here. This thing is really starting to piss me off, and I am getting close to trashing it and getting a Chinese printer. I can't even print a fan housing for Gods sake.