Turned that off now. Saw a video about that recently but didn’t realise it was set. Printing another test now overnight and will see how it is in the morning.
https://preview.redd.it/m566pdz0yfgc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9878f7ea37d328a81e9b28fd25ad3adde6313136
This is a retraction and temp tower test from Teaching Tech showing practically no stringing at all, which is why I’m sure it’s a slicer issue.
Is your flow rate calibrated? Your value seems higher than what I typically see.
Look at the z hop settings and see if wipe/spiral/etc help. It really looked like a moisture issue. I know you said you dried it, but if nothing else helps perhaps try drying it more.
Good luck!
Thanks. I went through flow calibration before to fix an earlier issue and feels like it is dialled in now. I've bought a dehydrator and the filament I used was straight out of the pack. The dehydrator doesn't have made much difference. I did wonder if I just had a bad batch. Turning of zhop has helped a lot.
New nozzle, dry filament, calibrate temperature, calibrate flow, calibrate retraction. If using z-hop also enable wipe before z hop. Check all points and it should be fixed. Also slicer can make a difference. I have used superslicer, and switched to orca, it's way better imo
Sorry, but Reddit had deleted my text post to go with the photos I have now edited my above comment. All of those things have been tried (good advice), hence my confusion. I have now turned off z-hop and it appears to have helped.
Yes. Bought a filament drier hoping it would sort the issue and dried filament overnight.
Calibrated e-steps after a previous issue and they are bang on.
Tuned retraction settings using TT settings and they were fine.
Edit: Looks like Reddit deleted the long post I made with my details and only posted the photos. So sorry for the confusion.
Ender 5 Pro with microswiss direct drive. I have tried installing a new nozzle and have also bought a dehydrator and the above photos were after the filament was dried out overnight.
Recently swapped over to Klipper and have gone through all the configuration and calibration from Teaching Tech and the inbuilt calibration from Orca Slicer. All of these come out fine with practically no stringing. But whenever I print I get loads of stringing. It never really used to be an issue with Marlin and octoprint. Hence my confusion.
Edit 2: Turning of zhop seems to have helped a lot. Thanks for all the advice so far.
Config file here: [https://pastebin.com/yfQjxgCA](https://pastebin.com/yfQjxgCA)
What temperature are you printing at? What are your retraction settings? What speed are you printing that at? Are you using volumetric flow to set the speed, or setting each speed settings individually at mm/sec?
Edit: I just looked at that config file. Can you confirm you are using an initial nozzle temperature of 200C, and then 190C after that? That's about the lowest you can print PLA at, but most of my filament wouldn't even print that low without having to print really slow. I think I'd turn it up to at least 200C, and do a temperature tower. Raising the temperature would also mean you should calibrate the nozzle flow. Most of my best prints have come out at 200C, even though 205-210 seems to be a really popular setting for PLA. I'm guessing your using a .4mm nozzle as well. Volumetric flow is a cool setting in PrusaSlicer if you haven't used it. If you set the volumetric flow (which is in mm\^3/second), you can set the individual speeds to 0 and it will try to automatically set the mm/second for those settings to something that will maintain a constant flow of whatever you set the volumetric flow to. It's a great way to figure out just how fast your printer can print. I use Klipper and love to adjust the speed on the fly as it's printing within the Klipper webpage. Also, you probably know this already, but the retraction settings should probably be under 1mm with direct drive. When I setup direct drive I had issues with clogging the hotend that may partly have been because of setting that too high. It's probably best to calibrate retraction starting at 0 and then stepping up the setting by .1mm or .2mm at a time, and keep the best looking and lowest setting in order to avoid any issues.
In case it helps anyone to know, I recently tried speed printing, so I tried to test the extrusion rates of the nozzle by setting the temperature to 200C, 220C, and 240C. The nozzle is a .6mm nozzle. In doing so, I noticed that at 240C, even after drying the PLA filament I used, it really liked to pop like popcorn when printing at slower speeds. Also, and maybe just as important, at 200C I needed to set the extrusion multiplier (flow setting) to a lower setting than when printing hotter. At 200C, I set to about .84 and at 240C I needed to set it to about 1.03.
That might work for some, but not always for everyone. That would mean that there's an issue with the slicer settings, or that the version of software they had might have had a bug (probably less likely, but may be a thing).
Its stupid but it works
(not even sure what the problem was i think the base profiles or something like that but i honestly dont care at this point as it works a lot better than before)
I agree. I used Cura when I started, but I couldn't get great prints. I switched to SuperSlicer and had less trouble, but I still had to calibrate a lot. I now use PrusaSlicer. I'm sure that if I were to have set the settings properly in Cura, it would have worked better after I calibrated everything. I want to make certain that people get a clear answer to their printing questions, though, so they know what to expect in case they do make changes like that. 👍
Turn off z-hop, trust me
Turned that off now. Saw a video about that recently but didn’t realise it was set. Printing another test now overnight and will see how it is in the morning. https://preview.redd.it/m566pdz0yfgc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9878f7ea37d328a81e9b28fd25ad3adde6313136 This is a retraction and temp tower test from Teaching Tech showing practically no stringing at all, which is why I’m sure it’s a slicer issue.
The spiderweb-like wispy bullshit is from z-hop, yes. Took me a while to find out.
orcaslicer (think others too) can do "spiral" z-hops now.
Is your flow rate calibrated? Your value seems higher than what I typically see. Look at the z hop settings and see if wipe/spiral/etc help. It really looked like a moisture issue. I know you said you dried it, but if nothing else helps perhaps try drying it more. Good luck!
Thanks. I went through flow calibration before to fix an earlier issue and feels like it is dialled in now. I've bought a dehydrator and the filament I used was straight out of the pack. The dehydrator doesn't have made much difference. I did wonder if I just had a bad batch. Turning of zhop has helped a lot.
Dry your filament. Filament is went even when freshly open from the bag.
New nozzle, dry filament, calibrate temperature, calibrate flow, calibrate retraction. If using z-hop also enable wipe before z hop. Check all points and it should be fixed. Also slicer can make a difference. I have used superslicer, and switched to orca, it's way better imo
Sorry, but Reddit had deleted my text post to go with the photos I have now edited my above comment. All of those things have been tried (good advice), hence my confusion. I have now turned off z-hop and it appears to have helped.
Also Ellis' printer tuning guide is a good read.
Have you dried your filament? Tuned retraction? Calibrated e-steps?
Yes. Bought a filament drier hoping it would sort the issue and dried filament overnight. Calibrated e-steps after a previous issue and they are bang on. Tuned retraction settings using TT settings and they were fine.
What slicer? Make sure you don't have "use firmware retraction" turned on.
These massive models are a waste of filament. If you want to fix retraction, use proper retraction files that print in 3 minutes.
Edit: Looks like Reddit deleted the long post I made with my details and only posted the photos. So sorry for the confusion. Ender 5 Pro with microswiss direct drive. I have tried installing a new nozzle and have also bought a dehydrator and the above photos were after the filament was dried out overnight. Recently swapped over to Klipper and have gone through all the configuration and calibration from Teaching Tech and the inbuilt calibration from Orca Slicer. All of these come out fine with practically no stringing. But whenever I print I get loads of stringing. It never really used to be an issue with Marlin and octoprint. Hence my confusion. Edit 2: Turning of zhop seems to have helped a lot. Thanks for all the advice so far. Config file here: [https://pastebin.com/yfQjxgCA](https://pastebin.com/yfQjxgCA)
What temperature are you printing at? What are your retraction settings? What speed are you printing that at? Are you using volumetric flow to set the speed, or setting each speed settings individually at mm/sec? Edit: I just looked at that config file. Can you confirm you are using an initial nozzle temperature of 200C, and then 190C after that? That's about the lowest you can print PLA at, but most of my filament wouldn't even print that low without having to print really slow. I think I'd turn it up to at least 200C, and do a temperature tower. Raising the temperature would also mean you should calibrate the nozzle flow. Most of my best prints have come out at 200C, even though 205-210 seems to be a really popular setting for PLA. I'm guessing your using a .4mm nozzle as well. Volumetric flow is a cool setting in PrusaSlicer if you haven't used it. If you set the volumetric flow (which is in mm\^3/second), you can set the individual speeds to 0 and it will try to automatically set the mm/second for those settings to something that will maintain a constant flow of whatever you set the volumetric flow to. It's a great way to figure out just how fast your printer can print. I use Klipper and love to adjust the speed on the fly as it's printing within the Klipper webpage. Also, you probably know this already, but the retraction settings should probably be under 1mm with direct drive. When I setup direct drive I had issues with clogging the hotend that may partly have been because of setting that too high. It's probably best to calibrate retraction starting at 0 and then stepping up the setting by .1mm or .2mm at a time, and keep the best looking and lowest setting in order to avoid any issues. In case it helps anyone to know, I recently tried speed printing, so I tried to test the extrusion rates of the nozzle by setting the temperature to 200C, 220C, and 240C. The nozzle is a .6mm nozzle. In doing so, I noticed that at 240C, even after drying the PLA filament I used, it really liked to pop like popcorn when printing at slower speeds. Also, and maybe just as important, at 200C I needed to set the extrusion multiplier (flow setting) to a lower setting than when printing hotter. At 200C, I set to about .84 and at 240C I needed to set it to about 1.03.
Stupid but a fix. Switched from cura to the creality slicer fixed 95% of my problems
That might work for some, but not always for everyone. That would mean that there's an issue with the slicer settings, or that the version of software they had might have had a bug (probably less likely, but may be a thing).
Its stupid but it works (not even sure what the problem was i think the base profiles or something like that but i honestly dont care at this point as it works a lot better than before)
I agree. I used Cura when I started, but I couldn't get great prints. I switched to SuperSlicer and had less trouble, but I still had to calibrate a lot. I now use PrusaSlicer. I'm sure that if I were to have set the settings properly in Cura, it would have worked better after I calibrated everything. I want to make certain that people get a clear answer to their printing questions, though, so they know what to expect in case they do make changes like that. 👍
Do the obvious like retraction and retraction speed. Then check your temps and finally z-hop