Just wanted to show you all a photo showing what inconsistent filament diameter can do to you. A third of this “e” hit a spot of low diameter filament and I’ve ended up with under extrusion and poor first layer adhesion.
This is easy enough to check for, you just need to take some measurements of your filament a few times over half a meter or so. Be sure to take two measurements at each point in case the filament has an oval instead of circular cross section (which this one also did).
This filament has been a real problem for me, so I’m trying to use it up in giveaways. The vendor is 3DPrinterStuff.com, but I’ve had this for over two years and their other colors were decent, so I wouldn’t take this photo as a general mark of my experience with their quality.
could be a diameter problem, but it looks more like a variation in the height of your platform or nozzle. If the filament went taught and pulled up slightly on the extruder, that would cause this.
As @Whosa_whatsis said, check your bed is flat and level. If it was just filament going thin, producing the gaps in the foreground E why are there all the ridges on the E in the background? Maybe your extruder is slipping at some smaller diameters too?
I think the ridges in the background are from over extrusion. I had the filament diameter set a little low to try to compensate for the small diameter areas, and there were also diameter variances on the large side. I can’t quite explain the almost horizontal ridges just by the fan duct.
The other thing that can’t really be seen in this photo is that the perimeter is undersized. The area that didn’t get filled well was the first area that got filled coming out of the perimeters. That could still point to friction on the spool, but I think rules out bed flat/level for me.
The sooner we all have real time measurement of filament diameter (approximated from width/height) in our systems the better. Seen the recent posts from @Thomas_Sanladerer ?
@Mark_MARKSE_Emery If this was caused by a change in filament diameter (and I’m still not convinced it was), it was too abrupt for a system like what @Thomas_Sanladerer is working on to fully compensate.
