Starvation questions. Aside from the bearing rod wear, I’m still getting some starvation issues. I got fed up, turned the speed way up and got better results, but it’s still starving the nozzle.
I’ve got positive airflow across the extruder motor and print, I’ve got minimal retracts going on. The filament path is straight, and the filament is new…PLA, 205 degrees. But as you can see in the infil and the rightmost side of the print, it’s starting to starve. a light push on the filament got things going again, but there’s going to be an ugly line in the print.
P.S. Meshmaker makes some weird choices. That first pic is the celtic skull, oriented the way it thinks it should be oriented…chin down.
Good luck. The only way I can help you is by repeating what I heard. Have a fan on the heat break above the nozzle to reduce the chance of the melted filament crawling out the back of the hotend. Have a fan on the print to cool it since it is PLA. Make sure the cold end is clean with no filament filings in the hobbed pulley/gear. Make sure you do not have moisture problems in the filament. Make sure you don’t have dust on the filament.
Besides the stuff mentioned above, others wanting to help will want to know where you got your filament. The more info you give, the shorter the time till someone can get you a solution.
Oh. There is one thing I personally would add. Melt some plastic in the hotend, extrude a tad bit and then back it all the way out and snip off any melted area for a quick and sloppy way to remove any floating plugs from the hotend.
Increase the the pressure against your hob and filament, it looks like is just a tiny bit to slack.
Like maybe parts of the filament are slightly under-spec and it’s not gripping it well enoug?
@Mike_Miller I think @Nigel_Dickinson is suggesting that there is a tension control for the idler/bearing on your extruder. Sometimes, I think the filament being too soft does cause problems though. Related to this in what I said was that the extruder may have ground away the filament and is not getting the amount of grip that it needs.
@NathanielStenzel no I’m suggesting that its not tight enough to even mark the filament never mind grind it.
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I think +Nigel Dickinson is suggesting that there is a tension control for the idler/bearing on your extruder.
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Sometimes, I think the filament being too soft does cause problems though. Related to this in what I said was that the extruder may have ground away the filament and is not getting the amount of grip that it needs.
Those were separate thoughts,@Nigel_Dickinson .
Be careful, though, with increasing the tension too much. I found that it can make things worse in theta is strips the filament and becomes bogged. The general wisdom for my type of printer (Felix) is to have as little tension as you can get away with.
Oh yeah. Another angle on this…is your extruder motor hot? Some people use fans to cool their extruder motor. Some people use fans to cool their extruder’s stepper motor driver chip/board. I am under the general impression that if the current is set too high, the motor heats up and if it is set too low, the motor will miss steps.
I’ve got an 80mm fan blowing across the extruder and build plate for testing. (I also have a crazy-stupid 200mm fan I got for a song with the idea that I could sit the printer on it (adquately spaced and engineered) such that it could turn slowly and cool all of the motors.
Testing, I set all movement to 50mm/sec and it failed immediately. So far, it’s set with all speeds at 30mm/sec, 100% extrude multiplier and 100% movement multiplier with zero retraction and a small part is printing nicely. (A QuadRap Smiling carriage, @Shauki 
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@Mike_Miller Are you accidentally cooling your hotend?
Keep in mind that there are a number of fan ducts to help cool the print without cooling the hotend.
When I get prints that look like this it is from something causing a bit of a blockage in the nozzle.
