Transcript:
Hey, I’m Alec. And today on 3d printing troubleshooting guide, we’re gonna talk about layer shifts. If you’ve been finding these videos helpful, don’t forget to subscribe to the channel to stay up to date with all the solutions to the many areas you may encounter well 3d printing And if you missed the last episode. Feel free to watch that here. Now let’s get started. Solaire shifts are something that can happen. If you have some issue with one of the axes where you’re in the middle of the print and suddenly you just have the entire thing shifted along with the layers. Now this can be on the X the Y. It could be a combination of the two and it’s something that can make what is for the most part, a great print suddenly go awful. You can have it where the beginning is looking great, and then it shifts, and then it continues to look great, and it doesn’t really matter because in either case, it’s just trash. You’re just gonna throw it away because as hard as you might try to chop it off and move it over and glue it back together, you still have a big gap where there’s just overhang basically zero. Degree overhanging it all troops. So there’s a couple different things that can cause this, so let’s get started and figure out what might have happened so the first thing that might have happened Has to do with the pulley now. The pulley is a part right here on the x-axis and is back here on the y-axis. It’s the actual part that the motors attached to that helps move the belt. Another thing is that it could be the belts. The belts could be too loose, where there’s just not enough tension to make sure that it’s running properly along each movement. You could be printing too fast. Where as hard as the printer might try, it just moves quicker than it’s able to, and it causes that layer shift, so the solution to this is actually pretty easy most of the time. So you’re gonna want to check that the pulleys that are on the motors, so there’s going to be a pulley over the shaft. That’s going into the motor. You’re going to want to make sure that the set screws on there are tightened down. So usually there’s two very, very small hex head screws that are within the pulley. So what’s called a set screw because it’s basically just threads and then the socket for it is within the threads and it’s just a very small screw. Besides the point, that’s the part that you’re trying to tighten down because you want to make sure that if the motor shaft has a flat side so instead of being a circle, it’s more of a D shape. You want one of the set screws to be pressed against that, that’ll help prevent it from moving side to side and stay in that spot and the other one is just a little more insurance to put just more pressure to clamp on to the shaft. Now, figuring out if your belts are too loose, is something you kind of grow into and learn properly. What’s the right tension? So let me just loosen this. This is clearly too loose. There is not enough going here to be able to move it back and forth without it. Kind of jittering like this holy over here isn’t really moving as I’m doing this. That’s I can get skip steps. So most printers will have a tensioner of some sort in the case. The pulse here has this screw that I can pull and it’s getting tighter because like, here’s about where it was. I can twist it, It’s getting tighter until it’s pretty taut here. You don’t need it to be completely rigid because that can also have a counter effect Where now you’re really squeezing in all the pulleys and idlers that are keeping the system in check. So you don’t want it too tight. You don’t want it too loose, it’s! The usual bar is like. Can you keep strum it like a guitar? That’s a pretty good measure. You might need to slow down the prints. It may just be that. Your printer is just trying too hard and going back to the current being. What gives the torque to the D motors? If you’re trying to put too much current in to move really quickly, that’s giving it less torque. Moving very fast means it’s it’s basically just doing as best it can to get there, and if it hit something in the way that’ll cause it to stutter, and that’s how you can get those layer shifts. So if you’re printing just too fast in general, that’s how you can get prints to to shift. The prints itself may be stuck to the bed. But if the nozzle is ramming into the part, that’s where you can have an issue. It could also be that you have overhangs and they’re not cooling properly, so your layer cooling fan isn’t doing the best job, and so the layer is starting to pick up and just become a barrier for the nozzle and the nozzle hits it and then the whole printhead stutters hits it and that’s it. The prints shifted and once you can do that, you can try and recover it. You can try and resupply Ste code to get it to pick up where it was in most cases, you just got to restart the print. In some cases, it may just be that. Your board is overheating and the separate drivers are trying too hard and in which case you can try putting a fan onto the board, but it really depends on the system. I’ve dealt with some printers where out of the box? They just weren’t working too well, and I put a fan in to the control board box and it started working a lot better. It was just getting too hot within there, and that’s what, what? I was getting these skip steps, other printers. I went through these steps. I’ve laid before you and that work just line one final thing is that even after all this, you’re still getting layer shifts. You may want to consider adding easy lift to your retractions. So what this does is when it’s done extruding somewhere at the printhead will lift up, and then you’ll move somewhere else. Drop down and continue printing. This can help you get past that issue of there being something in the way of your print. So if you have really bad overhangs that are curling up, you may want to have just a really large. Z lift. So it moves really high up over and back down, and that’s one way to get around it. They really just want to figure out how to make better layer cooling, rather than just putting a bandaid on the solution, but it’s an option if Flair shifts are something that have been plaguing you. I hope that this guide has helped you get past that issue and start 3d printing again. But if this isn’t the specific issue, you’ve been having with your 3d printer. We do have a playlist full of the other 3d printer troubleshooting guides that will hopefully answer whatever questions you have. If they don’t, we do also have a support line that you can email at support at mater hackers. Comm or give us a phone call to actually talk to a person that will help walk you through step by step whatever issue you might be having also stay tuned for more episodes. What we’re going to go into all sorts of different problems? You may be having with your 3d printer. I’m Alec for Manor hackers thanks for watching. Thanks for watching. If you like that, give us a thumbs up and be sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all the big builds how tos and troubleshooting guides. I’ll be working on and don’t forget, check out. Mater hackers comm to explore everything 3d printing and to join the community.