3D Printing Forum

Well I wonder if something needs to be replaced

Using Ultimaker PLA Silver Metallic and default PLA profile settings, my last few prints have very thin hairs all over them.

An Atomic Pull came up completely clean and good nozzle shape (one of Ander's test ruby nozzles)

I did 3 more just to be sure...all came out looking good.

Any idea? They clean up quick with a heat gun, but these just started to appear.

You know more that most of us on 3D Printers. Unless you somehow disabled "Retract when changing Islands"

Could try a little more retraction, cooler temps, quicker travel speed to break the strings before they form, or, you can change the shell thickness.

Did your hairy print resemble this one

What is that Izzy.

That's crazy....I have had hairs like that on many prints but I would say 1/3 of that

Tried to take a pic of it. Note the center section of the part

My print shown is the hip of the Braq dragon, in Polymaker's PolySmooth, I'm about to test some retraction and fan settings for this material, there's stringy and hairy but this is ridiculous.

nGen would give me results like that using the PLA settings. I had to up it a bit and raise the temp to eliminate them

Coming back to this....still getting a lot of thin hairs on my stock nozzle (removed prototype ruby) with Ultimaker brand filament. Would this be a symptom of needing to check my coupler or something? Did some atomic pulls and it's all clean and nicely shaped in there.

Beside the obvious temperature and retraction things, could it be that the nozzle is worn out? Once, I replaced nozzle to a new one and wow! That made a piece of the difference. Even though it only printed 80% PLA and the rest were ABS and PETG, in one year of medium usage any nozzle needs replacement.

That's a good point. One year of heavy use

New nozzle installed and wow....what a difference. Stringing is about 99% gone and prints are looking great again

LePaul wrote: ↑October 2nd, 2017, 10:20 am New nozzle installed and wow....what a difference. Stringing is about 99% gone and prints are looking great again

So what you have discovered is that the Nozzles need to be cleaned or periodically replaced or stringing could occur.
This is gooood

Well I did a few prints with Simplify3D and strings are back

The flow doesn't seem to be consistent. Overextrusion perhaps?