True. I’ll try to do all of the belt tension troubleshooting on their website first and if it doesnt work I’ll reach out.

So it is kind of bad I assume. Prusa recommends 96hz for the top belt and 92 hz for the bottom belt but i cant hit those numbers. For some reason my bottom belt is tighter than the top one. If I try to tighten the top belt more than the bottom one my gantry is no longer square. I think something is messed up so I’m going to just take the belt assembly apart and see if I can figure it out :/

Oof that sounds rough. I hope it’s all fine now.

I’m not going to say it was smooth sailing but I think I’m through the rough waters. This past day I’ve been printing basically non-stop and every print has been pretty much flawless.

The days before this though I had:

• Diagnose z-axis movement issues.
• Accidentally printed PETG onto the smooth bed plate. (I knew this was bad but I just assumed it was bad adhesion, I didn’t realize the problem was the opposite LOL)
• Broke the belt tension adjustment piece and had to drill holes into it to remove it and replace it with a piece I printed with PETG.
• Diagnose a “ghost clog” where I took off the nozzle, found no clog, took apart the nextruder and found nothing and realized at the end it was bad filament.

I do not have a caliper unfortunately but I do have one arriving in the mail in a week or so. I realized I needed one once I started trying to design things with a tight fit.

Yeah. The good news is after cutting off the problematic part of the spool, the rest of it has been printing very nicely and I’m already halfway done the spool.

I was using Prusa’s default profile for PETG which heats the nozzle up to 250 C. If you are correct about it being PET, it should still have melted.

It was a brand new spool so the extruder idea is probably out. Also I tried cutting 10cm off of it which should be long enough that it would be too far away from the extruder anyways. I was also using Prusa’s default profile which heats the nozzle to 250 C! Anyways I’m glad I figured it out. Next time I suspect a nozzle clog though I’m going to try swapping the filament as well before I do something major like take apart the extruder.

I think the consensus from my research is that PLA sucks for practical prints. If you are going to put a constant load on it or if the location can get a bit hot then the print can fail. PLA is also very rigid which can be good but can also be a negative if you want some give. I’m probably only going to use PLA for more “show pieces” that will only be used indoors and will not take a beating. For things like plastic cases, it’s probably fine.

I’ve read that while PLA is biodegradable it’s not compostable and require industrial composters to break down. So unless you are printing with chocolate or something weird, none of the materials are great for the environment.

Will try a different brand once I’m done this spool. The weird thing is the white filament was perfectly fine. Maybe just some impurities or something.

The weird thing is that it prints fine now. Since I’ve fixed the issue I’ve sent over 3 jobs to the printer and all 3 printed mostly fine. Some stringing but it’s PETG so somewhat expected. It was just that first 10 or so cm of filament that just refused to melt. So weird…

I can’t really print it in a better material until I get ventilation figured out which might not be until spring of next year. I did order some parts from Prusa in case the part I printed fails so worst case I have to swap it out but so far it works very well :D

Gotta give it to them for making the machine so repairable. Even if the design here is a bit questionable.

Good luck man. It’s crazy that you spend so much time building this giant thing and you don’t find out if you built it correctly until the very end.

That is probably my biggest complaint with it. I’ve spent a long time building things before but for those projects I can always test what I’ve already built so I am never worried about it not working. But this, this is such a complex piece of machinery and you just kind of pray it works at the very end.

You might get more luck with responses by making a new post.

It’s pretty critical. It holds one of the pulleys that the belt is attached to. The belt moves the print head in the x/y axis. I actually did print the part in PETG. Hopefully it just works and I won’t have to touch it for a year :D

Thanks!

Actually ended up printing the part with PETG. It worked and the issue is fixed (for now). Removing the broken part was a huge pain. I ended up using a drill and just drilling around where the nut is until I could fit tweezers onto the nut then I used the tweezers to keep the nut from moving and a screwdriver to loosen the nut until the part came out. All-in-all it was pretty time consuming and annoying. Hope I won’t have to do that again for a while.

Thank you! You too!

I think I’m just going to buy the part from Prusa.

• They appear to be out of stock for PC - CF
• PC releases harmful fumes and needs to be ventilated. I’m going to find a venting solution eventually but not now.
• The part is way cheaper than a spool of the filament, I can get a few in case they break. I know I can print a lot of parts with that same filament but I don’t really have an interest in printing with PC - CF.