Just about all of my prints have these lines at around the same heights, and I can’t figure out why. I tried changing the nozzle, changing the layer height from 0.15 to 0.12, and changing the speed from 60mm to 40mm. All of these seemed to have helped a bit, yet they remain. I was thinking maybe as the prints get to a certain height, the shaking of the bed (Prusa MK2) caused the layers to be slightly offset perhaps. Anyone have any other ideas?
The fact the lines are at the same height between different jobs suggests something is wrong with your Z axis. Can you post photos of your printer, including the Z rails and/or screws?
Good point. I knew it had to be something systematic, but didn’t really know where to check from there. Here is the left side and here is the right.
Sorry for the late reply, tied up. Thankyou for the photos.
The Z-axis leadscrews look OK in the photos (nothing obviously wrong). That’s a very clean and new printer.
Q1. Is there any grease on those Z-axis leadscrews (tall metal spiral rods) or are they completely dry?
Q2. If you force your printer to move up and down does it make unusual noises at some parts of its travel height? You can try typing thing g-code into your printer monitor software to make it move up and down:
G0 Z100 F1000 (move to Z position 100mm. You won't actually travel at 1000mm/minute, instead the printer will do whatever it's max is) G0 Z0 F1000 (move to Z position 0mm, ie nozzle touching the bed)You may need to home the axes first (G28)
Q3. Are these screws on both sides properly tight? I think I might possibly see a gap under one, but it could also be an optical illusion from reflections.
Thank you, and no worries on the late reply. I’ll check all of this soon. You are right in there being a small gap there. It is normally tight, however I did loosen it a smidge because someone in a video mentioned that might add some forgiveness if one of the screws (or leadscrews as I’m learning) is not true.
Those screws are/ were dry though. I recently put a small amount of WD-40 onto a paper towel and cleaned them up a bit (maybe not the best choice vs a machine oil or something similar).