Calibrating the Extruder on a Geeetech A30

[essex_chris]

I'm trying to setup my A30 & drill down on the best settings for printing. So far my efforts to calibrate the extruder are getting me nowhere so i hoped i could turn to the forum to help.

I am able to communicate with the printer by Octoprint, or using the Smatto Motor tool by USB, or through Slic3r over USB. (not all at the same time of course).

I am trying to follow this guide - https://mattshub.com/2017/04/19/extruder-calibration/

Currently my setting are as follows;



When i try to extrude 100mm using G1 E100 F100 i get ~85mm extruded. This is pretty consistent.

I have tried making small adjustments to the Motor Step value, and i have tried doubling it and halving it - but nothing seems to make any difference.

Hot end temperature while trying to do this is set to 200c but i have tried changing it to 190 and 210 - after printing a temperature tower from Thingiverse this particular PLA seems to work best at 190c.

I'm a bit stuck at the moment because nothing is changing - so i assume i must be doing something wrong.

Thanks in advance for any help

[Sa1Wales]

I would also like info on this, I cant believe you havent had a reply yet as it states in the build instructions to post in the forum if you have issues or facebook. Not everyone uses Facebook.

Hope there is a good reply from Geeetech soon,

Steve.

[Admin]

Thanks for your feedback, we will provide a solution.

[William]

Hi, maybe you should save your settings.

[Sa1Wales]

Hi, maybe you should save your settings.

Thanks William, The default in the firmware was 90.0000 I was extruding 95.28mm so I did 100x90=9000 and divided that by 95.28 which Equalled 94.45 entered that into the motor step E clicked set step and just to make sure I sent the M500 code to save it and it seems to be exepting it I'll just run 100mm of fillament through and see the outcome.

Steve

[TheG]

I also checked this now and it was only extruding 8.6 instead of 10cm... calculated 104,651 steps for E, configured and printing another test cube It appears to be wise to check this even on printers that appear to work mostly well and only are "a bit flaky" every now and then...

[Sa1Wales]

Mine seems a lot better after calibrating but I find I am getting pauses for a fraction of a second every now and then that is causing the spots on my prints, I will take a photo when finished printing maybe I am printing a little too fast for the buffer to keep up with, but not sure.

[Sa1Wales]

Here is a photo it is still printing but managed to get it focused to a point you can see the spots.

[TheG]

Are you printing from SDCard? I'm using a raspberry pi with OctoPrint, I strongly suggest getting one of those and installing it for a great web-interface and remote-control capabilities... also, I never encountered short breaks or anything alike printing with this setup. What speed are you printing at by default? Same as the profile you shared?

Edit:
Also, that looks like a very good print, I can hardly notice anything bad on it on that photo

[Sa1Wales]

Are you printing from SDCard? I'm using a raspberry pi with OctoPrint, I strongly suggest getting one of those and installing it for a great web-interface and remote-control capabilities... also, I never encountered short breaks or anything alike printing with this setup. What speed are you printing at by default? Same as the profile you shared?

Edit:
Also, that looks like a very good print, I can hardly notice anything bad on it on that photo

I am printing though USB my SD Card reader hasnt worked since day 1, I bought the Wifi module also to find my tablet isnt compatible lol software runs and connects to the printer but none of the operations do anything through it. I am using my gaming PC at the moment but have started using my Laptop to print recently as win 10 likes restarting at the most unwelcome times.

Yeah using the my Profile posted in my sig just changed a few parameters such as turn off top layer, turned on spiralize ect all speeds are the same though.