I reverted the directions of the extruders, now a lot easier without the washers, and printed a pancake with all channels and the print completed!
I finally figured out that 224C is too cold for the PETG to stick on the bed and had more success with 239C. During the print, I did hear filament slipping. I could then feel each of the filaments to find out which channel had the issue.
I wanted to see if the flow issues have been solved so I did another print in white. This had a few problems.
The Z axis sounded like it might have skipped a step, and it showed in the print and had to babystep. I've now increased current from 0.6 -> 0.9A. Now that I'm typing this, I'm also considering increasing the Z_HOLD_MULTIPLIER (the current when the motor is not moving) from 0.5.
Additionally, I had set PrusaSlicer to move at a speed limited by 30mm3/s, but the channel choked and was only stable at around 40%, hence the expectation is 12mm3/s of flow per channel.
I was also doing some in-situ linear advance testing to see if it was working.
During this print, I could see in the leak detection window some yellow that was coming out, which means that it's channel 2:
Now, since the Coaxial8or is out and in the open, I thought it was a good a time as any to heat to 240C and find the flow limit using this guide with the following changes:
- I used a crocodile clip from my hydra "helping hands" thing (seen in a previous log when it was holding the extruded filament)
- I used 112mm because that's the length of my screwdriver
The feedrate values I tried, in order were:
- 300 (worked, but probably doesn't count since the hotend wasn't fully pressurised)
- 600
- 450
- 360
- 330
- 300 (didn't work this time)
- 240 (worked)
- 270 (didn't work)
I then extruded 200mm through channels 2 - 8 with F240 as seen below. This corresponds to 240 / 60 * 2.4 = 9.6 cubic millimetres/second/channel.
There were no leaks to be seen.
What's that? Big Leaka's stocks are tanking?
The flow rate is still disappointing though. I don't think there's even been a change over the previous designs.
[Next Day - 14:00]
I decided to set all motors to 900mA current, which should be in acceptable limits since the extruder motors are rated for 1000mA. Since non-moving extruders were perfectly fine, even way back at the start of the year when I set the run current to 450mA, I have also halved the default hold multiplier to 0.25:
[16:30]
Decided to move past arbitrary limits and set 1A current for all motors. The steppers and the driver heatsinks are still barely warm, but the feedrate has increased to 510mm/min (8.5mm/s) for a volumetric flow rate of 20.4mm3/s. Since filament in some channels started to slip over the gears, I believe it's right on the edge and a flow limit of 19.2mm3/s should be used for printing.
In other words, the Coaxial8or speed limit is 8mm/s with my present setup.
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