I finally figured out why my 3D printer kept failing mid-print

Was printing a little gear for a project in my basement in Nashua and after the 4th failed print I realized the cooling fan was blowing right on the print bed, not the nozzle, so I taped a piece of cardboard to redirect it and it worked perfect first try anyone else run into weird airflow issues causing fails?

3 comments

3 Comments

juliahall20d ago

Wait, the fan was blowing on the print bed that whole time? That's such a simple mistake but I bet it threw everything off. Did you check the fan direction before you started or just assumed it was pointed right?

kais6720d ago

Wait, are we sure the fan was actually the problem here @juliahall? I mean, if the fan was blowing on the bed, wouldn't that just cool the print slightly and give you better overhangs? I've actually had worse prints when I point the fan away from the bed because the filament doesn't cool fast enough and it gets all droopy. Plus, most printers have the fan blowing on the print by default anyway, so unless you're doing ABS or something that needs a hot enclosure, a little airflow is usually fine. I think the real issue might have been something else like an unlevel bed or bad adhesion. People always jump to the fan thing first but it's rarely the main cause in my experience.

the_henry6d ago

Glad you brought this up @juliahall, it really is one of those easy things to miss. I had a similar issue a few months back where my prints kept warping and I swore it was the bed leveling. Took me way too long to realize the fan was just barely grazing the corner of the bed and cooling it unevenly. Once I tilted the fan up a tiny bit the problem went away completely. So yeah, it's definitely a real thing but it's also the kind of thing you don't notice until you've already wasted a weekend troubleshooting everything else.