Printing with Light Weight PLA

Although not quite the same (somewhat faster, and carrying a 4S pack) my Excalibur guided missile has a carbon rod from motor mount to tailplane, as wel as spars, joiners, stiffeners, etc.. If you've examined the foamy Easy Gliders, etc, the thin fuz is quite bendy, and prone to trim variations depending on air temperature!

I setup the dragonfly3 with the electrics. Mostly works. The wing is sitting nicely. There is no aft stress on the boom. The Rx within the main cavity is a bit tight as the servo leads are right-angle. If I can get one of Tony's Rx to link there will be more space.  I had adjusted the fuse width so that it would take an 850mAhr and that does just fit - I needed to shift it back and I strapped it (at least for initial flights). There was space in front of the battery for the ESC.  I had to add ~3g to the tail for COG (a small bolt and some washers). I could potentially shorten the nose or try tapering it a bit if ESC as the front proves to be workable.

   



It is calms outside but Brenda thinks it is more important to sort the fridge before our trip.....

 

I've switched to Cura 5.4, so far it looks brilliant
 
At the top is the end of the print using 5.4, below using 5.1. The discolouration is caused by the filament staying too long in the hot end, I upped my feed from 80% to 90%. Amazing how much difference it makes.

I've also turned my build plate over and put tape on it, it doesn't stick as well as the plastic coating on the other side, but I didn't get any warping!
 

Klippy
Can't have you using a later CURA version than me so 5.4.0 now installed.
The release notes have a huge list of bug fixes, none of which seem to apply to anything I do.    

Other than the change in Cura version was upping the flow from 80% to 90% the only change?  And for LW-PLA at 90% you must be getting quite a thick perimeter line.  a 0.4mm nozzle is it 1.5mm or more?

Good to see you back Jon, my flow rate is set at 56.5%, print speed at 50 in Cura 5.4, the increase from 80% to 90% controls all feeds and rapids on the Anet front panel. The difference in discolouration is quite dramatic.

Now here's something I don't understand, after weeks of good prints, this happens
 
Then these 2 elevators, the bottom one has a gap
 
I took it off the plate, made NO changes and printed the upper one, Any ideas?

Klippy
I have recently come across the same sort of thing. 
The only thing I could detect as different was the 'in room' air temperature and humidity which in the last 10 days has changed daily from 45 to 60% and 21 to 25 C.
In my case I suspect there is an area of the print that is marginal and the wrong humidity or temperature causes the bead to temporarily not stick properly.
It is of course only a theory. 
 

So for a half dozen layers you got minimal feed.  First thoughts:
a) did conditions in the room change for 10 minutes or so?
b) 100mm of slightly off filament?
c) did the extruder grind the filament and then pick itself back up?
 

Another thought - if there is a bit too much friction in the filament path that can lead to the gear biting into the filament s it is doing retractions.  I found that upping the temperature by a degree or two gets the flow a bit more 'fluid'.  Perhaps less chance of the biting.  

Of course if you watch it you will not see it until you leave the room.....

Thanks guys, it occurs to me that I may not have had the cabinet closed up for those failed prints but I can't be sure. Upping the print temperature discolours the component. What I did notice was that when I pulled filament off the spool, at times I felt a resistance, almost like the filament was sticking to the next layer. This spool is about 3/4 finished.

Something for the 3D printer fans.
I heard the words, but half of it was not in a language I'm familiar with! 

A while ago I bought 3 rolls of locally produced LW-PLA in 3 different colours. I had nothing but trouble and couldn't get any colour to foam properly. Then over a certain temperature (220o) the filament refused to even come out of the nozzle! The local seller (Da Vinci Labs) tried to help, even sending me video of a customer printing with it.
Ultimately I gave up, put the rolls in re-sealable bags, added Silica Gel packs, vacuumed them and put them away. Quite by chance I put in each bag a Humonitor.
Cut to yesterday, while looking for a roll of Filament to test the new printer with I picked up one of the duff rolls. Idly looking at the label I noticed that the Humonitor had gone green (they call it Azure) indicating in excess of 60% humidity in the bag.
 
I quickly checked the other 2 rolls, same story! I then checked all my other rolls that had Humonitors in them, no problems. Ergo, the only common denominator was the rolls themselves. After my early printing problems with moisture I have been a bit anal about roll storage. The 3 errant rolls arrived in vac packs, once opened the rolls were put in my own re-sealable bags that I always re-vacuum.
2 of the rolls (black and red) spent most of yesterday in the oven at 90C, the 3rd (grey) spent 10 hours in my filament dryer at 55C, last night I printed some test pieces with the grey with some success! Up to 240C anyway.