who knows these things real well. Cannot get it to print

Last year I had my printer humming and printed a few cool things. got busy over the summer and let it sit. Nothing changed, nothing was touched. now all of the sudden it does not feed the filament. all of it turns but it eats the filament up. I have tried to season the hot end, I have tried pushing other things through it.... it feeds up through about the first layer and then just quits feeding and jams. it is running exactly the same as it did before, actually loaded a file I printed last year and it still did not print that one either. any ideas? I have tried all day to work with Colin and I am feeling stupider and stupider. cannot get anything to work.

Printer make/model?
Filament type?
Relevant print settings?

Without writing up that data you are not going to get much response....

Tachout, one thing I would do is back out the filament and check the diameter. Is the diameter of the filament correct? It kind of sounds like you have sections of your roll of filament that a little bit over sized.

To elaborate on Roxy's comment, if the filament was kept in a humid place it is possible it has swelled due to absorption since it was last used.

And one more comment. Tachout knows this. This thought isn't directed at him. The title of this thread is: "who knows these things real well. Cannot get it to print" This is why it is so helpful to build your printer as a kit. You really do get to know your printer. There is always pain bringing up and getting comfortable with a new printer. But at the end of the process you know your printer and can work through the issues. This is kind of the opposite. Techout isn't ready to divorce his printer and he wants some counseling. :)

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Originally Posted by Roxy

... Techout isn't ready to divorce his printer and he wants some counseling.

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A degree of counseling was already provided to Tachout in his thread on the same issue from two weeks ago What am I doing wrong Extruder eating fillament.

Tachout - in that thread, you reported the printer was doing fine on a file sliced previously, and here you're saying a prior file doesn't print. Are these the same files or different ones? I previously provided a link to a composite description of everything people have suggested as causes to their extrusion stopping. As those descriptions suggest, the hobbed bolt carving into the filament can be caused by any of a number of things. Can you elaborate on what you have investigated and what you haven't?

Printbus I went through your guide as recommended and worked each idea and could not figure it out. Then working with Colin I decided to just take and order a new spool of filament. Was going to order if though him and then I realized something.... thanks to a little investigation was that the filament I had was 3mm filament and I ordered a 1.75 hot end so I thought that must be it.... I am stupid and the last time I ordered filament I ordered the wrong size. I ordered a roll of 1.75 from Colin (and let me tell you I ordered it on Christmas Eve and it was at my house the day after Christmas. Outstanding service). I tried to just load it and no luck. it felt weird like it was too small and I am still not sure if it is not too small for my hot end although I looked at what I originally ordered and the original order for a hot end was for 1.75 hot end. Well I have tried for a couple of hours at different tutorials on you tube for slic3r and that has not helped. I know it is flowing as it started out printing that stupid cube for me several times. I have tried several different ideas of changing the heights in the slicer to get them to print. I can get the first layer down and on the bed, but after that it just does not want to print.

I have tried when the head is hot to push a piece of wire through the head to make sure it is not clogged, and I can get it to go through with no resistance. I can get the filament to load and I tried putting cooking oil on it and it loaded and then did the first layer like all the times before and then did the same thing. As for the assembly of the hot end, I have not changed anything from when it printed good last winter. Only difference is the filament and the computer I am on. It just keeps chewing up the filament. I am going to try to load a piece of tubing down the extruder to see if this helps but not sure I understand how this could help as I can load it easy and it seems to feed thought and into the hot end without any issues.

Machine is a Maker Farms 8" Prusa i3V
Temperature for hot end 200 - Printing PLA
bed temp 70.

No problems getting it to stick to the bed. Machine is running fine for about the first layer. Usually at about the end of the first layer it just stops extruding. Extruder is turning so I know something is bad. I look and sure enough it eats the half moon shape into the filament. I am not sure if it is in the settings of my Slic3r, if it is in the extruder, or what it might be.

Let me start at the beginning of what I am checking before the print.

1. Check Z in the corner (slight drag on paper) Check in center of bed and in 3 other corners and it feels about the same. With a Micrometer on the top of the top aluminum extrusion to the bed we are within .003 at all 4 corners

2. Check extruder to make sure it is clean and heat it up to temp and load the filament when hot. Make sure bearing spins free, and put bolts in finger tight and watch as spring starts to compress to about 15%.

3. Load card. Start program.... let bed heat, and then watch it move, and home.
Watch hot end get to temp. Since I preheat it the time is not long on either.
watch it start and it starts putting down filament almost right away in the perimeter 1st pass and I have it make 3. then it lays down the exterior of the box and looks fair but it is real light and hard to see. I then have it start to do the fill of the first part of the box and it sometimes makes it thought this part, and sometimes it does not. then if it did, and it starts the second time on the perimeter it starts to skip and real soon after that I can tell it is not printing anymore.... I pause it and shine a light into the extruder to check out the hobbed bolt and sure enough it starts to eat the filament so I stop it and have to clean it and start over.

Any recommendations as to what I should do next?

What hotend are you using?
It would be most helpful if you could provide a link to exactly where you got it, so that we can determine whether it is a reputable brand and model.

http://www.makerfarm.com/index.php/h...n-hot-end.html

This is the hot end I ordered with my Printer from Colin at Makerfarm.

.40mm Hexagon Nozzle for 1.75mm Filament(Prints ABS, PLA and Higher Temp Materials

what happens when you manually push filament through? do you meet any unusual resistance along the way?
the hexagon is a good hotend from what i've experienced. the problem might be the filament or your extruder.
one tip i saw is to dip the end of your filament into some vegetable oil and then extrude it. it might make it easier for the filament to slide through the extruder and hot end.

I can put it in, and it pushes in with no resistance until I feel it start to melt. I have then pulled it out tried it with vegetable oil on it. Still does not help. I am thinking of just ordering a new hot end from Makerfarm and seeing it is all in the hot end getting damaged somehow

I just pulled the nozzle off and I am pretty sure it is clogged. I think I will just order a new hot end and see if that helps.

Soak the nozzle in acetone to remove the old plastic. Or burn it out with a butane torch but make sure you do that outside..

Thank You beerdart. I have my old one soaking in a cap full of fingernail polish. Stupid me, I looked at the bottle and it states non acetone so I am going to run to the store and grab a bottle of Acetone. I have ordered the new nozzles anyway just incase. They are real cheap and Makerfarm is located just across the valley so shipping is like 1 day so why not just have new ones laying around just incase. I will see if I can clear it

I have had numerous issues with the Hexagon Hot end and switched over to the E3D V6 and have had zero issues since.

Most Hotend problems is under-cooling or over-cooling. (Other then a clogged nozzle) The Hotend itself is a very simple device no mater the brand.

Tachout what extruder? Greg's?

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I have had numerous issues with the Hexagon Hot end and switched over to the E3D V6 and have had zero issues since.

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Agreed. Love my e3d, can't believe I wasted so much money on cheaper options

I have had a similar problem with an all-metal hotend and PLA in a bowden setup. Because of the bowden I needed to have a few mm of retraction to counter oozing. With ABS I could get succesful prints most of the time (not always, it would occasionally jam), but with PLA the hotend would always get clogged somewhere during the print. First layers were nice, then the extruder would get a hard time and jam totally. I have a Bondtech setup on that printer and it would put so much pressure on the filament that the 4mm couplings would spring loose, releasing the ptfe bowden tube (and piling the filament next to the printer).

I finally nailed it down to the heatbreak (the threaded part between the cooling body and the heating block). After taking the whole hotend apart (including the stuck PLA), I found that the PLA was stuck somewhere in the heatbreak and could not be removed by any force. I used pliers and a vice, so it was really, really tightly jammed. My concusion was that the PLA had glued itself to the inside wall.

Aparently PLA sticks quite well to metal surfaces. It seems that polishing may solve the problem (http://www.dta-labs.com/products/prometheus-v2), but I took the easy way out and exchanged the heatbreak for a teflon lined one I found in my spare parts bin. Used my Dremel to make it fit the inside of the cooling body as the top needed to be thinner. Result: problem solved. I have been happily printing ever since (4 months or so) without a single jam and at retractions up to 6 mm (!!). I just never run the nozzle higher than 260 C now, but I only need 250 for ABS and can do with 235 for PETG and 220 for PLA at high speeds. As I can buy teflon lined heatbreaks for a dollar or so, it is also cheap to replace the heatbreak if the teflon liner gets over-heated by accident. I now have a couple of the right size as spares.

Some people claim that it is dangerous to run teflon at temperatures near 260 C. However, this is the temperature limit where it still maintains most of its mechanical properties and is the recommended limit for engineering purposes. It actually melts at 327 C, and only starts to decompose at temperature way above 400 C. http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/jre...n6p327_A1b.pdf. Beware however that your themistor is not indivudually calibrated and that your temperature reading can be off by 5-10 C (typical) or even 20 C (extreme).

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Originally Posted by Tachout

...thanks to a little investigation was that the filament I had was 3mm filament and I ordered a 1.75 hot end so I thought that must be it.... I am stupid and the last time I ordered filament I ordered the wrong size. I ordered a roll of 1.75 from Colin (and let me tell you I ordered it on Christmas Eve and it was at my house the day after Christmas. Outstanding service). I tried to just load it and no luck. it felt weird like it was too small and I am still not sure if it is not too small for my hot end although I looked at what I originally ordered and the original order for a hot end was for 1.75 hot end....

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For the record, proper 3mm filament simply will not feed into a 1.75mm hex hot end. No way, no how. Use a calipers to measure the diameter of the feed hole at the top of the hot end. IIRC the feed hole diameter is about 1.85mm on a 1.75mm hexagon hot end. I don't know what the diameter should be for a 3mm hot end, but it has to be larger than 3mm... If it is, you have a 3mm hot end.

For all we know, your problems may be simply due to not configuring the slicer for the actual size of your filament. Measure the diameters with a calipers and report back. Tell us the filament diameter setting you're using in Slicer. If you have been using 3mm filament because that is what you really have but have been configuring slic3r for 1.75mm because that is what you think you have, the slicer is going to try to push 3x the proper amount of filament volume through the hot end. The narrow gap between tip and bed on especially the first layer would lead to an incredible amount of pressure on the filament being pushed into the hot end, and it'd be just a matter of time before you carve into the filament.

EDIT: Colin (and company) makes mistakes. I have a roll of 3mm filament from them that is useless to me as a first-hand example. If the filament you had been using was ordered from MakerFarm at the same time as your printer, maybe they confused orders and kitted your box with a 3mm hot end and 3mm filament instead. Knowing what you actually have is more important than knowing what you ordered.

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Originally Posted by Alibert

...Aparently PLA sticks quite well to metal surfaces....

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Part of the problem is that PLA expands slightly when it cools. If fluid filament gets pulled up into the heat break and it cools, you run the risk of that swelling forming a pretty good plug in the tube.

Chadd, before you run off and buy an e3dv6 hot end because of the positive reports here, be aware that it can be argued as more susceptible to plugging in the heat break than the hex. This isn't meant as a ding against the e3dv6 - I have one myself. The issue is simply due to the fact that the e3dv6 has a much sharper transition between hot and cold elements of the hot end. Multiple users here have had to back off the retraction distance when they transitioned to an e3dv6.

For what it's worth, I had the same frustrating experience of carved out filament in my Greg accessible extruder for the first few months of printing. Then I changed to a different brand of filament and all is gravy now :D.

Chachin..

Wanted to give everyone an update. I decided to order a new fan (Because some idiot broke a fan blade off the cooling fan while it was running because he was not paying attention and let something hit one of the blades) and two new nozzles.... Well I ordered them and 24 hours later they appeared in my mailbox. I opened the bag they were mailed in, then opened the box that was in the bag, and then removed packing material to find the two new nozzles and the new fan. Decided to see if I could get it to print the calibration cube. Started slic3r program, loaded the correct file supplied by Makerfarm originally. Then put the cube in the hole and hit create gcode. Installed the new nozzle, and loaded the filament. Hit print and once it got hot, and started running everything is printing good so far. It states it is 24% complete and looks good. We will see how this goes but looks like my only problem all along was a clogged nozzle. Thank you all for the help. I have my Greg extruder and hex hot end working fine. Next time I have an issue like this I know where I will start to look.

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Originally Posted by Tachout

Next time I have an issue like this I know where I will start to look.

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You seem to have a negative personality. You are jumping to the conclusion there will be things in the future that don't print right! :)