Extruder gear life expectancy?

[hernejj]

Can anyone tell me how long your first extruder motor sprocket gear lasted? I've had my printer about a year and I've gone through about 3 rolls of filament and now my sprocket gear is chewed up to the point that it needs to be replaced. Seems like it should have lasted longer.

[BLKKROW]

I have printed at least 3-4 rolls in the last month and my gears are working just fine. Of course I printed them with a high infill and did not use the ones Makerfarm provided.

[cperiod]

I've run maybe 8-10kg through the original Makerfarm gears and they've just started to develop a bit of slop since I dismantled the extruder a couple months ago. Not enough that I'm obsessing about it... it probably hurts my retraction, but I'm mostly printing PETG so it's not like I'd notice a bit of extra stringing.One of the earliest things I printed was a spare extruder, though, just in case. I'm sure that if I hadn't done that it would have failed catastrophically on me by now

[hernejj]

It turns out that the screws that hold the extruder motor into the extruder body (and also provides gear tension) came loose. The small gear was so chewed up I'm surprised it has been working at all!! I just replaced both gears with my backup parts. Time to make new backups. I'll keep an eye on the tension of those screws from now on. I'm guessing a poor mesh was responsible for the premature tooth wear.

[cperiod]

Well, I guess I should get off my butt and tighten up mine...