10" Pegasus extruder issues....

Greetings all,

I have a 10" Pegasus that doesn't seem to want to feed filament properly. When extruding the drive pulley skips making a godawful clickclickclickclick noise and the filament does not feed smoothly it pulses out of the hot end I have been running tests at different temperatures (Esun ABS 1.75mm Filament) from 235C all the way up to 255C. I triple checked that the drive pulley was clean and installed correctly on the motor output shaft and the grub screw was seated both correctly and screwed in tightly. However. when the extrude is started it seems to be fine for a half second or so then the clicking noise starts again. It seems to be grinding the filament something awful as well, as there is a huge build up if powdered ABS on the extruder carriage. I have tried many many different variations of spring tension on the guide bearing to no avail. I even went so far as to simply hold the bearing to the drive pulley with my fingers to see what level of pressure worked best but I can't seem to find "the sweet spot" it either feeds with the clicks and the powder build up or it doesn't feed at all... On a lighter note that extruder is a cinch to disassemble to clean the drive pulley.

Thanks

Either your extruser is not getting as hot as it thinks or you have a clog.

I would check to see if you have a clog. I use a method called the cold pull technique, if you Google it you will find an answer. But essentially you set your extruder temp low, like 180*c and then pull out the filament slowly. Do that a few times and it should have cleaned the nozzle.

If that doesn't work, make sure the Teflon tube is clear from the hobbed gear. Also check the filament diameter using calipers to ensure its not oblong in one direction.

Hi

If you open up the extruder so the filament is not clamped, you should be able to push filament through the hot end by hand. You can prop the clamp arm open with a screwdriver to allow this. If you can push it OK, then your system is not clogged. If you can't push it, you have a clog, a low temperature, wrong type of filament, or an incorrectly assembled hot end. There is a troubleshoot list for each of these paths....

Bob

Well, after a lot of cursing and head scratching, I figured it out. I had the E-steps on the extruder set way, way too high. They were over 800 I cranked them down 100 steps at a time until I got something that looked like 100 mm of filament or so then did a calibration test and ill be damned if I was only one step off from as close to perfect as I can get. No more skipping. No more piles of ground up filament in the extruder.

Thanks for all the advice.

Scott

If you had the E steps at 800, you either loaded the firmware wrong or had something really weird in the eeprom. Either way, check the rest of your settings. It's rare than *only* one of them gets messed up.

Bob

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DrMacZed

Well, after a lot of cursing and head scratching, I figured it out. I had the E-steps on the extruder set way, way too high. They were over 800 I cranked them down 100 steps at a time until I got something that looked like 100 mm of filament or so then did a calibration test and ill be damned if I was only one step off from as close to perfect as I can get. No more skipping. No more piles of ground up filament in the extruder.

Thanks for all the advice.

Scott

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I am glad to hear you got it resolved! If it makes you feel any better. With my first Prusa IV3 it took me about 5 months to resolve my extruder issues.

Well there was a small peice of paper in with one of the boxes of parts that had E-Steps 814.xxx so I foolishly assumed that that was the proper setting for the extruder. Now i need to get less scared of mucking about in firmware to get the 100 to stick as it resets to 814 when ever the printer is reset or power cycled.

Mine came with a piece of paper that said to set the E steps to 114.x . I found that my printer was more happy with a setting of 107.