I would love the know the secret how to have continious filament feed

Hi ,

I have tryed having the tension tight and less tight on the extruder and it works just while the first layers of filament are put down then the feed stops.
I have cleaned the hobbed bolt with a brush and the same thing happens again, again. I have set the temperature at 220 to see that makes any difference. I thought that I might not had the filament hot enough. I have spent 4 hours today with out any luck. Other peolpe seem to be able to do it, why not me. Use blue tape and hairspray and the first layer sticks. If you look at the picture , I have moved the print for the purposes of taking a picture.


Filament is PLA 2.85mm in diameter, have the bed level, extruder seems to worlk ok.

Frustrated!

cheers
Colin

i dont think the problem is the feed stops but you sure arent printing close enough to the bed. your z height / bed gap is so big the filament is just coming out in squiggles. you need a feeler gauge and the gap should be roughly .005". that atleast a good place to start. the filament that gets applied to the bed should be flat, not round. right now nothing is sticking, its getting all caught up in the nozzle and getting drug around.

Jimc, Ok, I'll try anything at this stage.

Now where did I put my Feeler gauge.........


cheers
Colin

I had a similar problem a few weeks ago on my j-head. I think the issue was the filament was melting too high up the hotend and would continously clog. I initially avoided the issue by buying a second hot end . I disassembled the j-head and cleaned all the pieces by soaking them in acetone ( I was working with abs). I replaced the plastic tube inside, assembled it properly and it works fine! So if all else fails, disassemble everything and clean it all. Then follow the assembly instructions on e3d-online.com if you have an all metal hotend.

Edit: couldn't view the image so my bad if my post doesn't necessarily apply lol

I went through a lot of frustration with a J-head and direct drive extruder, until I did two things, I changed the head for an E3D and made my own toothed gear for the stepper motor with a metal collar and an M3 tap to cut the grooves (using a jig I printed for that purpose). Now the extruder just keeps going and going and going... not a single skip.