Ongoing problems with my Flashforge Creator Pro

[cmousseau]

Hey all, I have a handful of things I am having trouble with I am desperately looking for assistance on.

Background: I am a teacher and have the benefit for having two Flashforge Creator Pros in my classroom. Both of them were purchases in October of 2016 form Amazon.

From here on out I will refer to them as printer A and printer B.


For Printer A: The left nozzle does not print fast enough, the filament oozes out much slower than the other nozzles. As such the filament will not form on the print and it leaves gaps in the structure and fails every time. I have taken the entire assembly apart to ensure there is no backed up filament inside the head or really anywhere. It is perfectly clean. The black guiding tubes are also perfectly clean. The trouble shoot I have tried switching out the nuzzle with other nozzles, replaced the white tube inside the nozzle, and swapped out the black guiding tubes. Nothing I do solves this problem. I did print onthis successfully when I first got the units, but admittedly this problem has been around for a good 6 months, I have just avoided using this extruder.

For printer A: The right nozzle is completely stuck. I am not sure if there is a jam/backup inside or not. I literally cannot remove the nozzle, it is completely stuck. I have tried heating the nozzle up to 240C for several minutes hoping to melt anything in the way, no luck.

For Printer B: I believe I stripped the threading in the head where the nozzle threads into. I am not positive, but I cannot thread the nozzle back in. I tried other nozzles just to confirm it is not the nozzle that is the problem, it appears to me the threading is stripped in the head. Is there a suggested fix for this? My guess is not, so I need to get a replacement, but I do not know what it is really called, I know it is not the entire dual extruder block, there must be a name for the thing the nozzle screws into, it is the block with the insulating material surrounding it.

Printer B's left nozzle still works so of the four possible nozzles, I only have one that is working for me.

Also, I use Simplify 3D as my primary software/slicer, I have no idea if this helps trouble shoot, but hey why not offer the info.


One last thing: Flashforge has an "Updated" 3D printer, so when I go to buy stuff there are two versions of everything, one for the old and one for the new. BUT, I have no idea what 3D printer I have - is there a way to check on if these are the "Updated" printers or not?

Thanks for the help!

[jfkansas]

Hey there, sorry about the problems. As far as the problems you are having, the Newer and older versions of the Creator pro all use the same parts in the print head.

It does sound like you have some things mucked up and a rebuild is needed. If you are stripping out blocks, that isn't anything new as the threading in the blocks isn't done very well. I have stripped out one or 2 myself. That's why I designed a better block.

On printer A to get the nozzle off you will need to heat it up and use a good set of pliers to grab onto the block and a 9mm wrench on the nozzle. It should come off with some good force.

I don't know what kind of budget your school has for the printers. But I have a supply of extruder mounts and all metal hot ends that makes maintenance way easier and the printer more reliable. I can give a nice "educational" discount too, PM for more info. On the all metal Microswiss setups I literally have many hundreds of hours of printing with no maintenance done. Being all metal, there is no PTFE liner to wear out.

Sometimes the PTFE liners aren't cut very well and are too short. This allows a little pocket to form at the bottom of the liner and filament can "coagulate" there and eventually plug things up. It just isn't a very good design overall.