Clogged nozzle

[usarmyaircav]

I have makerfarm blue for abs filament. I never thought about that having filament in the tip might be normal. I will put it all back together tomorrow and go from there.

Colin said to be sure to season the hotend and that I should use the .9x version of slic3r, rather than cura, as cura can cause jams he says.

I really appreciate all the help here on this forum.

My fan shroud melted to the hotend and broke when I tried to remove it to tighten the nozzle while hot, is clough42's improved hexagon cooling fan shroud system https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:335613 still the better way to go rather than re-printing the one the came with my printer ?

[sniffle]

I have makerfarm blue for abs filament. I never thought about that having filament in the tip might be normal. I will put it all back together tomorrow and go from there.

Colin said to be sure to season the hotend and that I should use the .9x version of slic3r, rather than cura, as cura can cause jams he says.

I really appreciate all the help here on this forum.

My fan shroud melted to the hotend and broke when I tried to remove it to tighten the nozzle while hot, is clough42's improved hexagon cooling fan shroud system https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:335613 still the better way to go rather than re-printing the one the came with my printer ?

Cloughs design is basically for perfectly placed airflow so that no air is being blown onto your parts causing warp.

[printbus]

...Colin said to be sure to season the hotend and that I should use the .9x version of slic3r, rather than cura, as cura can cause jams he says.

My fan shroud melted to the hotend and broke when I tried to remove it to tighten the nozzle while hot, is clough42's improved hexagon cooling fan shroud system https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:335613 still the better way to go rather than re-printing the one the came with my printer ?

Seasoning with something like vegetable oil has it's followers, but I've never tried it and many don't agree with it.

Colin starts losing credibility with the community here when he keeps saying you can't slice with anything other than Slic3r v0.9.9. A number of us use Cura without issue, and many more have moved onto newer versions of Slic3r. I don't know that Colin has never told anyone what newer version of Slic3r he tried - my theory is it might have been a pre-release version that had some issues. I also know Slic3r has added settings with some of the newer versions; maybe he tried to use old configuration files with the new version and the missing settings in the configuration files led to issues.

With Cura, the default retraction length is probably what causes extrusion problems for people. IIRC, Cura installs with a default retraction length of 4mm. Note that Cura is put out by Ultimaker, who's printers use a Bowden extruder. With a Bowden, you either get by without retraction or you have to use a large amount of retraction length in order to deal with the hysteresis of the filament in the Bowden tube. For a direct drive extruder like Wades, 4mm is a LOT of filament to pull back out of the extruder. 4mm feed of 1.75mm filament is the same volume as what, about 100mm of extrusion from a 0.40mm nozzle and 0.2mm layer height? This means that if you have more than one retraction within another 100mm of printed distance, the hobbed bolt is passing over the same section of filament again, but with the knife edges in a slightly different position on the filament than they were on the previous pass. I've seen prints that can do multiple retractions within 100mm of printed extrusion. Seems to me that this could easily lead to the hobbed bolt simply carving away at the filament. When I was using Cura, I had ended up at 1.5mm for a retraction length and set the minimum distance between retractions to as large of a value as I thought I could get by with for each print.

As you learned, the as-provided shroud for the hex hot end is sort of a laughable design. As a minimum, the flat part that sits above the hot end aluminum block needs to be cut away so the hot end won't melt it. Flipping the fan around so fan air flows over the front of the print bed helps with the issue of fan airflow cooling off ABS prints. I've added wings to the back side to help ensure airflow passes through the heatsink fins, not just around them. And I don't like how the shroud only mounts on the two upper corners - leaving the possibility of the shroud and fan bottoms vibrating. Other than these issues, the design is perfect (lol).

[AbuMaia]

It's interesting that you see that on clear, and on your E3Dv6 hot end no less.

I've been seriously considering moving to the E3D, in part because as I understand it, the E3D has a wider feed hole than the hex and is slightly more tolerant of the bulges.

It may be. This is my first experience with bulges. I'm using the 1.75mm Universal E3D, and it has a piece of teflon tube running through the heatsink portion, stopping just before the heat break. That narrows things up a bit. I also use a piece of the same teflon tube through the extruder from just below the hobbed bolt to the top of the E3D. Interestingly enough, the bulges get through this tubing, but not the tubing in the E3D. It may be the integrated bowden tube receiver on top of the E3D Universal that's catching the bulges.

Edit: measured a piece of bulgy filament that had jammed my E3D. Nominal size is 1.75, measured is 1.71, bulge is 1.91. I can force it through a piece of teflon tubing, which I think works in the extruder because it's right by the hobbed bolt. But once it gets to the transition area just on top of the E3D where the extruder tubing ends and the hotend tubing begins, it can't be forced through again, and jams.

[usarmyaircav]

Kevin, you were correct. After soaking the nozzle in acetone overnight it still had ABS filament in it. I decided to just try and do a print and see what happens. At first nothing came out, but then after a bit I noticed a tiny string start to come out, but then it stopped. I stopped the print, and re-fed the filament, restarted the job and low and behold it started printing!!!!!!! It went on to complete the whole clough42 fan shroud!

I used the slic3r .99 version. I am having issues with the 1.1.7. I installed it ok, went and changed it to Expert mode, and now when it starts I just get a blank window, no controls nothing. I am on kubuntu.

[Schnupp]

Im still having extrusion issues... How much force is needed to manually hand feed filament? When I try to hand feed filament I need to apply a ton of force to extrude the slightest bit of filament.

[printbus]

Im still having extrusion issues... How much force is needed to manually hand feed filament? When I try to hand feed filament I need to apply a ton of force to extrude the slightest bit of filament.

It shouldn't take a lot. How are you attempting to manually feed it? By pushing on the filament or by turning the large gear? If pushing the filament, release the guidler block so the filament isn't held against the hobbed bolt. You could always start by removing the filament and getting a feel for how easy/hard the large gear moves without the filament in place. The motor adds some drag, but if the large gear doesn't turn easily without filament, make sure the large gear isn't rubbing against the bolts for the upper wheels on the X-carriage, and that the nuts for the large gear haven't tightened up the hobbed bolt on you.

Have you recently replaced the MakerFarm firmware with a new Marlin version? MakerFarm used to have a peculiar setup in the thermistor tables that would mess up temperature readings by 20-30 degrees if the update wasn't done properly. IIRC, the actual temperature ended up being set 20-30 degrees lower, which would also make the filament harder to extrude. I don't know if they've carried that setup into the firmware baselines for the larger printers and the RAMBO and RUMBA builds.

If all that checks out, it may be time to remove the nozzle and try cleaning it out. Before the holidays, I was printing some tall vases all day long day after day, and noticed my extrusion slowly getting weaker and weaker. I was evidently building up some crap in the nozzle with that near-continuous printing. Cleaning out the nozzle with a hot air gun and some fine wire got me going again.

[usarmyaircav]

Kevin, Not sure if this is the same issue, but reading more your config settings, I got home last night, and did the estep calibration, which worked fine. Went to put in the amount and found that I have to fix my firmware to be writeable, so decided to just wait and print, cause I really wanted to print something. I decided to use cura, so followed your settings and got the gcode, loaded it into pronterface, and started the job. I could see filament oozing out some so figured this should be great. bed heated up and job started, but when it was doing the perimeter, the flow out was terribly erratic, and then stopped. I stopped the job, re-fed the filament tried again. same thing. Went back to Slic3r .99, same thing. reset all my esteps, and anything that I thought was too low but got the same thing. If I extrude into the air filament comes out, but doing a print job little to nothing. Could the nozzle need to be cleaned like you mentioned above, or is it possible that the nozzle is too close to the bed? I had the bed level just right, but, when I tried to print last, it seemed to be touching. I will check that tonight. I really need to get a modified endstop setup.

[printbus]

Kevin, Not sure if this is the same issue, but reading more your config settings, I got home last night, and did the estep calibration, which worked fine. Went to put in the amount and found that I have to fix my firmware to be writeable, so decided to just wait and print, cause I really wanted to print something. I decided to use cura, so followed your settings and got the gcode, loaded it into pronterface, and started the job. I could see filament oozing out some so figured this should be great. bed heated up and job started, but when it was doing the perimeter, the flow out was terribly erratic, and then stopped. I stopped the job, re-fed the filament tried again. same thing. Went back to Slic3r .99, same thing. reset all my esteps, and anything that I thought was too low but got the same thing. If I extrude into the air filament comes out, but doing a print job little to nothing. Could the nozzle need to be cleaned like you mentioned above, or is it possible that the nozzle is too close to the bed? I had the bed level just right, but, when I tried to print last, it seemed to be touching. I will check that tonight. I really need to get a modified endstop setup.

If you seem to extrude into free air OK, I'd suspect the nozzle may be too close to the bed. That can definitely lead to extrusion issues on the first layer, and even into some additional layers. In my case, even the free air extrusion seemed thinner than what I was used to seeing. As someone mentioned earlier or perhaps in another thread, things change with temperature so the bed adjustment is best done with both the bed and nozzle at the temperatures to be used for printing. When did you buy your kit? I see the 10-inch ones after October 9 or so shipped with the micro-adjustable endstop. If yours is older than that, yeah, the Z endstop mount is pretty frustrating to adjust, especially if you're trying to do the adjustments with everything hot.

Even before I had revamped the endstop on my 8-inch, I ended up with springs and adjustment thumbwheels on all four corners. By having all four corners adjustable, the exact placement of the endstop switch isn't as critical and can be just left alone after it is in the right ballpark. Putting thumbwheels on the bed adjustment screws allows a no-tools adjustment, and if necessary the bed clearance can actually be adjusted for extrusion appearance while the printer is still doing skirt loops and into the rest of the first layer.

[TopJimmyCooks]

did you measure your nozzle clearance with the bed and nozzle hot? if not, thermal expansion may be squishing the nozzle to the bed not allowing filament out on the first layer.