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Solved PLEASE READ - Hotend Jam/Clogs? - Seasoning and an Oiler

Discussion in 'Troubleshooting' started by Galaxius, Nov 15, 2014.

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  1. barry ginsberg

    barry ginsberg New Member

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    Safflower oil is available in most supermarkets and has a high decomposition point. The purer the better.

    barry
     
  2. Apel Papa

    Apel Papa New Member

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    Thank you! Sorry, I thought I replied
     
  3. 3D Printer Man

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    Can you give me more information about how you oil?
     
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  4. Dr. Jack Hirschberg

    Dr. Jack Hirschberg New Member

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    Print a small oiler , insert a small piece of sponge then put a couple of drops of oil onto the sponge and feed the filament through the sponge in the oiler
     
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  5. 3D Printer Man

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    That is what I think, any vegatable oil.
     
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  6. nickster

    nickster Member

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    I haven't been following the rationale for oilers, but they sound like a really bad idea. Can't do anything to improve interlayer adhesion. If anything I'd add a scrubber to make the filament squeaky clean!

    The filament tension springs on the original KS Robo were completely inadequate. One of the first mods was to significantly beef them up. The replacement springs I got from ACE HW -23mm long, 0.70mm dia spring steel wire, 6.25 O.D, about 8 turns, about 2.7mm center to center between winds. Compressed length is 14.7mm. The hobbed bolt in the KS Robo has serious quality issues, not being centered with large flats on some of the teeth. Tried some from eBay, but ended up hobbing my own. Not sure if it was good or bad, but the teeth are very sharp from the hobbing. I had a spool jam at one point and the entire X carriage assembly was lifted off the Z screws by the filament and ended up inside the top of the printer cover.

    I did have issues printing PETg at one point. Fix was to decrease my spring pressure because the filament was getting distorted/squished more than ABS, from running back and forth on prints that did a lot of retracts. Since then I have switched to a E3D V6 with extra long teflon feed tube on the Wade. Using a modified stainless heat break screw bored so the teflon stops just short of the heat break. Unclear if that is important. Also experimented with drilling out and burnishing the teflon feeder tube from 2mm to 2.3mm. I just had a 16 hour ABS print die because of a filament defect where the filament diameter went to 2.2mm. The extruder had so much force, that I could not remove the filament from the stock ~2mm teflon tube. I also recommend shaping the tip of the teflon tube to fit the drilled out hole of the heat break, but be careful of PTE shards. If the teflon is just cut off square, there is gap between the teflon and cone shaped heat break hole that can accumulate filament material with extreme retracts or swapping rolls.

    Get a USB microscope or just hold the heat break up to the light and look for any waviness or drill marks on the heat break feed surface. It needs to be mirror smooth. Last go around I had with PETg, I ended up polishing out imperfections in the heat break bore.

    Finally, I did have success way back with the original PEEK hot end, by coating the inside of the feed tube with uMicroLube Tugsten Disulfide powder available on eBay used for pinewood derby axle prep. Do a search on the material. More slippery than teflon, heat resistant, and forms a permanent coating on the metal surface. There is a concern about nano sized particles, so be careful to not inhale, but otherwise inert.
     
  7. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Then you need to do more research. They are often needed (or periodic seasoning) to avoid clogging the nozzle. This is a feature of PLA and the nozzles. Either you have this issue or you do not. Trust me, you will know :) There is NO DOWNSIDE to an oiler. None. Other than a tiny amount of oil getting smoked off during the print.

    This only affects PLA. Not PET, Not PETG, Not ABS, not anything else. Won't hurt to leave it on, but not going to help either.
     
  8. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    I went over a year with my first printer before I started having this issue and trust me... I yanked out a fair amount of hair before getting it sorted.
     
  9. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    If you simply wiped down the first foot of PLA with canola everytime you swapped filament that would probably be good enough.
    That would suffice for re-seasoning.
     
  10. nickster

    nickster Member

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    Mark, ...I'll bet is is pretty frustrating to all of a sudden start getting jams, but why did it work for a year without problems? what changed?
     
  11. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    The nozzle.

    I swapped nozzles. Seems obvious doesn't it?

    It was not :)
     
  12. nickster

    nickster Member

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    filament jam or nozzle clog? Last I read about the PLA problem, it sounded like molten plastic was getting stuck to a cooler part of heat break tube near the transition zone on a retract. Then it stripped the filament at the hobbed bolt on the next extrude. When Prusa was working on this a couple of years ago, he was really big on polishing the heat break surface. Any microscopic pitting of the stainless or residue build up on the heat beak wall would give the PLA enough purchase to jam.

    Also read another blog of someone using PLA that modified the throat ratio in the nozzle. If you look at view B of http://wiki.e3d-online.com/images/b/b2/DRAWING-V6-175-NOZZLE.png Dimensions C, D and E were critical. If I remember, the problem was after a retract, the material has to stay molten enough to immediately start flowing on the extrude. I'll see if I can dig up the link if anyone is interested. He did some interesting work examining clog plugs.
     
  13. DavidTheNerd

    DavidTheNerd New Member

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    OK, so throwing in a monkey wrench here, but i have printed pla without a oiler, but simply a sponge and it works fine, going to try and add some oil, but just saying, chances are, its not your filament or the printer with the problems, simply user error. (unless everything you own is chinese) nothing against them, just my results have been crap.
     
  14. FlyMario

    FlyMario Member

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    You know, I myself have never actually pushed anything but ABS through my Robo3D. I love my printer so much that I am afraid of using other material. I know... its silly.
    I saw a video where they only season it a bit before printing instead of using a constant supply of oil. That is pretty interesting to me if that is true. I am thinking of home brewing a printer that I do only PLA.
     
  15. Geof

    Geof Volunteer Moderator
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    Wither way is fine. Abs does nit need an oiler...nothing does except pla. The oiler hurts nothing and i use mine on all filaments. Its easier to me than dipping the filament everytime. Add a few drops to the sponge whenever i remember :)
     
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  16. nickster

    nickster Member

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    Hey Mark - I've needed to run Maker Geeks Raptor PLA recently instead of ABS and was having a bear of a time on my E3D V6. Crazy heat creep jams. Tried multiple stainless barrels and aluminum heat sinks. If you look at the naked E3D V6, it is a terrible design because it relies on heat conduction from the stainless barrel to the heat sink via screw threads. There's no guarantee that any of surfaces will be in contact near the hot end, allowing the entire barrel to heat up = no heat break. The fix for me was to use a heat sink compound on the screw threads like Deep Cool Z5 (like $5 on Amazon or NewEgg) which appears to be rated to 300C. While I had it apart, I drilled a hole in the heat sink between the bottom two fins to allow a thermistor to be installed that would touch the stainless barrel when it was screwed in. Activated the 2nd extruder in Marlin, and changed the config settings in Repetier. Now something that approximates the barrel temp is displayed along with the extruder & bed temp on the Repetier status line (I'm still using V0.95F because the current GUI is a step back to the stone ages).

    I had heard that some of the jam issues folks were seeing were caused by molten filament retracting in the cool zone beyond the heat break. My setup was initially so bad that I was getting jams within 5 minutes of starting a print running with no retract. The filament plug extended over 10mm into the cool zone past the PTFE. My jam problems have disappeared with the Z5. I am still experimenting, but see 50C barrel temp with 230C hotend and 70C bed. It's been two weeks and I am still jam and oiler free!:rolleyes:

    Haven't run the experiment yet, but am hoping the more cooling on the heat sink the better. The stock E3D fans run at 12V 80mA. I'll be trying some 30mm x 10mm 24V 130mA eBay fans which hopefully will move more more air. Some of these 30mm fans vibrate like crazy. They can be balanced to like no vibration in a few minutes by putting pieces of heavy black electrical tape off center on the hubs to act as a counter weight. Once you know where the weight needs to be added, substitute drops of CA glue for a permanent weight. Scrape off CA if you add to much. Works great.
     
  17. Printed Solid

    Printed Solid Volunteer Admin
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    The heat sink compound is a good idea. You must have had your V6 for a while. E3D has been shipping them with a little tube of it for quite a while now and it does make things quite a bit easier.
     
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  18. danzca6

    danzca6 Well-Known Member

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    Matt I tried liking this more than once but it wouldn't let me. ;) Using something like Artic Silver 5 has made a big difference for a lot of folks here using the E3D and having issues as you described @nickster. Hopefully that cures your pain.

    Look at about mid page... http://wiki.e3d-online.com/wiki/E3D-v6_Assembly
     
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  19. nickster

    nickster Member

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    @danzca6 - thank you for the links. Makes sense now. I saw heat sink compound on the Filastruder website, but didn't see where it was used. I have some Artic Silver 5, but was a little nervous about using it because of the max temp:
    Extended Temperature Limits:
    Peak: –50°C to >180°C
    Long-Term: –50°C to 130°C

    Z5 claims 300C but who really knows.

    @mark - It just jammed. Didn't have extruder 2 selected in the temp graph so I don't know what the barrel temp was. This time, there was no evidence of heat creep up the barrel into the finned heat sink area. I still want to understand what is happening. Good to know the oiler is available if all else fails.
     
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