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Unanswered Clogging during prints

Discussion in 'Troubleshooting' started by Scott Cargill, Sep 24, 2016.

  1. Scott Cargill

    Scott Cargill New Member

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    This is getting out of hand, I fire off a print job, and about 4 hours into the print I find the extruder has clogged up with the printer of course driving right along without anything coming out...

    It's seems to be consistent IMG_0003.JPG , I'll clear out the clog, and run it again about the same time / place it clogs up again.

    This last time i was manually oiling it every half hour or so, (oiled a foot of filament at a time) and Blew air on the stepper motor to help cool it down a bit.
     
  2. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Is the fan on the hotend running full speed?
    (not the one that blows on the print, the one that cools the hotend)
     
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  3. Scott Cargill

    Scott Cargill New Member

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    Yes, the small fan appears to be running fine, the large fan is having issues keeping up though.
     
  4. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    The large fan is not relevant to the clogging.
    It is slicer controlled and not going to affect the hotend. It may well affect the print quality :)

    If the small fan is not working correctly with the compact style hotends (like hexagon and E3D) your will absolutely get a print fail due to heat creep. The filament will get soft before the heat break and clog.
     
  5. Scott Cargill

    Scott Cargill New Member

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    Thats what I was thinking, well not so specifically but I was thinking it has something to do with process temps.

    I've swapped to an older Extruder, re-arranged the wiring, cleared the clog, etc. both fans are working full speed and correctly. I'm running the same print through Simply3d vs the matter control that I tried yesterday. here's hoping!

    This is by far the largest and longest printed object I've attempted, and of course it's one I designed from the ground up and reallllly did / do what it printed for use.
     
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  6. Scott Cargill

    Scott Cargill New Member

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    IMG_0007.JPG

    Welp that didn't work either.

    this time it stopped laying plastic before the first pass was complete. both fans were running, this time its a jam, / clog I'll have to run a heated element down the heat sink to free it up.
     
  7. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Well, these folks were have a fairly long thread on this with a hexagon and the bottom line is that the fan was insufficient:

    https://forum.lulzbot.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3128&start=20

    Not sure what else to suggest except trying a different fan. Heat creep is a real beast since it doesn't happen immediately and often takes many hours to manifest.
     

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