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Extruder Cooling Fan?

Discussion in 'General Questions' started by adikted2astro, Jun 4, 2018.

  1. adikted2astro

    adikted2astro Active Member

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    So I've made good progress printing TPU and Colorfabb's nGEN Flex filament. I am getting good bed adhesion and the prints are beautiful. But there's a problem. If I print for longer than about 2 hours, the extruder gets so hot that the temperature limit is reached, then it stops extruding material, even though the printer is still printing. This is very frustrating because it mostly happens right at the end of the print; in the last 15 minutes or so (for the models I am printing anyway).

    Is there a setting in the firmware I can change to alleviate this problem? The only other thing I can think of is to attach a cooling fan directly to the back of the extruder. I was wondering if anyone else has run into this and whether or not they were able to fix it.
     
    #1 adikted2astro, Jun 4, 2018
  2. adikted2astro

    adikted2astro Active Member

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    I forgot to say that the hotend temp is set to 265 for these prints.
     
    #2 adikted2astro, Jun 4, 2018
  3. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    There should be a fan on the side of the extruder that cools the heat sinks/fins.
    Actually on the R2/C2 there is one that pulls air across inside the carriage. Make sure those are all working.
     
    #3 mark tomlinson, Jun 4, 2018
  4. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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    If you are getting 'heat creep', the softened filament climbing up the extruder because of inadequate heat sink cooling the best thing to do is print a replacement fan shroud that swaps the fan for a 30 mm. Robo posted one on Thingiverse as well as several posted on this forum.
     
    #4 WheresWaldo, Jun 4, 2018
    mark tomlinson likes this.
  5. adikted2astro

    adikted2astro Active Member

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    Ok, I'll check that out. Yeah, the cooling fan right now doesn't work at high temps.
     
    #5 adikted2astro, Jun 4, 2018

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