Extruder problem?

I'm trying to figure out what is going on. Hopefully someone knows

The first image is something I tried to print after changing the spool. The next two is all I ever get now...

I feel like I've tried everything. I lowered the speed increased the speed and flow. no matter what its printing a crappy curly thing.

Maybe someone with experience can tell me what is wrong

 

Looks to be a clogged hot-end. Can you feed filament in by hand?

 

Hmm so I opened up the filament feeder thingy. Sorry I don't yet know what things are called.
I could see it wasn't able to push the filament through. Cut the filament and slammed it in really hard and I could see it coming out. One thing I noticed though is it used to just drop down straight. Now when I pushed it through it seems to curl up. Is that a sign its clogged?Anyways after that it had a good run for awhile and then messed up again. I think tonight I'll try again.

 

Curling is normal. Not curling is also normal. As long as it feeds through without requiring excessive force, then it's fine.

 

Hi Eliza, I remember programming a Basic language version of you back in the 70's on my dad's TRS-80 . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

 

Eliza, Are you saying that I shouldn't be shoving the plastic filament in really hard to get it through?

I still haven't fixed my problems since that last messed up print.

 

So what do I do if I'm using "excessive force"
is it clogged or something? do I need to open it up and replace something?

 

Well now it just completely stopped being able to push plastic to the extruder. I just don't know what to do at this point. I can push it through by hand but by itself it just does nothing at all.

 

Hi Craig,
Just so you know, Eliza is a software bot or someone with a lot of time on their hands pretending to be one - see my snarky comment above and: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA . See all its postings: http://forums.robo3dprinter.com/index.php?members/eliza925994.1107/

It really sounds like you have something clogging the nozzle. I've never had this problem but if you search through the forum you will find a number of cases where others have been helped with this. Some suggested using guitar wire to clean it out (while at temp of course). You also may need take out the PTFE tube to see if it is intact. This procedure is outlined in one of the Robo3D youtube videos. Good Luck!

 

Hi Craig. So you cannot push the filament by hand at all through the hot-end? BTW, I should mention that when you push by hand you're removing the filament hold screws first so there's no friction between the filament and extruded motors.

Can you still remove the filament out of the extruder while the hot-end is up to temperature? It should pull easily. Using calipers, what is the diameter of the filament? After making about a 45 degree cut of the filament (so there's a sharp pointy end) insert back into the extruder (again WITHOUT the bolts) and with the jot-end up to temperature. Can you push it through?


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Yeah I was able to push it through fine. I was pushing the filament through while the bolts were unscrewed, but I did notice I did have to push it pretty hard. I'm pretty sure that hobbed bolt was moving but I'll check again. I'm going to take a look at this during the weekend. Maybe I'll have to buy that white tube thingy from Drobo. I'm confused though, if i can push the filament through doesn't that mean its not clogged?

 

I get issues like that as well at times. Printing along and then NO FILAMENT! I wonder if I've picked up some dust on the filament or something. If I catch it in time, I pause the print, raise the head and clean out the problem, being careful NOT to move the head along the Y axis.

Cheers,
John

 

I was having similar issues. I thought it was a problem with the hobbed bolt, because I was getting a ton of filament shavings in that area. After MUCH agony and about a month of trying different things, I finally figured out that I just needed to jack my temperature up to around 200C for the PLA I'm using and it would work pretty much every time. You should be able to push the filament through fairly easily.

200 to 205 seems to be the sweet spot with my PLA. I thought maybe it was a thermistor issue, but I've since tried ABS and it extrudes fine at 200, so I think I just got a screwy spool of PLA.

 

I'm having the same problem (just got my printer, stops extruding after the first few layers and the filament chamber is full of shavings) I'll try a hotter temperature tomorrow night! Could print speed also be causing this?

 

It could be, but I jumped through all of these lines of reasoning and finally just jumped the temp way up and it worked a lot better. I tried lowering the print speed and it helps, but the underlying problem was the temperature.

It's really hard to know what's right and wrong until you start getting good prints and see how everything works when it's rolling right.

I tried switching out the hobbed bolt, because I saw tons of PLA dust in that area. That didn't help, because it was having to work too hard against a filament that wasn't being heated to the right temperature.

The thing that I finally came to, with the extended and much appreciate help from Tesseract, was that if I can't easily push the filament through the extruder when it's at operating temperature I either had a clogged extruder or my temp was way too low.

I worked through cleaning the extruder many times over the course of a week or two. Which, by the way, if you have to do Walmart sells some metal thread in the craft section that is the perfect size for cleaning the extruder tip. You have to thread it up from the bottom and it will crumple a lot of times before you can get it fed all the way to the top, but the combination of size and multiple woven threads did a great job of cleaning my extruder.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this will fix your problem, but you really seem to be going through the same problems I had and pictures two and three look exactly like some of my initial tries.

Also after you get your extruder running right, bed leveling is a HUGE thing. Tesseract has posted some threads on what your prints should look like on the first level if your Z axis stop is set at the right place.

 

Increasing the heat from 190 to 200 yielded far better results, but still not perfect. The filament started shredding again near the end of the print and the last few layers were as bad as the whole thing before I increased the heat. Going to try going hotter tomorrow night then see what happens when I slow the print speed down.

 

What printing program are you guys using for your slicing? I haven't gotten mine yet, but I was looking at the advanced settings in Cura the other day and it has some settings for different diameter of filament (in addition to the nozzle size).

Just a wild guess, but something to maybe check as it could be affecting how much material the printer is expecting to get.