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Flexible filaments

Discussion in 'Printing Filament' started by Kingbob, May 27, 2014.

  1. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    well ...
    1) remove the filament from the feed mechanism.
    2) put your tube down into the cold section of the hotend
    3) measure where the tube crosses the hobbed section
    4) #3 is where the notch goes into the tube (you can see that in the pictures).
     
  2. Kingrames

    Kingrames New Member

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    And what exactly is the hobbed section? I still have no idea what you mean by that. I have never used the word hobbed in my life.

    This is the result when I tried putting the pen tube into the system.
    [​IMG]

    I'm now going to have to cut off the bottom if I intend to try again. This is what I wanted to avoid.
     
    #62 Kingrames, Aug 18, 2015
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2015
  3. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Look at this picture. It should look familiar, you have a part exactly like it in your printer.
    That section in the middle of the bolt that looks rough? That is a HOBBED section of the bolt.

    images.jpg


    You could have googled that :)
    This part is in fact called: The Hobbed Bolt

    And there you got to use it twice now in a single sentence :)

    You will need to learn the terminology. Wish we had an FAQ.
     
    #63 mark tomlinson, Aug 18, 2015
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2015
  4. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Looks like you may have put the pen tube too close to the hot section of the hotend, but that is a wild guess since you don't say how it got that look. Just into the top (the COLD section) of the hotend is enough.

    Then the notch should line up with the hobbed bolt (see picture above).

    I used some PTFE which was a little larger and did not want to slide down into the hotend itself.

    Really, in the end, all you are doing is keeping the flexible filament from getting out of the feed channel.
    A Gregs Wade extruder is not really designed for flexible filaments (bowden would likely be better) but what we have come up with is a way make it work.

    In addition to the tube modification you are going to need to significantly adjust your slicer settings in order to make this work so be prepared for that as well.
     
  5. Kingrames

    Kingrames New Member

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    Well I can only see one bolt from the outside of the device and if it's the hobbed bolt, that's odd, because it rotates along the gear, so I have no idea why the bolt would be hobbed unless it's supposed to twist something around.

    The pen tube got mangled by the device when it was turned off and I tried feeding it into the system using the gear to push it along.
     
  6. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Yes, it is -- the filament is what it is 'twisting' around. It is being 'fed' into the hotend by the 'hobb' catching it and forcing it along. This is what causes the filament to feed down into the hotend (where it melts and gets extruded).

    You really should open up the feed and have a look to become familiair with all the parts. At some point you are going to need to do that because you will need to work on something, so knowing how it looks now is a good thing. Being familiar with how the mechanical side of your printer operates is key to being able to maintain it so open the hood and have a look around.

    Make sure you watched this as well:

    http://www.robo3d.com/pages/assembly-and-guides
     
    #66 mark tomlinson, Aug 19, 2015
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2015

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