Extruder getting hot enough to melt PLA filament on gears
Extruder getting hot enough to melt PLA filament on gears.
Any print job that gets close to an hour will suddenly jam because the extruder motor is so hot its heating up the gear and in turn causing the PLA filament to melt or get soft so it can't feed anymore.
The motor is so hot to the touch you can't keep your fingers on it more than a few seconds.
Why is this occurring? Do I need to attach a heat sink to the motor?
I've cleaned the entire extruder three times since I got the printer working 2 weeks ago. There is always black dust over everything inside. The tension wheel is pretty loose to the touch, I can manually feed without issue.
Thank you
RE: Extruder getting hot enough to melt PLA filament on gears
Extruder getting hot enough to melt PLA filament on gears.
Any print job that gets close to an hour will suddenly jam because the extruder motor is so hot its heating up the gear and in turn causing the PLA filament to melt or get soft so it can't feed anymore.
The motor is so hot to the touch you can't keep your fingers on it more than a few seconds.
Why is this occurring? Do I need to attach a heat sink to the motor?
I've cleaned the entire extruder three times since I got the printer working 2 weeks ago. There is always black dust over everything inside. The tension wheel is pretty loose to the touch, I can manually feed without issue.
Thank you
Too hot to touch is not normal. Go on the Prusa website and start a chat with customer support, assuming it is the original Prusa extruder. None of the motors get more than warm to the touch, even on a long print with 78 F ambient temp.
Regards,
Mark
RE: Extruder getting hot enough to melt PLA filament on gears
Oh!?! Ok. Yes, all original, the printer is less that two weeks old. Ambient temp is low to mid 60s F. Thank you.
RE: Extruder getting hot enough to melt PLA filament on gears
I do not have a Mini. However, I've added a simple external heat sink to the I3 extruder using heat-conductive adhesive to keep the temperature of the stepper within a sane range.
In my case I have room for two more, if needed, or even larger ones, but I have not found those to be necessary.
You will hear figures in the range of 70C to maybe 90C regarding the max operational temperature of high-duty-cycle steppers.
If it's actually hot enough to melt PLA filament, it's obviously well over 100C and something is wrong, and if this is the case, I would contact support since it's a new machine.
