How to know what tension of extruder?  

RE: How to know what tension of extruder?

What do you mean by 'tension of extruder'? Do you mean something like drawbar pull, as in how much the Bondtech gears will pull before slipping?

If so, something like a spring scale would easily measure it.

RE: How to know what tension of extruder?

@jsw

sorry for bad english. I mean tension adjustment at extruder gear.

RE: How to know what tension of extruder?

No problem.

There are several rules of thumb for setting this, but the bottom line for setting any extruder is the point at which it reliably feeds filament without any clicking or grinding of the filament.  If you read this and other fora, you'll see some who will say that different filaments may require different settings.

RE: How to know what tension of extruder?

One rule of thumb is what jsw said. You need to pretty much see how well the extruder grabs the filament and feeds it through the line. It needs to be neither tight and making grinding sounds nor loose and making sounds like its freely turning.

Another rule of thumb is to have the tensioner screw flat with the plastic while having no filament inside. This is for filaments like PETG and PLA. For FLEX I found that from the screw being flat to the plastic part you need another 3-4 turns counter clockwise to have good grip with a TPU filament having shore hardness 94A.

RE: How to know what tension of extruder?

@geoper2

thank you, understood 🙂

RE: How to know what tension of extruder?

General rule of thumb is having the screw flush with surface of plastic part. If you unload filament, you can observe fine imprints from extruder gear - not too deep, just tactile enough.

This is one of those things where there's no exact number to be assuigned to it and you have to go by "feels". Same like belt tension or first layer height.

RE: How to know what tension of extruder?

@crawlerin

thank you 🙂

RE: How to know what tension of extruder?

@crawlerin

Hi Crawler. Are you saying markings shown in the image below are expected? If not, do I eliminate these by tightening the tension bolt or loosen?

Thanks again!

RE: How to know what tension of extruder?

Would you be able to share a picture of what you're describing? I'm looking to figure out how to set this tension for both baseline material (PLA) and for TPU's with unpublished Shore A values (like Amazon Basics TPU).

Thanks!