Wood Filament Printing Issues
I recently bought a 600 gram roll of Colorfabb Woodfill PLA and also a E3D v6 0.6mm hardened steel nozzle to print with.
Well I switched out the nozzle as per instructions and then loaded the filament. After a first layer calibration, went ahead and decided to try out a 3Dbenchy. Well at first it was going good, but then it stopped extruding out the nozzle.. I also noticed the spool stopped rotating, and looked at the extruder gear and saw a bunch of dust.. So it was clogged at the extruder and the gear was just grinding down on the filament. I had to disassemble the extruder since I could not unload the filament. I cleaned the gears, removed the line and saw that "hockey puck" at the print head after I disassembled it.
I took the nozzle out as per instructions in the knowledge base, then put it back in, tightening it as well as making sure there is a small gap between the heat block and the nozzle. I took off the top PTFE coupler and pressed on the tube after loosening the grub screws to make sure that it was flush with the bottom of the heat break. I re-tightened everything (upwards pressure on heat block) and tried again. The first layer calibration was done and the z-adjustment was dialed in until I was happy with it.
As soon as I re-attempted the 3Dbenchy, it was already having trouble with it extruding being very patchy as it was doing the first layer until it clogged soon after. I had to repeat all those steps (including disassembling the extruder and cleaning it); and double checked everything to make sure I wasn't missing something. Then tried a third time and it started printing just fine, the 3dbenchy was looking great up until it got to around the 7% mark and then it clogged again (3rd attempt at this point).
I pulled the filament out of the heat break and did not see a hockey puck this time, however I did notice at the end there was a slight almost imperceptible bulge showing where it started to melt towards the nozzle. The nozzle also had some filament residue stuck in it. I tried to heat the nozzle up to 280 degrees and it got some of it out, but not all. At this point I am pretty much stuck on what to do. I followed the print setting guidelines for using their woodfill PLA, and also made sure in Prusaslicer that I selected the 0.6mm nozzle for the printer.
Does anyone have any suggestions? I have heard people having good luck with wood filaments for the Mini. Is there some setting in the slicer that should be modified to prevent those clogs or is this filament a no-go?
RE:
Some searches revealed that others have difficulties with wood filament in bowden type extruders due to friction. I took the bowden tube out and ran some of the woodfill through it by hand and then tried to pull it out, there is actually a lot of friction compared to normal PLA (especially in the curved tube between the extruder and the print head) so it's kind of easy to see how the extruder gear could have a hard time driving it without grinding it down. This might be a jam issue and not really a clog one.
I heard getting some larger inner diameter PTFE tube could very well fix this issue. Has anyone tried doing this with any success?