Filament jam after ~30hrs of print time
Hi Guys
I would like to check with you possible causes of my case here...
I printed an object for around 35 hours, Prusament PLA, got to 97%...I woke up in the morning, went to check the printer and noticed the extruder gear was skipping and no filament extruded - filament got jammed....I don't understand why though...everything was fine for several hours before....I would like to understand what could be the cause of this and see if this is something I can prevent or if this just happens, randomly...
I own MK2.5S (BEAR) - with the filament sensor installed...isn't the filament sensor supposed to know when the filament gets jammed? what does the sensor do actually? only checks if filament is there?
I was able to unjam the nozzle (heated to 240m unloaded and loaded) and now it's fine, BUT the print is ruined :/
I have some experience with printing already, however jamming, this did not happen to me before (except a case when I ran out of filament while not at home and while the printer was waiting for a replacement, it cooled down and jammed the nozzle)
So what I am really looking for - is this a case where I should simply "live with it" or is something wrong I need to address?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts guys!!
RE: Filament jam after ~30hrs of print time
What layer height were you printing and were there a lot of retractions in the print?
I don't know much about the MK2.5, but the MK3 has a custom heatbreak (to support the MMU) with a stepped interior that is believed to cause trouble for prints with lots of retractions.
I certainly feel your pain though as I had one 37 hour print fail twice before I got a good print and then another 34 hour print that I never got a good print from (5 failures). As I never could get that one to print I had to throw away ~100 hours worth of prints as I can't correctly color match so I need to find a new filament and try again.
What I have found is that this also seems to be filament dependent. The case mentioned above where I never got a successful print was with Prusa (not Prusament) Silver PLA. I ran the same gcode with both Amazon and SuperFila (wrong colors) and they ran flawlessly. The Silk Silver I got to re-run the 100 hours of printing didn't fail to print, but the results were terrible (sizing was off, super brittle, etc..). So you might also try a different filament too.
RE: Filament jam after ~30hrs of print time
With PLA, be careful with air temperature near the extruder. If the air is too hot, you could have jams. I have a Craftbot 3 also, and it is the first 3D printer to actually monitor filament flow. No, the PRUSA filament sensor only can tell if the filament is there or not there.
The Craftbot filament monitor is better, but it also has some false alarms, so I might shut it off. It actually might be causing more trouble than it solves. I guess the grass is always greener...