Extruder Knocking and Clicking Noise
Hi Everyone,
General Information
For the past few months, I have had a problem with extrusion occurring with every single print causing a near 95% failure rate. The extruder emits a distinguishable knocking/clicking noise either immediately at the start of the print or the print will begin successfully and go on that way for at the most 10 minutes before the knocking begins again and the print will fail. At first it sounds like a clogged nozzle; however, one of the stranger symptoms is that if I wait for the nozzle to cool after a failed print and then start up another print, plastic will flow freely again as if nothing happened. Resulting prints look very much like how an under-extruded print would look like. It happens regardless of position of the print head or the x carriage. Anything information or ideas would be incredibly helpful!
Things I've tried:
Photos
The following are what the resulting print looks like
Video Links Don't look at my ugly damaged bed lol
Filament Loading
Failed Print Example
Good Sample of Knocking/Clicking Noise
I've been battling this problem for months and I'm sure that the community has far more experience than me with this sort of stuff. Any help or idea would be extremely appreciated!
Re: Extruder Knocking and Clicking Noise
Hi, have you cleaned the teeth on your extruder hobbed bolt using an ordinary wooden toothpick, the point of a dart, or something similar? Especially when there has been a blockage the teeth like to chew off and retain little fragments of filament and over time this builds up and affects the ability to push filament through.
Once that is done, try raising hot-end temp by 5 degrees for your next print, that will help the filament flow smoother.
Bill
Tagaytay City, Philippines
Founder member of Philippines Prusa Printer Owners FB Group
Sponsor Pillars of God Academy in Bacoor
Re: Extruder Knocking and Clicking Noise
Have you checked to make sure the heatsink fan is running correctly? Also have you tried printing without the extruder visualization attachment to make sure the magnet isn't effecting the extruder motor somehow?
Re: Extruder Knocking and Clicking Noise
just throwing out ideas:
* bad rambo board. when everything heats up something on the board goes bad. you replaced everything else.
* PEI Tube problem. PEI went bad somehow expanding inside the hotend causing a jam. (you changed the hotend so.....)
* can you pin point the clicking noise? is it the filament slipping on the hobbled pulley and it digs into the filament?
* you appear to have replaced your hotend extruder body is this a reprint of a prusa part or 3rd party? misalign between PEI tube input and hobbled Pulley
* when it clicks and you unload the filament what does it look like, is there a kink, does the hobbled pulley have a round chunk taken out of the filament. does the end of the PEI shaped in the filament look like it has a gap?
*Gunner has a good point if you put a magnet on that stepper motor that isn't good.
“One does not simply use a picture as signature on Prusa forumsâ€
Re: Extruder Knocking and Clicking Noise
Hi, have you cleaned the teeth on your extruder hobbed bolt using an ordinary wooden toothpick, the point of a dart, or something similar? Especially when there has been a blockage the teeth like to chew off and retain little fragments of filament and over time this builds up and affects the ability to push filament through.
Once that is done, try raising hot-end temp by 5 degrees for your next print, that will help the filament flow smoother.
I'll definitely check the hobbed gear one more time just to make sure its perfectly clean; thanks for the advice! 😀
Re: Extruder Knocking and Clicking Noise
Have you checked to make sure the heatsink fan is running correctly? Also have you tried printing without the extruder visualization attachment to make sure the magnet isn't effecting the extruder motor somehow?
From what I understand about the heatsink fan system (turning on at 50C) I believe it is functioning correctly; it is also pretty solidly mounted (and mounted at the correct orientation with sticker facing in 🙂 )
The extruder visualizer was printed just for the sake of me and those helping me figure out the problem so it was added after the problem began so that's probably not it. I was actually pretty lucky because the printer failed to extrude right at the last layer of that print lol
Re: Extruder Knocking and Clicking Noise
just throwing out ideas:
* bad rambo board. when everything heats up something on the board goes bad. you replaced everything else.
* PEI Tube problem. PEI went bad somehow expanding inside the hotend causing a jam. (you changed the hotend so.....)
* can you pin point the clicking noise? is it the filament slipping on the hobbled pulley and it digs into the filament?
* you appear to have replaced your hotend extruder body is this a reprint of a prusa part or 3rd party? misalign between PEI tube input and hobbled Pulley
* when it clicks and you unload the filament what does it look like, is there a kink, does the hobbled pulley have a round chunk taken out of the filament. does the end of the PEI shaped in the filament look like it has a gap?
*Gunner has a good point if you put a magnet on that stepper motor that isn't good.
I didn't even think of a faulty PEI tube, that tube has definitely seen better days. I'll go ahead and pull it out and make sure its in spec. Great Idea! 😀 If that's not it, I'll be leaning more towards a bad board (wish i could use the spare regular rambo board I have to check)
The noise is definitely coming from the filament slipping; its basically the same noise that occurs during a really nasty nozzle clog.
The extruder body is a reprint of prusa parts. The gear and the tubing aren't misaligned as far as I can tell but I'll give another look when I remove the tubing.
All of you guys are super helpful! 😀
Re: Extruder Knocking and Clicking Noise
i ended up purchasing another MK2s just for spare parts. prusa is VERY slow in getting replacements so better to have one on hand then fight with them for a replacement after the fact. i was down for 1 month waiting on parts that killed 2 machines. i have 3 so one was going. when prusa screwed up my RMA after 2 weeks i gutted one of the broken machines to make another good machine so i was back up and running with 2 machines, back and forth with prusa and during that time i ordered that parts only mk2s from them, lucky the RMA parts came in first and i got the 3rd printer up and running finally. then the backup MK2s arrived so at least i feel better to have parts on hand.
interestingly i had to print some replacement parts and i bought Hatchbox PETG in orange which is close to the prusa color. printed out the new parts replaced my damaged prusa PETG parts and everything was ok for a day or two and i started to have mechanical issues. long story short it turned out the Hatchbox PETG i bought was trash compared to the original Prusa PETG, the melt point of the Hatchbox PETG was insanely low for PETG...
so i got offical Prusa Orange PETG reprinted the parts and low and behold no mechanical problems.
that was why i mentioned the newly printed extruder body since i had something similar and it turned out to be the replacement PETG was garbage and it melted and started jamming.
“One does not simply use a picture as signature on Prusa forumsâ€