Filament Jam Extruder
Hi everyone,
I'm having issues with the extruder. It will produce clicking sounds and there's no filament coming out. It happens when I'm printing 2 hours+ prints and it will occur a few minutes before it ends. When it happens, I pause the print, unload filament, cut off the filament, reload and then continue print.
I read a few threads saying it's about the temperature but is there other causes of this?
I noticed when I did a cold pull, the gears weren't moving properly. If it is the gear problem, what can I do to fix it?
Thank you!
RE: Filament Jam Extruder
Perhaps its a bit of a combination of temperature, gear tension and cleaning.
I had the dreaded clicking the other day at about 2 hours into a print. In my case I think it was because I was printing PLA in an enclosure and had forgotten to leave the door open a jar/not switch the fan on. I put it down to temperature, particularly as my starting room temperature was higher than normal. After unloading and loading I started printing again, not the next print but the print after that and the exact same thing happened around to 2 hours in.
I then did a couple of cold pulls and had a dust off and check of the gears and haven't had the problem since. Theres a reminder in this video about setting the gears and tension here:
I think I'd have another look for filament particles in the gears and no harm in doing another cold pull. I've found with the cold pulls my filament isn't covered in burnt bits like on photos and looks clean but doing it a couple of times certainly seems to work. I've only once seen an obvious particle on it and I put this down to having dropped the filament roll on the floor and think it had picked it up off the carpet.
I find if my enclosure goes much above about 28C when printing PLA for a longer length of time then a jam can occur, not straight away but after a couple of hours of printing and maybe being at that temperature for about 1/2 hour. Watching the temperature and a more thorough/regular cleaning regime and I don't have the problem.
I recently got some cleaning filament and have seen benefits from loading and unloading that between material changes which seems to improve extrusion particularly when swapping from ASA to a lower temperature material. I've started doing this when I've done a lot of printing with the same filament too.
RE: Filament Jam Extruder
Open the enclosure door. Don't print PLA or PETG with an enclosure door closed.
RE: Filament Jam Extruder
I agree with Dan, print PLA with the door open. For PETG, I do close the door. No issues with that, printing about 20 kg of PETG over the last three months. Not saying it helps but it doesn't seem to hurt either.
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...