Filament load - gears work to pull it out, but not to insert???
I print here and there and haven't printed in about four months. Just fired up another quick job in F360, exported it to PrusaSlicer, popped on my PLA spool and $%#&*^#$.
Filament unload was fine (ie the preheat and gears extraction worked) but the filament load detects the insertion and then does NOTHING.
The gears just don't engage to insert. Then it keeps asking if there is a successful insertion with filament being extruded. Of course not, the gears aren't pulling in the filament.
I checked the sensor and it is being detected fine.
Anyone have any ideas? The gear seems to only be working in extraction mode.
RE: Filament load - gears work to pull it out, but not to insert???
i had the same problem,
what happen was that the grubscrew in the gear came loose, after tightening the screw it worked again.
RE: Filament load - gears work to pull it out, but not to insert???
How much disassembly did you have to do? I'll go review the assembly instructions and see if I can figure out how to access the area.
RE: Filament load - gears work to pull it out, but not to insert???
if i can recall correctly i removed the idler door and i could reach it
RE: Filament load - gears work to pull it out, but not to insert???
Update - new advice question for the experienced...
So, indeed, opening the idler door to expose the gears made it easy to access the grub nut. That was not the problem though.
The gears were spinning on the insert, and you can see some filament dust where it looks like the gears were trying to insert the filament but slipping and grinding on the filament.
So, my assumption is that there is a physical blockage of some sort preventing the insertion.
Is this a periodic maintenance thing that should be done or maybe an expected issue that just needs to be fixed periodically?
In getting my installation kit bag of parts out I noticed a very thin cleaning tool. Maybe trying to run that up the heater block?
Any ideas would be appreciated.
RE: Filament load - gears work to pull it out, but not to insert???
I'll try this
RE: Filament load - gears work to pull it out, but not to insert???
I think I solved my problem. There was a full piece of filament in the heater pipeline that was clipped off flush at the top of the flex tube in the heating body.
Like it snapped off from the spool.
My guess is that I previously did a filament unload and maybe selected the wrong type a filament causing the unload preheat to use too cool of an unload temperature. Then the gears tried to retract causing the snap.
I had to open up the heating body to access the full heating element and the flex tube to get a pair of needle nose on the filament and pull it out with a high temp preheat.
RE: Filament load - gears work to pull it out, but not to insert???
If you've left a spool on the printer for months it got wet and wet PLA gets rather brittle, that's probably why it snapped...