Warped extruder body
I've had mostly newb problems with my three-week-old kit: improper squish, first layer won't stick, jams inside the hot end, etc. Surmounted all of them so far, but this latest looks tougher. The plastic part called the "extruder body" warped, clearly due to heat, leading to a "crash detection" during a print because the PINDA probe was no longer vertical. I ran a Self Test before re-calibrating and adjusting the first layer, everything seemed fine until the failure about an hour into the print, using ABS filament.
My plan for tomorrow is to see if I can't jury rig something for the PINDA probe so that I can print new parts from ABS. But why did the part get hot enough to warp so badly?
A second question is whether there is a decent way I can hope to print the replacement parts without the PINDA probe?
Re: Warped extruder body
Maybe you turn off the printer before the temperature in the HotEnd has dropped below 50°C and the cooling fan has stopped.
Bear MK3 with Bondtech extruder
Re: Warped extruder body
Maybe you turn off the printer before the temperature in the HotEnd has dropped below 50°C and the cooling fan has stopped.
Good observation. I'll keep that in mind. And thanks for responding.
I think my particular problem was that the hot end was twisted, almost touching the PINDA mount. It had looked square to me, but was clearly turned, once I got the nozzle fan off.
Anyway - I removed the PINDA probe, took off the extruder body cover, and generally shoved things aside so that I could use a heat gun to soften and re-square the PINDA mount, which I did. Of course, it was badly warped, etc. I spent about an hour getting a hole through it for the probe. With the probe re-installed, and seeing a crack in the forward surface of the probe mount, I had the bright idea of brushing on some acetone to re-weld it. That broke the part off entirely. After several attempts to reattach the broken off piece of the mount, I switched to screwing on a small wooden block that seems to have pinned the probe nicely. My thought was to get the printer to work well enough to print a new extruder body, which I do still intend to do. But actually the mount seems to work very well, and might work indefinitely. I suppose that if I mess up enough to get the hot end twisted over again, that the wood block might char, or even catch fire, but probably not, and it most likely won't warp from the hot end with that in proper position.
I've reset the probe, completed the Self Test and XYZ Calibration, so am now ready to do a First Layer Calibration and then see about printing some extruder parts.
A lot of my troubles started when, in the middle of a print, I'd start getting wispy threads out of the nozzle rather than actual strands. That was after a couple or hours of printing properly, so was difficult to understand. Since then, in messing around in an effort to find out what was going on, I broke off a lot of filaments inside the hot end, so can no longer say what might have been the original cause of those hair-like wisps after a couple of hours. I'm hoping that there was some partial obstruction that sometimes just didn't get in the way, unlikely though that seems. Except that I had the hot end twisted and melted the probe mount, the printer was doing a good job again after I finally got all the insides cleaned out.
Re: Warped extruder body
Hope you can print new spare parts.
The two most important points for good prints are:
A perfectly adjusted Z level (= a good first layer)
A well-cleaned bed (= detergent and water)
Bear MK3 with Bondtech extruder