Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.  

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

Hi Brian, 

Thanks for your pictures and setup description.  You have a small panel with 6 push connectors on it.  Is this just a junction between the printer tubes and the dry box tubes?  Where did you source your tubes?  How long have you had your XL?  Do you run the 3DXTech ESD PETG too or any abrasive materials?  

Thanks, for your pictures & info!

RE:

Posted by: @peter-k13

Hi Brian, 

Thanks for your pictures and setup description.  You have a small panel with 6 push connectors on it.  Is this just a junction between the printer tubes and the dry box tubes?  Where did you source your tubes?  How long have you had your XL?  Do you run the 3DXTech ESD PETG too or any abrasive materials?  

Thanks, for your pictures & info!

Yes that panel is just a junction point, so if I need to move the printer, get behind it or whatever, I have an easy disconnect.  The tubes are held magnetically so it disconnects super easy.  I also have 8 rolls in my drybox so that makes it easy to switch between filaments if needed by just swapping the tubes around.

I've had my XL for a little over a year.  I've fortunately not really had any issues with it other than I got the enclosure too hot printing a full sheet of ASA and it deformed the idler door and latches on the print heads.  This led to extrusion issues.  Once I figured out what was causing the issue I reprinted all of the parts in PCCF and haven't had any other issues since.  I've got over 2000 hours on it now. 

I do not use that filament in particular, but I have printed ASA, PETG, PLA, TPU, and PCCF all without issue.  I print probably 90% PETG, 5% TPU and it's a mix for the rest. I use almost exclusively Hatchbox filament, except for the PCCF (Prusament )and ASA (Polymaker).  I've printed lots of different brands and I've had the most consistency with Hatchbox.  I go thru a fair amount of filament printing for business, and I need consistency for color and print quality.  I'm not knocking any other filaments, I've just been happy with Hatchbox.  I really like Prusament as well, but it's rather cost prohibitive in the US.

I got the tubes from Amazon. I also run these same tubes on my other printers that use the original Prusa enclosure for the same reasons I listed in my original post as they all run from a similar drybox setup.

https://a.co/d/7vKOVcX

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

I had similar issues when I started printing PLA-Cu (PLA with copper infused). The drag through the Bowden tubes became too high, and the filament would break at the extruder. I use hardened extruders. One of the problems was the side filament sensor, and another was the number of bends in the Bowden tube. I now print directly from the dryer box with four spools. The 90-degree bend around the corner to the side filament sensor created too much friction for printing with this type of filament.

An other thing was that this filament need much lower temperature than normal filament and the high temperature would get the nozzle clogged in a way that even cleaning filament did not really resolve the issue. I did buy an other hardened extruder in the end. 

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

Just got my hardened nozzles from Prusa. Jacked the temp up to 250 and started a print. It was 230 by default. The 3DXtech temp range shows to be 230-260. Fingers crossed!!!!!!!!

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

Left it printing while I left for work overnight. Guess what?!?!?!?

FAIL

Back to swapping emails with tech support every day and a half. This is getting old. 

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

Gave up on getting head #2 to print long prints. I've swapped the black filament to head #1 with the regular brass nozzle just as supplied from the OEM. I'm only using #2 head for the accent colors that is a tiny fraction of the print times. Its working. This tells me something is wrong with head #1 which is what I've been telling tech support for over two months and they STILL tell me is the filament's fault. I've looked to find a replacement head assembly but it doesn't seem to pull one up when I search. I have ZERO clue what part is causing the issue so I'll replace the entire dang thing I guess....if I can find one. The hotter temps and hardened nozzle did zero to fix the issues. 

I've printed three days straight without a failure at this point just by swapping the filament I use 99.9% of the time to the other head. 

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

Comparing the two prints under 10x magnification, it is obvious that print head #2 is printing a way smaller string of material on the print bed than the #1 print head. Same .4mm nozzles, same material, same program, same everything just swapping color from head to head. Both Prusament filament, both new, not moist, etc. 

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

Interesting.  That almost leads me to believe there is still some sort of issue with the idler door and underextrusion.  I'm 90% positive that we already went thru this though somewhere in this thread. 

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

If one head consistently fails swap it out with an other. In this case swap head one and two. Re-calibrate the offsets clean the heads with cleaning filament and test again. If head 1 now under preforms then it is the head and you have eliminated the filament path. If things keep the same it is the filament path.

I had similarly problems and switched out heads. The conclusion was the filament path and for my setup only extruder 2  is good for very rough filaments. I print straight from the dryer parked on the side and do not use the side filament sensors.

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

I have a setup that has been working pretty well for me for the 3DXTech PETG ESD filament.  I have a 3mm ID x 4mm tube connected directly to print head #1.   The other end goes to a PolyBox with the spool inside.  The spool rests on steel rods with roller bearings.  With this setup I was able to run a large 14-hour print on an almost new nozzle. 

I still get notifications that the printer has stopped filament needs to be reloaded.  Most of the time I can unload the filament, clip the end, reload it and restart the print.  I have even been lucky enough to have it pause overnight.  I do not stop the print. The print bed will maintain its set temperature, but the nozzle will have cooled.  When I get in to work, I press the button to wake the machine up and let the nozzle get up to the correct temperature. I can then hit resume and it will pick up where it left off.  

When I have clogging or reloading issues, I will do a cold pull, or I run some nylon through the nozzle at the PA temp setting.  After the nylon I will cold pull with PLA. Cleaning the nozzle with the acupuncture is very helpful with the PETG ESD material.  Doing this helps me keep running parts without changing nozzles all the time. I have attached pictures of my setup and the large 14-hour print.  My next challenge is a 25-hour print. 

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RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

Peter....all that work and constant tending of the machine. What a crap show. It's ridiculous that these machines need babysat every hour of the day. I've came to the conclusion that it has nothing to do with the material. It's just something in head #2. I'm wondering if the motor isn't the issue. The doors, the drive wheel, everything else looks fine and have been swapped with new parts. The fact that when it purges before every print, the string purged by head 1 is thicker than head 2. This tells me the motor or something isn't pushing as hard. 

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

Park each head on the same spot unload the filament and tug on it thorough the ptfe tube. Is there much force difference between both? That is the short and easy way to find out if the drive can not pull enough fiber into the drive. If that happens you get a thin string.

To get a proper setup you need to do your own adjustments to make your setup work for you. Or you could pay $$$ more to get a real industrial device. I have my eyes on one that can build 3d circuits this device does cost about €150,000 so I need to save some. A cheaper variant that only does 3d printing of circuits costs about 1/10th. In the mean time I tinker around with my XL-5T. I had the same problems and it took me time too to figure out a way to print the filaments I want. But now I have done about 80 multi material prints, each 4.5 hours.

If you go fault finding in a circuit with no schematics does it ever help you to say it must be this or that without checking all other angels too? And if you assumed it was one thing and that did not work would it then be useful to keep on hammering on that same component?

I could have used my Bambu X1C with AMS too. However then I would have thrown away buckets of expensive filament. The bambu is faster but the material changes are very slow and cost a lot of filament, in the end both machines are of about the same speed. One print has only a little of the very abrasive filament, I use it as a signal reflector so it is on every layer. The amount of flush would be more than used in the model. The XL is also more precise 1:1 in size accuracy. And the XL is so quiet compared to the bambu.

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

Posted by: @jelbert

Park each head on the same spot unload the filament and tug on it thorough the ptfe tube. Is there much force difference between both? That is the short and easy way to find out if the drive can not pull enough fiber into the drive. If that happens you get a thin string.

I will do that if I can ever get the last of 3 fixtures printed for our production floor. I just now recalibrated the head parkings since I had one fail during the last print and I assume it is what cause a layer shift on the bed. 

Prusa tech support had me looking into trying to feed the printer from a dry box and I was browsing the interwebz for days looking for a setup all because they kept pounding me with its the filaments fault. I think I'll order some of the larger ID tubing and re-tube it all even though I haven't found a spot where it pulls hard. I would like to use 2kg spools though instead of the 1kg spools. That's why I built the spool holders with bearings so they would spin super easy. There is zero resistance coming from the spool holders. It's insane to me that these heads are as sensitive to the filament friction as everyone says they are.

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

Where do you all turn the tech support doesn't help and the forums don't give anything that is a solution. I'm about to hit this POS printer with a hammer. I've been fighting printing ESD material since FEBRUARY and it still won't print. I printed a few things last week and it worked. It stuck a time or two but I unloaded and reloaded the filament and it took back off and finished...which tells me there is nothing wrong with the filament. The head/nozzle clogs then the drive gear starts slipping on the filament. I've tried putting more tension on the springs, I've cleaned the gear, I've replace tube with 3mm ID, I've done a dozen things and nothing will make this POS print. I've about had it with this damn thing. I don't know where to turn for help. All I get from tech support is blame on the filament and nothing that actually helps. They won't send me new heads which is what I want them to do. Printer is under warranty still. But no, it's always an excuse. Getting really fed up. 

RE:

Have you ever tried reprinting the idler door and latch? I know we've discussed in the past, but the drive gear slipping sounds like not enough preload.  In this design adjusting the springs will not help you at all if the idler door is deformed and against the Nextruder frame. I know because I struggled with the same thing for a few weeks until I figured out that the idler door had deformed. 

The parts are a really quick print and easy to change.  Just go onto printables to get the stl's. For a test you can just print them from PETG and if it fixes your problem you can reprint in PCCF.

As far as where to turn unfortunately you've got to figure it out yourself.  While the forum and support can be helpful it's often hard to diagnose a machine if you can't be there looking at it.  What finally tipped me off on the idler door was I did a cold pull on the troubled extruder, and one on an extruder that was working.  When I compared the 2 the cold pull on the bag extruder looked very poorly formed compared to the working one. 

I reprinted the new parts in PCCF and I've not had another issue. 

I see your an engineer in your signature, so you've likely got a set of skills that most don't, and that's problem solving.  In very few cases has support for anything actually been helpful to me because by the time I'm contacting them I've already done a bunch of troubleshooting on my own.

You also have to remember that most people working in support are probably not super knowledgeable, this is a struggle at all companies, especially large and growing companies.  The knowledge of the experienced people is hard to transfer to everyone as much of it comes from experience, and a growing or large companies have lots of new or inexperienced people. 

Anyways try the idler door and latch, at this point what can it hurt?

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

Hi Guys, 

Like you I am still struggling with getting the 3DXTech brand of ESD PETG material to print consistently.  I've tried adjusting the nozzle temperature from 230C to 259C.  I've also tried slowing the Max Print Speed and lowering Max Volumetric Speed thinking that it is trying to push too much filament too quickly.  I've changed nozzles or cleaned nozzles by heating them and soaking them for days in MEK.  None of this works for this material. I can get them clean, but it does not take long before they get gummed up and clog.  I may try reprinting the idler door and latch as @Brian-12 has suggested. 

For now, I am giving up on this material, though I have 4 more spools to use up.  I am now using 3DXSTAT ESD-PLA also made by 3DXTech.  So far, this material has been printing very well.  The largest part I've made took almost 25 hours to print.  It had only 1 reload filament error at the beginning of the print.  That was just after reloading to this new PLA material.  Other parts have been printing well too.  I had our Electrical Engineers check the Surface Resistivity of the ESD PLA material to see if it would be acceptable for our fixture needs.  I got a thumbs up.  This is my new go to material.  

RE:

That's an interesting point, could it just be something with this ESD material?

Have you tried another standard PETG?  I print mostly Hatchbox, but have used Overture, Prusament, Sunlu, and Polymaker.  I've got some rolls of Voxel PETG that I'm getting ready to try. 

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

I think I'm just going to quote a better machine. It's absurd to fight something so long that I've probably almost spent enough labor to cover the new machine at my salary by now. I've tried every single thing posted on the forum and everything tech support has suggested and it doesn't do any better than it did when I started. Prusament PETG it does pretty good with. Maybe a clog once a week. However, we are an electronics OEM. We build circuit card assemblies. We have an absolute requirement to be able to print ESD certified material for the fixtures that I design and print. Apparently this machine isn't the one for us. 

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

Posted by: @4x4dually

I think I'm just going to quote a better machine. It's absurd to fight something so long that I've probably almost spent enough labor to cover the new machine at my salary by now. I've tried every single thing posted on the forum and everything tech support has suggested and it doesn't do any better than it did when I started. Prusament PETG it does pretty good with. Maybe a clog once a week. However, we are an electronics OEM. We build circuit card assemblies. We have an absolute requirement to be able to print ESD certified material for the fixtures that I design and print. Apparently this machine isn't the one for us. 

There's something else going on.  Did you reprint the parts I suggested? 

I literally have thousands of hours printing with regular PETG and I've never had a clog, just the issue with the idler door I mentioned earlier, and have not had an issue since.  A clog once a week is not even acceptable.

RE: Trouble Printing ESD Filament on XL Nextruder.

Posted by: @brian-12There's something else going on.  Did you reprint the parts I suggested? 

I literally have thousands of hours printing with regular PETG and I've never had a clog, just the issue with the idler door I mentioned earlier, and have not had an issue since.  A clog once a week is not even acceptable.

I have thousands of hours printing with Prusament PETG as well. I just completed a 42 hour print using Prusament PETG. When complete, I unloaded it, and loaded the ESD PETG and it clogged in less than 15 minutes. It's absurd. I did not print the parts you suggested, but I did find those parts that were provided to me by Prusa as the updated, higher temp, parts. I've changed hot ends, I've bought hardened nozzles, I've bumped the nozzle temps, I've replace with 3mm id tubing, I've built spool holders with bearings, I use a needle to clean nozzles, etc etc etc and still this POS won't print that material. 

Any chance you have an extra set of those parts printed I can pay you to send me? I don't remember what material you printed them out of and I doubt I'll have that anyway. Not sure if you are in the states or not. I'll have to look back and find the link to those parts and the material. I've tried so many thing at this point, all these post are running together. 

Thanks for your continued help. I greatly appreciate it.