Hey guys, I’ve been working on building a 3D printer; however, I got stock on trouble shooting.
the extruder get clogged. using PLA filament and extruder is set to 210 degrees i’m not sure what i 'm doing wrong. i would really appreciate if anyone can help.
Abe
Is it high temperature PLA?
Filament label shows range of 190 - 210
Is the temp you set for your printer in Fahrenheit vs. Celsius by chance?
I get good results at 200. But 210 should not cause clogging. Assuming you did not leave it idling at the temperature for a great long while.
Did you assemble the extruder?
The temperature is in Celsius
I’ll bring it down to 200 and see
Thanks
I bought the extruded assembled
I’m 95 % confidence it’s Celsius but I’ll will validate
Thank you
I realize that there is a difference between the filament actual length vrs the controller readings
I’m not sure the following reading would make a difference
Controller reading was 38mm but the actual length measured with caliper was 39.62mm
“Clogged” as in nothing comes out?
“Clogged” as in not as much as I expected comes out?
Sometimes It starts extrude barely the first layer then it get clogged then nothing comes out.
Were you able to extrude 38.00 / 39.62 mm without trouble?
I had to remove the extruder because it was clogged. Then just run the filament through the tube then measured the filament extended from the tube with caliper
That length reading might cause you to overextrude a little, but you can fix that in firmware temporarily until you have a chance to calibrate. Not great, but not a huge deal.
Relevant though, what extruder and hotend are you using? Something I’ve encountered before is the idler wheel in the extruder is either pushing the filament too hard or not hard enough into the gear that extrudes it. In either case, the drive gear can grind a patch in the filament and be unable to push it through the nozzle. If this is happening, you’ll be able to pull out the filament and see a little patch ground off of it.
The stepper motor driver for your extruder motor might also be either underpowered or require configuration. A4988 drivers have a little tiny screw that adjusts the maximum current that the driver will push through the motor. If the driver is set too low, your motor will be underpowered and not be able to push filament through. If the driver is set too high, it heats up super fast and thermal throttles itself, which results in it being underpowered. You have to set these to run just under the maximum current that your motor is rated for (those tiny pancake NEMA17 motors might be 1 amp or so). If you look at the datasheet for your particular driver, you can learn how to configure these with just a multimeter. Be very careful while doing this and only attempt to make adjustments with the power disconnected or you can fry your entire controller board. Ask me how I know…
Also make sure that you have the right thermistor configured in your firmware. The latest build of Marlin has a few different options. If the firmware thinks that you have a different thermistor than you actually have, the controller could be getting the wrong temp reading at the nozzle, which could easily cause things to go wrong.
The last thing I would look at is your bed leveling. If the nozzle is too close to the bed on the first layer, the extruder tries to push filament through the nozzle, but it has nowhere to go and it just bunches up and you end up grinding filament and nothing works. Try heating everything up, raising the head up off the bed, and manually telling the controller to extrude. If you get plastic coming out, there’s your issue.