Got my 1.75 volcano installed on a Bukobot. During initial extrusion tests, I didn’t see a major issue with the 3mm Tatsu gear so I had not swapped that part out yet. My threaded barrel has a very slight bend at the neck though :C
Printing is no bueno so far. Outside the skirt taking a moment longer than I like to begin, the extrusion is pretty consistent for the first 10 seconds or so, then I see small increments of no extrusion at the hotend during the skirt and brim. Do I have to change the firmware steps on the extruder for a filament diameter change or is that only when changing the drive motor?
What I’ve done so far:
–>Build volcano, attach wiring and heaterblock to spitfire extruder.
–>Change marlin firmware thermistor from 7 to 5.
–>Change slic3r / rephost to 1.75 filamet and 1mm nozzle throughout.
–>Attempted various first layer modifiers: 150% - 250%, no dice.
Yeah, looks like you’ve got a significant gap between the nozzle and barrel. Now that you’ve put plastic through it, that will be hard to fix. It also doesn’t look like the extrusion width is set wide enough for a volcano nozzle. You shouldn’t need to recompile your firmware, for the switch to 1.75, but you will need to if you changed thermistors. You’ll also want to update the PID settings, and you’ll also probably want to reduce your extruder’s microstepping (and thus your steps/mm), probably full-step since you will have smaller filament going in, wider extrusions, AND presumably thicker layers.
presuming that there isn’t something simple wrong as mentioned by the others. it sounds a lot like you are simply extruding too fast. The 1mm nozzle requires a large volume of throughput and I found the volcano only capable of 25mm³/sec which is not that great. print speeds above 40-50mm/sec may be your upper limit. (YMMV as I have the 3mm version). Basically if the filament flow rate is too high it simply can’t melt the plastic fast enough and you would see exactly the results you have reported (which can also be caused by other problems as mentioned above). My tests have shown that the long melt zone does not really help much, at least compared to something like a Jhead which can easily do 25mm³/sec)
Yup, looks like I flipped around the heatblock. Darn. Just got too excited when I finally found time to assemble it. Will do as suggested, thanks folks. @Tim_Elmore I hadn’t needed a heatsink and print very well, wanted to see if I got similar results with the wider nozzle.
Fix the heat block (and the bend on the barrel too) but keep in mind the cooling style of our original extruder assembly (your top part) may not be able to cool things down enough for that massive heater block you got. Stick more fans on the top (including motor, since that transfer heat too) or find some big heat sink to keep that top part within temperature limit. The red block at the top of the barrel should stay about 60 degrees or less after a few hours of running.
Ran back to my shop because of all the negative comments, fixed the barrel but broke the thermistor :C Had a spare for a V6 so I slapped that on there. Tomorrow I’ll do what @Whosa_whatsis suggested but it gives me a new excuse to order the proper barrel http://imgur.com/a/LAhYG
@Diego_Porqueras_Deez The size of the heat block doesn’t impact the heat load on the heatsink. Simple thermodynamics, all that matters is the heat flux across the heatbreak, which is only a function of geometry of the heatbreak and the temperature of the heaterblock side of the heatbreak.
@OP: The problem is that your printer’s heatsink doesn’t cool the whole heatbreak - see all those exposed threads? That’s bad, and is why you shouldn’t mix and match parts from different manufacturers without understanding the consequences.
@Wolfmanjm , two things - I’ve done over 50mm^3/sec through a 1.75mm Volcano. E3D says 1.75mm is faster than 3mm. Also, a J-head and a Volcano have about the same melt zone length, so I’d expect similar extrusion speeds out of them - no surprise there. What the Volcano gets you is high speed all-metal construction.
@Whosa_whatsis @Diego_Porqueras_Deez any tips what to do to change to full step on the extruder firmware. Not seeing a fact sheet on the tatsu gear for the step/mm calculators out there.
