I’m a newbie to troubleshooting printer problems. Maybe someone here can help. I am using a MakerGear M2. In the middle of my prints, the nozzle stops extruding. At first I thought it was the extruder motor gear binding but now I am not sure. Any ideas? What should I check?
1: head temp. If it’s not regulating right it won’t be able to extrude. 2: extruder motor stalling. I’m not sure of the best way to check this, but probably measure the voltage across the motor while it’s running. (Ideally you’d measure the current flowing through it but that’s trickier.)
I had my metal hot end cooling fan failing on me recently. It yielded this result (e3d hot end). Replaced the fan and no more swell & jams.
Depends how your extruder is configured, but this can also be the extruder idler (if you have one) not being tight enough. Will give similar symptoms to low extrusion temps.
Maybe it is backflow of melted filament or your temperature is too low. The faster filament moves, the more heat you need to apply to it. Sometimes, that can cause the filament to not get enough heat to melt it properly as the printing speeds up.
Would be good to know a few things. Did the motor stop turning, did the rest of the printer stop moving, what was the temp at the time of the failure, what did you do to get it to work again, ie: nothing, i just waited a while and it worked again. the more information the better to help you.
The temp was constant throughout the failure. All motors were functioning including the extruder motor; the gear was spinning but not pulling plastic through. I tried to adjust the compression between the gear and bearing that feed plastic into the extruder thinking it might be slipping but it didn’t help. I backed out the plastic, cleaned up the end and began a new print. I tried to print several times. Each time the print would start off fine and then the plastic would cease to extrude. Time varied, between 20 min and an hour.
You can heat up the hot end and manually push filament through it just fine?
ABS or PLA? Fan on heat break or not? What temperature? Do you hear any noises?
PLA, fan working, no noises but starting to have a sweet burning smell.
Different angle this time. Take the pinch roller loose. Heat up the extruder to proper temp. Manually push filament through if possible. If it is possible what does the filament look like when it comes out. does it drop straight down or does it curl somewhat directly after exiting the nozzle?
PLA is supposed to smell like pancakes cooking, I have heard. If the fan on the heat break is not cooling it off enough, you might have a backflow of PLA making a blockage. It is a common PLA problem. PLA prints at a lower temperature than ABS and you have to have that heat break cooled down enough to prevent backflow. It is often at least slitted to increase surface area so the fan can cool it.
I can’t give further advice on PLA, but hopefully I summed it up well enough. Wayne or someone else can take it from here.
By the way, I can’t give further advice on PLA because I never used it. I have only used ABS so far. Any PLA info I give is from reading posts and blogs from others.
That’s cool, thanks for the help!