I'm having some serious problems with my extruder,

3D Printing
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1

I’m having some serious problems with my extruder, and I can’t seem to figure out what exactly I am doing wrong.
I get about 15-20 minutes into a print and my extruder starts jamming up on me, almost as if my stepper isn’t getting enough current, I adjust the trimpot on my driver and sometimes it helps, but only ever for a minute or two at most. I don’t think it’s torque unless my stepper is failing, as I am using an E3D v5 which is correctly assembled, and a direct drive system using a Tatsu drivegear from Deezmaker and this design for the cold end.

any input on what could be going wrong with my extruder?

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PLA? You may need to season your e3d.

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yeah PLA, how do I season it?

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Check out the e3d forums. Specifically @Tim_Rastall 's comment: http://forum.e3d-online.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=65#p371

5

The motor isn’t overheating is it?

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It happened to me that the filament was far too thick at times (like 3.1mm) and just didn’t go through E3D… I had to buy better filament.

7

Filament quality is an important consideration. Also check if you can hand extrude. I.e. once it is hot enough push it by hand and extrude instead of using the stepper. See if it extrudes without much effort from your hand.

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If it can’t be hand pushed the problem is temp or clog related else it is electronics related

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@Michael_Hohensee , I’ll check that out.

@David_McGuigan , the motor does not heat up at all.

@Pau_Fernandez , I hope that it is as simple as that, it would make sense.

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@Scott_Miosi , it heats up well and true.

@Sudhir_P , I’ll check that, hopefully it’s what Pau said.

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Seasoning helps with the e3d and PLA. I had the same problem you describe until I did it with mine.

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@Michael_Hohensee , it would appear that seasoning the hotend worked. Now I’ve just got a few other problems, lol

13

Congrats. Now hope you get into some real printing