Was having the usual “clicking” issue with my E3D Titan Aero like a lot

Was having the usual “clicking” issue with my E3D Titan Aero like a lot of people were having. I purchased a new small stepper from E3D and was using that. I followed the instructions, made sure the gears were all lined up, changed the voltage to my stepper and made sure it didn’t overheat, changed the esteps/mm… lots of reading forums to know to check all that stuff and still I was getting the annoying clicking. So finally after tearing it down for the 20th time I decided to try the old stepper motor from the extruder on the CR-10 and BAM!!! That was it! It has been printing beautifully. Still have to dial in a couple things but no more clicking. I did have to reprint a couple of the mounts and ran into a thermal runaway issue from having the part cooling fan blowing on the heating block. A quick fix in fusion and that fixed that. Super happy with the way it’s printing now.

The clicking usally happens when using the E3D stepper im combination with a overtightened extruder gear screw and or a bad bearing. Oiled the bearing left the screw almost loose and no problems since. Just my experience.

@Thomas_Herrmann I tried loosening all the bolts to the point it was barely held together. The bearing was completely fine and is working great with the other stepper motor.

Ok, the one with the extruder gear should be the only one slightly loose. I hate the sound of a clicking extruder during print.

Good information, I have an extruder clicking too, I think I’ll try all these things, thanks!

How much are these 3d printers going for?

@lee_freeman started off with the CR-10S which I got for around $600 then added the E3D Titan Aero upgrade which was around $100

I guess there could be a multitude of reason for the clicking (speed, low temp, etc), but I have 2 Titan Aero’s and have never had this problem (although have had plenty issues in the past with other setups). One is on an I3 reworked, home built rig and the other is on my refurbed bits for bytes printer.

FWIW, both setups are using the regular sized nema 17 and not the pancake motor and just the basic RAMPs board.

@Tim_Sills Yeah I read that the pancake stepper they sell could be the cause so that’s why I tried it with the normal NEMA 17. I tried everything that people suggested and nothing worked until switching out the stepper

@Tim_Sills @Chris_Macier Sorry for interfering again but I think the root cause of that is the mechanics are not working freely as they should. The bigger nema just outforces the problems imho.

@Thomas_Herrmann I think the root issue is the manufacturer. This many people having the same issue means a poorly designed product.

@Chris_Macier Itt´s not perfect yes and I had two rusty bearings on two aeros and the missaligned extruder gears running on the outside of the grove even after manual fixing.

Then I loosended the extruderbolt and applied a bit oil to the bearing and they honestly perform great since then. So it´s fixible at least with some fine adjustments.

I’ve had 4 of them have the bearings rust out and seize so far. 3 times it completely destroyed the extruder (Titan not aero). The motors we have should be more than enough, but I still hear clicking sometimes (mostly on retract). We’re probably going to switch to bondtech and see how that goes.

@Stephanie_A Interesting, I didn´t knew that so many people have problems with titan and aero. I just saw the complains on the E3D forums and found mostly the same problems.

I got two Titans here that will be implemented soon. Will see how well they perform.

The clicking on retract sounds more like a not well adjusted gear to gear distance that can be adjusted with a bit of rotation. It´s mentioned in the manual.

All in all I was pretty frustrated with the aero and started to design my own hotend/extruder before I was able to fix it at last :slight_smile:

They’ve talked about the problem on their blog. In short, they had a lot of little problems they’ve had to shake out. https://e3d-online.com/blog/2018/01/22/bearinggate/

https://e3d-online.com/blog/2018/02/05/bringing-an-end-to-bearinggate-improving-titan-and-titan-aero/

Unfortunately for us, they only replaced the lids, but both bearings failed which caused them to spin in the housing, with enough force that it deformed the main housing, rendering them useless.
We bought a few of the igus versions, where this type of damage should be impossible. When those wear out we’ll probably manufacture our own igus bearings.
The wear is uneven with the majority of the load radial on a single direction.

  1. Have you adjusted steps per mm in firmware?
  2. Extruder spring tension will change from filament to filament. For PLA & ABS, i use same tension. For flexibles, I have to adjust the spring tension.
  3. Majorly the issue comes with spring tension and temp.