Having a new (to me) extruder failure on my Makergear Prusa and I'm wondering

3D Printing
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Having a new (to me) extruder failure on my Makergear Prusa and I’m wondering if there’s a known work-around.

I’ve been printing happily almost nonstop for the last two weeks, but I had a jam last night, and thinking it was just a jam, cleared it, reloaded the filament and ran again. About an hour into the print, same thing happened again so this time I gave the filament a little push and it squirted right out the nozzle, but still wouldn’t extrude under power.

When I pulled the bearing plate I could see that the filament had slid to the left of the bearing, so it was no lounge pinched between the bearing and the drive gear. I tried re -aligning and printing again, but after about 20 minutes the same thing repeated.

I’m wondering if something in the extruder body has warn, or if there is something else that could cause this? The filament is the same spool and the diameter. etc. measures consistent.

I’m going to see about a way to keep the filament from wandering , but wondered if anyone had seen this before?

2

Makergear hot end? with pla?

3

Nope, j-head hot end, MakerGear drive though.

4

I know this may sound silly, but is the idler flipped the right way? Can’t recall if it’s able to be flipped but I vaguely remember that doing so would allow the idler bearing to be left / right positioned. Is it aligned with the input holes?

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pics of the offending components please

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I thought that might be it @ThantiK and reversed it, but still acts up.

I’ll snag some photos, and see if I can get in there and see what might have changed.

7

my wades guidler used to let my filament shift I reprinted it but made the filament guide beefier and longer as not to allow it the possibility to walk

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You can grind a groove into your guide bearing. Arcol also sells them. I bought one but haven’t been able to test it yet.

9

JHeads are such Divas…

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Found the problem, details here: https://plus.google.com/103331171897037694195/posts/3AYTPL5hXyt