I just cannot get my #makible made #makibox to extrude any more. If I assist the extruder by hand I can get a few nice looking lines of hot plastic on the printbed, but otherwise I get little to nothin. I’m convinced it is the zen drive assembly and the filament feed tube. (Filament catches on metal inserts). Oh and you can forget about retraction. Anything that needs that is guaranteed to fail. #Disappointed. Any one got any ideas for a filament feed solution?
Can you take some pictures of the extruder? The teeth may have gummed up. Typically if a 3D printer is not extruding then the teeth that grip the filament and push it through the hot end are gummed up. It can happen for a lot of reasons.
Yea I can confirm that is happening, I thought to shave a pill off the zen drive and it still gums up. The drive just eats filament
Mine worked fine until I changed the filament color. Then it started to act up, grind filament and clog the hotend. I raised the temperature a bit, worked fine for a while, then clogging and immediately grinding occurred. I got to the point where there was no more melted filament coming out from the hotend, so I took it apart to clean it, without success until I placed it in acetone for a while. That and a thin wire pushed lightly through the hotend got the cleaning done. I put it back together, started a print, heated up to 142 the the temp fell back to 24 and never got up again. Oh well, time to ship it back for a replacement…
I’m afraid to soak my extruder. But I don’t think it’s clogged because plastic still comes out if I assist the extruder.
This may help. Great visual guide to clearing jams
I think I’m also interested in an alternative to the stock zen drive. I think I want an airtripper. Lol the only problem is I can’t print one!
Mine is almost in the Netherlands, so a airtripper as a first/second print? Any specific reason why the airtripper?
There could be multiple reason for this. Could you extrude in the air? If yes, may be Z height too low.
If no, check the filament drive is feeding smoothly. Next make sure no debris inside the PTFE tube, you could unscrew the metal connector to clear the tube.
For diagnosing the hotend, remove the PTFE tube and push a filament directly down the throat to try extrusion without the drive feed.
My hotend had not perform well for its lifetime, but I could get by using Cura as slicer. My DIY hotend was also blocking extrusion, by seasoning the input have made a huge difference.
How far did you insert the filament when you loaded the reel? Until it entered the top of the extruder or until you had a slight change of resistance (sometimes adjusting the angle by grabing the bowden tube needed) as it exited the bowden tube and just started entering the hot-end?
@Imko_Beckhoven_van I just like the way it looks and it looks like the best alternative so far. I’m not sura what else is our there.
@hon_po I did all those things except try cura. I can get it to put down plastic but I have to assist it by hand. This is what makes me think it is the extruder.
I also need to try inserting filament directly into the hot end without tube tho
@Marcus_Wolschon I went as far as the end of the feed tube and manually over came the resistance there. No further.
Cura has some setting to prevent repeatedly grinding on the same part of filament.
Slic3r has a Z offset parameter, you could try 0.1 or .2 to see if it helps. Sometimes removing a print just change the bed leveling, require adjustment again. I now wait till the bed drop to room temp before removing print.
I always wrap a piece of cloth around the filament before it enter the drive, so I rule out foreign object entering the hotend.
@Imko_Beckhoven_van
The Airtripper allows adjusting compression force, but not easy to remove filament and clean the gear.
The Minimalistic Mk7 is more convenient, but need to find the spring with the right force.
I appreciate all the help folks. Gonna try these when I get more time this week.