And now the Robox is dead

Let's Make Robots
1

After my first print, where the filament had already been in the printer for about 2+ days, I left it it there for another couple. By this time the filament was stuck firmly into the printer. I did get some back, but pulling a bit mor firmly than I should have resulting in the end of the filament coming off (nice clean break) but with some left in the printer.

So now I can’t do any further experiments with the printer, and I am screwed until I can get that last bit out.

Any hints will be appreciated because I’m about to open it up by throwing it against the wall a few times.

D. Jay Newman

2

Hindsight being what it is.

You probably should have powered up the hotend first before attempting to remove the plastic. The reason for that is most hotends a shaped (bottom up) such that you have the orifice, then a pressure cavity that is larger than the diameter of the incoming filament, and then the incoming filament. That way the solid filament is use to push on the molten plastic that is in the oversized cavity. Most likely the reason you could not remove the plastic nearly cleanly is that there was a big ole blob of plastic filling the cavity and you weren’t going to pull the blob that was likely twice the diameter of your filament through a hole that is about the diameter of your filament. :smiley:

3

Ahhhh. Sort of like a Foley
Ahhhh. Sort of like a Foley catheter. It’s possible to remove them by yanking, but I don’t think most men have the courage to try it more than once.

On the other hand, this hot end has a Bowden tube. From looking throught the top I can see the filament inside a web by looking tube, along with a pair of wires, with the filament going its own way into the hot end. I’m waiting for the tech to give me some advice because I promised him I’d do nothing once I explained how things were to him.

There are two commands I have access to: purge the hot end and extract stuck filament. I think I may, if I don’t get some advice from England soon (that’s where they designed it), I may just try purges at very high temps and see if I can get rid of the plastic somehow. I’m pretty sure that now I see where it is coming in it can be gotten out. And once I get that hot end cleaned up I can run some better prints.

4

If you get the hotend hot enough,

The plastic should just ooze out unless there is a physical obstruction (foreign material embedded in the filament). BTW hot will probably be 20C above nominal print temps for the material. 230C or so for PLA and 240-250 for ABS. These are just guesses.

5

I now have explicit
I now have explicit instructions to fix my machine written in British English, geek dialect. There is something called a screw on the back of the head that doesn’t look to me like a screw; I’d probably call it a thumbscrew but I’m just an American.

I do have to reach into reach into the machine with the power on and the head off to pull out the remaining filament from the head and from the machine while the head is hot (150 C).

I do thank you for your tips. I did try to purge it at high temperature and got a couple dots of burnt plastic.

This machine is going to take some experimenting with to figure out. Once I try a few prints of ABS on fine (I need a case for my RasPi B+), I’m going to make some robot parts with Titon from Tauman3d. I’m hoping to use it for the levels of my current bot.

6

Interesting setup on that one.

I checked out that printer briefly and it sounds pretty interesting. I’m wondering if the anti-ooze needle valve system has jammed. I’ve never seen a setup like that before, do you have any pictures of the extruder/hotend?

EDIT: Just in case you haven’t seen this:

https://robox.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/1000074670-manual-purge

7

cleaning a blockage

try this link it works for my printer

http://hydraraptor.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/pla-pipe-cleaner.html

8

It sort of works
It sort of works again.

Basically the tech had me set the hot end to 150 C, and then take the head off. The filament came right out of the head, and right out of the machine.

I reloaded it and it printed another pyramid, this time on Normal instead of a draft, then I printed something that should have showed a bit more. A larger mainly flat thing with sides and a small cylinder and square and some text. That printed nicely, and somewhat musically.

Then I tried to print a cover for my RasPi Model B+; I just have the one and forgot to order the case, so I’m printing one.

All of a sudden, for this print, the ABS doesn’t adhere to the bed very well, so I have long strings of plastic.

Also, at the beginning of the print it plops out a small amount of plastic and then drags this plastic through the beginning of the print. This causes some problems also, but usually isn’t serious because the head eventually kicks it off the bed.

I’m going to respond to tech support again and see if they know what might be causing this. I did clean the bed like they suggested, but things are worse and not better. Oh well, I’ll figure this out eventually.

This is my learning printer,

Somebody put up a pic in the SP of somebody with a delta printer a bit taller than he was. Can anybody give me a URL on that? I’m not going to make any printers now, but I might make one sometime in the future because I’m in the mood to make furniture.

In the meantime I have to see how Taulman’s Titon works on this printer once I’ve beaten ABS. I have three rolls of that and one of T-Glase (red) which looks like it would make beautiful earrings.