Issues with my nozzle (Whey!)

Community General Discussions
1

I am having a bit of trouble with my 3D printer at the moment, and thought I could gain some wisdom from our 3D printing geniuses (plural?) here on LMR.

My extruder keeps blocking, I am using PLA, printing at 190 degree's, with a hotbed of 57 degrees

The printer is a makerbot replicator 2 clone, called the duplicator.

Each time I clear the blockage (which takes an entire day basically) I can feed through the filament again, however the steppers start to "tick" and slip again over time, and about half an hour through my next print, it all blocks up again.

http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=33mrhnc%3E&s=8#.VSp4c_nF98N

This is a link to a video of the extruder, after I load the filament in, after cleaning the blockage (bear in mind the nozzle and extruder have had an acetone bath are very clean at this point) You can hear the ticking and see the filament coming abit juddery.

I am relatively new to 3D printing and would greatly appreciate some guidance in this area to get my printer back up and running!

 

Edit:

Added some extra images at the request of jinx

http://i59.tinypic.com/zx7fpw.png

Extruders (you can see the blockage, please ignore the ugly wiring on the left)

http://i61.tinypic.com/et8ykm.png

Another image of extruders

http://i61.tinypic.com/zvwz92.png

Image of nozzle

http://i59.tinypic.com/2uh5m51.png

My thing-o-matic settings in replicatorg for slicing.

Since these imges were taken I have successfully cleared blockage, and put the extruders all back together again.

Cheers all!

2

Turn up the wick.
Is that a single extruder or a dual with one of the nozzles removed?
I’ve got a Duplicator 4 and print PLA and would say that 190 degrees is a bit low. I’d get the same clonking noise with most filaments when the printer is loading or laying down base layers i.e. when the extruder is at maximum feed rate.
Try upping the temperature to 210 degrees and see if the same thing happens.

3

**Hey Andy,

Yeah it is a duel**
Hey Andy,

Yeah it is a duel extruder wth one of the nozzles off.
Thanks for the advise, I will clean it out and try it again at a higher temperature tomorrow evening
I will post my results here.

Cheers!

4

So this is happening on both
So this is happening on both extruders then. Probably not a stepper or gear issue if it’s common to both.
Don’t clear it out, just up the temperature and run the load filament routine. What’s in there should melt and be pushed through.

I didn’t have time to reply, but Badji and Ossipee mentioned in the shoutbox that they were extruding PLA at 180 degrees. I think my printer would grind to a halt if I set it to that low. I wonder if the Duplicators use a sensing thermistor with an incorrect slope causing monitoring errors. After all, unless you actually check it with an IR thermometer you only have it on faith that the displayed temperature is the actual head temperature.

5

To get ideal temp try 180,

To get ideal temp try 180, 190, 200, 210, 220; stop immediatly when seeing smoke. Having a multimeter which can also test temperature helps.