Are you referring to the filament wadding up on the right side of the plate during the purge, right before the wipe off? It usually does that, because there's a tiny bit of un-melted filament on the tip of the nozzle that will cause that first high speed purge to climb up the side of the nozzle where it sticks to itself until it gets heavy enough to fall off.
That's not a clog. You can use your tweezers to catch that as it happens and pull it down. (It's what they give us the tweezers for.) The little bit of un-melted filament eventually melts and falls off. Or you can clean the tip off after every print and it keeps that from happening. (Easier to just pull it off at the start of a print.)
If all you have printed out of that nozzle is PLA, (or PLA+) and you've never had any high temp filaments in it, it was probably not a clog. You don't need to run cleaning filament through unless you have changed to a different filament type like ABS or PETG. The cleaning filament itself is a royal pain, because it tends to jam.....badly.
If you were printing PLA+ at only 200°, your temperature might have been too low. The plus filament needs to be printed a little higher.....I believe insta suggested 218°, I use about 215°. Either one of those is going to work better for you than 200°, especially if you are trying to print at a low layer height and forcing out too much filament into too small a gap, at too low a temperature, too fast. You need to print a lot slower if you are running a low layer height, to give the filament time to get out of the nozzle and spread out. It needs to have a place to go. Add to that the fact that you were printing too cold, (not giving it time to melt), and the filament could have very well backed up and jammed.
When that happens, it can loosen the tension on the Filament Drive screw, or the set screw on the Filament Drive gear - so you do need to check it. That will keep cleaning filament from feeding in correctly, although truthfully that stuff has a very hard time feeding under the best of conditions. It tends to vary widely in diameter and gets squashed out of round about 80% of the time.
What's your extrusion speed? Try printing slower and see if you get better feed.
When you extruded the 50 mm successfully, did you do it in batches of 10 mm each?
If your bed level is off every time - something is set incorrectly. These machines hold their level extremely well, you should be able to set it and forget it for the better part of a year, even with heavy use. You might need to address that, but that's a different problem. Work on getting the extrusion problem fixed first.
PLA Clog
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- Posts: 8
- Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2016 1:26 pm
Re: PLA Clog
So here is how things have gone down.
Printer stopped printing, as in no filament coming out. I figured this was because I had been doing a lot of printing at fine resolution (continuously) and the filament spool had been on the machine for 10 to 11 days.
I have been printing eSun Black PLA at 200 C for more than 9 months, without any problems.
Heat up the machine, remove the filament from the hotend.
Let it cool down, then remove the hotend and then the .35 nozzle.
Put on a brand new nozzle, reattach the hotend, load in fresh roll of filament.
Using the M2 Quick Start I extrude 50mm of filament, then I switch over to Simplify 3D and start a print.
When it moves to the edge to purge nothing comes out and I shut down the print.
Then I posted here and I followed advice given and got a log of PLA out of the hotend.
Loaded up the filament and got 50mm of filament to extrude.
Went to print and then at the purge stage...nothing.
Printer stopped printing, as in no filament coming out. I figured this was because I had been doing a lot of printing at fine resolution (continuously) and the filament spool had been on the machine for 10 to 11 days.
I have been printing eSun Black PLA at 200 C for more than 9 months, without any problems.
Heat up the machine, remove the filament from the hotend.
Let it cool down, then remove the hotend and then the .35 nozzle.
Put on a brand new nozzle, reattach the hotend, load in fresh roll of filament.
Using the M2 Quick Start I extrude 50mm of filament, then I switch over to Simplify 3D and start a print.
When it moves to the edge to purge nothing comes out and I shut down the print.
Then I posted here and I followed advice given and got a log of PLA out of the hotend.
Loaded up the filament and got 50mm of filament to extrude.
Went to print and then at the purge stage...nothing.
Re: PLA Clog
1. It's not a clog if you are able to extrude 50 mm before switching to S3D for your print. (You can extrude directly from S3D using the Jog Controls, so you don't have to disconnect from the QS App and then switch the connection over every time.)
2. If you left old filament out for a couple of weeks and it is fairly humid where you live, the PLA has possibly gotten brittle, and is snapping inside the filament drive when the print head moves off to the right to purge. If that happens, nothing is going to come out.
Retract the filament from the feed and see if you can snap it. If it snaps clean instead of bending, the humidity has gotten to it and you need to replace the filament.
3. If it does the same thing on a fresh spool, one that still has flexibility, then the problem is likely somewhere in your feed.
It's possible that the tension is not set correctly and it's too loose to keep a firm grip on the filament when the printhead moves off to the right side.....
or......
the teeth of the filament drive gear have gotten clogged with shreds and it can't maintain a grip on the filament......
or......
the set screw on the filament drive gear is loose and the filament is getting out of alignment as it moves through the extruder.
That is what I would check for....in that order. (The most common/easiest to check for conditions are listed first.)
When you get to the last two possibilities on that third number, you will need to move the fans in order to see what is going on inside the drive, so it's easiest to check the other things first.
2. If you left old filament out for a couple of weeks and it is fairly humid where you live, the PLA has possibly gotten brittle, and is snapping inside the filament drive when the print head moves off to the right to purge. If that happens, nothing is going to come out.
Retract the filament from the feed and see if you can snap it. If it snaps clean instead of bending, the humidity has gotten to it and you need to replace the filament.
3. If it does the same thing on a fresh spool, one that still has flexibility, then the problem is likely somewhere in your feed.
It's possible that the tension is not set correctly and it's too loose to keep a firm grip on the filament when the printhead moves off to the right side.....
or......
the teeth of the filament drive gear have gotten clogged with shreds and it can't maintain a grip on the filament......
or......
the set screw on the filament drive gear is loose and the filament is getting out of alignment as it moves through the extruder.
That is what I would check for....in that order. (The most common/easiest to check for conditions are listed first.)
When you get to the last two possibilities on that third number, you will need to move the fans in order to see what is going on inside the drive, so it's easiest to check the other things first.
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- Posts: 277
- Joined: Fri Oct 02, 2015 5:37 am
Re: PLA Clog
You need to keep purging the nozzle to see what happens. 50mm isn't enough. Do that a few times in a row, if you get extrusion each time, something else is wrong.
M2 - V4, MIC-6 Build Plate, Astrosyn Damper's(X/Y), Rev. E, Geeetech LCD
S3D - FFF Settings https://forum.simplify3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2367
Print Quality Troubleshooting https://www.simplify3d.com/support/prin ... eshooting/
S3D - FFF Settings https://forum.simplify3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2367
Print Quality Troubleshooting https://www.simplify3d.com/support/prin ... eshooting/