Recently started using dual extrusion module after about 2-3 prints it wasn’t feeding anymore, took it apart and the only part with plastic still in it was the hot-end module, try to heat it up and push the plastic though but that didn’t work, anyone got any ideas of how to unblock it?
Heat it up to 250°C and push filament through.
If this does not work it is possible to change the nozzle or clean it with a needle or something similar.
There is a lot of information and possible tools if you search the www.
this is what i do to fix it.
- cut the filament above the nozzle (right above where it identifies the nozzle NI0.4) and below the feeder lock.
- take out the hotend
- take your 1.5mm driver and loosen the set screw above the hotend nozzle
- disconnect the hotend nozzle wiring and grip the nozzle and pull. you may have to twist the nozzle to get it to break loose.
- most times the nozzle came out clean. once it came out with the jammed ptfe tube.
- get a pair of pliers and grip the filament without crushing or bending and pull hard. the filament will come out wrapped tightly in the ptfe tube.
- now pull the ptfe tube off the filament.
- reassemble hotend
- reinsert hotend
- do a z offset calibration
- do a xy calibration
you are done and ready to go
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Thank you lots
more then welcome…
as an aside. the biggest reason i had for the right extruder clogging was the cooling properties of the module during dual color prints. does your module have the door with the expanded ports? if not you need the upgrade.
the other thing is the pins behind the hotend. they are fragile and can be broken when filament sticks and you wrestle the hotend out.
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here is a link to pin protector
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Thank you so much, really appreciate the help. Will look into getting that other door for it.
I’m at my wits end. I have been attempting to use the dual extruder with no success in the past few weeks. I have the 2.0 A350 with enclosure installed. The dual extruder has the new faceplate installed, as well as a plastic component to keep the ill equipped levers from popping open.
Over the past several weeks, I have been attempting to 3d print small 1 hour multicolor prints, and they fail 90% of the time due to clogging. I have changed the nozzles, and recalibrated to no avail. I have used almost every retraction setting I can think of, from retraction/nozzle switch retraction being completely off, all the way up to a ridiculous 25 mm, and I still seem to be getting heat creep, as the filament expands in the tip of the nozzle, hardens, and refuses to extruder half way through a single hour print. The material in question that consistently clogs is elegloo pla. I am trying other filaments at the moment, but I have little faith that will solve the problem.
The dual extruder has always been a disappointment due to heat creep issues, and I no longer know how to fix this clogging issue. I’m out of ideas. Any ideas on retraction settings or other solutions? I even tried printing with the fan on and enclosure open to whisk away heat from the entire build volume, and there has been no success. Here is an image of the grinding that happens after the filament expands in the hotend. Circles are placed around the two grinded sections, along with the expanded, hardened tip. Any help surrounding the problem would be greatly appreciated. This has been haunting me for months. Thank you, for any of your time and effort SM community.
Should have just bought a bambu lab ams instead of this $400 brick… this is the most sensitive piece of hardware I’ve owned. The only thing it does consistently is fail.
I need to print petg at about 15°C higher to prevent clogging.
I used a tool change retraction of 12-15mm with a speed of 20mm/s.
Normal print retract is 1mm at 30mm/sec, for me.
What slicer do you use and what’s your settings?
I searched a long time for possible solutions too and got to the ending that the filament get stuck in the little ptfe tube inside the metal tube. The ptfe tube seemed a bit short and the filament got stuck there.
Hope this helps!
just thinking out loud here…first off you have something ive never seen before. a filament with two ground down sections. my experience says the first one is always enough. so that this appears to be starting a grind then stopping then grinding again is odd too me. the filament itself does look like the heat creep accordion that gets stuck in the ptfe tube.
so… as described you should be working. first thing may be to revert any settings changed to std. they tend to work. take a look at standby temp. you have two print heads. when the print head idles it drops to a “standby” temp. which is cold enough to avoid these issues. make sure your temps are still ok. to high of standby temp and you start to heat creep. both heads need to be cooling properly.
KISS principle tells me that there may be a simple fail. “assuming” that everything should be working now the one part failure that could be causing issues is the cooling fan itself. each hotend has one. however, if the fan isn’t good then the hotend can’t cool down fast enough for standby to work.
can you see, test, prove that both fans are working. ive had a fan fail and not spin and didn’t know it. producing similar results as yours. the fans are hard to see spinning.
Okay… tried to print pla at 220 degrees instead of 200. For the first attempt, it worked. I successfully printed 2 of the small items that I was attempting to print. However, I went for 3 of the little keychains I’m trying to print, only for it to fail again. Running 16mm nozzle switch retraction(35mm/s), 1mm retraction(25mm/s). It’s back to clogging again unfortunately.
At the moment I’m using Cura. I’ve attached two screenshots of altered settings I’m currently using to print these.(Order is Extruder 02 / Extruder 01) I thought that the profile might have been ruined on my first one, so I started from scratch using Cura’s Extra Fast profile. Still ran into the same clogging issues.
Here are the settings that have been altered on a per extruder level. I am using very little of extruder 2 during the print. Extruder 1 is always the one to clog. The print consists of 3-4 layers of dual extrusion, followed by 8 or so layers using extruder 1 before returning to another 4 layers of multicolor printing. I have had it clog less than halfway through this print, around the halfway mark, and when it’s almost completely done. Here is a screenshot of the object in question I have been trying to print.
The two ground down sections is very curious, and definitely not a one off of my machine. I have gotten that result multiple times from printing these objects.
I’ll be altering my standby temps next… I have them set to 175 at the moment which I thought was more than enough to keep heat creep from getting to it, but I suppose not. I’ll try lowering them even further? I did revert settings back to a standard profile(Cura Extra Fast), unfortunately with no luck resolving the clogs.
I checked the cooling fans, and they are both spinning, so I’m under the assumption that those are working properly… I’ll keep a close eye on those around the time it fails, just in case… what a sensitive piece of hardware.
PLA-PLA Dual Extruder.zip (900 Bytes)
Here, try this.
If you don’t already have it, in Cura open the marketplace, and install “Import Export CSV Profiles”. That add-on allows you to import and export printer settings. The only thing you might have to change is, this profile is set for printing the model with the left extruder and printing supports with the right extruder.
I would also recommend you calibrate your stepper motors. It’s somewhat of a lengthy process, but your prints will be so much more accurate, which will also result in less problems.