Nozzle feed problem

Hi

After a couple of successful prints (except for some sticking problems like a lot of users) the amount of filament coming out of the nozzle is much less.

Normally, a few second before printing the nozzle start to melt some filament and then hit the bed but today it wouldn’t do it anymore.
So I checked the gears and everything seems normal.
I tried to force the filament manually (while pressing the “feeding button”) and it comes out normally - which tells me that the nozzle is not clogged.

It seems that the gears are not pulling the filament consistently.

Any solution?

Thank you

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  • Is your filament roll set up correctly? That is, with the feeding end of the filament coming from the bottom of the roll. Is your filament tangled onto the roll or does it come off smoothly?
  • Check the feeder drive inside the 3D Printing unit, it can happen that something gets into the gearing system. A little bit of blowing and picking with a pair of tweezers will work.

The filament comes smoothly - no tangling.

I open the 3D printing unit yesterday and realized that the feeding gear was kind of loose on its axle.
I used the dedicated screw to tighten the gear back.
I put everything back together and will test today to see if it fixed the problem.

To be continued

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Update:

It worked like a charm.

But I’m still struggling with my print not sticking to the bed - that 3M surface is clearly the worst material ever. The only thing that makes the print adhere is spray glue.

And yes, the bed is calibrated.

Glad you were able to fix your feed.

Try Elmer’s glue sticks instead. They work great for me and the residue rinses off with water.

@saucisse, do you live in a humid climate?

I tried Elmer’s school glue but it made the bed even more slick and slippery!
The only that work so far for Elmer is the spray glue.

@Tone: pretty humid! I live in Miami and humidity during simmer is kind of crazy, also my office is under AC at 76°F. I imagine that it could affect the “stickiness”.

A number of people myself included have very little problem with sticking to the bed and my theory is that humid climates need a different technique. I think the heated bed will tend to condense water in humid climates. Have you by any chance tried without heating the bed? Just curious. Tried blue painters tape? How abouit cleaning the bed surface with alcohol just prior to printing?

Hmmm!
:thinking:

I like the idea of turn the heat off, I’ll try it as soon as my new print is finished.

Will keep you posted.

Heya!

I use a bit of rubbing alcohol to clean the print bed if my prints aren’t sticking. It helps ensure that there is no water or any other moisture on the build plate and usually works :slight_smile:

Regarding school glue sticks:

The glue has to be PVA glue, and to my knowledge, not all glue sticks contain large amounts of PVA (I’m no chemist or anything, but I believe PVA is a part of glue and is not the entire stick? I am probably wrong.)

Also depending on which material you are printing with, turning up the temperature on the build plate may be the solution. With the PLA’s I’ve printed, I’ve been unable to get them to adhere to the build plate without heating it. Usually heating the build plate to 50-60 C is sufficient with PLA. Any more and you may encounter warping as PLA’s glass temperature is just above 60 C or so. Don’t make the build plate too hot as it may not allow the filament to actually settle.

Something else you can do:
Print with a brim. It helps with PETG, PLA and ABS. Rafts even work with PLA quite well, however, they are rarely needed.

Hope that helps :slight_smile:

-Greg

Thanks for the alcohol tip, but I’ve already tried it and it didn’t work for me.
Same for the bed temperature, I played with a variation of settings from 50 all the way up to 70 but it didn’t stick regardless of the PLA filament I was using.
I also played with nozzle temperature obviously.

Using brim or raft doesn’t work either since they wouldn’t stick neither.

The only thing I haven’t tried yet is not heat at all which may be the solution for Miami, (thank you @Tone) :kissing_closed_eyes:

Could you provide us with a video of how the PLA isn’t sticking? I had an issue one time where my calibration was off by a tiny bit and so it just curled by the nozzle.

I hope no heat works!

-Greg

Are you sure your calibration is good? I’ve found that the recommendation for how much resistance is right on the paper doesn’t work for me. To get consistently good results, I have to push the nozzle down as far as it will go during calibration while still allowing the paper to move with significant force. By that, I mean that if I go down the smallest step further, the paper won’t move at all.

Yes, that’s the way I calibrate the bed too.
I go one step up from the point where the paper won’t move (with 0,05mm setting).

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Otherwise not heating the bed doesn’t make a difference sadly.

I used some masking tape this time and it sticked just fine.
I guess I would stick (:wink:) to that option from now on since it is less messy than the glue.

My nozzle feeds just fine right before starting the print. Then, the first layer looks good. Subsequent layers (2 or 3) start looking poor. Then the machine runs but filament stops coming out.

Any ideas?

how did you tighten the feeding gear? is there a manual somewhere? have the same problem