I’m wounding if anyone has an idea what is happening.
Every time I try printing a big model, about 3-4 hours in, no more filament is coming out of the extruder. There’s plenty on the roll, the roll is not jammed on itself and the extruder motor is not jammed either (no clicking noise as it does if the nozzle was clogged).
The extruder motor spins like everything is fine, but no material is coming out of the nozzle head. If I try to pull out the material, it gets stuck on the on the extruder motors gear. But it still won’t push the material down through the extruder, just spins like it’s making no contact with the gear, yet it must be to some degree or I would be able to pull it out.
Every time, the fix is just unload and reload the material and everything works again, until your a few hours in and it does that again. So I can’t print any big models that take a long time as a result, which is everything I need to print right now.
I just replaced the extruder, nozzle, and temp sensor/heating coil with oem parts in hope something was wrong there, but it made no difference. This printer has printed thousands of hours at this point, so it’s far from new.
The material btw is z-abs. No materials have been used with this printer besides Zortrax materials. There is nothing blocking the spool from unwinding that I can see.
Any ideas as to what could be happening? I’m at a loss as it seems to defy physics to me (can’t have a free spinning gear and yet the material is caught on the gear)
Also, you can check if the extruder sprocket is not too close to the small bearing inside the extruder. If it is, then turn off the printer and put on safety gloves. Next, unscrew the four screws holding the motor on the extruder block, and tighten then them back again. The extruder motor which is under pressure of loaded material should align to a better position (a little more to the left).
One last thing at this point - once the filament is no longer coming out of the extruder (but the motor is not stuttering), try to push the material string manually into the gear (not pulling it out as you did). Does it help for a moment? This might mean the extruder motor is malfunctioning.
Ive narrowed it down to 3 minor issues that come together to stop the print:
rubbing load on the spool holder
Debris in the extruder pinion teeth
Small blockages in the extruder head
Pinion I clean each tooth with a scalpel and also replaced the pressure bearing.
Extruder Head - just replace it for a V3
Last part is a revised spool holder with proper bearings so that there is no drage on the spool - this seems tobe the major issue and took me days to find.
What happens for me is that these minor issues come together and mean the extruder motor pushes repeatedly on the same strand of filament and reomves about 0.5mm off the outer, so then there isnt enough pressure on the filament to drive it through.
WHen you unload the filament, just check about 12mm from the end if you have a narrower section of filament - if so this is why it stops.
Good luck, ill update on the bearing if it works better or not.
This issue ha only gotten worse for me over the past year. Now that I am using daily again, I was able to figure out what actually is happening.
In my case, the cable is breaking near the extruder motor. What happens is the the extruder motor starts jamming. If I move the cable around and find the right spot, it stops jamming and goes on fine, until I let go of the cable and it starts jamming.
I ordered multiple cables since apparently, this cable breaks every 2000 hours or so of operation. But apparently it takes zortrax 30 days to put a cable that’s in stock in a box and ship it… it’s been over 2 weeks so far of waiting.
What annoys me @Zortrax is why this weak point in the printer at all… the rest of the printer was so very well engineered. There has to be a better solution that this ribbon cable. Bluetooth, radio waves, Multi strand wire like superworm. Something has to be better than 2000 hours. And I’ve had this happen a few times since around 1000 hours on the machine. So it’s really only 1000 reliable hours before it need to be replaced.