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McSlappy wrote:Interesting... Perhaps there was a group of e3d's that were unfriendly to PLA...

Except I have a V4 and when Sanjay sent the replacement it was a V5. So probably not a batch, probably just some smallish percentage have issues.

I hope this is the case (in a weird way) because I'm longing for the awesome ooze resistance of the e3d with PLA

McSlappy wrote:I hope this is the case (in a weird way) because I'm longing for the awesome ooze resistance of the e3d with PLA

McSlappy,
I feel your pain. I posted similar issues a few weeks back. Although I have the 3mm version, the failure mode appears identical. I now have 3x E3D v5 hotends and every single one of them jams with PLA. It jams when I print into free air. We currently only print with PLA so our 3D printers have been essentially non-functional for months.

ceramichammer wrote:

McSlappy wrote:I hope this is the case (in a weird way) because I'm longing for the awesome ooze resistance of the e3d with PLA

McSlappy,
I feel your pain. I posted similar issues a few weeks back. Although I have the 3mm version, the failure mode appears identical. I now have 3x E3D v5 hotends and every single one of them jams with PLA. It jams when I print into free air. We currently only print with PLA so our 3D printers have been essentially non-functional for months.

did you try the vegetable oil trick?

I posted this on the E3D forum today but thought it might help folks here.

I've spent an inordinate amount of time looking at hot ends and filament paths under microscopes and doing all sorts of testing. I have my E3D working like a charm with PLA and other materials. More on that in a minute. I also have 3 of 4 Kraken hot ends working great. That 4th one was giving me fits for the last week (I just hooked it up a week ago) with filament starving and the occasional stepper "tick, tick, tick" (skipped steps). I pulled it apart multiple times, switched nozzles from the 3 known working hot ends, etc. Then I swapped the heat break to a working hot end and now IT started having intermittent problems. Upon closer inspection and testing, I noticed when I pushed filament through the break with the PTFE Bowden connected that I would get a snag and scraping. I isolated this problem as the sharp edge where the 2mm hole in the heat break begins. I used a 1/8" drill bit and twirled it in my fingers while pushing it in that opening to chamfer the edge of that opening a little. I then used a pipe cleaner covered with metal polish and used an electric drill to "ream" the inside of the 2mm bore to polish it.

Now let me say, before doing this the prints I got, in addition to having occasional filament starving and skipped steps, also did not look that good. I know this isn't the best photo but you can even see the difference in it. The part on the left was before and the part being printed is after.

[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s7/v15 ... 0773-3.jpg[/img]

The surface finish on the new part is like glass, the old part is blobby, misaligned, etc.

Hope this helps folks!

cheers,
Michael

What thermistor do you all have? I got a 3mm Bowden one for my ultimaker and it originally came with the NTC 100k thermistor, the really small one. I had issues printing at "normal" temps, I had to bump up the temps about 30-40 degrees above "normal" (was printing opaque PLA at 250 and Nylon at 280+).

I replaced it with an EPCOS 100k I got from Ultimachine, and have been able to drop Nylon to 250ish and I've been printing a lot of ABS at 230. I haven't tried PLA for a while, but the only times I had jams was with the clear green PLA I got from SeeMe (Couldn't print it on my buda either), the white Ultimachine PLA printed fine. I would like to try some more PLA, but I don't have much.

Kinda got off topic, but I'm wondering if others have the same thermistor I had, and I'm suspecting it of causing some of the issues experienced. Or maybe Michael's issues are the same issues that everyone else is having.

I use the screw in thermistors from eBay exclusively now. It is the EPCOS 100k thermistor (#1 in the firmware).

Nylocke wrote:What thermistor do you all have? I got a 3mm Bowden one for my ultimaker and it originally came with the NTC 100k thermistor, the really small one. I had issues printing at "normal" temps, I had to bump up the temps about 30-40 degrees above "normal" (was printing opaque PLA at 250 and Nylon at 280+).

I replaced it with an EPCOS 100k I got from Ultimachine, and have been able to drop Nylon to 250ish and I've been printing a lot of ABS at 230. I haven't tried PLA for a while, but the only times I had jams was with the clear green PLA I got from SeeMe (Couldn't print it on my buda either), the white Ultimachine PLA printed fine. I would like to try some more PLA, but I don't have much.

Kinda got off topic, but I'm wondering if others have the same thermistor I had, and I'm suspecting it of causing some of the issues experienced. Or maybe Michael's issues are the same issues that everyone else is having.

I think the issues with the E3D and PLA are caused by what Michael discovered. Others have reported a "lip" inside the heat break also. Doing what Michael did to his heatbreak would propably solve most but probably not all of the
PLA printing problems.

It is an easy test - simply remove the nozzle and manually push some filament down the Bowden and through the hot end (when it's cold of course!). If you feel ANY snag when the end of the filament is in the hot end, you've identified a problem. With my Kraken, 3 were perfect and one had a snag. My E3D is also perfect.

Eaglezsoar wrote:

Nylocke wrote:What thermistor do you all have? I got a 3mm Bowden one for my ultimaker and it originally came with the NTC 100k thermistor, the really small one. I had issues printing at "normal" temps, I had to bump up the temps about 30-40 degrees above "normal" (was printing opaque PLA at 250 and Nylon at 280+).

I replaced it with an EPCOS 100k I got from Ultimachine, and have been able to drop Nylon to 250ish and I've been printing a lot of ABS at 230. I haven't tried PLA for a while, but the only times I had jams was with the clear green PLA I got from SeeMe (Couldn't print it on my buda either), the white Ultimachine PLA printed fine. I would like to try some more PLA, but I don't have much.

Kinda got off topic, but I'm wondering if others have the same thermistor I had, and I'm suspecting it of causing some of the issues experienced. Or maybe Michael's issues are the same issues that everyone else is having.

I think the issues with the E3D and PLA are caused by what Michael discovered. Others have reported a "lip" inside the heat break also. Doing what Michael did to his heatbreak would propably solve most but probably not all of the
PLA printing problems.

FWIW I stripped my first one down multiple time and ran drill bits and reamers through it on my lathe.
I suspect that the bulk of the issues have to do with the finish on the inside of the stainless section, the variance of which is probably a function of how long the manufacturer uses a given drill bit before swapping them out.
If I'm ever bored one weekend, I'll strip down one of the two not functional ones I have and try using a pipe cleaner with metal polish to polish the inside of the stainless section to validate my theory.
The real point here though is it's sold as a finished product, not one you need to refinish in order to print PLA.

FWIW I stripped my first one down multiple time and ran drill bits and reamers through it on my lathe.
I suspect that the bulk of the issues have to do with the finish on the inside of the stainless section, the variance of which is probably a function of how long the manufacturer uses a given drill bit before swapping them out.
If I'm ever bored one weekend, I'll strip down one of the two not functional ones I have and try using a pipe cleaner with metal polish to polish the inside of the stainless section to validate my theory.
The real point here though is it's sold as a finished product, not one you need to refinish in order to print PLA.

After all the work on the first one did it ever print PLA correctly?

Eaglezsoar wrote:FWIW I stripped my first one down multiple time and ran drill bits and reamers through it on my lathe.
I suspect that the bulk of the issues have to do with the finish on the inside of the stainless section, the variance of which is probably a function of how long the manufacturer uses a given drill bit before swapping them out.
If I'm ever bored one weekend, I'll strip down one of the two not functional ones I have and try using a pipe cleaner with metal polish to polish the inside of the stainless section to validate my theory.
The real point here though is it's sold as a finished product, not one you need to refinish in order to print PLA.

After all the work on the first one did it ever print PLA correctly?

No, neither of my first 2 would print PLA reliably, but the one thing I have not tried is "polishing" the inside of the thermal break, partly because when I had it stripped down I didn't have any metal polish on hand.

FWIW I've run off a few parts now and my 3rd one seems to print PLA fine with comparable quality to my JHead, as long as the slicer doesn't generate maniacal retracts on the part, which KisSlicer will do in some cases.

I'm still not clear about retracts and PLA. So - avoid retraction, leave it the same or bump it up?

I totally get the nubs created by them - with PLA.

Printing has been such a tradeoff.

ABS: Great surfaces with sticking challenges
PLA: Strange bumpy challenges with great sticking

We're still bleeding edge me thinks...

Eaglezsoar wrote:FWIW I stripped my first one down multiple time and ran drill bits and reamers through it on my lathe.
I suspect that the bulk of the issues have to do with the finish on the inside of the stainless section, the variance of which is probably a function of how long the manufacturer uses a given drill bit before swapping them out.
If I'm ever bored one weekend, I'll strip down one of the two not functional ones I have and try using a pipe cleaner with metal polish to polish the inside of the stainless section to validate my theory.
The real point here though is it's sold as a finished product, not one you need to refinish in order to print PLA.

After all the work on the first one did it ever print PLA correctly?

Upon much closer inspection, all three of my v5 stainless steel heat breaks had a TERRIBLE surface finish on the inside. It looks like they used a busted old drill bit and let it spin for a while instead of drilling and reaming the hole. Today I undertook the arduous chore of fixing them. After all was said and done, each heat break took almost 2 hours to polish. After much frustration, I found the best way to do it was to wrap a tight spiral of sand paper around a tiny plastic cylinder, chuck the cylinder in a hand drill, and spin the drill while quickly moving the heat break up and down on the sanding "stick". It took many minutes at 180 grit just to remove the deep gouges in the finish caused by the manufactures poor tooling. Sanding grit 180>220>400>600>1000(wet sand)>1500(wet sand). Once I was finally finished, it was like a mirror inside. I've been printing PLA all night and it looks great. No jams.

ceramichammer wrote:

Eaglezsoar wrote:FWIW I stripped my first one down multiple time and ran drill bits and reamers through it on my lathe.
I suspect that the bulk of the issues have to do with the finish on the inside of the stainless section, the variance of which is probably a function of how long the manufacturer uses a given drill bit before swapping them out.
If I'm ever bored one weekend, I'll strip down one of the two not functional ones I have and try using a pipe cleaner with metal polish to polish the inside of the stainless section to validate my theory.
The real point here though is it's sold as a finished product, not one you need to refinish in order to print PLA.

After all the work on the first one did it ever print PLA correctly?

Upon much closer inspection, all three of my v5 stainless steel heat breaks had a TERRIBLE surface finish on the inside. It looks like they used a busted old drill bit and let it spin for a while instead of drilling and reaming the hole. Today I undertook the arduous chore of fixing them. After all was said and done, each heat break took almost 2 hours to polish. After much frustration, I found the best way to do it was to wrap a tight spiral of sand paper around a tiny plastic cylinder, chuck the cylinder in a hand drill, and spin the drill while quickly moving the heat break up and down on the sanding "stick". It took many minutes at 180 grit just to remove the deep gouges in the finish caused by the manufactures poor tooling. Sanding grit 180>220>400>600>1000(wet sand)>1500(wet sand). Once I was finally finished, it was like a mirror inside. I've been printing PLA all night and it looks great. No jams.

Thanks for posting what worked for you, it may help others that are having problems printing with PLA.

JohnStack wrote:I'm still not clear about retracts and PLA. So - avoid retraction, leave it the same or bump it up?

I totally get the nubs created by them - with PLA.

Printing has been such a tradeoff.

ABS: Great surfaces with sticking challenges
PLA: Strange bumpy challenges with great sticking

We're still bleeding edge me thinks...

You can get great finish with PLA, but you really need a Hotend that stops oozing almost immediately on retract. I usually tune my retracts for PLA and never really touch them for ABS.
The jhead Mk5 I have has amazingly good characteristics for printing PLA, I run 5mm retracts at 50mm/s. On the E3D I run closer to 2.5mm retracts, but it's more of a compromise, I'd like to run more, but doing so results in print failures if many retracts are generated in a small window.

Filament temperature is also a factor for retract settings and PLA, typically less retract is needed at lower temperatures.
And which slicer makes a difference, CURA. Generates less boundary crossing paths than the hoe slicers, but I've had good luck with KissSlicer as well.

ceramichammer wrote:

Eaglezsoar wrote:FWIW I stripped my first one down multiple time and ran drill bits and reamers through it on my lathe.
I suspect that the bulk of the issues have to do with the finish on the inside of the stainless section, the variance of which is probably a function of how long the manufacturer uses a given drill bit before swapping them out.
If I'm ever bored one weekend, I'll strip down one of the two not functional ones I have and try using a pipe cleaner with metal polish to polish the inside of the stainless section to validate my theory.
The real point here though is it's sold as a finished product, not one you need to refinish in order to print PLA.

After all the work on the first one did it ever print PLA correctly?

Upon much closer inspection, all three of my v5 stainless steel heat breaks had a TERRIBLE surface finish on the inside. It looks like they used a busted old drill bit and let it spin for a while instead of drilling and reaming the hole. Today I undertook the arduous chore of fixing them. After all was said and done, each heat break took almost 2 hours to polish. After much frustration, I found the best way to do it was to wrap a tight spiral of sand paper around a tiny plastic cylinder, chuck the cylinder in a hand drill, and spin the drill while quickly moving the heat break up and down on the sanding "stick". It took many minutes at 180 grit just to remove the deep gouges in the finish caused by the manufactures poor tooling. Sanding grit 180>220>400>600>1000(wet sand)>1500(wet sand). Once I was finally finished, it was like a mirror inside. I've been printing PLA all night and it looks great. No jams.

It's probably that the manufacturer wants to get as many parts per tool in order to keep costs down or maximize profit. That means someone gets the shiny E3D form the new drill and someone gets the nasty one from the end of the line. The fact you have 3 bad ones and I have 2 out of 3 seems to imply that perhaps they are waiting a bit too long before changing tools, or an additional finishing step needs to be added to the process.

What size sanding stick did you use given the hole is only 1.75mm in diameter?

Polygonhell wrote:

ceramichammer wrote:

Eaglezsoar wrote:FWIW I stripped my first one down multiple time and ran drill bits and reamers through it on my lathe.
I suspect that the bulk of the issues have to do with the finish on the inside of the stainless section, the variance of which is probably a function of how long the manufacturer uses a given drill bit before swapping them out.
If I'm ever bored one weekend, I'll strip down one of the two not functional ones I have and try using a pipe cleaner with metal polish to polish the inside of the stainless section to validate my theory.
The real point here though is it's sold as a finished product, not one you need to refinish in order to print PLA.

After all the work on the first one did it ever print PLA correctly?

Upon much closer inspection, all three of my v5 stainless steel heat breaks had a TERRIBLE surface finish on the inside. It looks like they used a busted old drill bit and let it spin for a while instead of drilling and reaming the hole. Today I undertook the arduous chore of fixing them. After all was said and done, each heat break took almost 2 hours to polish. After much frustration, I found the best way to do it was to wrap a tight spiral of sand paper around a tiny plastic cylinder, chuck the cylinder in a hand drill, and spin the drill while quickly moving the heat break up and down on the sanding "stick". It took many minutes at 180 grit just to remove the deep gouges in the finish caused by the manufactures poor tooling. Sanding grit 180>220>400>600>1000(wet sand)>1500(wet sand). Once I was finally finished, it was like a mirror inside. I've been printing PLA all night and it looks great. No jams.

It's probably that the manufacturer wants to get as many parts per tool in order to keep costs down or maximize profit. That means someone gets the shiny E3D form the new drill and someone gets the nasty one from the end of the line. The fact you have 3 bad ones and I have 2 out of 3 seems to imply that perhaps they are waiting a bit too long before changing tools, or an additional finishing step needs to be added to the process.

What size sanding stick did you use given the hole is only 1.75mm in diameter?

I stand alone because I have the 3mm hotend. I just had a thin piece of plastic laying around.

I think the holes they drill in both the heat break and the brass nozzle are 2mm. The heatbreak is most likely 303 free machining stainless, and the nozzle is C360 free machining brass. I don't think E3D specifies what specific alloys to use on their technical drawings, so the machine shop picks what's easiest and cheapest for them to use. Both parts are machined on swiss type CNC lathes. Changing drill bits is the most expensive thing they can do since it takes a while and they could probably make hundreds of parts during the time it takes to switch out the drill.

Still, they need to ream the inside of the heat break. If I were to make it, I would drill the heat break to 1.98mm then ream it to 2mm. They also need to make sure that the holes are perfectly concentric. These problems aren't directly E3D's fault because they aren't the ones manufacturing the parts. However I think Sanjay needs to tell the machine shop to fix this problem because it's messing up his product.

I flipped my heat breaks upside down on my rostock; the threaded section is exposed in the air with the heat break fully inside the big aluminum heat sink. No problems for me so far, but I have never printed PLA. The chamfer on the heat break doesn't seem to make any problems even though it's facing down.

Generic Default wrote:I think the holes they drill in both the heat break and the brass nozzle are 2mm. The heatbreak is most likely 303 free machining stainless, and the nozzle is C360 free machining brass. I don't think E3D specifies what specific alloys to use on their technical drawings, so the machine shop picks what's easiest and cheapest for them to use. Both parts are machined on swiss type CNC lathes. Changing drill bits is the most expensive thing they can do since it takes a while and they could probably make hundreds of parts during the time it takes to switch out the drill.

Still, they need to ream the inside of the heat break. If I were to make it, I would drill the heat break to 1.98mm then ream it to 2mm. They also need to make sure that the holes are perfectly concentric. These problems aren't directly E3D's fault because they aren't the ones manufacturing the parts. However I think Sanjay needs to tell the machine shop to fix this problem because it's messing up his product.

I flipped my heat breaks upside down on my rostock; the threaded section is exposed in the air with the heat break fully inside the big aluminum heat sink. No problems for me so far, but I have never printed PLA. The chamfer on the heat break doesn't seem to make any problems even though it's facing down.

+1 to this, you seem to know your stuff mate

Eaglezsoar wrote:

ceramichammer wrote:

Eaglezsoar wrote:FWIW I stripped my first one down multiple time and ran drill bits and reamers through it on my lathe.
I suspect that the bulk of the issues have to do with the finish on the inside of the stainless section, the variance of which is probably a function of how long the manufacturer uses a given drill bit before swapping them out.
If I'm ever bored one weekend, I'll strip down one of the two not functional ones I have and try using a pipe cleaner with metal polish to polish the inside of the stainless section to validate my theory.
The real point here though is it's sold as a finished product, not one you need to refinish in order to print PLA.

After all the work on the first one did it ever print PLA correctly?

Upon much closer inspection, all three of my v5 stainless steel heat breaks had a TERRIBLE surface finish on the inside. It looks like they used a busted old drill bit and let it spin for a while instead of drilling and reaming the hole. Today I undertook the arduous chore of fixing them. After all was said and done, each heat break took almost 2 hours to polish. After much frustration, I found the best way to do it was to wrap a tight spiral of sand paper around a tiny plastic cylinder, chuck the cylinder in a hand drill, and spin the drill while quickly moving the heat break up and down on the sanding "stick". It took many minutes at 180 grit just to remove the deep gouges in the finish caused by the manufactures poor tooling. Sanding grit 180>220>400>600>1000(wet sand)>1500(wet sand). Once I was finally finished, it was like a mirror inside. I've been printing PLA all night and it looks great. No jams.

Thanks for posting what worked for you, it may help others that are having problems printing with PLA.

I take back everything nice I've said about his head. Even after polishing both heat breaks to a mirror finish, the thing still jams. I have tuned and retuned the PID control and have rock solid temp control with less than +- 0.75 C swings. I have a precision machined hobbed bolt which doesn't slip or fail under almost any circumstances. The spring-loaded extruder + hobbed bolt combo has enough grip and pushing force that I can't get it to slip, fail, or chew filament when I pull on it as hard as I possibly can yet the E3D head will jam it and cause it to chew the filament. I have a "custom" fan mount to ensure that the 30mm fan is blowing plenty of air over the bottom-most fins of the heat sink. Even with retraction completely disabled, eventually this thing jams on most every print. I have 3x E3D heads and they all fail the same way. That's close to $300 in retarded hotends that have rendered our PLA-only printers completely useless for the past 2 months, and chewed up untold hours of my life. I curse Sanjay and everyone else who sold this as a PLA compatible head. I'm going to convert these hotends into voodoo dolls and stuff them full of PLA which will surely jam.

Before I write this, don't hate me...

I have my Rostock. It prints ABS.

I have a Robo3D. It prints PLA (but slower). It has its own issues but...

Both have E3DV5 heads.

I've blown both out. (Remember, I'm the king of hot end blow outs...)

Anyway, the Robo:

After the last blowout, I took 1,500 grit and went through the interior. I bench tightened at 240C (not 290), let it cool down, then I bench tightened again. It did move just a tiny amount. I didn't drill.

I've got about six hours on the newly rebuilt head. It's holding.

I've notice that they're speed sensitive. I think PLA prints at a slower, not a faster speed. The robo only does 30mm/s really well from what I see.

Is it speed maybe? (Polygon, I know you've done your work - so this is just an idea without any empirical evidence.

That whole tightening thing - to me, seems to be the real problem.

JohnStack wrote:
Is it speed maybe? (Polygon, I know you've done your work - so this is just an idea without any empirical evidence.

That whole tightening thing - to me, seems to be the real problem.

Trust me mine was tightened at 290+, and I've tried various torque values.
My initial and on the most recent one torque force was in line with what I would expect for Brass into Al, but on the initial hotend it's been put together with as much force as I would dare on a 6mm screw thread.
I don't think it's the issue.
I do think the issue is likely worse with 3mm, than 1.75mm, I find i interesting that for all the testing Nophead did years ago with Stainless thermal breaks he couldn't reliably extrude PLA but more modern attempts seem to succeed, I think a lot of that is the prevalence of 1.75 mm filament.

JohnStack wrote:Before I write this, don't hate me...

I have my Rostock. It prints ABS.

I have a Robo3D. It prints PLA (but slower). It has its own issues but...

Both have E3DV5 heads.

I've blown both out. (Remember, I'm the king of hot end blow outs...)

Anyway, the Robo:

After the last blowout, I took 1,500 grit and went through the interior. I bench tightened at 240C (not 290), let it cool down, then I bench tightened again. It did move just a tiny amount. I didn't drill.

I've got about six hours on the newly rebuilt head. It's holding.

I've notice that they're speed sensitive. I think PLA prints at a slower, not a faster speed. The robo only does 30mm/s really well from what I see.

Is it speed maybe? (Polygon, I know you've done your work - so this is just an idea without any empirical evidence.

That whole tightening thing - to me, seems to be the real problem.

Are you thinking that the brass-to-stainless interface isn't seating properly? I can only speak for the heads that I have but none of these issues have caused a leak/blowout. I feel like the jam is at or above that seam.

To all the people who report problems with the E3D and PLA, what are the temperatures at when you print with the PLA?