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Hey guys, my prints always jam after a bit of time (filament stops extruding and drive gear just starts grinding it). I have been through many upgrades trying to fix this and had no luck. I was wondering if anyone had other ideas. Below is a list of everything i've tried:

steves extruder -> ezstruder -> e3d Titan (current)
Stock Hotend -> e3d v6 lite -> e3d volcano (current)

I've tried abs and pla and various temperatures, messed with retraction and speed settings, tried various fan configurations, oil on the filament, and probably a bunch of other things I cant think of right now, but every time I print, it starts off fine and then at some point into the print (varies depending on print and slicer settings) it stops extruding. If anyone can help me troubleshoot, I would greatly appreciate it!

Well, I think you've eliminated the possibility of a hardware defect by changing all of the variables so many times... Maybe you've got an electronic oddity going on like a stepper driver with an intermittent heat issue or something like that... Chances are that it's simpler than that, though.

Does your extruder motor get hot and pre-melt the filament?

How stable is your hotend temp after the layer cooling fan(s) come on?

Do you have an ATX power supply or one of the more industrial units? If it's the latter, have you taped over the hole in the base or printed this plug? http://repables.com/r/726/


What's your current setup? I think you should try known working GCode from someone else with the same gear to see if it's a ghost in the slicing or if it's specific to your machine.

Ive actually replaced the stepper once as well, I switched to a higher torque nema 17 because I thought that could've been the issue.

I have a fan blowing on the extruder motor so it does not get hot (verified with the ol touch test)

hotend temp is pretty stable. probably under +/- 2C

I believe I have the ATX but either way I dont think that this would cause the kickback I get in the extruder

For reference I can get the gear slipping/kickback (not sure what the best description is) when just telling it to extrude 10mm in air so it is unlikely that it is a slicing issue.

I'm pretty stumped right now :/ Happy to try anything you guys can come up with

Have you measured your filament in several different places to see it it's diameter changes much from the default 1.75mm?
Also are you saying that you get the kickbacks with no hotend attached?

Filament diameter is good.

No kickbacks without hotend. I can extrude the whole tube length fine, I only run into trouble when its going through the hotend.

What about temps and speeds? If you're doing PLA down low around 180, try it at 200 or so. As far as speed goes, this is also related to your nozzle diameter, what happens when you crank it down to 30mm/s or so (assuming you have a .4 or .5 nozzle)?

I'm running a 0.4mm nozzle. tried temps ranging from 180-250 (higher seems to be better). as for speeds, slower definately helps, but even at 20mm/s it'll jam up eventually.

some pics of my setup if that helps

another

3

I think that your hotend has a Teflon tube inside of it as most E3D have. You may want to disassemble the hotend end check the condition of this tube and replace it if necessary.

You want to determine what the issue actually is before randomly changing too much, if you can create the condition just extruding into mid air it should be relatively easy to track down.
It's either something jamming the hotend (too much retraction etc), misreported temperature (it would have to be off by a lot), a poor connection to the stepper, the stepper driver or the stepper itself.
I'd usually start by manually feeding filament through the hotend to feel the resistance, it's a bit harder on an E3D V6 because the Teflon tube runs into the hotend, and that prevents you from disconnecting the tube at the hotend, so you'll probably have to disconnect at the extruder and feed manually from there, this should tell you if the issue is excessive resistance in the hotend/PTFE tubing of the extruder failing to generate enough torque.
Assuming it's the latter, I'd start by checking the wires, I have connectors in my extruder wiring and I had a poor connection on one wire at one point, when it was knocked, the extruder motor would just oscillate in place, it took me way longer than it should have to identify the issue, because it was intermittent.
If the motor wiring is good, you try more stepper current in the EEPROM, and try monitoring the stepper driver temperature, they get hot enough to burn you, so be careful, if more current makes it worse, you drop the current and point a fan directly at them to see of that has an effect.

Thanks guys, I'll run through all these steps and see if I can figure out which is the problem.

so I took a crack at identifying the problem and still came up empty. Here's what I did: Set extruder to 200C (I'm using PLA). Extruded filament through the tube fine. When it hit the hotend it extruded maybe 10mm and then started slipping and pushing back. I then retracted the filament. Pulled the tube out and inspected the end of the ptfe. It looked okay to me. I then tried shoving filament through the hot end. It had some resistance but not too much, I could push it through decently easy. So next in order to test the stepper, I started extruding filament through it (into the disconnected tube, so it was going into the air, not the hot end) and I used my hand to pull back on the filament seeing how much force it took to cause slipping. It took me pulling pretty hard on the filament to cause slipping in the extruder so I dont think that motor is having any current or wiring issues.

Any other ideas, or tests I can run?

The MOSFET that controls the extruder stepper may be resetting as it overheats. Open up the electronics bay door and aim a slow fan at it while you print. I've had the same issue with Orange Menace when I print.

g.

Tried a fan on the MOSFET. No change. I took a video of the problem. I put some sharpie marks on the filament so it's easier to see the movement.

https://goo.gl/photos/Bgbas9RHbLoCCqHV6

you need to clean that hobbed driver for one thing it is full of plastic when you clean it get every last little bit of plastic out of it I used a dentists probe as I have for model making but even a tooth pic will help Now that I have a Bondtech QR http://shop.bondtech.se/ec/extruders/ I have not had to do this again but with the easy strider until i had it properly adjusted it was a once every few weeks with PLA

I clean it every time i try to extrude and it ends up chewing up the filament

Have you compared the temperature reported by the thermistor against a thermocouple?

g.

Well, I was adjusting a few things and accidentally broke my thermistor wires so temperature is definitely a problem now. I purchased a thread in thermistor. I update as soon as I get it up and running again.

If it's chewing up filament, the issue is at the hotend, something is causing too much back pressure.
This can be temperature, inconsistent filament (both diameter or just inconsistent temperature requirements), speed, a PLA jam, lack of cooling on the cold portion of the hotend.