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Printer flooded with filament, all of a sudden...


frederiekpascal

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Posted · Printer flooded with filament, all of a sudden...

Hey guys,

I was printing the low friction spool (I love this design and idea!) https://www.youmagine.com/designs/low-friction-um2-spoolholder

Printed the first parts and all went perfect this week. The first parts really looked like a charm. I was proud of the result.

Qi1fAlN.jpg

Today I started to print the last items for the spool holder (excited!), but then it went wrong.

I saw the print was going wrong from the start.

9C2TPxV.jpg

So I decided to open up my precious again and after "removing material" and removing the bowden tube, I noticed this :

QdKKJnr.jpg

everything was flooded with filament :

NYKMAOo.jpg

I have no explanation for this.... I sticked to the same settings (205°/60° and colorfabb (standard white) PLA) and made no changes.

Thank god I ordered many spare parts (teflon couplers, bowden tube, nozzles, ....) in the webshop of DidierKlein so I could replace all the flooded items and my printer is working again now.

But what went wrong this time? This is starting to become expensive. :D

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    Posted · Printer flooded with filament, all of a sudden...

    I had hoped someone else would reply by now. I've never seen this exact problem.

    First of all you can clean this spring and teflon part easily in boiling water. 100C is much warmer than PLA's glass temperature so it will be soft like chewing gum. And 100C is not hot at all for the other parts.

    I suspect your problem occurred because the bowden was not seated fully into the white teflon part. When you insert the bowden - look at it from the side view and make sure it goes inside that ring on the top of the white teflon part. At the same time make sure if you lift on the bowden you are pushing down on the bowden-holder-ring.

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    Posted · Printer flooded with filament, all of a sudden...

    But this is just a theory as I have never seen this type of small amount of excess pla. Now if it were a huge glob of PLA as big as the heater block I think I could explain it.

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    Posted · Printer flooded with filament, all of a sudden...

    The only explanation I could give was also that the bowden tube was not perfect pushed in the teflon coupler... But weird it first printed 50 hours without a problem... :)

    Anyway, I replaced the bowden and cleaned the rest and it's working perfect again.

    Thank god I got replacement parts :D

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    Posted (edited) · Printer flooded with filament, all of a sudden...

    I had the same problem again this weekend, with the same spool of colorfabb standard white PLA/PHA...

    Again a bowden tube for the dumpster.

    The first time it was possible the bowden tube was not inserted perfectly like @gr5 mentioned. (I'm not sure about this cause I didn't check it when I took out the flooded tube) but the second time this happened I'm 100% sure the bowden tube was inserted perfectly.

    This is probably a bad spool of Colorfabb filament I would guess? It's very suspicious this is happening twice with the same filament right? Cause all my other spools are working perfectly. (Ultimaker PLA and other Colorfabb colours)

    To summarise what happened again. My printhead was flooded with filament like soft chewing gum around the bowden tube on the side of the heatblock and the teflon coupler was like the picture above again. As a result the filament feeder was also grinded with filament too.  I have no clue what went wrong, I printed on 30mm/sec, layer 0.08 and temperature 195°.  195° on 30mm/sec isn't too low for the more soft Colorfabb PLA/PHA right?

    These settings work great with other filaments, only this white one costed my 2 bowden tubes and 2 teflons... (I'll try to clean the teflons with boiling water like @gr5 is saying, will keep you posted how this turns out)

    I showed this thread to Colorfabb, I hope they will compensate it cause this spool is becoming very expensive. :D

    Anybody who can help me out? :)

    Could a moderator please move my thread to Forum Hardware Troubleshooting & Maintenance? Posted this in the wrong forum. :s

    Edited by Guest
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    Posted · Printer flooded with filament, all of a sudden...

    I cleaned out a bowden with filament stuck in it only yesterday. I poured boiling water into a large pyrex brownie pan but that wasn't hot enough so I reboiled the water now that the glass was hot and poured it in again - water temp was 81C according to IR temp sensor. Left bowden underwater (used 4 forks to hold it under and 2 people) for about an entire minute. pulled it out of the water using only hands, straightened the tube completely straight and kind of pulled it straight, then after about 15 seconds of cooling tried and was able to push out the "bad" PLA with a piece of fresh, cold filament. It slid out easily.

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    Posted · Printer flooded with filament, all of a sudden...

    I think the other guy kind of flexed the tube - straight, then relaxed into U shape, repeat 2 times. This may have straightened any kinks (not sure why the filament was stuck - it looked okay - didn't even know which end was stuck).

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    Posted · Printer flooded with filament, all of a sudden...

    If it would ever happen again, could you take a picture of what your printhead looks like before you start taking it apart?

    At the bottom of your nozzle, do you have this small teflon ring sealing of any openings?

    It is weird that there is filament in the PTFE, but I can see how that could happen.

    But on the spring?

    Did it get on the spring when you took everything out and it got extra messy?

    If your bowden tube is correctly in its place, how strongly is it secured?

    Is there any movement in it at all or completely still?

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    Posted · Printer flooded with filament, all of a sudden...

    If it would ever happen again, could you take a picture of what your printhead looks like before you start taking it apart?

    At the bottom of your nozzle, do you have this small teflon ring sealing of any openings?

    It is weird that there is filament in the PTFE, but I can see how that could happen.

    But on the spring?

    Did it get on the spring when you took everything out and it got extra messy?

    If your bowden tube is correctly in its place, how strongly is it secured?

    Is there any movement in it at all or completely still?

     

    These are your answers @SandervG :

    If it would ever happen again, could you take a picture of what your printhead looks like before you start taking it apart?

    --> will do!

    At the bottom of your nozzle, do you have this small teflon ring sealing of any openings?

    --> do you mean this small ring? If yes, I don't use it anymore with my Olsson block installed.

    It is weird that there is filament in the PTFE, but I can see how that could happen.

    But on the spring?

    Did it get on the spring when you took everything out and it got extra messy?

    --> that's possible, I don't remember that... but the 2nd time it was only on the PTFE, that I'm sure.

    If your bowden tube is correctly in its place, how strongly is it secured?

    Is there any movement in it at all or completely still?

    --> The 1st time I didn't check it so I don't know. But the 2nd time it happened imo the tube was perfectly in place and completely still. (it was the new one, I changed it the 1st and 2nd time it happened). What was kinda strange is that the Colorfabb PLA was still soft like a chewing gum and that after many hours staying in the tube. I don't know if that's normal but other PLA normally hardens quite fast and this PLA stayed soft. Or is this typical for Colorfabb PLA/PHA?

    I asked Colorfabb for support, I'll keep you posted on their feedback.

    Thanks for helping me!

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    Posted · Printer flooded with filament, all of a sudden...

    I'm still too new with 3D printing to know if their theory is correct or not.

    But, Colorfabb claims that my filament stayed too long in the hot end of my UM2.

    They gave me this theory (I've translated it)

    With normal settings you have an average of 0.2 (layerheight) x0.4 (nozzle) x50 (speed)= 4 mm3/s output.

    With your settings your are on 0,08x0,4x30= 0,96 mm3/s.

    We think because of your very slow print speed and extremely thin layers, the material stays too long in the hot-end and making it extremely liquid.

    So my question to you guys, I was already on 195°C... Should I go even lower to avoid the flooded filament problems?

    Their theory sounds reasonable to me, but I don't understand why you can't print that slow on 0.06 layer height. I though it was the slower you go, the higher quality you'll receive in return? :D

    Thanks for your answers, I want to avoid this for the 3rd time... :p

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    Posted · Printer flooded with filament, all of a sudden...

    Could be... temperature varies a lot between different brands and colors, maybe you can go even lower than 195°c?

    This makes me wonder if the temp sensor is good? Maybe the temp is not read correctly?

    Ps: For this kind of prints i usually go for 0.2mm layers or 0.15mm not lower

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