[Wanhao i3] PLA filament tangled/knotted around the motor... Hardware problem? Cura Settings?

[osolgineers 0]

Hi everybody,

I've been using a Wanhao Duplicator i3 with Cura for a while now, but I switched to the old cura software to the new one a month ago. It has been long to find the good parameters to have clean prints, but it seemed to work for a few print.

Without any changes, all my prints then began to fail, because the filament gets tangled around the motor. I wonder if there is not a cooling problem from the front fan that is supposed to cool the motor.. The temperature would then increase in that pseudo-chamber where the filament gets entrained by the motor.

I'm printing with PLA at 210°C, with a heated bed at 50°C.

Here is a picture of what is happening:

Note: the images don't seem to work so here are the direct links

- http://hpics.li/12df93f

- http://hpics.li/abe02af

<-- gr5 inserted this

Do you guys know a solution to that problem? Thank you very much ;-)

Edited June 15, 2017 by Guest

[gr5 1,270]

My guess is that you are probably printing faster or colder than you used to in the old cura. Is that a flexible filament or not? Does the problem happen during priming? Because the priming step is definitely different in cura 2.X.

[osolgineers 0]

Thank you very much for your reply buddy ;-)

Normally the printing speed is the same, and is very low (around 30mm/s). Also, I use PLA, but don't to which extent you can consider it flexible, but I think it is not, if you bend it too much it will break.

This is the one I use: https://www.amazon.co.uk/PrimaValue-PLA-Filament-1-75mm-Various/dp/B013K82E7K

This problem happened one or two times during the real model printing, but it happened way more during the printing of the base layer.

[gr5 1,270]

Is it 1.75mm filament?  We use Ultimakers which use 3mm filament which just doesn't do this unless you buy very flexible (think rubber bands) filament such as ninja flex.

Well the "happens mostly on bottom layer" is a clue!  But um.  I don't know what it means.  Both curas default to .3mm bottom layer but I assume you didn't mess with that.  Are you sure you didn't maybe level the nozzle a bit too close to the bed recently?  I like to level it very very close and squish that filament in.  But your feeder maybe can't handle that.

Basically I really don't know 1.75mm filament and your feeder well.  I think the only thing that will cause that is too much pressure.  Which means printing too cold (I think newer cura defaults to a lower temperature!) or too fast (.3mm bottom layer is quite "fast"!  Make sure bottom layer thickness and speeds are the same for both cura's).

I mean in the older cura the bottom layer speed was much slower to compensate for a thicker layer. The new cura also but probably different values. There's a huge difference between bottom layer print speed of 20mm versus 30mm per second. Especially when printing a thick layer and when nozzle is too close to bed.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Guest

[osolgineers 0]

It is 1.75 indeed! I actually don't know what's the base layer speed but I'll try to play with that parameter tonight, thank you very much.

I already tried changing printing temps but it didn't change anything sadly

Cheers ;-)