Retraction is clogging my extruder

[d3lt4ONE11 0]

I'm new to 3d printing but I'm trying to learn as fast as I can. I have a prusa i3 clone and it uses cura software to slice and print. I'm having an issue where the machine will retract the filament ( and by retract I mean alot of retraction) and the soft filament hardens in the tube going to extruder head, causing a jam. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I tried to turn off retraction all together in the cura settings, but the machine still does it. Is there anther setting on the machine thats doing this? I've read that retraction helps with 'stringy' prints, but do I even need retraction?

 

One other thought, the software on my machine has been buggy. Even though I know flashing new firmware on there is a tricky business, could flashing new firmware help this issue? Could it actually be causing this issue in the first place?

 

Thanks in advance for the help and advice!

[yellowshark 153]

Hi, it would help us if you noted all your retraction settings for us to diagnose what is causing your problem; also what version of Cura you are using and what filament?

 

The Cura setting to turn off retraction is in the Material section - "Enable retraction". Not setting this will disable retraction. Assuming that is what you did, I have idea why the printer would continue to retract - did you try turning everything off PC and printer and then reprinting? Are you using vs 3.1? - this seems to have a number of bugs at the moment so it might be worth trying with an earlier version if the problem persists.

 

Do you need retraction? Well probably, at some stage. It will depend on the filament/manufacturer being used and the geometry of the model being printed. Yes it does help reduce/removes strings, as does extruder temp., i.e. cooler. I do not think I have ever disabled retraction, which is not to say that one should not. Most of my prints have large surfaces so I always extrude in one extrusion far more than the amount retracted thus avoiding your problem.