HELP problem with extruder the first day!

[secondsky 0]

Hello everyone, I'm new to the forum.

Yesterday we finished building our Ultimaker and we did some test printing.

Unfortunately after a couple of prints the pal plastic has become brown and stopped going out, while the extruder was smoking.

I go for points to make it easier to understand what happened:

-During the installation we had to cut a little the tube because the reoìcomended 8mm were too many and was impossible to have a contact between the metal connector and the wood.

Once shortened to 1 mm is left a small gap between the metal and wood, but there was also in the picture of the guide and confirmed that the the tube was in pressure against the peek.

-However, we applied the Teflon tape from between the extruder and the peek as recommended.

-During setting of the axes from the replicator g control panel, on all axes the machine answered correctly except for the extrusion mechanism, which carried out the orders just some times and with a big delay.

-During the prints, instead, of extrusion spinning properly.

- Before the last print, the extrusion head remained in contact with the Z plan and kept out of plastic, which may have formed a cap.

-Extruder smoked from the hole, and we seen that the temperature had reached 290 °C, while we had set 250.

-Before the last print, came out a bit 'of plastic from the extruder top, but in small quantities.

We would like to know whether it is a widespread problem, if there is a way to cleanthe extruder, or whether it is possible to order another one.

[Daid 303]

Your extruder is most likely fine. You'll most likely have a "plug" above the heater in the bowden tube. Which is blocking extrusion. At high heats this can happen.

Recommended:

-Check for a plug by removing the fan, removing the alu plate + everything below it (as 1 piece, taking these parts apart should be a last resort, as the brass and the PEEK break very quick). The plug should be in the tube.

-Print PLA no higher then 230C

-Watch out for temperatures nearing 300C, because your PEEK can melt then.

[ddurant 0]

Also, don't leave your machine hot when it's not printing..

When I'm starting up a print, I get EVERYTHING ready then start the preheat and start printing right away, once it gets to temperature. If you leave it hot when not printing, the heat will move up the hot end and encourage the plug that Daid mentions..

[secondsky 0]

The problem seems solved, I brought the head to 210 degrees and then I pushed the cable by hand.

The head has begun to expel PLA.

I still can not print anything else, because then, when I run some simple model, the extruder turn a litte bit before to start but then stands still and the head leaves very little material. But maybe something wrong in generating the gcode.

[Daid 303]

Sounds like the "dimension" setting is off in Skeinforge. We haven't been able to locate the root cause, but it seems to be off in some cases. (It should have been on by default)

But, solving your possible GCode problems:

https://github.com/daid/SkeinPyPy/wiki

(and any other software problems)

It simpler to use, and all ready for the Ultimaker. Oh, and it also upgrades your firmware at first start (if you want, and I highly recommend it!) to make sure you don't have any problems with firmware.