Nozzle temperature during material station retraction - Polymaker PA6-CF

[keenon 0]

Hi everyone! First time posting :) I have the UMS5 Pro Bundle, and I'm experimenting with printing with Polymaker PA6-CF filament. I downloaded the material settings from the Ultimaker Marketplace, but have run into a few issues, and I was wondering what settings I can tweak in Cura/on the UMS5 to fix the issues.

 

The biggest problem is after any print (or abort) while the Ultimaker is displaying "Finishing..." on its screen, the CC 0.6 nozzle I use for the PA6-CF cools down for a minute or so before the material station tries to retract the filament. By the time the UMS5 Material Station tries to retract the filament, the nozzle's temp is down to somewhere in the neighborhood of ~130C, where the melt point of PA6-CF is closer to 180C. So the filament is completely rigid, and can't be retracted. I've tried to pull on the string coming out of the nozzle by hand at this point, and it's really strong. Then the Ultimaker detects a jam, and has me remove the Bowden tube, and cut a big chunk of material out to "clear the jam." All that's really necessary is keeping the nozzle temp closer to 180C during Material Station retraction, so that the PA6-CF doesn't freeze up in the nozzle. How do I fix this?

 

Also, and this is much more minor, I've noticed that the UMS5 will extrude long strings of material during warm up, with the print head off the side of the bed so they fall to the ground. Is this some kind of pre-programmed purge? Sometimes, with the PA6-CF, the material will bunch up on the nozzle instead of drooping down in a string, so if I can avoid it I'd like to turn off this behavior.

 

Thanks in advance for the help!

[keenon 0]

Is the real answer to just avoid Polymaker's PA6-CF? Has anyone had success with it?

[gr5 2,173]

The first 2 things that come to mind would be either avoid Polymaker or don't use the material handler.

 

Is it possible you changed the feeder tension? It's supposed to be in the middle.  If you don't know what I'm talking about then don't worry about it.

 

Okay so I downloaded that material from marketplace - this file here - rename to ".zip" if you can't open it.  There's a folder in there called files then materials then the remaining file is what you want.

 

https://api.ultimaker.com/cura-packages/v1/cura/v7.5.0/packages/Polymaker_PolyMide_PA6_CF_2019/download

 

Is that the right one?  It says it has a break temperature of 175C so something is wrong?

    <setting key="break preparation temperature">280</setting>
    <setting key="break temperature">175.0</setting>

 

 

[keenon 0]

Thanks so much! Yeah, I suspect the material XML off the Ultimaker Marketplace is wrong, but I may be missing something important. I'll experiment and report back 🙂 It's nice to learn how to edit the raw XML, that's much easier than using the GUI. Thanks again.

[eschwartz96 2]

Hi Keenon, 

 

I actually brought this same question up to our local Ultimaker support representatives (FBCR8). They had me reach out to Polymaker were I asked if there was any issues with the material profile. They mentioned that this shouldn't happen with their most recent material profile. I re-synced my S5 to Cura and haven't had any issues since. If that doesn't work maybe try deleting the profile off the machine, forcing it to download. As always make sure your Cura is up to date. 

 

If those don't work reach out to directly to Polymaker, they were great to work with. We love the PA6-CF, such a capable material for end-use parts.