Extrude motor running but no PLA goes in pls HELP

[vevrca 0]

Hello!

omg i think i broke it. I just started playing with this printer, i printed a few simple small thingies but then suddenly the material feed stopped. The extrude motor seems to be running (i see the gears turning) but the PLA stays still and nothing is coming out the nozzle.

I was printing for about 2 hours at 210 to 225°C, didn't change/move/touch anything on the printer, just changing speeds and temperatures. The PLA just stopped coming out :(

What do i do, what do i do?

I hope to god its fixable...not rly my printer :/

Kristina

[Daid 304]

First, everything is fixable, so don't worry.

Second, there are a few things you should check.

First, check if the filament at the motor, where it's touching the special bolt. If it's grinded down then the bolt cannot grap it anymore and push it in.

Secondly, release the "quick release", heat up your machine, and try pushing trough the filament by hand. This should be quite easy if you are at 220C.

If you cannot push it, then you have the infamous plug. If you cannot even pull the filament out, then you might have a bad bowden tube, or filament which is too thick. But both are more rare then the plug.

This plug happens between the PEEK part of the hotend, and the bowden tube. It can have a few different causes, but in general it's the bowden tube that's slipping up. See:

http://wiki.ultimaker.com/images/Bowden_plug.gif

Too check if it's a plug you need to unscrew the bottom part of your hot-end. DO NOT disassemble the PEEK part or the brass parts. It's not needed, and those break easy. Just unscrew the long 4 screws, that should give you access to the trouble area.

[vevrca 0]

yay thank you so much!

It was a plug, we took it apart, cleaned...set the Z switch (after I kinda ripped the blue tape :/)

but now it works ^^

thanks again!

Kristina

[Daid 304]

If it happens again, you might want to add this upgrade to your printer:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:11864

It helped quite a few people with this problem.

[vevrca 0]

hmmm i think i was happy too fast :/

After a couple of hours (it was working so perfectly :( ) it stopped again. I disassembled it but there was no sign of a plug - both parts were clean. I heated it up to about 240°C and released the quick release thingy, tried to push and pull the material but it wouldnt budge. The special bolt grinded up the material pretty nicely but since i cant move the thing by hand i assume the grinding wasnt the cause of the material stopping.

This is still the 1st roll of PLA we're using (one that came with the printer) so that shouldnt be the problem either. How do i check?

Kristina

[Daid 304]

Is the PLA running smooth trough the bowden tube? It should go trough the tube with ease.

There are 2 more known problems, one is a bad batch of bowden tubes, where the inside diameter of the tubes was wrong at some spots causing blockage. The other is bad filament with a high variation in thickness (usually this is silver/gray filament)

[vevrca 0]

Found the problem. It looks like we tightned the ummm the 'quick release' part to much, it deformed the material so bad we barely pulled it out the tube. Now my only problem is finding stuff to do during an 8 hour print

And ou looks like the tube rly loves popping out so i'll be printing the thingy.

Thanks a lot!

Kristina