Help! - UM2 not moving material

[sammo 0]

Hi I hope you can help, I'm out of ideas and desperate.

The symptoms I have are that PLA/PHA no longer comes out of the nozzle, I just hear the feeder clicking.

What I've tried so far :

Stripping down the feeder and cleaning it out.

Using the Atomic method to clear any blockages.

While doing the atomic method, material comes out of the nozzle and when I cool it down to 90 degrees I can pull the filament back out with a conical end on the manually fed in filament, I can also see through the nozzle and it looks clear.

When I go through the change material option, filament is fed to the head (or at least as far as I can see) but no filament comes out of the nozzle and after a few seconds I get the feeder clicking again.

Any ideas of what I should try next?

I'd really appreciate some help, I'm stuck now?

Thanks in advance

Edited May 12, 2015 by Guest

[valcrow 145]

It sounds like something is misaligned.

Either your bowden tube is misaligned and the filament is actually feeding to the side of the teflon tube or there is a significant lip on your Teflon tube that's causing excess friction.

When feeding the filament watch carefully that the filament passes through the teflon part (the white thing that touches the bowden)

Ensure that the bowden is slightly in the teflon piece. Note where the filament stops feeding and clicking begins. If it's a few seconds after the teflon tube, it's most likely the Teflon piece itself. If it is at the end of the bowden tube it's probably misaligned. It doesn't sound like it's making it to the heated nozzle part at all.

[sammo 0]

It sounds like something is misaligned.

Either your bowden tube is misaligned and the filament is actually feeding to the side of the teflon tube or there is a significant lip on your Teflon tube that's causing excess friction.

When feeding the filament watch carefully that the filament passes through the teflon part (the white thing that touches the bowden)

Ensure that the bowden is slightly in the teflon piece. Note where the filament stops feeding and clicking begins. If it's a few seconds after the teflon tube, it's most likely the Teflon piece itself. If it is at the end of the bowden tube it's probably misaligned. It doesn't sound like it's making it to the heated nozzle part at all.

Thanks for the reply, I was wondering if it was the PTFE piece, since I'm well over 500h now on the original.

The printer has been running pretty much 24/7 for a couple of weeks and used every other day before that since November.

Everything has been perfect so far, but I decided to experiment by running a print at 100mm/s speed.  I usually keep to around 40/50 but I thought I'd experiment.

The print quality wasn't great so I aborted the print after about 40 minutes, then tried printing again at a slower speed (back to 50 again) but that's when I noticed that filament wasn't coming out anymore.

So I'm thinking... disassemble the print head and check that everything is in order?

[crazybird 1]

Pettry similar to me but after try with ninjaflex...

you can join the conversation here, I still waiting for the next step.

Simillar problem here

Edited May 12, 2015 by Guest

[valcrow 145]

Yeah it might be the PTFE piece for sure. If you disassemble again, you should check that there is no lip on the interior of it.

500hrs is when I had to replace my teflon piece so that is likely the cause.

[sammo 0]

New coupler being delivered next day under warranty - now that's customer service! (Dream3D in the UK)

I'll wait till it arrives before I dismantle to check it's the coupler that's gone.