So my machine is assembled and runs well, except for the extruder. I did buy the one from vicious1.
I am using esun pla that works great in my fabrikator mini (which uses a similar extruder tensioner) without issues. Initially I had to move the gear that grabs the filament because it wasn’t aligned very well and the set screws were hitting the filament instead of the teeth hitting the filament. The idler pulley was also not aligned, so I moved that with a small lock washer that I clipped and flattened into a normal washer. It seems that no matter what tension I set it to, if it stops for more than a second or so the gear just eats through the filament instead of pushing it through the hot end. I have tried swapping out stuff from the fabrikator mini and had slightly better luck, but not much.
These are the two steps I am going to try next time I have time to play with this thing.
cut the spring a little shorter to lower the minimum tension it is able to provide. I can always get another one or tighten the screw more.
If that doesn’t work
put the full extruder mechanism from my fabrikator mini on the mpcnc.
Also, does anyone else have an issue when searching for the word “extruder” on the forum? Everything else I search pops up, but I get a 500 error when I search for extruder.
The brass gear wasn’t aligned? I check the gear and the bearing before I ship them out and the set screws have always been close to the stepper not the heat sink.
You might actually have to turn up the stepper driver for the extruder. Some of them are requiring just about 2 times the power to work right, I can’t figure out why or which ones.
The search doesn’t work for me either, I have no idea how to fix that…
I can easily push the filament through. I have tried from 190 to 230 with the same two spools of filament (which normally print great around 205).
When I took the heat sink off it was pretty clear the filament was catching right on the edge of the gear near the set screws. I can try moving it back to the position you put it in.
I have turned the driver up for the extruder. I think it is currently around .88 and doesnt hesitate at all. The stepper doesn’t have an issue, it all seems to be in the tension and filament alignment right now.
I run a much more basic wordpress website than this and I am clueless most of the time. Everything is so scattered around. Part of that might be that I am required to use a standard template provided by the university. 20mb isn’t much room to play with for pictures and stuff. Have to get creative with embedding imagur links and hoping they work/don’t go away in a month.
Hmm, could it be the other end. Is it hard to pull the filament? I never have issues with these extruders, I just replaced my other extruder with this one.
You sure it doesn’t need more pressure? Too little and it will shave it, Too much and it tends to kind of cut it.
I’ve tried just about everything between no addend tension to almost maxed. I’ve never seen this before. When I set the tension and get it to extrude nicely the gear just gets pushed through the filament when it is paused. But I have tried with known good spools that work fine on every other printer.
No better results by switching to the the mechanism from my fabrikator mini or cutting the spring shorter. Switching the drive gear tomorrow if my friend can find his spare one like pictured in the link. Also might switch to a direct drive e3d v5 to eliminate the hot end as the cause of the issue. But I don’t think that has much to do with the issue because filament is still easy to push through.
Maybe settings in the firmware? I did flash it for a different version to use the non full graphic LCD but it is your firmware and says MPCNC on the screen.
How are you testing this, it could be a wrong slicer setting as well, wrong nozzle size, extruder acceleration. Try my test file from the import extruder post. If it doesn’t work while trying to print it could be a lot of things. If it passes an extrusion test (100mm manual extrude, make sure it pushed through 100mm) then it is most likely a slicer issue. if it doesn’t pass the extrusion test probably a firmware issue, could be a hardware issue.
Sorry too much DayQuil, try a 100mm test(bad equals firmware issue, or hardware), if it’s good try my test file (bad equals slicer setting).
If it can’t do a 100mm manual extrusion what is happening?
Testing is done by preheating the hot end and then using the move axis under the prepare menu. I think that the setting for 1mm at a time is set too fast. It seems to work better when I try to print and try .1mm.
I didn’t notice the test file, Ill try that tomorrow. I haven’t actually set the slic3r settings up totally correctly because I prefer using simplify 3d or cura. Ill try slic3r with the exact settings from the instructions if the test file works.
The extruder settings, as far as I know, do not work on those lcd’s ( they don’t seem to obey the firmware) I never changed them because I have never used them. I will try and remember to look into this in the morning.
You don’t need to set up anything. The best way to test it is plug it in with the usb and connect it to repetier host, then use the manual controls in that program.
So you might not have a hardware problem at all, could just be trying to extrude from the lcd?
Could be issues with the LCD. When I do the same thing on the fabrikator mini it moves the extruder much slower and controlled. On the MPCNC it seems like it might just be full speed. Which would definitley cause an issue.
I just tried the IE Test print file. Looks like I didn’t set my z height right before hitting go. I am so used to other printers just hitting the endstops and then working. There is still another issue. Something in the extruder makes a crazy annoying noise right now. Going to take the fan and heatsink off to figure that out. I think I just don’t have the roller screw tight enough since I intentionally left it loose to see if that helped. Hopefully it is just I was being dumb trying to use the lcd for everything.
I would love to be able to use repetier, but the computer I originally planed to use with the mpcnc decided to stop recognizing its usb controller. I have a windows 10 tablet too, but that only has 1 usb controller that controls the usb port as well as the touch screen and keyboard/mouse attachment. So controlling any 3d printer with it so far has just resulted in the mouse going crazy. When I looked it up most computers with this issue have it because windows detects it as a ball mouse, but I didn’t find that to be the issue.
I took the heatsink and fan off and raised the z height to about an inch so I could see exactly what was going on. No matter how tight or loose I set the spring tension the filament gets chewed up. Too loose and it just spins on there until it eats a hole through it. Tight enough for it to actually extrude consistently and it chews a hole through anyway.
Compared to the tinyboy, it looks like the mpcnc extruder is spinning way faster to put out the same amount of material even though they have the exact same gear on them with no reduction.
Unfortunately I won’t be able to really work on it again until the 21st because I leave campus tomorrow for a robotics competition and from there I go on spring break.
Pretty sure its the lcd, if you are using my board, my drivers, and my firmware. I just looked through the firmware and I don’t see anything about speed yet, but there is a lot to check.
Got every thing put back together again and ran the test gcode again. It did extrude OK (not good, but it worked) for a while but it still made an awful noise. After the first few layers it did end up chewing through the filament and stopped extruding.
I have everything but a mount to switch the hot end to an E3D v5 to see if that helps at all. My guess is that it wont help much if at all, but at this point I will try anything to get this working. I really won’t have time on thursday to work on it before I leave. Ill get to disconnect from technology (camping, mountain biking, rock climbing in the woods) from Sunday to Sunday over spring break. Just a bio test and a robotics competition between me and an awesome week.
I am having nearly the exact same issue. I pretty much did all of this and still have issues with the extruder grinding through the filament. the extruder also sounds real bad and seems to shake a lot. I bout everything except my 20x4 LCD from this site.
Can you share your repitier/slicer config file? What about the marlin settings you said to change/confirm. Is this what the default should be? #define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT {200,200,4535.44,200}
I tried the test part again and with a flashlight then after taking the fan and heatsink off it looks like the extruder is running WAY TOO FAST. It is spinning at more than 1 revolution a second. Any advice?
Another problem I am having is I am not getting temperature feedback in Repitier unless I am printing
What jumpers? No they are not. None were installed on the board from you and none were included with the driver and extruder when I bought them from you. Now I need to figure out where to find some. Hopefully this addresses the issue.
I’d guess that’s the issue then. get some jumpers and that should fix your issue.
I’m having what I assume is a firmware issue. in the photo you can see that I got my temp settings dialed in, but I’m having a problem with bulging corners. i imagine it’s a firmware setting. and I need to fix it because it causes the inside of holes to be smaller than the model because holes are technically just a bunch of corners. wondering where I should start tweaking. jerk, acceleration, etc.
Sorry I hijacked this thread but thanks Ryan for your help with identifying the issue. I took some jumpers from some old hard-drives and the MPCNC prints really good. Now I just need to figure out the magic starting height to not plow and to get good stick. Any recommendations would be appreciated. Now back to laser etching round parts using the 4th axis.
