Extruder won't feed filament

KSL

New Member
#1
Hi all, trying to get my first print going.

Problem: filament won't feed. Extruder stepper seems to work ok with manual control when there's no filament, but it just gets stuck when trying to feed with filament.

Filament is all the way into the top plastic channel, but not getting into or thru the hotend.

Hot end temp says it's ok, tried up to 210. Hot to the touch, seems like it's working.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Thanks
 
#3
Also try loosening the screw of the bearing holds pressure on the filament to the extruder motor. See the forum topic called sloppy layering for more info. I had a similar problem and lessoning the pressure helped the filament to flow a lot smoother.
 

GORDON.LAPLANTE

Administrator
Staff member
#4
The hotend has some small freedom to move as you tighten it down. This means the hole for the hotend doesn't line up exactly with the filament shaft from the extruder motor bracket. The easiest way to get the filament in the shaft is to straighten 3"-4" by hand before feeding it into the shaft. Also cut the end of the filament on a diagonal.

We are working on removing any 'play' in the hotend so the hole lines up better. We first thought having a little bit of movement would make it easier to swap hotends but it doesn't seem to matter.
 
#5
I just assembled mine and went to load the filament for both extruders and had this issue for both. In the pic of the top of the hotend you can see where it's warped a bit from the my attempts and pressing the filament through. Is the best solution for this to put some slop in the filament guide bearing or would drilling out the hole a little larger work better? Seems like making that hole a bit bigger and cutting the filament diagonally would be a solution. You can see in the pic the area that the hot end fits into is pretty rough but I don't think I want to try to risk misalignment of the whole hot end by trying to smooth this area out so it sits in deeper.

Anyone have thoughts on this?
 

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#6
I printed a replacement piece on my Replicator 2 and when I seat the hot end in its place the filament guides right through as expected. I guess I'll just have to replace my existing piece that came in the kit because what I got won't work without modification. I think I'll drill out the guide hole bigger to see if that fixes it first though. I don't really want to disassemble the extruder right now. ;)
 
#7
grumble said:
I printed a replacement piece on my Replicator 2 and when I seat the hot end in its place the filament guides right through as expected. I guess I'll just have to replace my existing piece that came in the kit because what I got won't work without modification. I think I'll drill out the guide hole bigger to see if that fixes it first though. I don't really want to disassemble the extruder right now. ;)
So went ahead and drilled out the existing guide hole quite a bit. The filament guides nicely and now I have a replacement part should I need one. :)