Has anyone ever had an issue where the AMS fails to feed the toolhead extruder?
And I’m not talking about the filament stopping short from the toolhead due to friction or a certain filament sensor failing. Like the filament from the AMS makes it all the way to the toolhead, seemingly doesn’t catch despite the filament sensor indicating it fed successfully, then proceeds to jog the filament. After the song and dance it retracts all the way, and then proceeds to restart the process a few times more. Eventually it will report back that it failed to feed, while keeping the filament in the entire feed-path. The only way to back out from the loading process is to turn off the X1C just as the AMS finishes retracting, otherwise I’m stuck tearing down the entire path just to remove the entire length of filament. It does this for all 4 slots.
I have been using the printer quite a lot now, through the external feed on a roller. Heck I know the filament sensor works because it’s already tripped mid print as the spool ran out. The feeding gears can’t be the issue because it rips the filament from the cardboard spools when it runs out, the spools I buy have the filament stuck in the cardboard so it doesn’t unravel itself. For what it’s worth I’ve torn down the tool head for cleaning, and aside from some dust it still looks great. I have replaced all the PTFE tubing, using official tubes just so I don’t have to second guess flush cutting my own. I’ve hit the point where I needed to cut lengths off of my spools because the filament was getting chewed up from the repeated feeding and retractions, or I risk dust buildup in the system.
Customer support has been very responsive and helpful, they’ve sent me a Filament Hub twice now and a Feed motor, so I am very grateful for that. But surely someone else out there has this exact problem, otherwise it seems like more people have problems with retraction or simply a bad PTFE path.
No amount of Googling or Forum searching has turned up any similar user experiences yet, so I’m stuck with a fantastic printer and a glorified spool holder.
I had something similar on a multimaterial print where I had not modified the Min/Max temps of the filaments.
Heat creep occured well into the extruder, deforming the filament end. A bit of a blob where usually the filament cutter leaves a clean edge. Have a look at the filament end as that can help with the diagnostics by ruling out heat creep or cutter wear.
Setting Min/Max filament temps to identical values for all filaments resolved that (although they were all outside recommended temps).
And of course, push all ptfe’s fully into their sockets. Even slight changes of the cut filament end will ensure that it finds all tiny gaps everywhere along its path. Guess how I found out
I had an issue the other day that sounded similar, I had just got done printing external roll. After it tried to load a few time I started looking and I forgot to hook the pfte tube back up on the back of the printer so the filament wasnt mking it to the hot end even though it seemed to.
Did you remove the clear filament sensor switch housing? Sometimes small pieces of filament get stuck in there and deflects the filament from entering the nozzle.
To add to the pile of potential people looking for a solution, my solution basically boiled down to waiting it out with customer support as they narrow down the problem and send you a part each time.
This was 5 months in the making for me because early on I had to tear apart the PTFE feed all the way down to the toolhead or lose lengths of filament at a time so many times that I just did not want to bother with the AMS again. It ended up not mattering because feeding the filament a few times is enough to chew up the length, forcing me to cut my losses.
For the record for anyone out there, a quick fix is to let the AMS retract all the way, then turn off the power either through the powersupply or through a smart switch. DO NOT just pull out the power connector, Molex Mini connectors aren’t designed for repeated insertions, albeit the amperage the AMS draws is way below spec.
Support was gracious enough to had send me a Filament Hub twice, once with a spare motor, then finally send me an AMS mainboard.
Something about the mainboard was faulty to the point where it apparently did not correctly handle the Filament Buffer Signal, according to customer support, which is why it would just repeatedly poke the extruder and not maintain pressure and let it “bite”.
Thank you to customer support for sending me the one part that fixed the whole thing. Although I do hope the feeding process is amended so the next person doesn’t have to deal with a stubborn AMS that just leaves a meters worth of filament stuck in the entire line.
I actually did the mod where you shave off a sliver of the filament runout sensor, I discovered that at specific angles the filament can push the arm far enough to become stuck. Unfortunately it didn’t fix it for me, as the sensor was working just fine the whole time without the AMS
Thankfully I’ve never encounter heat creep, yet, despite runnning filament with the gamut of almost 30 C. Chamber temp doesn’t reach past 35 C either, and that’s with a bed temp of 55 C on the cool plate.
It would bind at specific angles around the buffer, I fixed that up real fast by routing the PTFE properly so it wouldn’t deflect so much. Unfortunately this is still a fairly stock configuration so the feeder motor had no issue pushing past small binds.
I have been having the same issue I have found the the angle of the ptfe tube going into the hot end needa to be straighter than it is normally with the top glass pushing down on it. It will fail about 80% of the time but if I take the top glass off or push the tube over a bit with my hand it works every times
Just wanna say thanks as this fixed the issue for me! Pushing on the tube at different angles and it finally loaded after multiple retries of letting it do its own thing. I hadn’t used this AMS slot before either
