Hi All, I’ve owned a new A1 AMS for about three months now and in that time I’ve encountered this problem three times. Basically the printer reports a blockage and stops. Upon investigation I’ve found that there was a large blob of material all around the hotend completely encasing the clip that retains the hotend. The first time I encountered this I thought that it may be excessive grease applied during manufacturing and which solidified.
However having cleaned it all off and got it working again it stopped again after about 2 weeks. Once again there was a large blob of what I could identify as PLA around the hotend and its retaining clip.
Again I cleaned all around the hotend, its retaining clip and the nozzle and everything started up fine but after about 7 hours it once again stopped and PLA had started building up again.
This time despite the fact that I cleaned it all it now seems to have a tightspot just above the extruder so the filament doesn’t appear to get through to the gears.
Has anyone any experience of this problem and if so please advise what I need to do to resolve it.
I’m sorry but I didn’t take any photos.
Cheers
Filament absorbs moisture from the air. When the “wet” filament hits the hot end, the water turns to steam and expands, driving excess filament from the extruder.
Your filament needs to be dried so that it doesn’t over-extrude and string-out and get wrapped around the extruder anymore.
This may help you clean up the current issue as some mess might still be hanging around.
I second @RocketSled
Thank you both for your advice which is very helpful. With regard to the moisture, I’d be surprised if it is this as the printer is in a heated study and when not in use the filament is stored in plastic bags with Silaca Gell bags.
With regard to the build-up of filament residue, isn’t this a poor design which allows the molten filament to escape from the pathway to the nozzle?? Personally I feel it lets down what is otherwise a good machine and renders it unreliable. I’ve had four failed projects just because of this design weakness and as the printer is only 3 months old, I’m not excatly impressed.
Photos would have helped greatly to advise. I know you are unable though.
Silica gel isn’t a magic substance, it is an aid. It also requires refreshing and much of it isn’t reusable.
I have had an A1 and still have an A1 mini, with over 2.5k hours of usage and I only lost one nozzle to my own stupidity. I have not experienced what you have described.
Many factors can cause this.
- Incorrectly seated nozzle
- Filament quality
- External moisture
- Incorrectly sealed bags
Without more data, which of these contributed to your experiences is hard to guess.
Just a quick update on this subject for anyone else experiencing this problem.
I went through the cleaning process and got everything nice and clean. I then took care to ensure that the hot end was firmly pushed up into place before fixing the retaining clip to hold it in place. I’ve now completed about 20 hours of printing and there is no sign of leakage of PLA around the hot end.
From this I can only conclude that the hot end was not fitted into place correctly when the printer was assembled because the problem started almost immediately after I started using it for the first time.
My thanks to all who took the time to give their helpful responses.
So this then.
I had a similar issue – taking nozzle out and putting it back in again fixed it. Thanks