i work in an industrial field and have a small farm of 10 X1C, 2 P1S and X1E.
right now im printing a pretty large order of 150 housings which take about 5h per part. since i started mass producing them on all of the X1C and the X1E (i dont take P1S since their print results are not good enough for this case) i had a lot of trouble with heat creep resulting in blocked/gunked extruder units and blocked nozzles. this takes quite a while to fix when you come to office in the morning and 4/10 printers didnt finish their jobs due to blocked extruders.
first thing i noticed was that it primarly happened on the X1C where the AMS stands on top (on some printers it stands aside) so i took all AMS down. Second thing i did was reduce the bed temperature from 90C to 80C and tested bed adhesion (still works). Furthermore i decreased the hotend temp from 260 to 250.
However despite those efforts i still have gunked extruders.
To me it seems like there is too much heat in the build chamber. Unfortunately this room has no cooling, so room temperatures might go up to 28C which seems to be the equilibrium when all printers are running.
Filament is Formfutura Apollo X
Does anyone have an idea what to do? Thanks forehand // Marcus
Hey man. Same here. I bought 2 x1c for a project, for spare parts printed in petg and tpu. Basically…tpu is impossible. No ams as suggested, generic tpu but with same specs as bambu tpu 95A, clogs. Heat creep. Tried everything… No roof, dolor Open, aloe printing, cold printing, fast printing (as fast as tpu allows)… Nothing. So i printed thise parts on an artillery X2. Petg goes amazing. But i had to use that x1c to print other things, and i mainly print gears on PA6. So i tried… heatcreep. It starts well…but end up clogging. And PA needs a closed chamber and at least 50degrees. So it shouldnt experience heatcreep… I have another self built machine with active chamber heating to 70degrees celsius and the same filament works perfect. So i Guess they heatsink and its cooler are way too small to evacuate the heat.
I am not a professional and don’t have print farm experience.
My suggestion stands on how it looks from your description.
I would try reducing the hot end temperature to 240ÂşC. You mention the excess heat and thus higher ambient temperature, which will reduce the temperature difference and so the heat transfer. At 240ÂşC, you are still in the recommended printing temperature range. Is there any reason for starting printing at 260ÂşC?
Five hours of print seems to be a large volume, so I would expect that you benefit from the higher temperature within the chamber.
I personally do 5+ hour ASA prints on a P1S and in the afternoon the area where the printer is at can get up to 30°C and to date have not seen heat creep issues with the ASA I use (Flashforge). FYI Chamber temps measured with a non calibrated probe that I installed seem to level out around 50-55°C.
I do not have experience with the ApolloX filament but reading on their website it does seem to be a blended polymer to improve some characteristic like warping and flow and although they indicate a viscat softening temp of 98°C on their MDS it might be a little more sensitive to heat creep.
Maybe try to open the top lid just a crack open to reduce the chamber temp a bit.
Another thing to look at is the filament retraction setting as this can create increased heat creep if too frequent and/or with long retract travel.
The temperature equilibrium was at around 50°C in the chamber, which caused the issues. i tried loosening the tension-bolt in the extruder which pushes the feeder-wheels together so the filament will not get deformed that easily. Other than that, i removed the top lid (which completely solved the whole problem - fortunately warping was not an issue). Only downside is the emission of the ASA (we have a pretty large air filter and all printers are in a separate room so i hope this is not too bad).
For the future, i will change to a different ASA which may not cause those problems.
Well, an update: i had a system with a thermistor and a screen, to read temperatures. I figured out a way to puto the thermistor through the fins of the heatsink, and started heating only the nozzle, up to 240C. After 10 minutes, the heatsink didnt go past 54C, so that wasnt the problem. Then, i heat up the bed, up to 110C. And started printing. The print was good until temp in the heatsink reached up to 85C, where it failed and heatcreep happened. So, i lowered the bed temperature to 80, and then 90, where it found an equilibirum point, to be able to print complete parts…but they fail by delamination. The chamber temperature, that didnt go past 45C (while with a bed at 110C goes up to 52C) is not enough to create a good environment for larger prints. So i invented a active chamber heating system, to go to 60C, but i need to make som tests, because it will for sure send the heatsink to heatcreep.
Im going to try that, and after that, create a block with the size of the heatsink cooler, and make a watercooling system, trying to minimize changes to stock.
read above, opening the lid helped me. HOWEVER i noticed very poor layer adhesion which may come down to a printing chamber temperature of only about 40-42°C. so keep that in mind when printing functional parts.this effect may come from temperature issues or from the filament itself, i dont know
Thanks. I will add that to my list of things to try.
What seems so weird in my case is I have always run fine and printed the same models with the same profiles with the printer fully enclosed. I am starting to wonder if recent filament batches are the cause. I am currently on rApollo and have ordered some ApolloX (non-recycled) to test.
i had the ApolloX in black. I only used it for one large order of my customer and ordered 20 spools at once, so i cant really tell difference in batches etc.
when printing with open lid: also beware of emissions (VOCs) when printing. either use a separate air filter or print in an well ventilated room
I have been having the same issue since installing an AMS on my machine.
I have been running heaps of BLACK ASA from the spool holder for the last year or so and NEVER had a nozzle clog.
Im now doing a multi-color print in ASA with white and red and it got most of the way through a 6.5H print cycle and stopped extruding in the last 10-15mins.
My AMS unit is sat on top of my printer also.
I’m using the textured PEI plate as i really like the adhesion it gives.
Could it just use some risers as well as do the heatsink fin mod as i really don’t have room to move the AMS off the top of the printer.
I am seriously wondering if some update on filament feeding from the AMS is causing issues. I am was printing with this filament just fine for a long time and many prints before. @tom.fr13r what ASA brand are you using?
I had this same problem with formfutra apolloX as well. after the 5th jam on a roll i literally just threw the ASA roll out of my window and used ABS. idk why it doesn’t work, i tried everything, chamber open makes the print look like trash, chamber close results in heat creep jam. printer lives next to a window shop fan btw so cooling isnt a problem.
funny though i got through 2 whole rolls of it without this problem then my last roll i had sitting around just wouldn’t run at all, even dried it for 24hrs and still had the problem. it also jammed the sensor in my ams top side, had to fix that as well.
I had my extruder blocked twice now, using glow PLA.
The problem can be forced or avoided (to some degree).
A killer are models with lots retractions, avoid them at all costs if the filament suffers from heat creep.
Some filaments just love to transfer heat better than others.
And while this is no problem at all during print moves, slowing down big time or suddenly having an awful lot of retractions is like a jackhammer.
Inside the extruder the filament increases in diameter and if then there is not enough transported or the print ends things get (very) stuck.
So what actually happens here?
No matter how good you cool those those fins - it is the filament transporting the heat.
Using the FLIR those fins show the same temp printing normal PLA as when printing glow PLA.
The only real way to prevent this is to make sure there always more going out than being pulled back…
Take these silica gel containers - more retractions than print moves and certain to cause an issue.
Lowering the nozzle temp can help to reduce the problem a tiny bit but once the print goes slow the filament creeps…
All my other printers had a longer heat break and longer cooling region than those Bambu nozzles.
If I would have more time I would design a new front cover so a bigger fan and proper vents can be included.
But since that will certainly upset the printer with the added weight…
Temped to re-route the parts fan to go through the heatsink first…
I know its older tech but i kinda wish bambu could make a hotend that uses a PTFE tube as an insulator because it ran my ApolloX ASA way better on my old printer and prevented heat creep when my office hits 87F in the summer. I think there are certain advantages and disadvantages to all metal hotends vs PTFE tube style. Despite needing to rebuild the hot end regularly it would be nice to have one i can just drop in when i need it for heat creep sensitive filaments.
I think the problem is the design limitations.
Bambu, like some other manufacturers came up with their own solutions, rather than building on existing concepts.
Getting tempted to build my own hotend and head cover for the parts fan.
For me the max flow rate that some hotend sellers advertise is really relative.
Not a commercial printfarm runner here and with that I prefer hassle free operation no matter the type of filament going through the extruder.
I have an old design that I used before but it would require a whole new top to match the extruder and I am almost certain it would fit into the existing space without changes either.
Might have to get the anodising equipment out again and make the hotened from Aluminium.
Never had any issues with them, never any failure of the heating wire and I mainly used them to print nylon from the hardware store…
I experienced all of the above with ASA from Voxellab, Filamentum and Polymaker. The only brand that stood out was Flashforges ASA. Full bed adhesion at 110°C. Nozzle temp at 260, 0.3 to 0.6mm nozzles, all ok. Reteaction at 1mm with 30mm/s retratcion speed. 15mm/s outer perimeter speed, 40mm/s all inside speeds, 20 top solid surface, 15mm all over brim, no cooling. 4h dried at 65°C. No warping at all, no delamination, used as functional part in a vibration and shock environment.
The other filaments made me question my sanity, printer and capability. Turns out they were too moist and simply of a inferior quality. The flashforge material is definitely my go to material.
I’m having trouble now with Bambu’s ASA printing a black and white model with lots of small details using a 0.2 mm nozzle. Worked fine with PLA, but so far with ASA I keep getting clogs. I tried cleaning with some cleaning filament this time, including a couple of cold pulls with it, and started it again. If it fails again, after reading this thread I’m wondering if it is indeed just heat creep, and if perhaps using the part cooling fan on just 10% or something would help, so maybe that’ll what I’ll try.
Probably doesn’t help that the purging between colour changes with a 0.2 mm nozzle is problematic. They need to jog the print head more often with a 0.2 mm nozzle than they do, because the filament piles up and reaches the nozzle. When it reaches the nozzle it starts turning into a solid clump, and I’m sure that it just starts building up more and more pressure and this is what helps clogs start, too. Even with PLA I find I have to watch it during colour changes in order to knock the purged filament over once it reaches the nozzle to avoid clogs. The 0.2 mm nozzle waste doesn’t seem to be heavy enough to take care of itself like it does with 0.4 mm and larger nozzles. The 0.4+ mm nozzle waste seems to be heavy enough to usually knock itself down the chute when the print head jogs, but with the 0.2 mm nozzle it never seems to do that.
Adding my voice here… I have a P1S (fully enclosed) and a AMS. I respooled ApolloX ASA into plastic spools and used in the AMS. And I printed all the parts for a voron without an issue… Also printing them back to back by changing plates, thus not letting the printer cooldown that much.
Now 1wks ago, all of a sudden, I was getting clogs, always the same pattern:
Print would go well like the first 10mm, then all of a sudden (at least to me…) the extruder would stop extruding but the printer does not detect anything and will just continue (till the end if I let it…).
When I extract the extruder, I can see that the filament is completely flattened and is wrapping itself around the tooth gear and eventually gunking up the entire mechanism…
I tried to :
Dry the filament (FF has no clear guidelines), but I dried for 12h at 60C
Moved from the AMS to the spool holder
Print the exact same part using Esun ABS+ and profile… then no issue at all…
Since this first happened, I must have extracted, de-gunked, re-installed the extrduder, hotend at least 10 times… I also tried to swap out hotend, rebuilt the extruder with the BBL hardened gears (I had the BIQU gears when this started), changed the fans, changed the thermistor/heater… Always clogs…
Anecdotally, I checked the hotend with a FLIR, the cool side does seem cool enough (<100C), but when I extract the extruder right after the clog, the surface of the extruder is almost too hot to touch (probably 70C)… Is that normal?
I don’t get why it had worked before and why it does not work anymore…