I also noticed the clicking on my A1. It is definitely correlated to retraction events when the extruder is changing direction. Can’t remember if it was noticeable from the beginning but I‘ve been using the unit for less than two weeks now.
For me it sounds like there is some play in the internal gearing. Will have a look when the printer has finished printing.
I also noticed that the extruder is activated with a cold hotend in the preparation phase of every print job. It then makes the stepper motor skip a few steps for a fraction of a second which is cearly audible as a rattling noise. This seems to be a predefined standard procedure but I can imagine it being quite stressful for the internal gearing. Any comments on that?
I’ll check that after the current print finishes in some hours. I’ll also try to wiggle around the yellow extruder gear using a toothpick without filament present to check for any play. The clicks have gotten less noticable during the last few days.
I opened the extruder and there’s definitely a tiny gap between the teeth of the yellow gear and the pinion of the stepper motor. I was able to reproduce the clicking by wiggling the yellow gear.
From my understanding this tiny gap is intentional and thus the clicking can’t be avoided and is nothing to worry about. Especially since there’s no way to adjust the distance between gear and pinion.
Also, I noticed that the noise gets less pronounced with increasing print time which might be related to thermal effects when the temperature of the whole extruder assembly slowly increases. It’s another indicator for the gap being intentional in order to accommodate for a thermal expansion.
Good to know what’s the cause. My toothpick test shows the same result, there’s maybe a 0.25 mm play in the system and my manipulation also causes the clicking. I’m not bothered by it anymore.
Makes sense to me that this might be an intended tolerance. Still would be interested to see what other user’s results are! The toothpick test is easy to do
With the manual extrude/retract I’m hardly getting any clicking. there’s a hint of clicking when going from retraction to extrusion, but only sometimes.
That click is produced by the small gap between the motor’s gear and the yellow gear of the extruder. Is it important? I don’t think so, but I’m not an expert.
Definitely not a typical sound. That is your extrusion stepper skipping steps.
Did you try to observe the hotend temperature displayed on the printer’s display while it makes these sounds?
Another option is that your nozzle is clogged. Was doing a cold pull part of your cleaning process?
Steps:
_ Sounds all time coming from extruder
_Extruder 240C itry same sounds
_Filament motors good working i checked
_ı do all cleaning prossess
İm not sure i do everything step by step
might be a different issue from the one i was hearing. Mine only happens in certain cirsumstances. And doesnt appear to be causing any issues with my prints.
Im having the same clicking issue on my A1 Mini. Ive only had it for a week and have only printed a handful of prints before it started to do the same clicking. Ive contacted support and went through their recommendations although every attempt it clicks. Also causes the nozzle to slightly jiggle which doesnt seem normal. Any recommendations other than taking everything apart again? Ive also tried 2 other nozzles and experience the same problem.
