I have requested support but after 5 days i still have not gotten any response at all and was wondering if it’s either a very easily fixed problem because im new to 3D-Printing or if i actually need help/replacement to fix it. I have the printer for about a week now and after some prints and filament changes, it stopped printing at all. It does everything but print. I removed the hotend and extruder, both checked for clogs and opened the extruder itself and nothing was inside. I connected everything again and turned on the printer, ran it for tests and manually extruded, but still nothing came out.
Without the hotend and manual extrude, still nothing comes out, tube is correctly placed and filament is Bambu PLA basic so no diameter difference. Since i have no idea how another extruder would function i have no comparison to what is normal. I think the problem is filament feeding but i have no idea how to fix this due to lack of knowledge about 3D printers.
If anyone has any suggestions, i would gladly hear them.
I assume you are not using the AMS but the manual feeding of filament.
To load a filament, heat up the hotend to roughly normal printing temp, so 220 for PLA. Push the filament through the tube until you hit resistance. Keep pushing the filament slightly into the tube and press the extrude button 2-3 times. If you now pull carefully on the filament, it should be stuck and not come out again.
It should actually start extruding then if you keep pressing the button. If the filament does not get stuck, its not grabbed by the extruder gears.
There are some possible reasons.
The grabbing wheels of the extruder are spaced too far apart for some strange reason, most likely factory problem
Gears are slipping on the mount shaft, maybe some oil as been snuck between gears and shaft
Motor is not working
You made a mistake and need to repeat the procedure
I have tried pushing it in and extrude to grab it, ive seen it actually through the manual extrude without a hotend, but when i attach the hotend and use a printjob, it does not give any printed layers like its stuck again somehow
So…without a hotend, you see the filament leaving the extruder, but with a hotend not.
So it most likely is the hotend. Does the hotend actually get hot? If not, the printer should give an error and maybe only some cables aren’t pushed into their sockets all the way.
If it does, it might be clogged. With the printer there came a needle kind of thing you can poke into the hotend to get it free again. When you have dismounted it, can you push it into the hotend all the way? If you cannot, the hotend is clogged for some reason.
I thought that the first time around and completely replaced the hotend and turned it on, it did not help, no wires show visible damage and hotend is getting hot. I have seen little bits of filament being spilled out when i manually extrude with pressing and manually pushing filament into the extruder, i thought it was working at this moment, i turned on a printjob and again, nothing coming out of the hotend when performing a printjob which makes no sense.
Though Thrawn is 1000% more experienced and knowledgeable than I am, I was just wondering, does the print you’re sending show up in the printer cache? Have you tried printing one of the pre-installed prints? This might eliminate an issue between your PC and the printer.
Both PC printjobs and pre-installed printjobs do not show any difference in either printing or not printing. Even though I lack experience something tells me that the feeding process is somehow halted/stuck and filament does not reach the hotend correctly, note that the printer is not even a week old.
Yes, it seems to be.
If you manually extrude and nothing comes out, it either has to be the hotend or the extruder. Since the printer came with a spare hotend, I would suggest you use the spare and try it with that.
If that also doesn’t work, it pretty much has to be the extruder and since it obviously can grab filament as it works with no hotend, I can only assume then that it either cannot grab it firmly for some reason and when the resistance from the hotend is added it starts to slip on the filament or that the gears are slipping on the shafts as soon as some resistance is applied.
The only other thing I can think of is that the filament for some strange reason is missing the entrance to the hotend.
But in any case, it should be something that is solvable with some replacement parts.
I also thought that replacement parts would be the option to fix this, but then again, after a week already? Seems too quickly for my liking with filament that is specifically designed for this printer. Buying replacements wouldn’t be an issue for me if it was running 24/7 for the past few months but right now i’d rather hear from support soon and find if there can be made any arrangements for either another solution or replacement parts from their end.
Randomly throwing this out there but have we looked at the screw and spring assembly that provides pressure against the drive gears? And are we sure the cutter is retracting fully?
I’m not finding it referenced in the wiki so here is a post about the screw,
I did not mean for you to buy them, but rather that support can provide them to you. It appears more an issue that did not come from wear, but rather a problem during production. Maybe its just the tension of the arm on the extruder that pushes against the filament.
Same here. I think support has gone on vacation as I haven’t received anything but auto-emails for the past 5 days. This includes asking them to initiate a lost package ticket with FedEx since I never got the items I purchased. All I hear are crickets!