Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble jenschr, I would hesitate to be so dismissive of Sanjay's suggestions - he has a tremendous amount of experience doing hotends, more than anyone else in this thread certainly. Eric's comments are spot on - but the section at the top of the heatbreak is not in the transition zone. I think if you reexamine your findings you will agree - with the aluminum fins cool to the touch, the transition zone happens at the portion of the heatbreak without threads. As for other v5 users having troubles, many of them were nailed down to faulty nozzles (bore length too long) which has been rectified in v6, poor diameter tolerance on the filament, or some other issue. There are about a dozen possible causes - no one common denominator. I would say it is in you best interest to listen to those with the most experience.
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble @elmoret If Sanjay replied to my first support request I'd take him seriously. I never got a reply. It's not fun to only get someone's attention only because you comment publicly on G+ and THEN be ignored for almost a week? I don't mind that he attends the 3DP show (who wouldn't?), but it's not fun to have to call him out here on the forums just to get a reply. I strongly dislike it, but if that's the only way I can get his attention, then I'll do it. When it's this many people that have a similar problem, I don't really see how dismissing my extruder design will help. Like I said - it is more powerful than the Wades I used with the E3d before. Here is a picture of my old Wades extruder setup http://flashgamer.com/a/wades_e3d_1280.jpg. I had the exact same problem printing PLA when I used this extruder, so I can sort of guarantee that it's not the extruder that is causing the problem. As I pointed out - both those two commercially sold extruders are for 3mm and use a hobbed bit of similar size/design to the MK8 with all metal hotends. As for the transition zone - sure - I know it's supposed to happen just above the alu block, inside the lower part of the heat-break and thus not at the point where the heatbreak joins with the heat sink. It's quite obvious that on my v5 it does not work like it should so that gap was my best guess. I know that Sanjay has got a load of experience, so I was kind of hoping he had a plausible answer such as "there must be a mechanical production fault" or "you are not doing X right".
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble Hi Sanjay, I have already filled that out once; you should see my forum name in there. I'll do it again tonight if you can't find it. Ben ..
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble Looks like your filament is as large as 1.87mm. That will definitely jam. Would suggest sourcing some better quality filament.
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble It seems you have found my form. I don't think that 1.87mm is unreasonable. It not all that size, that is a worst case. I have re-installed the old Felix hot end and updated the firmware. I have done one test print with it and it worked fine at 195 degrees. Do you have any comment on additional cooling of the heat break? The Kraken is water cooled is it more reliable with PLA? I don't see people have the same sort of issue with it of the other forum. Thanks Ben ..
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble Capella_Ben, Just to be clear Tim Elmore (elmoret) is one of our trusted distributors in the US with a great deal of experience selling and supporting E3D stuff. He has access to our troubleshooting tools/info at a certain level so he can give advice in situations like this. I've updated his forum status and changed his username colour to green to more clearly indicate this. From your support form I also see that you may have the wrong thermistor selected in your firmware? In Marlin you should be using Table 5, and in Repetier you would use Table 8. Your support form indicates you may be using Table 8 in Marlin which could be the source of issues. Filament beyond 1.85 will indeed start to cause issues, it only takes a single small part of the filament to exceed this, catch on one of the junctions in the hotend and exceed your extruders ability to keep it moving forwards. I also see you are using a 0.35mm nozzle which might be exacerbating things to some extent. It might be worth starting out on the 0.40mm to reduce variables. Cooling heatbreaks with airflow over the constriction is a bit of a red herring, people keep doing it, it doesn't make a great deal of sense. In terms of pure physics the amount of heat that can be removed by convection from that tiny bit of surface area with air that will inevitably be heated by the time it gets there is miniscule compared to the combined conductive cooling and heating from the heatsink fin right above and the heater block right below. It is worth bearing in mind however that adding airflow under the bottom fin might be inadvertently beneficial as it could cause more effective cooling of the bottom fin and disturb upward convective hot airflow. However really this should be managed by airflow through the heatsink with and not under it. In terms of Kraken vs E3D-v5 volumes of issues it is worth bearing in mind that for every Kraken sold there are several hundred v5's in the wild. The number of people with issues with v5's compared to total sales volumes represents a reported issue rate that is well below 0.5%. The rate for Krakens is lower than that of v5, but the data is quite noisy as the sales volumes are so different. It is also worth bearing in mind that those who buy and use Krakens usually have significantly more printing experience and so are less prone to have issues. I don't believe that cooling is the main differentiator from having designed and supported both products. Jens Regarding the delay in me getting support to you, truly I apologise for the delay. It was not at all a matter of me ignoring you until you starting discussing things on public platforms. It was simply a crazy crazy week/10 days. Lots going on at work and in my personal life. Usually emails and other comms get replies within 36 hours or less. Over the last week that went up to 6-8 days in some cases. It's regrettable but simply a reality of having a limited number of people attempting to do as much as possible. It's something we're taking significant steps to improve. E3D as a business happened "by accident" as a hobby rapidly turned into a large international business in the space of around 9 months. It's tricky, we make mistakes, we're learning, there are growing pains. I apologise that you were a victim of this but I also want you to know that there was no malice or intent to ignore involved at all. I was not properly aware that you suspected the heatbreak was the source of your issues. From your previous comments I was under the impression that you thought your heatbreak internal surface finish was good and you didn't suspect it as a source of problems: I assumed from the rest of your post that you were maybe having issues with the chamfers or alignment of the bores in the other parts. However in your latest post it seems that there may actually be an issue around the transition area (thin walled constriction) of your break?: If that's the case I'm more than happy to get you a replacement. While we're at it we may as well get another nozzle and sink to you to eliminate as many variables as possible and give you the best chance of getting up and running. I've added credit to your account for this purpose (including cost of shipping). Do go ahead and place an order for a full set of metal parts. You could even move to a 3mm v6 Direct, which incidentally has no PTFE at all in it if that is something that concerns you. I don't know the torque of your motor, driver, microstepping, current settings etc but I do still maintain that a direct drive extruder cannot possibly exert as much force as a geared extruder. A Mk8 drive gear and an M8 hobbed bolt have near as dammit the same effective diameter, however the hobbed bolt is driven through a 5:1 or greater reduction ratio. All other things being equal the direct drive extruder has 20% the available maximum force of the geared extruder. The limiting factor however usually ends up being the ability of the drive gear and idler to grip the filament and the filament failing in shear as the teeth grind through the filament. The GT9S is a bastardised clone of the Micron extruder. The original Micron extruders were designed to use a 13:1 NEMA11 or a 5:1 NEMA17, I've not used either, I've heard good things about the Micron, but I know very well that Geetech have no idea what they are doing when it comes to extruder and hotend manufacture or design. I have a few of their clone v5 hotends that are truly disastrous in terms of design changes and manufacturing quality. They should not be regarded as a source or authority on extruder design. I should do a blog post some time on the stuff I have from them. The Bulldog (intended for 1.75mm filament) is indeed a direct drive extruder with no gearing. However the Bulldog XL (for use with 3mm filament) is infact a geared extruder with a reduction gearbox. It doesn't look much like the normal planetary 5.1:1 designs we see as the gearbox is in a square case not a round one, but it does indeed have a gearbox. Sanjay
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble Hi Sanjay, I am using Repetier firmware. From memory I don't recall there being a question on what version of firmware you are using (but I could be wrong). As previously stated 1.85 is a worst case measurement. I have tried MANY MANY MANY different rolls of filament and they all fail. The filament is kept in a low humidity sealed container. It is interesting what you say about the cooling of the heat break. At that stage I was pretty desperate as everything I tried had failed. At the moment I have changed back to my old extruder and it works fine with PLA. I'd like to change back to the E3D, because when it does work with ABS or 618 or Arnitel or Bridge it works great and has a better quality finish. However no-one has been able to give me any advice on how to fix the problem.
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble Sanjay, As you can see from my previous reply, I have also had the same problems when using a geared Wades but this was the sort of answer I was looking for. I fully understand the growing pains and I'll stop being negative/aggressive. All I want is a fully working hotend, so I'll go ahead and re-order J
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble Actually, on reflection, maybe rather than trying to fix users individual problems, it would be better to release guidelines for what to do to resolve jamming. I has been discussed in a very fragmented fashion here, but if someone in E3D can put together some troubleshooting guidelines then I'm sure that would be of great benefit.
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble Already done, sitting right in the documentation section of this website. http://e3d-online.com/E3D-Troubleshooting
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble Thanks. I have seen that a while ago. I guess I have gone on a bit of a journey since looking at it. I'll go back and go over it again in more detail. Cooling must be my issue. The hot end mount does have an unusual cooling method. Maybe a re-design is in order.
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble Suddenly, after months of problem free PLA printing, had constant blockages in my E3D-V5 It happened after a filament change so the new filament probably also has something to do with it but the strange thing is, what I always used up untill now was pretty-low end stuff and now I went for more high-end material (apparently) First tried to clean (no effect) changed the nozzle for a new one (no effect) seasoned the heatbreak with canola oil (no real effect) but then changed the retract to 1 mm (has always been 4.5 without issues) and now it's flawless again... Strange... Smells good though when heating up the hotend to 300 deg C with canola oil
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble @E3D - something I've noticed while testing the last days - Colorfabb's PLA/PHA seems to cause a lot more problems for me than pure PLA from Faberdashery and DiamondAge. I'm assuming that the PLA/PHA combination causes higher friction than just pure PLA. Does that fit with what you're seeing from the user surveys? J
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble Jenschr, Not noticed any trend or issues with colorfabb, I would say it's some of the best stuff out there. Data from problem reports doesn't show any link between colorfabb and problems. In fact I know that Colorfabb use our hotends in some of their test machines and for material development.
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble Man... I'm really wondering what I'm doing wrong to the Colorfabb filament then. I've had problems with it on several Ultimakers and Printrbots as well as this machine. I'm now printing successfully with PET+ from MadeSolid. Printed with PLA from Faberdashery yesterday, some really old ABS from Makerbot (back when they made 3mm filament) before that as well as ABS from Protoparadigm, Proto-pasta's carbon fibre infused PLA, 2 year old PLA from Diamond Age before that, NinjaFlex & PLA, ABS & flexible rubber from PlastInk, PLA from Ultimaker and even Taulman 645 Nylon. Not a single blockage with any of these, but as soon as I insert the PLA/PHA mix from Colorfabb, my extruder clogs up. I've now tried the Hexagon nozzle in addition to the E3D and it's exactly the same problem. I've tried a wades extruder, my own direct extruder & the Bulldog XL. No difference. I've tried with and without heated bed, different temperature settings, extrusion speeds, no retraction. Same problem. I've also tried all the tricks in this thread... I honestly have no idea what to do to make this work? I think I'll have to throw the 10 rolls of Colorfabb filament I have and get new filament from Faberdashery instead? Would be expensive... My last straw - could it be that the 3mm PLA/PHA has more friction than the 1.75mm due to the increased surface area? Could you check that against the survey results? Does anybody else use 3mm from Colorfabb with success? J
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble Sorry to be little off topic but this is for AlexC....do you have a manufacturer name and part number for the connectors you use on your hot ends? the ones you say are the same as what come on UBIS.... I am hoping to find something like those at mouser or digi-key. Thanks,
Re: E3D v5 All Metal w/Direct Pinch skipping/clicking proble To follow up on my own post above - I now have no issues with Colorfabb. I met a guy from the Stockholm Hackerspace & he told me to go 20C warmer than the MAX written on the rolls. This worked on my custom printer, Ultimaker & the Printrbot so it may be relevant to others. I should point out that this did the trick for all but one roll. I checked it closely and the color was not consistent. It varied across the roll. When I told Colorfabb, they immediately sent me a replacement & I'm quite happy with that.
