Hello, I am fairly new to 3d Printing and I own an UP Mini. I have been printing mostly with hatchbox PLA (which cost me $30) I was running low so I bought a new spool of excelvan1 (I paid $16). Every print I have tried to run won’t finish because the excelvan filament won’t feed through completely. The extruder starts to try to pull on it, making a loud noise and the filament coming out gets smaller and smaller until the print fails and nothing comes out. Its not clogged though because I can extrude and withdraw the filament. I even put the small amount of matchbox filament I had left back in and it printed like normal.
Is the cheaper filament the problem or do i need to adjust heat?
Also I do not know how to change the temperature on the UP Mini, it only has preset temperatures for ABS and PLA.
How big are the parts you’re trying to make? If there are large parts is directly related to low temperature.
But if not, I wouldn’t dismiss that option either. Try to find the way to increase a little (5º C) the nozzle temperature and give us a feedback.
Also, once I bought an awful red PLA that behaved like that, a cheap one bought on eBay. Do you have more material to try the same gcode with another filament?
1) Make sure your filament diameter is what you have keyed in your slicing software. For instance, if you have keyed in 1.75mm on Cura, verify if your filament dia is actually 1.75mm. Some cheap quality filaments will be slightly thinner or thicker. In this case, you might have to adjust the actual diameter in your software.
2) Is the filament brittle? Try holding the filament with two hands with say 50-70mm distance between two fingers and try flexing the filament. If it is too brittle, the filament will snap immediately. A good filament should have a certain amount of flexibility to it.
3) Try this method. Lift your extruder to 50-60mm from bed, heat the hotend between 190-230 degrees increment by 5 to 10 degrees each time, and try extruding the filament. See which temperature best suits your filament type.
I agree with the partial clog. It happened to me also. The extruder was making clicking sounds every so often, and it got to a point when it refused to extrude anything in the middle of one of my prints (print failure!). The cause were debris on my spool, which I remedied by using a filament filter. I never had a problem ever since. Btw, I print at 200 degrees Celsius.
Sometimes cheaper filament will have varying size. The nominal size is 1.75mm or 3mm, but I’ve seen cheap filament with bulges up to twice the nominal size. Higher quality filament makers will run the filament through a QA process to avoid huge size problems. I don’t know for sure if that’s your problem, but that would be my guess from your description. If you have calipers (which I highly recommend), you can check the filament size. If the size varies, you could try cutting out the oversized part, but there’s always the chance you’ll run into another and fail a print later on. Good luck!
With filament like anything else in life, you get what you pay for. I know it is nice to save some money, but cheaper costs usually mean less quality control. Try to plan out when you buy filament so you do not run out. Using this type of cheap filament will do your machine more harm and cost you so much more on maintenance and parts costs. The extruder is trying to pull a non uniform material through a precision cut hole in the nozzle. If you keep using the material that is non-uniform it will wear the hole out and the filament will start swinging side to side as it comes out the worn hole making bad prints and making you have to change the nozzle.
Put the cheap filament on your bookshelf and label it a learning experience. when ever possible DO NOT change the manufactures setting unless you have the owners manual and another person there to teach you how to do it. “Remember don’t fix it if it is not broken”.
That clicking is the teeth on the drive wheel slipping on the sides of the filament. this is not good on the drive wheel and the material scraped off of the filament will settle down around the bottom of the wheel housing and can cause future problems. use a short burst of air ( from a Can) to clean the whole housing before proceeding with your print.
You said that you run at 200 C. Is this what the manufacture recommends? Each spool of filament as the recommended use specifications on the label. Running at a non recommended heat range can hurt you machine (wear out heaters, nozzles and feed tubes) this also will lead to bad or un-usable prints.
Contaminants are the biggest reason not to go with cheap PLA. What happens is that the PLA denatures in the nozzle over time, and then stops flowing. You’re able to retract it because it’s still plastic, but you should try crushing the tip with a pair of plyers–it’ll probably be brittle and crush almost to powder.
Higher temperatures will only make this problem worse. If you can get by with a lower temperature that may do it, but I wouldn’t be too optimistic.
I always print at 193-195ºC for PLA in my Prusa i2, and overtemperature also could clogg you extruder, due a vacuum effect produced by the heat climbing through the filament and making it too viscous, does your extruder’s coldend get warm? I had a pair of cloggs due this issue and a fan on te peek thermal barrier made de deal.
