Hi all, I am trying to use Bronze-fill on my Ultimaker2.
What ever I do (starting from the suggested setting from @ColorFabb) the nozzle gets jammed.
Changing the material to PLA or ABS after trying Bronze-fill, to get my normal projects done, is always a huge job to get the nozzle clean.
Does anyone have an idea what I should do?
I read that some people have nice experiences with Bronze-fill. What am I doing wrong?
Right now I am thinking about not using Bronze-fill on the UM2.
I have bought the 3mm Bronze-fill from Colorfabb.
Regards
Alfred
3 Likes
Bronzefill is not an easy material to print with, it takes a lot of testing to get it just right, but it’s worth it.
For small prints, we’ve got some good results with the following settings:
MaterialColorfabb BronzefillLayer height0.2mmShell Thickness0.8mmBottom/top thickness0.8mmFill density100%Print speed50mm/sSupport typeNonePlatform adhesionNoneTemperature205ºPlate temperature60ºRetraction lenght4.5mmRetraction speed35 mm/sTravel speed150 mms/sCool head liftDeactivatedCombingEnabledMinimum travel distance1.5mmSolid infill bottomEnabledSolid infill topEnabledFlow rate106%
Hi Alfred;
one of the things you might also want to check out is the feeder you are using. bronzefill is quite stiff and hard to print with a default feeder.
MdD3D
4
Make sure your nozzle is clean before you start, after that you must lower the temperature off the filament with 10degrees. And then you try something, just a test file. When you see nothing comes out, you push from the back the filament in to the nozzle, normaly then you push all the stuff that is stuck out of your nozzle.
It’s possible it’s burned and it will smell, but it should work.
Make sure it’s not the feeder that’s the problem rather than the nozzle being blocked. My experience with bronzeFill has been that it’s less likely to block the nozzle than standard PLA, not the other way round.
If for any reason the feeder has not been pushing the filament through efficiently and has been grinding the bronzeFill then there will be a lot of bronze particles “coating” the metal hub of the feeder which creates problems afterwards for either bronzeFill or PLA. These bronze particles prevent the hub from gripping the filament correctly and hence pushing it efficiently into the nozzle.
Cleaning out the feeder periodically is a piece of regular maintenance that I would recommend regardless of what materials you’ve been using. Unfortunately the feeder on the UM2 is not the best of designs, hence why it’s the most re-designed part for it on YouMagine.
Hope that may help.
Steve - Birmingham Hub
1 Like
Thanks.
did you use the standard feeder, or something advanced?
I should have said in my post that I’m still using the standard feeder and printing successfully with bronzeFill, but when I get extrusion problems now it tends to be the first place I look for a possible solution.
Both the standard feeder, and |Robert|'s feeder. With the latter it worked vastly better.
gr5org
10
Did you post this on the Ultimaker forums? There are quite a few people who print with bronzefill no problem there. I love the idea from Steve here that it might be clogging the knurled wheel in the feeder. Compressed air usually helps (or blow hard). Maybe it’s time to print out that IRobertI feeder. My first thought though was that if you are switching between ABS and PLA regularly you are bound to have problems. ABS needs things hotter and the teflon isolator tends to deform which ABS doesn’t seem to mind as much and then you switch to PLA and you have a deformed isolator which causes extra friction (a few pounds!) and you have some bits of ABS in the nozzle slowly caramelizing over the next few hours.
I do a “cold pull” aka “atomic pull” after EVERY filament change to get every last microgram of the old filament out. This means that whenever the printer finishes a print, if I suspect I might have to change filament I immediately set the nozzle temp to 90 for PLA (or 130 for ABS) and shove the filament back into the nozzle while the nozzle is still hot then come back later when the bed is cool and pull the filament out. I still have the original feeder also and this would be easier with the IRobertI feeder.
1 Like
gr5org
11
Many thanks for your input.
Will try this. Sounds quite logical.
Thanks
Alfred
Cleaning is always a good idea, but especially after printer filaments that have particles in them.
You have to think about the fact that these materials (at least the ColorFabb ones: BronzeFill, CopperFill, WoodFill, BambooFill and soon BrassFill) are based on PLA.
When you start to have printing problems and the materials stays inside a heated nozzle for a longer time, the PLA will start to move out from between the particles (metal or wood) and this will lead to a clump of particles which can be hard to clean.
But if you don’t clean your nozzle completely, these particle-clumps can lead to random blockage later on as one of them will come free and try to come out through the nozzle.
At ColorFabb they print these materials mostly with regular feeders on their Ultimaker 2’s.
It works quite well once you have the settings dialed in.
Also keep in mind that printing to slow can cause troubles as well.
Most temperature settings are designed for the regular speeds (around 50mm/s mostly) and printing really slow may cause additional heat to travel up trough your hot-end and will cause the filament to start melting (and thus expanding) higher up in the nozzle.
This will then lead to additional friction inside the hotend.
If you are still having problems, just send ColorFabb a quick email to support@colorfabb.com.
They’ll be happy to help.
wow man you are everywhere 
gr5org
16
lol. You too! It’s impressive how many people on the UM2 forums are also here.
If you click on the /ColorFabb tag here you’ll enter the ColorFabb sub community. There’s a couple of Bronzefill posts there as well. That might also be of help. Cheers
I never had problem with bronzefill. It’s all about speed and temperature. You must know more about material. At the first clean your nozzle, use aceton, water, burn nozzle, hot wire. Try again if is not blocked. If not, see official website which temperature is correct to use and test it with printer. Jammed nozzle means bad speed with bad temperature or material flow. Ultimaker is powerfull printer and you are able to change almost everything during print. Try it.
Thanks wonderdax,
I did all of this already and now the printer is running fine.
Ciao
Alfred
