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Jul 2017
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Jul 2017
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kentcaldwell
Jul '17

Hi all,

My Flashforge Creator Pro started jamming up on me recently during longer prints. I went through several cycles of opening up the motor / extruder, cleaning the assembly, reassembling, and then having the same problem. Filament would extrude fine for a while, and then just seem to clog up for no reason.

My nozzles were old, so I replaced them with .4mm stainless steel nozzles and new PTFE tubing. Printer ran fine for a couple of small test prints, but pretty soon I unfortunately had the exact same problem (I have the same issue on BOTH extruders despite having done the upgrades to both extruders.)

I’m thinking now that it could be a couple of things:

1) Thermocouples not reporting accurate temperatures? Maybe the temperatures are lower than what the printer thinks, meaning I’m not heating filament up enough as its being fed = jamming? I replaced my thermocouples over a year ago and printed fine for a very long time.

2) Some tension issue with the feeder gear, where it’s not pushing filament through strongly enough? Not sure about this, because manual force with my hands does not get the filament through after a jam, and I have the same problem with both extruders.

3)Is it worth replacing the thermocouples? Extruder assembly? All metal hot end? I’m just baffled that I printed on this machine amazingly smooth for almost two years, and then out of nowhere both extruders are jamming up despite nozzle / PTFE replacement.

Any insight is much appreciated!

-Kent

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    Jul '17

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    Oct '17
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wirlybird
Jul '17

First is determine where the actual jam happens. Is it down low in the nozzle hot end area or high in the cool part? If it is up high then this could be heat creep.

Always measure and enter the filament diameter.

In general a clog after some time printing could be from printing to fast, trying to extrude to much. Temps off for extrusion rate. Retraction rate is to aggressive.

Also make sure the PTFE tube is the exact correct length and sizes and is not getting pinched.

3 months later
kentcaldwell
Oct '17

Wanted to reactivate this thread, as I’m still troubleshooting my printer with no answers. Trying not to replace an entire extruder assembly / motherboard if I don’t have to.

Has anyone experienced faulty thermocouples that, rather than showing an “error” or N/A on the display, just display wildly erroneous readings? Recently, my right extruder read that it was at 205C, but was not heated at all. Is this likely an error that a thermocouple replacement would fix, or is something potentially faulty on the motherboard of the printer?

I will probably order new thermocouples regardless and give it a shot, as they are cheap (just cumbersome) to replace…

Thanks in advance for any insight,

-Kent