I am having a major issue with my FlashForge Creator Pro that is causing me to no longer be able to use it. First off, I started a print and noticed that the filament was getting thinner and thicker, as in, at some points during the printing of the raft, it would get thin for a second, and then go back to thick, and it would do this every 5-10 seconds or so. This seemed to happen less frequently relatively soon, and was completely gone by the time that raft was half way done. However, then later, the filament would get thinner again and then stop extruding completely. The print head would keep going, printing just air. I tried the same print again and it went a few layers longer until it did the same exact thing.
Why is this happening? How can I fix it? Help is much appreciated, as this is urgent!
If you know how to uninstall the stepper motor, and disassemble extruder assembly, you can clean the extruder gear which I think is the issue here. Check youtube, there are a lot of videos on cleaning extruder gear.
Take a long chunk of the filament and measure its diameter with calipers. See how consistent the size is. May not be the problem but better to eliminate that.
What type of filament? What speeds, temps etc. would be helpful.
Could be such a simple thing as too low extrusion temperature. It happens to me when I switch from PLA to TPU and forget to raise the temperature a bit. It will start printing fine but then clog after 5-10 minutes. What temperature are you using?
I have had a similar problem on my machine the problem was not a jamming issue. You made no mention on clicking noises during the print. Based on this I would assume you do not have a jam. It took me a while to figure it out I even thought it was the filament. My problem was a worn worm gear, the gear that grips the filament with its teeth. How I came about to troubleshoot it was the following; First I notice that the filament and spool was not moving. Second while changing filament the filament would not come out using the stepper motor I would either have to assist it or use the MK8 idler spring. Third if you took the steps to clean out the extruder gear like 3dprintwiz said and the above is still happening. The gear that attaches onto the stepper motor shaft needs to be replaced. I replaced my aluminum one with a stainless steel one an has been fine for months…
It could be the cables going to the print head. They get a lot of flexion during printing and after prolonged use could break and cause the stepper motor to not always turn as it should. As far as I know, there’s no feedback mechanism to the motherboard to tell it that the motor is turning or not, so the printer would likely go about its merry way trying to print with nothing coming out. I was watching mine print this past weekend and saw the huge amount of movement those cables receive and was just thinking to myself: “I wonder how long it’s going to be before I have to replace those cables?”
That would also explain your report of an initial thinning, followed by a thick extrusion. When cables break, they generally go intermittent for a bit before completely ceasing to function – much like the X-endstop cable on mine that I had to replace just last month.
If you have an ohm meter handy, you could turn the printer on its side, open the electronics bay, pull the motor connectors off on both ends, and ohm-out the connections between the extruder motor and the motherboard (just be sure to turn off and unplug the printer first!). And if all four wires read OK, try wiggling the cable a bit and see if it affects it. My bet is that one or more of the wires is bad.
