I hear ya. The thing is, when the machine is working it makes Really Nice Parts. The manager/ person with the money buys it and then tasks the next person down the line with keeping it up. It’s a DIVA wrt time and effort and cleaning. I really thought I had been doing a good job of cleaning it…
Another part of the problem is that the system is so new that the support wasn’t there/ isn’t there. We should have had a once-per-year tune-up in our maintenance agreement (the company doing this for us has just implemented it). We also should have had more training on How exactly to clean it. There were very different interpretations of how to wipe the heads: with pressure, without; scrubbing vs single direction; before and after vs just every other run. Even what type of alcohol to use was unclear. We used 70% until just recently, the tech said it should be 90%.
It’s fun doing something that hasn’t been thoroughly figured-out yet… mostly. -Juliana
We had the same decision to make. We were keen for multi materials but when we realised the price to purge materials on changeover we realised it wasn’t viable unless doing a sizeable batch of parts. As a design consultancy that doesn’t happen often for us, so in instances when we need a different material we just outsource.
Hi Pavel - I would be happy to get an email or a phone number to see how your tech figured it out. Maybe he saw it slipping. Hm. Well, just knowing that a z-axis motor (which is covered in our service agreement) could be the problem is helpful. Thanks for the PM and for your help! -Juliana
Hi, you can take the heads out, make sure not to loose the small seals on each side, than you can put the heads in isopropanol and also fill the inside with isopropanol, leave it overnight , make sure not to damage the electronics and cover the isopropanol bath so it does not get evaporated over night, than blast with compressed air, if it is not better than you have to go for new heads, I am running an Eden 260 for more than 6 years, good luck
Use pure IPA (isopropyl alcohol). Put it in a syringe (10 ml) and put a 1cm long rubber tubing instead of the needle. Remove the heads and clean them first with IPA (don’t forget to wear nitrile gloves, of course). Be sure to have pure IPA and clean (never used: no particles inside). Then, flush the head with the syringe through one of the holes on the head (where material refills the head usually), but don’t forget to close the other one with your finger (wear clean nitrile gloves for that) or you’ll have IPA in your face… Do it as long as the nozzles are clogged (typically 2-3 times).
I took these photos almost a month ago and never posted them. I tried increasing the voltage to the piezoelectric controllers. (They are what control the opening and closing of the little doors that allow or restrict the flow of the uncured material.) The tech had the voltages pretty high and I just increased the model voltage to the max. Then I ran the weight cal test and it asks the printer to print 4 or 5 grams of material. What I got from the support head was close to what was requested. The model head just made a thin layer which I scraped off and weighed. It was just dust really and nowhere near the amount I want. The model head is BAD. Now, I’m just waiting for the $ to get a new one. Once we have a new one, I would like to try cleaning the old one with the methods described here but for now, I’m learning to live without a 3D printer. So sad… sniff, sniff! Thanks for all your help, 3dHubs. -J
