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Feb 2019

J

sorry for being confusing. I am Pavel.

Shawn is our tech that figured this out for us. And I honestly have no idea how he did it. I can get his email if it is easier than phone for you.

but ultimately, he opened up the machine and was watching the z axis rod rotate. that i do know

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

23 days later

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).

Good luck!

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
DSC09700.JPG DSC09697.JPG

2 months later

Hi, I am a new user here and I was wondering if you had success with any of the cleaning methods in this thread? We are having the exact same problem and are also waiting on the $ to buy a new one as well so I thought I’d ask. We are on our first set of heads still so we can’t take one out and send it out to try to get it cleaned or we’d be leaving the printer idle too long.

Thanks and I look forward to your response! -EB

Hi EB. Well, I’m not sure this is going to be the standard answer, but… a few weeks after I posted this, my boss got on the phone with our 3D printer support/ reseller company - the people between Stratasys and us. I don’t recall the phone call being particularly loud or anything but a few weeks later, a new head arrived and we didn’t pay for it…! A few weeks after that, I was at a training event with our support people and I told them that I had wanted to say thank you but I didn’t want to get into a mess or overstep my station. They said that it didn’t come from them, and it would have come from Stratasys?!?! I don’t know that this will ever happen again but you could try. I think they (both groups) sold the Durus material without stressing that it needs an intense (and different than Vero) cleaning regime. When we got the new one, I wanted a proper tech to show me how to install it and when he did, he took the old one back! Too bad - we had plans for trying to clean it.

Unfortunately, as soon as it was clearly not working well, it just got worse and worse. I tried like crazy to clean it with alcohol and Print Head Wizard but it just kept getting more and more clogged. I did do the thing where you jack up the power to the piezo-electric gates. They were at their max and just about nothing was coming out. We sold our old Durus material on eBay and are promising ourselves not to buy/ use any more. Vero is not bad stuff. A little more brittle but at least it works!!

Good luck getting your heads clean! Let us all know if you figure out a way around replacing them. -Juliana

Hi Juliana,

In case you don’t know :

The brittleness of the Rigur (RGD450) is halfway between the Durus and the Vero white, black, grey and clear but if you use the Vero blue which is cheaper than the other Vero colors for some reason, it’s brittleness is between the Rigur and the other Vero colors while slightly less rigid.

If you tune your UV lamp at the lowest intensity that will not give you a sticky top surface after printing, your parts will also be less brittle than if the intensity is higher.

I hope this will help you…