I started having heat creep issues trying to print and water cooling was my last ditch effort to get over the problem and maybe…just maybe…have it work better than ever.
Conclusion, it worked awesome! First successful dual print in years. The mounting bar stabilized around 45degC. I melted two cold packs in the process (5 hours). This was a prototype, an adapted CPU water cooling reservoir, pump and radiator will work just fine.
Dual extrusion never worked well in the first place but otherwise I’ve had great luck with the Replicator 2X using one extruder at a time especially after all the after-market upgrades from bottleworks, etc.
I’ve learned a ton about the process variables related to the extrusion head in the last few weeks and I feel like the constraints relating to the hot-end, thermal barrier, mounting bar and heatsin/fans is too tight. When heat escapes up the thermal barrier and isn’t wisked away by the heat-sinks fast enough then all sorts of issues occur.
- The filament get’s soft. With the tensioners from raffle.ch that provide a lot of force it can flatten the filament which then jams trying to fit into the thermal barrier. (Usually only occurs when the extruder head is idle too long while the other head is extruding)
- The filament melts and the resistance through the barrier tube greatly increases. This causes the guh-guh-guh sound as the stepper gear skips.
- Filament actually melts as far up as the stepper gear. yeah extreme for sure, but when running both heads and one with HIP which is at 250degC this can happen on the Rep 2X more-so than single head extruders.
- Stepper motor heat can also contribute as they can get 65degC typical, causing the heat sinks to struggle. Gluing heat sinks to the steppers didn’t help a bit.
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Doesnt seem like anyone is interested, but for the sake of history the water cooling is working great! I ran a 6 hour print and mounting bar stayed at a cool 43degC with dual extrusion running - no more heat creep. New water cooling unit is quiet and very smooth!
Word to the wise, if you do this you need to wire the pump into the Makerbot power supply. The fluid is somewhat conductive and enough to throw off the Thermocouples on the hot-ends. I was getting readings of 90degC on cool extruders! Occured as soon as I plugged in my Koolance unit to a second PS but even when it was off. The two power supplies formed a floating ground loop and TC unstability through the coolant, heat-sinks, mounting bar, heat-break to TCs.
I’ve suddenly become interested since my Makerbot Replicator dual has been diagnosed with heat creep…probably why I stopped using it for a while, couldn’t do a fill print without filament jamming. It’s gotten so bad that every 30 minutes it needs to be babysat and paused, filament pulled and pushed back in…then unpaused. I just didn’t realise that this was a a common issue until now. What equipment did you end up using and 10 months later how has it been as reliable as when you first assembled it?
Hi marvins_dad,
This was all a long road of failures that seemed to converge at once. I got it together and working great and then the wiring failed for the second time after doing a repair. This time I replaced the whole cable set with fresh cables from Makerbot. It is working better than ever now though.
The water cooling is definitely doing its job and if you can I would recommend it but it’s probably overkill. You might get away with just better heat sinking and fans though too. One way or another though the wiggle room on heat creap is small and always was with Replicators. All process variables that are in play during printing make it sensitive to heat leakage from motors or hot ends, bad fan efficiency and probably ambient heat and humidity too. Anyway you can widen that process variable space will work…water cooling just works so well that heat leakage cant compare.
I use a Koolance EXOS unit that has the fan, liquid resevoir and pump integrated with 3 thermocouple sensors as well. Again, overkill, probably the smallest CPU cooling unit is going to work fine. My reservoir is about the size of a pop can, so you dont need much. I run the thing at 50% output so again any small pump will do.
The cooling radiator on the print head is going to be the tricky part. For prototype I just bent some copper pipe into shape and glued into some heat sinks using adhesive heat sink glue. It’s like cpu thermal paste but it’s glue. You might find some CPU water cooled modules that you can use, like two 40mm square ones. The other option is a piece of aluminum block, build a casting box around once face of it, fill with adhesive glue with the copper pipe embedded inside. Wait to dry and this would probably work well. I cut a CNC one myself but was quite a job to get right. If you have a better CNC machine you would have better luck.
Let me know how you make out. If you want to talk by phone or something PM me.
Thanks for the info. Now I can see what you describe in the photos. I had wondered if you were lucky enough to find heat sinks with the water cooling pipes integrated that fit…but see you customized that. I wish that they had a throat that could be machined to allow a continuous liquid flow through the throat itself…but there might not be enough room in the block itself…then having to plumb the ends might be to wide anyway. I noticed how lame the fans were on my rig, so that will probably be my first venture…getting more powerful fans over the heatsink, while I research liquid cooling off the shelf options. Thanks again! Antoine
hi,
i am trying the jamming problem whit my replicator 2x and i end up on your post.
i got inspired and i made a fast trying of a water cooled system like yours
i wil do some more testing in the coming days to see if it works well
i notise wile i was filming my print seem to still have some problem
did you make it to transform the replicator 2x in too a reliable printer?
