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Hello XYZ owners.

I ran into an issue lately and it took me a little bit to figure this out. There is no help online so I thought I’d pass some of it along here. I was getting an error with the printer reporting there was a filament jam when there really wasn’t. It would happen randomly and with any filament. But it was so random it was hard to determine if it was code error in the model, cartridge, filament (open source), etc.

I have a duo and have removed one of the nozzles to convert it to a single head unit. After thinking about the logic (how it determines there is a jam, which by the way XYZ support is no help) I decided to look at the control board on the head unit. Here I found an IR receiver and transmitter and then looked further to see the black/white pattern on the idle wheels next to the stepper wheels. This wheel tells the CPU filament is moving freely. I removed the idle wheels and noticed the back of the aluminum wheel gouged from lots of use and resulted in the wheel freezing time to time with heat. I swapped the wheels and it works beautifully. Then I wet sanded the back of the bad wheel to remove the grooves and it’s back to normal.

So if you have an XYZ davinci and get a jammed filament condition and you know it’s not true, take a look at the idler wheel movement.

Thanks

-Alex

3 Likes
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Mine doesn’t jam yet, but there is squeaking coming from that exact area. It was making noise before I changed it to a J-head. The idler wheel is exposed now, and I can check that rather easily.

Thanks

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I get a jam. But I know it is jammed, why wheels are to close and it literally grinds the filament, can the wheels be moved further away?

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On the XYZ it should be spring loaded. Almost all extruders I’ve seen are spring tensioned in some way.

If not there should be some kind of adjustment.

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I have a DaVinci jr and I used to have a problem where the filament jammed in the extruder.l (the jr had a Bowden extruder.) I fixed it by running the auto calibration don’t know if this will help you

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I didn’t think about the Jrs. Should have pre-faced with that. If they have Bowden extruder set ups then they are different from the original da vincis. With the standard da vinci printers you get a rotational moment acting perpendicular to the idler wheel axis. Poor design as it has resulted in a gouge in the wheel from the post it rests against. But thanks for the info.

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Yea as mentioned these are spring loaded. Maybe the spring just happens to be a higher k value than mine? Never had that issue of chewing up the filament with the da vinci printer. With Airwolf I had an issue with the extruder being too cold or the federate was too fast for the nozzle size. Are you using the XYZware?

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I just made the switch to repetier this weekend I no longer have those issues. The “Service” is garbage the “Warrentee” is a joke and none existent after 180 days. It’s sad they make a really great printer. Enclosed case almost professional looking. The repetier software is night and a day a week apart from xyz crap ware. The online community is what drives these machines and sadly xyz tries to burn us every chance they get all because we make their product work better.

1 Like
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1.0 or 2.0?

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I have a 1.0 the 2.0 is supported by the .92 repetier firmware. Jr and pro and A1.0 I think. Google it. The only risk is never being able to go back to xyz ware. Another helpful tip with I’ve found is soak a small sponge in olive wrap the sponge around the guide tube and filament hold it on with a wooden clothes pin. Works awesome for pla to stop the binding and has the same effect for abs. Doesn’t seem to effect layer bonding or colour saturation. The other nice thing about repetier is the optical sensor can be turned off to allow translucent filaments to be used.