Looking for anyone with ideas on how to improve how the filament feeds from the spools into the runout sensor to the extruder. With the spool mounted above, some of my filament is breaking during non-printing idle time from the sharp angle and tension, and after printing some 6KGs of filament it's grinded through a good chunk of the plastic housing for sensor. I know I can print more shells for this(Can you provide an STL for that Adeel?), but I'd rather solve the problem.
Obvious simple idea is to just run filament out of a drybox or similar instead that's level with the sensors, but that will take up a lot of additional space I don't really have.
Check out thingiverse, Ender 3 is similar
I wondered if the spool holders can be turned upside down so they don't "stick out" to the top but point downwards. Maybe bigger spools won't fit anymore...?
Straight inline feed is best, a bearing roller on the desk. Way too much space required for my setup. Lots of curved feed arrangements on Thingiverse. To help this method put a vegetable oiler in-line to lube the filament. This helps with PLA.
Will look into an improvement here if I get the time, but an another idea to consider would be a coupling/ptfe tubing combination before the filament inters the sensor. It could be mounted to the same holes the sensor mounts to but with longer bolts.
I took a different approach by thinkIng: “if tension on the filament is too high, it’s because the spool isn’t turning smoothly”.
So I solved that problem by mounting a number of cheap rollerblade bearings on the spool holders, which makes there is no tension at all on the filament.
you can see on the picture below how I used the bearings and how the filament has no tension.
i hope my trick can help you too.
regards,
peter
Having some other extruder related issues now, I've destroyed two of the PTFE pneumatic couplers coming out of the extruder. Not sure if I've maybe got a setting wrong, or it's just general wear and tear, since I've printed some 9kg of filament between the first two couplers. Bad quality low rez photos because my phone is being problematic, but the 'throat' basically ripped out and there are no teeth left in the coupler for the tube to be grasped with. The same thing happened with the first one, but this time I thought it would be okay since I installed clips to keep it from moving around. Cura speed related settings attached.
The couplers should have lasted a lot longer than 9KG, issue is likely due to too much pressure in the melt zone, I'd recommend increasing temperature and decreasing the filament flow rate, this should reduce the pressure and keep the print quality high.
I am Moving the extruder to the top of the gantry to reduce the load on the z axiswhich has caused the z axis to droop on the one side on taller prints with de. I also think this could help with feeding filament through the sensor. I will follow up with results
So I moved the extruder to the top gantry and will not be using the spool holders as the shelf this printer is going into is too short for the printer + 1kg spools. everything is working well and the weight on the z axis is reduced. Looks wonky but this table setup is temp until it goes on the rack with other printers.
Looks wonky but printer feels more compact and is ready for the rack with my other printers.
I've just sawn up a paint roller and used the end caps. It seems to have solved the problem for about £2