My situation is very similar. Brand new Taz 4… printed the octopus perfectly then one of my own objects using Cura with Taz input. I was printing black ABS from Lulzbot at 230. Life was beautiful. I came back to print a few days later using HIPS and couldn’t get the filament to feed. It just kept grinding and gouging the filament without pushing any through the extruder. If I popped the hobbed bolts, I could manually push the filament through the extruder. I finally gave up and tried to go back to the ABS. Same thing. Chews up the filament after feeding about 40mm perfectly. I’ve got the bolts tight enough to score the filament. When I open it back up, the filament is gouged. I break off the three inches from the gouge and reinsert, get a little feeding through the extruder and tighten it down. I set the extrude on Pronterface to 80mm and raise the z-axis up 30mm so that I can see what’s going on. When I hit the extrude button, it squirts out perfectly and makes a nice little pile on the bed. After about 40 mm it slows down and stops extruding. When I open back up the filament is gouged again. I’ve done this a number of times with different tensions on the hobbed bolts, but it comes out the same every time.
I then took off the whole nozzle assembly and replaced with my dually. Hooked up one extruder and it ran perfectly and didn’t stop. I then put the original single extruder back on and it does the same… 40mm then nada. Please help me.
Remove your nozzle and either soak it in acetone or replace it. Perhaps swap it with the one that works.
Check your extrusion steps/mm.
Slow your extrusion rate down to half of what it is now.
Ensure your heater block is not loose
ok… finally figured it out. Maybe this will help others since it’s more simple than you’d think.
After reading all these similar responses, the Taz guys made a great list of possibilities that made a lot of sense. I figured that the pressure was building up and the heater couldn’t keep up with the extrusion. I went into the Pronterface and found that it was assuming an extruder with a 0.5mm opening instead of the 0.35mm that’s on the Taz 4. Then I remembered that I hadn’t messed with this earlier when I got the good prints. What I did do was print directly from the SD card with the computer unplugged from the printer. I think there are too many conflicting commands coming from multiple sources when the Pronterface is active even when trying to print directly from the SD card.
I unplugged the computer from the printer and everything is working smooth as silk running directly from the SD card. I just wish this didn’t take over a week for me to figure out. On the bright side, I can adjust the z-stop and level this sucker in about three minutes now.
Hi Ive just brought a second had Taz 4 that’s been up graded to a Taz 5.
The first try was from a file the supplied SD card the filament printed for a few seconds the stopped, on inspection the filament was found to be gouged as you’d discribed in your post.
1/ Do I use Cura to reset the pronterface value?
2/ If I reset as you’ve discribed the pronterface setting With the PC software will the SD card files work correctly also?
Great fuel for any advice as this is totally new to me.
Animal _lector