This is frustrating me… Seems nearly every time I print with PLA, I get jams. Seems to occur after an hour or so. I’m using PolyMaker PLA at the moment. Oddly, I did a recent hospital batch of facemasks (charity), which printed properly for all 30 (using the fast settings), but those were under an hour each. The moment I started a day-long run, it jammed after an hour (using the fine detail settings).
The heatsink fan is on at all times, so theoretically, the heatsink should not allow the PLA to engage in “heat creep”… but it does. What’s everyone else doing to mitigate this? Is the detail level allowing the heat creep to set in (i.e., fast vs slow)?
I’m about at the point where I’m going to go back to my old hotend.
PLA is notorious for heat creep, not much way around it. You could try using an external fan blowing air on your printer, you have to have good air circulation. I am really surprised that this is happening with the aerostruder print head, that’s my favorite print head and it works so good! What is v3 though? Is it the one in Lulzbot’s store that sold for $250? I don’t see a version number on that. Is the PLA flat matte finish or does it have a gloss finish. I have a tough time with the matte finish PLAs.
The full name is “LulzBot TAZ Dual Extruder v3 Tool Head” - Sold for around $495. It’s difficult to look up as apparently it’s no longer sold, but that’s what my receipt says. Here’s a link to some tips & tricks for it, at least…
Ohh! Well that’s an entirely different animal! I don’t even want to get into it, this subject has been discussed thoroughly in here about PLA and the dual extruder v3. It’s a bad design! You can try blowing a fan, printing a better air duct, getting a better cooling fan etc… some of the stuff helps but doesn’t cure the problem 100%. Do yourself a favor and print PETG instead of PLA for the coved-19 stuff. PETG lasts longer with the disinfectants. You can search the forums about this problem and spend a week or more reading about it, I still recommend the aerostruder / titan extruder if you can get one.
I would, and have had 2 reels of PETG on backorder from lulzbot for a couple of weeks now (already received the poly dissolve from the same order, no communication on what the delay is… I’m assuming it’s a back-order). All I’ve got is PLA and ABS… and I won’t do ABS anymore with the open frame design due to lack of proper ambient heating.
I remember having some initial problems with PLA on this many months ago, I wasn’t able to find anything about similar problems at that time and kinda gave up, waiting for others to come up with some “tips & tricks” for using it with PLA. Guess there’s nothing to be done with a bad design :/…
I’ll give the 80mm fan a try, sounds like a cost-effective solution. Any recommendations on the funnel material? I can do nylon or polycarbonate with my old head.
I’ll probably try nylon to begin with… PC has a MUCH higher melting point, but it appears this funnel needs support material… and I don’t have dissolvable filament that operates at 300+C. Bearing in mind the original fan was a plastic of some sort to begin with…
PETG or ABS should be fine. PLA has a good chance of working as well as long as the fan is working. With PLA, using the “block the fan” method to clear a previous heat creep issue might melt the piece.
That’s a good point about blocking the fan, I’ll avoid PLA for the funnel. If I can’t make nylon work, I’ll fall back to ABS and cross my fingers (have not had good luck with ABS, keep getting layer separation).