extruder green gears

I have a fairly new Taz6 and the extruder gears seem to be wearing faster than I would expect. I am getting green dust all over and expecially in the small extruder gear, it’s turning white.

I was wondering if I could re-print those gears in a nylon such as taulman alloy 910 and replace them or should they be a stiffer material such as the ABS they use or PETG?

I think the nylon would just wear much better.

Thanks.

-James

I believe I have seen postings of others who have done that. I have myself printed out a whole body in Poly-carbonate that I still am using.

Gotcha. I don’t want to print with a material that isn’t food contact safe since we use ours to also make custom cookie cutters for my wife. All I have used in my lulzbot is pla and petg and I have read that Taulman alloy 910 is also food contact safe so it would be a good filament for me to use.

It sounds like what you are seeing here is the green gears just getting worn in, not worn out. We usually see this with new printers due to the gears being brand new, so after a few prints the flaking should stop. If you want to, you can definitely use another filament for the gear. My personal recommendation would be the Alloy 910 if you are set on a nylon (nice and durable, just be sure to print on a high infill), but I also like the Lulzbot Green to keep the aesthetic.

I actually just received a spool of the Alloy 910 filament yesterday so after a few test/calibration prints with it to get it dialed in maybe I’ll make the gears with that.

I also need to source some of the nuts that are used in some of the parts as I would like to do a little customizing of my printer. Different color fan ducts that cool the filament, etc. I’ll be using PETG for those parts as I really like printing with PETG.