Taz 6 filament jamming up.

Hey yall, Ive been having a problem I’ve attempted to trouble shoot for a few months now (not to much time between work and house work)

When i try to print stuff if it’s a short object its fine but at a certain point around 5mm high almost every time (been printing alot of chibi grims.) the filament feed stops. I’ve tried replacing the hot end, it worked for a bit. Although it doesn’t jam every time so I’m not sure if it was just luck. I’ve also tried cold pulls and running different filament. Any tips that may help me? I at one point did have clicking coming from the extruder stepper haven’t had that in awhile though. Not sure if the stepper is going or if it was clicking due to the filament jamming up.

What brand/type of filament are you using, and also the temperature on the hotend? Is it cutting out a bite mark in the filament when you unload it? Also, what toolhead are you using?

I was using inland pla, i’ve been using polymaker pla with the same result. Its hit or miss sometimes it runs through sometimes it doesnt.

I’ve tried running it between 180-210c same result (haven’t verified temperature with a probe), as i said to this is the second hot end.

i’ve tried different tensions on the idler at first i thought it was to loose, maybe to tight. when i leave it over night and the problem occurs it it takes a good chunk out not feeding anything.

forgot to say im using the stock extruder

PLA is very susceptible to heat-creep. The heat break fan (the one that runs all the time) on the tool head may not be providing enough cooling but it can be supplemented with an additional external fan blowing towards the tool head with good results. After the first layer or two, it is very hard to have too much cooling with PLA.

You mention that the problem occurs more often at 5mm in height but if it is heat-creep, it would be more time-based than height-based (i.e. a 5x5x20mm object should fail at a larger height than a 10x10x20mm object).

Try setting your gap on your thumbscrews to 5mm with filament loaded into the toolhead. It also sounds like heat creep as b-morgan says. Also, after this happens are you making sure to clean any residual filament out of the teeth on the hobbed bolt?
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set to 5mm checking it out now i have to fix some settings on my slicer that may have been causing a small issue to. if i can’t resolve it i’ll most likely print a bracket out and add another small computer fan on the printer. i’ve been running this printer for around a year now just odd that the problem has just randomly started.

so i have another issue thats preventing me from even trying anything. Not sure why this is happening.

While laying down the first layer the layers just curl up on themselves. so its impossible to print anything i even tried old gcodes that have worked. i calibrated the extruder and also pulled the z-height up and down by a half mm each way no success.

i have noticed though that it seems like the filament is extruding to wide when i take my caliper to it, its showing around .75mm i think the layers keep overlapping and thats whats causing it to curl up on it self. first line on the print is printing to a width of 1mm i tried upping the line width in the slicer to .7 it didn’t change anything.

only thing i can think to try at this point is to throw in my old hot end and see what happens.

Can you post a couple pictures showing what the first layer height is looking like? It could be related to your z-offset needing some adjustment.

Hi guys

I’ve had similar issues with jams with PLA (abs works, which is what I’ve begrudgingly switched to in the mean time). I’m wondering if it’s similar to your problem. for me it seems like it’s the filament jamming in the “cold” area of the hot end.

My classroom has two taz 6 printers and both have the same issue with PLA based jams or freezes.

I’m not sure if it’s an issue with heat creep as I re-worked the fan that cools the hot end with a rather powerful blower. It’s enough that I can cool just the cold end with enough air that the hot end can’t keep temperature. I’m still having the issue.

I’m getting to the point where I’m going to switch to a 1.75mm filament on an E3d as PLA is a very important material for our school site (price, safety, smell, availability).

Out of curiosity, how many other lulzbot owners actually print in PLA? Or are most of us moving to PTEG or other alternatives?

EDIT: whoops, I thought this was a current thread, didn’t realize it was for last year!