{"id":1790,"date":"2014-05-06T19:40:41","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T01:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/haveblue.org\/?p=1790"},"modified":"2014-05-06T19:40:41","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T01:40:41","slug":"support-extruder-reassembly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/?p=1790","title":{"rendered":"Support extruder reassembly"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tAfter discovering the semi-blockage<\/a> in the support extruder, I carefully drilled it out with an appropriately sized drill bit and followed up with several pipe cleaners loaded with Mothers Mag & Aluminum Polish<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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I then carefully cleaned the extruder tube, and pressed on the last spare inlet buffer I have (made from Vespel<\/a>, again by John<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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I carefully slid the heater coil back over the extruder (and tried to twist it as much as I could in order to keep it as tight as possible on the tube), re-attached the stud for the solenoid paddle, and re-attached the thermocouple probe.<\/p>\n

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Then I wrapped the woven fiberglass insulation back around the assembly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The original foil was unusable, so I tried using plain old ‘heavy duty’ aluminum foil from the grocery store.\u00a0 It wasn’t as thick, so I doubled it up and did my best to wrap it as tightly as I could (using pieces of 3M high-temperature flue tape<\/a> to hold it all in place).<\/p>\n

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The next step was to re-insert the pins for the heater and thermocouple back into the circular connector (I had pulled the pins out in order to more easily re-attach the heater and thermocouple to the extruder tube).\u00a0 Note that the correct insertion\/removal tool is the Amphenol M81969\/14-01<\/a> – it took me several orders from Mouser to finally figure out the right size.<\/p>\n

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I then used a few zip-ties to neaten up all the wires.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Everything got reassembled back into the housing.<\/p>\n

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Re-attach the motor drive blocks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After putting the head back in the printer, I ran a few feet of support filament though the extruder to flush it out.\u00a0 Things were looking good…\u00a0 …until I attached the nozzle and tried running more filament through it.\u00a0 Just as before I started the extruder teardown, it jammed, kinking the filament off to the side between the drive wheels and inlet buffer.\u00a0 Seeing that the buffer was also now cracked, I said a few choice words and called it quits for the day.<\/p>\n

Upon reflection, I figured that the extruder probably wasn’t the issue in the first place (assuming that I had done the rebuild correctly) and that the motor drive block or the nozzle was the culprit.\u00a0 I removed the motor drive blocks and set the head in the machine so that I could power it up and try feeding the filament through by hand.\u00a0 I was able to push the ABS filament through pretty easily, but the support filament I could barely budge.\u00a0 So I removed the support nozzle and put the model nozzle on the support extruder.\u00a0 Wonder of wonders, I was able to feed through the filament just as easily – the nozzle must be the problem!\u00a0 I reinstalled the motor drive blocks and sure enough, the support drive was able to feed support filament through the support extruder and model nozzle with no jamming whatsoever.<\/p>\n

I’ll try clearing out the support nozzle with a 0.011″ drill bit (even though I know I’ve done so once already), and I believe I have a spare T12 support nozzle floating around in case that doesn’t work.\u00a0 At least I’ve finally found the core issue and I’ll hopefully have the machine fully functional in only a week or two.\u00a0 [insert something about ‘famous last words’]\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After discovering the semi-blockage in the support extruder, I carefully drilled it out with an appropriately sized drill bit and followed up with several pipe cleaners loaded with Mothers Mag & Aluminum Polish. I then carefully cleaned the extruder tube, and pressed on the last spare inlet buffer I have (made from Vespel, again by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haveblue.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}