first jam

Last night I got my first jam. The extruder was making some crazy noises, so I thought something fell into the gears or a gear broke, so I took the extruder apart. Found no issues, so I took the hotend apart. No issues there either. Then I realized that the problem was a thick blob on the filament, that would not fit through the bowden cable.

Next time this happens, the filament will be the first thing I check, but I was wondering what steps you guys take to diagnose a jam before spending hours taking the whole machine apart.

My steps are unload the filament which usually shows if the filament was too big and got stuck. I then remove the bowden tube form the carriage and push a piece of filament in the hotend while hot and remove it quickly to see if it has dirt on it. If it does I repeat it until there is no more dirt. After that you have to start looking for mechanical failures like the gears etc.

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So I finally ran out of my ebay black pla, and loaded up some beautiful red from a highly recommended seller from the general forum. The filament is 2.8mm, same as my black one was. But when I was loading the filament, about 100mm from the head the extruder started making crazy noises and the filament stopped I though maybe it was because the bowden cable was in a funny position with no filament in there, so I helped it along by pushing on the filament by hand. I finally got it to the head, started a test print, and again crazy noises from the extruder and not much plastic extruded.

I removed the filament, thought my extruder was toast becaue the filament was 2.8mm all the way, but then loaded some cheapo ebay pla from the same seller as the black one, and it is printing beautifully.

Is it that certain filaments are too stiff for bowden, or maybe the red one has some colorant that makes it less slippery?

Somewhat related, where do you guys buy your filament for the tantillus?

I would try tightening down the idler (or loosen it). Also it is possible a thread of the black filament was in the tube and caused the red to jam in the tube. It happens when you unload the filament and it gets stretched thin coming out of the hotend.

I mostly use Repraper (reprapwalmart) filament from China and some Ultimachine filament as well.

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I tried tightening and loosening the idler, that didn't help, so I guess it must have been a piece of stretched filament in the bowden. I'll give the red one a try again, it does look really nice with a very consistent diameter.

Wow, those reprap walmart prices are incredible! That's half of what I pay for my PLA. Is shipping time reasonable?

They ship Fedex so once the order leaves it only takes a few days. If you buy in quantity it is really cheap because you save so much in shipping.

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Tantillus.org	Mini Printable Lathe	How NOT to install a Pololu driver

Actually the issue wasn't leftover plastic in the cable. I started getting the same sticking with the blue filament, too, so I took the bowden cable out for cleaning, found no issues.

Then I set the printing temperature higher to 200F and now everything is nice and smooth. Another day, another lesson learned...