Reprap Prusa Mendel I2 - Nozzle clogged??

Hi Guys,

I'm Mauro from Sydney and I've recently purchased a Reprap pro but I've encountered some problems.

Basically what happen is that the filament comes out from the nozzle really slowly, also the motor bits that push the filament in to the hot end skip on the filament itself, like if there something stuck in to the noozle.

Also if on Pronterface when I try to extrude 50mm of filament from the noozle comes out probably about 10mm maximum.

I'll attach a video to explain better my problem.

I want also to take this occasion to ask you if there is any meetup for newbies or courses to learn how to 3d print.

Thanks in advance for the attention and for any help.

Sorry about the quality of the video, hope can help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVhvPccCzK4

Things to check:

- Current setting too low/high on the stepper driver for the extruder
- Correct temperature set for the filament your trying to extrude
- Correct thermistor selected in the firmware
- Wrong esteps set in firmware
- tension on the filament idler
- Trying to extrude too fast?
- blocked hotend

Try without the filament, see if the motor still make the clicking noise, if so probably the current on the driver needs tuning.

I just finished my Mendel I2 with .5mm nozzle for 1.75mm filament. I printed my calibration cube with perfect success and another practical print in PLA. I then tried ABS and it was a terrible failure, with general inability to extrude the filament and the bed can barely get to 110c target temperature.

So I went back to PLA and tried to eject the ABS with a followup of the PLA fiber at ABS temps until it ran fairly clean. Since then, clogging has been fairly consistent with only short periods of it extruding effectively.

I will disassemble the hot end tonight and see what I will see. My suspicion has been that the very roughed up filament abraided some of the PTFE liner which is then clogging the extruder but I have read of a number of other possible scenarios. Inspection will tell and I will share the results here for the benefit of others.

Gallery of photos of successful and failed prints (due to poor extrusion ) [www.dropbox.com]

If the bottom end of the PTFE has deformed at all, you'll get weird clogging issues as the flow is not smooth.

Note: For changing between ABS and PLA, I find Laywoo-D3 wood filament good as a transition filament. You need at least a 0.4mm nozzle else the wood particles tend to clog it, but since you're using 0.5mm, it should work fine. It extrudes well at ABS and PLA temps, and it's easy to see when it's all cleared out (the plastic stands out against the wood).

Start at ABS temp, Remove ABS and insert Laywoo-D3, extrude till clean, change to PLA temp, remove Laywoo-D3 and insert PLA - Any remaining Laywoo-D3 will extrude easily. You can also do the reverse.

Definitely avoids little pieces of ABS not melting and clogging things.