Extruder Smoking Problem

I recently built a Prusa and have got everything working except for the extruder at this point.

I have a Wade's geared extruder and a hotend made from a kit bought at mixshop. It consists of a threaded tube wrapped in nicrom wire. The problem I am having is that when heated up to 190 C with PLA in it, it seams to produce a great deal of smoke.

Is this normal when working with PLA?

As far as I can tell it is the filament causing the smoke and not some other part of the extruder because it doesn't occur without the plastic.

No that's not normal, I run PLA at 175 although I have run it at 200 and don't get any smoke

---

__________________________________________________________________________
Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

Thanks. I didn't think It was, so I stopped running it after noticing the problem. I will take apart the hot end and see what may be causing the smoke tomorrow.

The smoke means that your nozzle is a lot hotter than you think. Make sure that your thermistor is taped well on the hot end and insulated with kapton tape. Also, make sure that you have the correct temperature table for your thermistor loaded in the firmware. I don't think you need to take your hot end apart.

Thank you for your help. You were right, the temperature table was wrong. I also removed the heat shrink from the nicrome wire and thermistor and replaced them with kapton tape just in case this is what was burning as well. Hope to be printing by this evening now.