PLA high print temps and other problems

Hi,
I bought a rep rap pro Huxley kit a couple of months ago and have been very happy whit it i have printed off alot of things

however i seem to have a huge problem with oozing i have searched the forums and come up with very little. i tend to have to print PLA at 230-240 it will tend to print fine though sometimes after a few layers (1cm or so) i might have to increase the temperature of the hot-end, as the puller for the filament starts to skip once i increase the temperature it is fine.


has anyone experienced similar problems?

many thanks

Tom

That is a very high temp to be printing PLA. I generally print around 180C. Do you mean ABS?

I had similar issues due to:
1. spool holder causing too much friction and not feeding the machine properly.
2. filament slipping because the thick idler wasn't tide enough or its starting to break apart.

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Cheers,
Franklin Dattein

Hi thanks for the responses, its definitely PLA,

the spool holder turns nicly and i have been making sure that there is slack in it

what do you mean but starting to break apart and the think idler? i have tired adjusting the tensions on the idler between not gripping at all and it grinding the filament away. but i cant seem to extruder at much lower temperatures.

any other ideas?

By that I meant to say that my thick idler isn't that great and starts bending every second month, until it breaks.

Remove the idler and feed filament manually with the right temperature (about 185C). It should be easy to push filament through the extruder.
If you can feed easily, your problem is either the feeding mechanism or bad filament quality.
If you can't, the problem is likely to be a clogged extruder or your thermistor is reporting temperature wrongly.
Once I stumbled upon a video on Youtube showing how to cleanup the extruder, it shouldn't be difficult to find that out.

Anyways, I normally don't have to disassemble the extruder to unclog it, like in the video. I set the temperature to 240C and I use an thin allen key to push the clogged plastic.

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Cheers,
Franklin Dattein

230-240 will cause PLA to harden in your hotend and block it up more so I hear!