I've been embedding the nichrome as well in every heater. However, whenever I worked on the heater, enough of the cement would always flake off to expose the nichrome to mechanical stress. Perhaps you are using a different kind of cement. Mine is quite gritty, but I like it anyway because it does not irritate skin. The bar does get hot. I've been thinking that a bit of fiberglass PCB might sby mrshane - Mechanics
Wade: I also have to keep the flow rate low to prevent jamming, although I think mine does fine with 2.5 mm^3/s. I've sharpened the bolt with a die but haven't tried the needle file yet; I'll do that if the extruder jams again. The lube sounds like a good idea. It surprises me that others haven't mentioned breaking the delicate nichrome wire. I broke the nichrome several times, forcing me toby mrshane - Mechanics
Ok nophead, based on your recommendation, I optimized my heater. My heater is a lot like the bitsfrombytes heater; the main difference is I used an acorn nut instead of a custom nozzle since I have no access to a lathe. There was a washer and nut between the furnace cement and the nozzle. I removed those, shortening the shaft about 10mm. The acorn nut is now touching the cement directly. I rby mrshane - Mechanics
I am also having trouble with my laser cut extruder. It ran well for two hours last night, then it suddenly jammed and would not extrude anything. It jammed right in the middle of printing an otherwise good corner block in ABS. :-( After that, I could not convince it to extrude for more than a couple of minutes at a time. This morning, I partly disassembled the extruder and connected the drivby mrshane - Mechanics
I just got my laser cut Rep(St)rap working! I'm in Utah valley. See the RepRap category of my blog: If there are others in Utah interested in this project, we should get together. I'm willing to drive to SLC. If you're a family man like me, the main thing that held me back from getting into the project was the expense. We Utahns interested in RepRap should meet and find ways to reduce theby mrshane - Utah, Salt Lake City RepRap User Group