Hello forum
I recently installed my new E3D v6 hotend. I have some troubles regarding the mechanism dragging in my PLA. When the motor drives to drag pla into the extruder part, the motor drives fine but the pla doesn’t move into the extruder. I tried increasing the tension on the bolt, but this led to the motor just skipping steps.
I can’t get the mechanism to drag down pla constantly when the motor turns. I’ve cranked the driver for the particular stepper up to it’s maximum following the k8200 manual. This didn’t solve my problem… Then I ordered a new hobbed bolt at Ebay which didn’t do any good either.
I’ve never had problems with this, using the stock hotend, this problem occurred after installing my new E3D hotend.
I am extruding my PLA at 190c and my nozzle diameter is 0.40mm.
I hope some of you can come up with some ideas on how to solve this problem…
- I know the E3D isn’t a official Velleman part, but I hope it’s okay to ask questions about this, if not I’m sorry!
best regards
JohannesTN
Hi,
When you were building the K8200 there were 2 bolts that should have been filed down.
Did you do that?
Is the filament actually going into the E3D or is it misaligned.
Are you still using 3.0mm filament?
These are just guesses.
I hope this may help.
I don’t have the E3D yet.
Hi Johannes
To be able to narrow down the possible faults you can try the following:
-
heat the hot-end to 190° (for PLA).
-
turn the large gear of the extruder manually: the filament should run smoothly out through the nozzle
-
if not: encrease the temp. to 200°
-
help by manually pushing down the filament
If you can’t manually extrude the filament, you will not be able to do so with the motor either, so no need to worry about the motor at that time.
- check if the hot-end has been assembled correctly
- remove and replace the filament, check how far you can push it down. It’s probably “hanging” somewhere (it’s easier to enter the filament when the end is cut at a 45° angle). The filament should go all the way down to the hot-end.
Regards
Wrong Way:
I did file the two bolts down yes.
It is going completely straight and directly into the center of the E3D
- yes I am still using 3.0 filament, I bought the specific E3D hotend to handle 3.0mm filament.
Thank you for replying 
Deskstar:
When I heat up the hotend and turn the gear by hand the pla extrudes just fine. I’ve checked that the hotend is assembled correctly, and I’ve tried changing it multiple times but with the same result…
I changed back to the original hobbed bolt which seems to grab the plastic better, at least it looks so.
Are the gears to close together?
Have you tried to set the reference voltage to 0.55?
I’ve found this works best.
Do you have the hobbit bolt to tight?
The gears is perfect, not to close, not to spread. I’ve set the reference voltage to 0.55 yes. The hobbed bolt is tightened just right too.
I think I got this part to work, looks like it helped my to install the original hobbed bolt, guess the one I bought of Ebay was some crap as it didn’t really get a god hold of my pla.
I got a new problem… When I start a print, the z-axis lifts more than it should (more than one layer) resulting in my first layer not sticking well. The z-axis homes just fine, but when it begins printing it is lifted like 0.5mm plus the 0.4mm (my first layer height). Normally I have my z-offset set to 0, I tried setting it at -0.25, but nothing changed. My guess is that when the z-offset is set, the z-axis motor will spin back a little to lower the z-axis the 0.25mm before printing, isn’t this right? - if that’s correctly understood, the z-offset doesn’t work as my z-axis doesn’t lower before printing.
I tried changing the z-offset to -2.0mm just to see if there was any difference, but nothing changed at all. I’m using Repetier 0.95F and slic3r 1.0.1
Best regards
I have the other problem with the E3D v6… The prints are sticking so well I can’t get them off!
I did have a lot of problems with jams initially, so I’ll list the steps I went through to get things working.
Initially I had run the fan off the fan connector and wasn’t running it continuously… Bad idea as serious jams which I had to drill out.
Then I hadn’t run the PID auto tune, so the temperature control was bad and I hadn’t turned down the heater to 12V. So I got the latest Marlin firmware and rebuilt it with the auto tune PIDs and reduced extruder to 150 from 255 and now the temperature control is fine.
I had to adjust the Z stop to get the height above the bed correct. This could be why your prints aren’t sticking it you’re too high.
Finally I used the Slic3r settings for precision slow printing from the thread on this forum.
Such an improvement over the original hot end as no more stringing…
You must have the E3D fan running anytime the hotend is powered up. The PLA will melt and stick to the tube. I wired my fan directly to the power supply through a 42ohm resistor and it has been working perfectly
Hi JohannesTN,
no, in the default configuration the axis should never ever move past the endstop. With a non-zero offset, the first movement upwards for the first layer height is reduced (or increased) accordingly.
By the way: if you are using the stock 0.4 mm nozzle on the E3D, you probably have to decrease your layer height.
Cheers,
kuraasu
