Hi all, please a question i can not find solution in the forum.
i got my vertex printer 3 weeks ago and i am printing a lot every day with PLA in the beginning.
i read and try to optimize all, but intermittent it looks like underextrusion. Then the next equal part is printed well. (smal parts, fast printed in 12 minutes)
Then i encountered: if you hold your fingers on the filament at the inlet of the extruders, you can feel that there sometimes is a lost of steps !
First i tested the motor drivers as described, current is ok. i changed the drivers to the x and y axis, no problems there.
I also can not find any ploblems with the filament on its way to the head, if i push by hand i can extrude plastic without force on both nozzles.
Sometimes it’s rare, sometimes it’s often.
i dismonted one extruder and reasembled it with a piece of 4mm Polycarbonat plate on the workbench.
If you now test it manually with some filament you need a lot of strength and you see two errors:
a.) the distance written in the manual for the pulley to the stepper motor is wrong. I need 1.0 mm more on the left extruder and 0.9 mm on the right extruder to get the filament straight throug the extruder, looking in this direction.
b.) there is a construction fault: the pully is to close to the filament in back-front direction (if you stay in front of the printer). So the filament is bent first to the front, running in a curve arround the pulley and then bent back to the outlet.
This all takes a lot of power , is not good for the filament (cold-bend) and completely unnecessary ! Also makes loading filament difficult and annoying.
i grindet away material of the black housing with dremel tool to give the pully more cave room to go more to the back, made the holes for the screws a bit to long-slots and mounted all so that the filament now go throug the extruder straight and gently. (also i filled the gap on top of the housing with plastic-stripes i found in my den, so i can tighten the both upper screws proper)
Now it works fine, the grip and the “bites” with the filament is same as before but the motors don’t need lot of power and no steps lost.
Although i print fast, surfaces are looking good now, without disturbance.
On Thingiverse you can download some STL’s for an upgraded extruder motor.
I installed one and now the steppermotor has more power since the filament is now straight against the pulley.
cause we are in the wrong section with this subject, i took it to “Your printer, creations, and ideas for improvements”, called it “Optimizing Extruder(s)”