Tag Archives: jams

Backing out the filament

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I’ve found that backing out the filament after each print, while a pain, has been helpful in avoiding extruder jams.  Or, rather, I have found fewer extruder jams while doing this. 1

I suspect the reason this has helped is that it removes from the PTFE insulator any of the remaining plastic that might have been about to ooze near the barrel top.  Have you found that this helps you?

  1. Not to confuse coincidence, correlation and causation, but I have also found fewer extruder jams when wearing my underwear inside out… [↩]

Dragging my feet on PLA

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I’ve been a total slacker about getting started printing in PLA.  Part of the reason is I’ve seen others have a lot of problems printing with it – ruining extruders, oozing out of barriers, too hot, too cold, too just right, the heat is uneven, the barrel jams, etc, etc.  However, since I’ve been printing larger and larger objects I’m finding that warpage is become more of an issue.  This means I need to either buy/make a heated platform for the ABS or I need to switch to PLA.

There’s a few things I’d like to build that are big and flat.  I’d like to print up a modular chess board (already have it designed in my head, I just need to export it to Sketchup) and crank out a few Mendel or Mini Mendel pieces.

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