Hi All,
This will be difficult to pin down, but getting pointed in the right direction would be helpful.
Purchased a FlashForge AD5X ~5 weeks ago. Worked great, one button calibration out of the box, I proceeded to do what everyone does when learning: print a bunch of stuff, mix success and stumble over the usual stuff. Ie: Learned why you clean the bed, learned how supports work, deal with filament breaks etc etc.
About a week ago I had a print fail, it looked like there was a broken filament that wasn’t being pushed. I do a cold pull on the nozzle, and was able to print successfully for a time (although there were some small features on some prints that seemed sloppy compared to previous prints).
After that though ALL my prints started to fail. Even after cleaning the bed, double checking bed/nozzle temp, I’d get bad adhesion. I’d also get the nozzle dragging through layers, as if the Z was off (even after running calibration repeatedly and before each print). There was some popping and oozing, which I put up to not storing my PLA dry (although ambient was only ~40%). However the problem persisted even with a freshly opened vac-sealed (confirmed seal was good) roll of PLA.
I ordered a replacement nozzle that arrives today, but can anyone give me some insight? I only ran ~2kg of PLA through, that seems like really premature wear; I must have done something wrong.
Thanks for anything putting me in the right direction.
It depends on the filament you use but if you are using brass nozzles, best to get use to replacing them periodicly. Just look at thingaverse or the prusa site for nozzle assessories and look at how people make cases for multiples sizes and numbers of nozzles. IDK what kind of quality that FlashForge has but its pretty typical to wear out the nozzle (just maybe not as fast as you are experiencing)
but you might be having problems with the preloading or the tension on the filament feeding gear. IDK the method that your printer uses but I had similar problems with my PRUSA until I replaced the Hotend PTFE tube. Those will also wear out so get a few if your printer uses that feeding system
yeah I anticipated wear, but with <2kg of material that seems excessive no? I did have some feed issues, but even with those resolved and it feeding nicely, I still have problems. A friend of mine did suggest that maybe with the feed issues I managed to do something that brought the nozzle out of spec and that’s why I’m getting issues.
you might want to check how tight the filament is before it goes into the system, like it was a popular trend to find a way to get your spools on bearings instead of free spinning, as that extra tension goes a long way to create problems.
Good luck, hope you can fix it without having to tear down the whole print head