Maintenance day for my CR10 (& Jerry's printing log)

[Jerry-rigged]

My printer was intermittently having issues with the clogging and skipping layers, and during my last print, it failed completely. Clogged nozzle, and the filament would not release from the hot end, and broke off inside the hot end... Hate it when that happens....

So tear down day.

I think I found the root issue. The bowen tube has swollen up a bit inside the hot end. The swole section is right at, maybe a bit above the heat break. I think this was letting the filament bulge out, and jam up. Lucky, I have some spare Capricorn tubing that is the right length, and a spare new nozzle. Now to get to get it all back together...

Here is the old Bowden tube. Hard to see the expanded section in the pic, but I can feel it pretty clearly.

 

[3d-rc.myshopify.com]

Nice machine. She definitely looks like she needed a good cleaning

 

[Jerry-rigged]

Yeah that garage desk is pretty nasty... dust, oil, dead bugs... LOL

 

[jondilly1974]

Funny story is I’m doing a somewhat similar tear down of my E5 too. Decided to go with a direct drive setup for printing TPU. Also since my shop area in in an unconditioned garage, I finally decided to buy an enclosure and a spool dryer small enough to fit inside the tent. Hoping the tent keeps the dirt and bugs out for the most part.

 

[Jerry-rigged]

Yeah, I need to come up with some kind of spool dryer while printing setup. After about 5-7 days of using one spool for prints, the print quality starts to drop pretty bad. My bulk filament is in a dryer box that stays <20% humidity, so the filament will dry out in a few weeks.

 

[Jerry-rigged]

Got everything back together. New nozzle, new bowden tube, added plugs in the fan wiring, cleaned up the hot end, leveled, and it still won't print right... grrr...

Acting like it is clogged again.

 

[Tex Koder]

So, are you saying No filament is coming out at all?
I bet there a clog in your heatbreak.

Did you check that when you had everything disassembled?

.

 

[Jerry-rigged]

Weak filament flow, even with the print head in the air. But, I think the issue was that spool, maybe? Swapped to a different spool, and it prined perfect.

Spool has three wraps left. small print, so I was willing to risk it.

The blue dragon printed fine (13h print), but that was the last print that worked off that spool. Bad section of filament, or just waterlogged overnight? Not sure.

D&D minis are not the greatest on a old FDM, but it gets the job done.

Now off to paint.

 

[Tex Koder]

^
NICE!

Keep us posted.
Want to see it once painted.

That looks alittle like Drogon from GoT.

 

[Jerry-rigged]

That is from "MZ4250", he has models for most of the D&D monsters Spoolers, it is a blue dragon... lol.

My little girl likes to paint the dragons, so I keep printing them.
Adult gold (not finished painting), young white, young green, adult bronze-

 

[Tex Koder]

Wow!
Very Nice.

Guess I'll have to print some of these for my girls too!

 

[Jerry-rigged]

Today's print - Goblin Warg rider. Model by MZ4250 - he makes a lot of great D&D and TTRPG minis...

Not bad for an old FDM printer. Still needs some clean-up before paint. There is a bit of funny stuff going on around the warg's rear legs... Odd those layers only separated at the rear legs, and not all across the model. Also, the goblin was printed separate from the warg. CR10, PLA, 0.08 layer height, temps 200/60, bla bla bla, and a dime for scale. (TTRPG scale is 1"=5')

 

[Jerry-rigged]

They are multiplying!

The second one had the rear legs print fine, so it is not an issue with the .gcode. But the lower jaw on the second was a small bowl of spaghetti. oh well, it will still work for gaming.

Planning on 3 total.

 

[Tex Koder]

Overall, those look great! considering how small scale they are.

The issues you're having with the prints -could be caused by the filament getting snagged coming off the spool..
If that happens it will throw off the print momentarily, especially when the extruder tries to make rapid extractions AND rapid feeds to keep up with the nozzle movements.

 

[Jerry-rigged]

Painted one. Cell phone camera flash makes it look weird, but wose without light. Lol. Not a paint job to win contest, but it will play...

 

[Tex Koder]

^
spooky..