Jamming Jamming and More Jamming

#1

I’ve had my Zeepro for 6+ months now and have made around 8 things successfully. In that time I have gone through 5 nozzles and heating blocks due to the threads stripping when removing the nozzle to unclog. I actually had a fresh nozzle & heating block from zim and it printed one thing, and then the next print (right after) wouldn’t go. It is now fully jammed and will not extrude anything, there is a loud knocking sound from the print head area when trying to reverse/extrude the filament even though I have pulled out the white tube.

I don’t know what I am doing so wrong to keep causing this to happen, does anyone have any tips on a) how to unclog these finicky extruders b) how to not clog them in the first place?

This printer has been nothing but trouble and the only thing that has stopped me from throwing it off a bridge is how much I spent on it (even though it was a long time ago). I’m probably going to buy another printer from a company that actually knows how to produce quality machines but I am going to try one last time with this one.

#2

See Insomnia’s guide: http://zim3d.tumblr.com/

When I first received my printer I experienced repeated jams also. I now have a ton of prints, across 2 Zims, and have not experienced a single jam in months. I would attribute this to 3 tricks:

  1. Do not use Zeepro filament.
  2. Do not use cartridges and lower stepper feed.
  3. Ensure the filament is straight for a few inches before you feed it into the teflon tube.

Here’s a hypothesis, for what it’s worth. The filament in the cartridges is wound tightly, and is on a small diameter spool. I’ve noticed that if the filament curls when it leaves the teflon tube in the head, it can miss the guide tube at the top of the nozzle assembly and instead starts to feed into a cavity in the heat sink. When this occurs, you’ll hear a grinding sound come from the extruder. I’m now in the habit of straightening out the first few inches of filament prior to priming, and then ensure it grabs as I feed it by hand, bypassing the lower feed altogether. It also appears to help that the 1kg spools are larger in diameter, so the filament is straighter to begin with. If you really want to use the cartridges, Insomnia has some tricks in his guide to make them work more reliably.

#3

I had similar symptoms.

All the troubles came from 2 screws getting loose, it’s the 2 ones on the inside of the head : you need to remove completely the head to tigthen them.

Someone mention that those 2 screws were too long, I haven’t check it, but tigteh them do the trick for me. No more jams (and up feeding directly from big spools :slight_smile: )

#4

I have printed several kg of filament so far and had my share of nozzle cloggings, new nozzles, heating blocks and so on.

Several things I noticed and improved my printing experience to clogging free for the last 3kg of filament.
First get rid of the cartridges and print yourself the alternative: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:740639
Its worth the effort and the most important thing.
The next important thing was print bed leveling. Its not only important for sticking of first layer but also clogging.
If its to close to the nozzle it constantly has to pressure the filament out resulting in a major clog after some time.
I have a feeler gauge (several thin metal strips) to make sure its properly leveled.
Next was temperature, too low and it clogs, too high and it gets melty in the result. So experiment and find the right temperature (and dont just believe what the package tells you; I had some wrong ones).
I have used a lot of different filament vendors (8) and mostly was happy with the middle of the temperature that was printed on the package. There are huge differences between material, color and vendor in temperature. But the Zim had no problem even with the cheapest filaments I tried…at least not with clogging.
Furthermore I had the defect that my fan exhausts for the helper fan (left one) was venting inside the head cover, so that the temperature of the head quickly fell below 150 and clogged the nozzle. So have a look at you temperature or turn that fan off in the print preset settings.

And with my Zim I had two loose screws on the bottom of the heating block and after tightening those things improved.

Unclogging I tried a lot of things. But if the method described by Zeepro (heat up, quickly remove nozzle and manually press filament out) does not work, its busted for good.
Once my nozzle was partially or totally blocked, nothing could reverse it. Maybe if you have great skill and tech and a real good 0,25 or 0,3mm drill, heat the nozzle and try to drill the plastic. I have tried and read the some people use accupuncture needles for that as well. There are 0,25mm needles available.

So the most important things:

  • improve lower filament feeder
  • correct bed leveling
  • correct temperature

Hope it helps

#5

I’ve read some guides that talk about using a blowtorch to burn out any plastic remaining inside nozzle. How do I detach the nozzle from the plastic looking tube piece connected to it? Or are they fixed? Is this piece capable of handling heat from a torch?

All of my nozzles are now clogged including my backups. I plan on disassembling the printer today as I suspect the filament has jammed into the stepper mechanism as suggested above. I would love to get one nozzle working for even a day so I can start printing some replacement parts to bypass the regular filament spools.