After troubleshooting, taking the extruder apart and rebuilding it in the darkest of light with teeny-tiny parts and screws and a headlamp, flashlight, magnifying glass, and reading glasses flopping on and off my face, it was time to contact the company and try to see what they thought.
I hesitate to ever start taking things apart myself. Although I have a lifetime of experience “reverse-engineering” and “re-engineering” all sorts of complicated things, I’ve learned from that lifetime of doing so, it should only be done as a last resort.
I managed to take the extruder apart, fix the tube and portal the filament goes into, put the filament into the Teflon tubing, and reassemble the thing, including some delicate, carefully placed parts like the trigger, springs, pot/knob, and so on. Whew.
I tried to run a test printing again and it did basically the same thing. I went through the motions without grabbing onto the filament. It spat our a heated glob of filament in disgust, and wen ton about its way, producing no 3D object.
So I contacted the engineers in China and explained what was going on. We have a time and language barrier to work around.
So I videoed what was going on. After some back and forth we both agreed it was the extruder. They are shipping me a new one.
Their after-sales service is very good. I can’t complain because this is a complicated piece of hardware, with software and we’re trying to get it running together, across the globe, speaking two languages. So it’s going pretty well, considering.
Here is a video I gave them showing what’s going on. The new extruder should be here soon, and we’ll pick up her when it arrives. Slowly but surely…
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_video src=”https://youtu.be/UCeFYXmHf00″ _builder_version=”4.9.7″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_video][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]