Topic: Slow extrusion, problems with stall protection board
I am trying to extrude polystyrene using a Filastruder that was set up by someone else at least a year ago. The polystyrene that I'm loading in is in the form of small flakes. After loading in some plastic and warming it up, the machine ran and extruded some plastic, but very slowly, less than 12 inches per hour. I could see the screw spinning before I put in plastic.
To try to fix this, I tried to adjust the current and voltage limitation knobs, because the voltage and current values seemed strange. The input voltage is around 11.2 V and the output around 11.1 V. The output current is about 0.3 A and the power is about 4 P (not sure what unit that corresponds to). I was able to set the current and voltage limiting knobs as the instructions describe. The indicator light labeled FULL (or something like that, it's hard to read) was green, and the IN and OUT lights were alternating and flashing red with the cycling display. No other lights are on.
I hear a clicking sound every few seconds, but that might just be the heater turning on and off.
Has anyone encountered similar issues, and how did you fix them? If not, what diagnostic tools do you recommend?