Filastruder tore itself apart

can you define a short time? For the first print you were supposed to run it at 180 and run the entire contents of the supplied abs through it.. are you running a the filtered nozzle?

Thanks for the quick replies, bubbasnow and elmoret!

bubbasnow, I ran it around a half hour of the 8-hour cleaning time before the problem happened, and got a good 30 feet or so of filament.  Do you think PLA and ABS should be extruded at the same temperature?  People print ABS at a higher temperature, so you would think it should be extruded at a lower temperature too,  It comes out quite runny and free-flowing at 160°, so I didn't dare go higher and risk it pouring out as a liquid.  On the other hand, ABS is supposed to have a lower coefficient of friction, which should let it flow with less pressure.  I'm using the brass nozzle that came with the Filastruder kit.  I don't see a filter on it.

elmoret, I have Serial No. 536, so it's Revision 1.3.  Sorry if I used the wrong word; maybe it's not ramen.  It's filament with irregularities.  Here's what came out right from the start in this photo (#1 below).  Some of it for a few inches is very smooth and crystal clear (hooray!), but everywhere there is a kink in the filament I can see a small dark piece of debris inside.  I gather from the forums and instructions that this is normal for the first 8 hours of operation, the "purge" process.

The instructions Version 1.3 recommend using clear ABS for the 8 hour purge.  With the kit I received a bag of white plastic pellets labeled only, "Ziploc®".  They look like white ABS, but I know better than to heat a plastic if I'm not absolutely certain what it is.  I checked Filastruder.com/products/filastruder-kit and it says "over 90% of the testing has been done with ABS", but Nylon and TPE also work great and "PLA requires a little more care.  The Filastruder extrudes it fine..." I just have to put it through a drying process first.   A challenge?  Sounds great.  Being careful is what I do best.

Here's a photo of the white plastic and the (vacuum-sealed until I opened the bag) clear PLA from OSP. (photo #2)

Good to hear about the safety feature.  I love safety features.  It's what I do for a living.  That means the pin slipping is just a symptom of the problem.  And the pipe bending was a symptom.  The root cause was the auger not turning freely in the pipe.

If the auger not moving freely in the pipe is usually caused by improper assembly or improper operation, then I'll fix both and make the root cause go away.

I disassembled everything, straightened the barrel, and started over.  Here's another interesting thing I found in disassembly.  (Photo# 3,4) One of the washers is pressed all the way into the plywood thrust block.  Let's fix that by filling in the hole with another washer. (Photo #5)

That would be caused by too much pressure in the extrusion chamber pushing the auger back into the thrust bearing.  Wikipedia says t takes more pressure to extrude PLA than ABS, so it would be expected that the chamber pressure would be higher.

Filastruder.com says the Filastruder can process PLA as long as it's dried well.  I'll do more research to see how others had success with PLA before I try it again.

For now, I'll get a pound of clear ABS and run it through to see whether improper assembly was the issue instead of overpressure.

Thanks for the advice, Everyone.  I hope I answered all the questions, if not in the same order.  I'll post my results with ABS and do more research on how folks get success with PLA.

Much better now.  With the addition of a bigger washer on the plywood thrust plate, the Filastruder worked fine for the whole bag of ABS for the initial purge.  I found I have to keep mine about 48" above the floor to let the filament coil itself without tangling up.

After that, I found I can extrude PLA at 180°C at about the same rate as ABS, although other folks on the forums use lower temperatures.  I tried increasing the temperature as high as 200°C to see if the filament would come out thinner, but at that temp bubbles appeared in the filament like it was boiling in there.  But 180°C did fine.

I just printed a few calibration blocks and a few portions of my new replacement pool filter basket using my Filastruded PLA on my Mendel Prusa with a .35mm nozzle.   I had trouble with jamming until I raised the print temperature all the way to 220°C.  Now it seems to get through a whole print alright.

Thanks Everybody for the advice!