Solidoodle 4 - Problem feeding filament (Page 1 of 2)

Thanks for the help Ward.

Is there any kind of installation guide for installing that on the Solidoodle 4? I would like to see what I am getting myself into before committing lol

IMHO if you are going to the trouble and expense of Upgrading the hot end to an ED3
the easiest way to mount it is buy a titan.
Also understand the difference between the Lite and the full ED3 the lite is only good for ABS pla and other relatively low temp  materials the full ED3 while more money will do higher temps and a full range of materials.

A titan should pretty much bolt right onto the front of your motor you just need to remove the old extruder and gear and install the new. you may have to make or print a shim plate.  I installed a titan and ED3 on my prusa and I have a SD4 .

Yeah - time for an upgrade. Holy cow that is a lot of ground up filament!

there are basically 2 ways to go about a mount for an E3D upgrade...

1st way is get a 3d printed mount for it - obviously you would have a hard time printing one yourself at this point....

2nd way would involve having, or knowing someone with, milling/lathe experience.

For now, lets just assume a 3d printed mount...What you will end up with is something like this...

If you need the mounting parts printed, I can help with that - shoot me a PM and we can talk about it.

as for the E3D itself, you can buy the kit from Filastruder, and assemble it yourself, or you can buy a pre-assembled one, ready to install, from PrintIt Industries.

Which one to get?
the full E3D v6 is capable of higher temperatures, so if you want to venture into the world of exotic filaments like nylon or something, this would be the one to get...
the E3D Lite6 is just fine for PLA & ABS if you are less adventurous, or on a tight budget...
I have both versions and both are great so whichever way you go is good...

making the firmware changes and flashing the board will be determined by the controller board you have - being as how we are talking about an SD4, I am going to guess it is the Printrboard.

Thanks for all of the input. I am thinking my issue may be the extruder tension rather than the hot end. I cleaned the hot end as well as I could and ran filament back in. When I noticed the filament not feeding I pushed up on the pressure lever to tighten the grip on the filament and it ran fine like that. I suppose I can drill a hole in the end of the lever where the spring is and use a bolt and a couple of nut to put a constant tension on the filament. I may do that to print out the gears that I need for a project this weekend and then replace both the extruder and the hot end.

Heartless, thank you for the write up!  Are you using a different extruder than the stock one? The spring in mine no longer appears to be applying enough pressure to have the filament feed.

Tin Falcon, does the Titan offer a considerable improvement over the various printable extruders? I read on the page that the gearing helped the resolution and helps remove :waviness." Has that been the case in your experience? That aluminum extruder definitely looks nice.

No, mine are stock extruders, but appear to be a later revision than yours as they are aluminum, not plastic.

being a plastic piece it is possible yours is beginning to "stretch" out of shape a little - it will happen over time. you could try slipping a washer between the spring and either the mount or lever end (if the spring is inset) to get a little more tension.

A longer bolt or any kind of extension on the existing bolt will work as a temporary solution.  If not, let us know and someone will print and send you what you need.  Hopefully heartless will jump in with her preferred solution.

Does anyone know of a way to get the hobbed pulley off of the extruder motor? I can't get the set screw to budge. All that is happening is hex keys getting stripped.

mine was so stuck i ended up having to drill it out

Kronikabuse,

My set screw is pretty well stripped out now. I guess I will have to drill it out. How did you go about it?

Has anyone replaced the extruder motor before? I am contemplating just doing that. I am also contemplating just buying a new printer lol.

Has anyone replaced the extruder motor before?

Mechanically, it looks like it is just held on with a cable tie. What I am more concerned with is the wiring. Most of the NEMA17 motors I am seeing don't look like their wires will extend all the way to the control box.

Darrells- you would not want to use the .9 along with the E3D Titan...it sounds like fantastic resolution, but the math doesn't check out. You would want to actually look at this motor http://www.printitindustries.com/collec … hs13-0404s

The zip tie on the E motor isn't mandatory. Several users, myself included haven't had a zip tie on the motor for years. Swapping out motors is an easy mechanical change, but you will still need to recalibrate in EEPROM.