Plug of Death :( (Page 1 of 3)

If the barrel is rotating and you're sure it was tightened sufficiently, then something is either assembled wrong or aligned incorrectly.

The "plug" you describe is normal. The last 3 inches of the auger is in the melt zone.

I read about this "plug" happening randomly and then not having enough friction for the extrusion to happen, somehow the pellets are not being pushed forward and the whole thing rotates in place...

I wonder if I should do the trick I read to turn the whole pipe now 90 deg counter clockwise to compensate for the turn.

The pipe is TIGHT (I put the flange in a bench wise and used a wise grip to screw it in, by the short end as instructed not to bend).

Should the pipe be screwed in ALL THE WAY to the end of of the threads ?

Assembly pics

Improper assembly, or running it stalled (not letting the plastic melt first).

The only way the pipe gets bent is if something is if the auger is jammed. This happens one of three ways:

1.) Improper assembly - something not lined up properly, or thrust bearing not held compressed, or some other mistake
2.) Plastic not melted/improper temperature/controller or sensor failure
3.) Some sort of debris jamming the auger in the pipe.

I did look at the pictures. They weren't very helpful, things like alignment are not apparent from the photos you took. I can tell you installed the insulation wrong and the filament guide wrong. These things wouldn't cause what you described, but it tells me you might have missed some other details during assembly.

To bend the pipe like that, something happened to stall the motor. Considering you took photos 15 minutes apart, I'm betting you ran it while stalled, and it bent the pipe. Not only that, but you ran it stalled for so long the barrel rotated more than 130 degrees. This is improper operation.

Why it stalled? Hard to say, I would bet improper assembly, probably the thrust bearing not being compressed during assembly. There are no v1.5 videos on youtube, if you watched an old version video (made by someone other than me!) that would certainly explain why you might have done something wrong.

Pipe and auger are in stock, but I sell them on a case by case basis so I can provide them at cost (no profit) to existing customers. As I already told you via PM, you need to email me through the Filastruder website's contact form.

Are you running it as soon as it reaches temp or are you letting it sit at 180 for 15-30 before you start?  As soon as it reaches temp is still too soon, the heat needs to spread around more before it runs.

This is really getting annoying of how many people have issues with assembling their unit correctly.
Isnt there a video on how to do it step by step ?

I found one with a lady showing how to, but it was hardly helpful.
I'd post one but my filastruder is modified so it wont match

To my knowledge, at this point 7 customers (out of 1600) have experienced this issue. That, in my mind, makes it pretty uncommon. It has happened on almost all 5 design revisions, and has happened on all three different augers. Actually, the augers I'm using right now are 4 times more expensive than the augers I used when I started the Kickstarter. It has only happened to me once in over 1700 hours of use, so it is hard for me to "just figure out what's wrong". I posted exactly what I did to clear the jam, and it hasn't come back since, with over 200 hours of use - so it is hard for me to believe that the auger is "degrading". Also this user had only a few hours of time on his setup, further contraindicating an issue of degrading. Some (of the 7 folks to have experienced this) have had a few hundred hours. I had 1500 hours before it happened. There is no pattern to support the "degrading" hypothesis. Actually, the only common denominator has been the use of glow in the dark colorant - 3 of the users to have experienced this used GITD colorant. I have not ever used it myself, nor do I endorse it.

If you have a source for these "$5 quality parts", please share it and I would be happy to test it out.

If you have recommended changes to the instructions, I would be happy to implement them. Personal insults aren't very productive.

The barrel rotation/twisting has nothing to do with the failure to feed, and that is definitely a case of improper assembly/use, every single time. There's two separate issues at work here.

Finally, lets try to make this a bit more helpful - have you ever run GITD colorant on the 2 extruders that have problems? What colorant/polymers have you run? How many hours of runtime did they each have before experiencing the clogging? I would love to figure this out, but I need data.

Its very difficult to get teflon to stick to anything in practice. It'd just be wiped off - there's a special application process to put it on cookware.

What folks have posted problems? Perhaps I have missed their posts. If there are more than 7, please link them here so I can be sure to have seen them. Where on the internet is Filastruder getting a bad name? I'd be happy to address any problems.

What I said above is that if the barrel is twisting, it was assembled incorrectly. That is true every single time.

What auger did you purchase? The trouble is that with 99.5% of customers, I don't hear reports of auger issues, so switching to a different auger randomly doesn't really help things - especially since there have been reports of issues across all auger variants. In other words, I could have just sent you two more of the same auger/barrel, and I bet you wouldn't have had a problem either - so it isn't a case of "bad" augers, since all of the ones I've ever used can experience this.

Finally, did you ever run GITD colorant in the two that went bad? It could absolutely coat the augers with something, and that would go away if the auger was replaced (as you have done).

I thought you said that buying an auger from ace/home depot causes the problem to vanish, so then why would you scrap all the metal parts if it is currently working?

See, this is the problem I have trying to diagnose things - I get conflicting or incomplete information from users. If you want, I can send out a barrel/auger for you to test.

Finally, congrats on over 2500 hours. I certainly didn't have that sort of use case in mind when I designed this.

That's good to know. My hypothesis is that there are multiple causes:

sometimes the cause is running a particular material (like Asaclean, or GITD colorant) At least three users have experienced plugging RIGHT after running one of the above.
sometimes it seems completely random, and possibly from turning on the machine too early, since the auger center melts last.

Once it is plugged, it seems nothing will help short of disassembly, and/or replacement of parts if they were exposed to one of the above. In my case, I disassembled, pulled the plastic off (no solvents), and reassembled. Never another issue.

That's all I know so far. I'm not ignoring this, I'm not shifting blame (for the plugging issue) to users. I just don't have enough information to figure it out yet.