SoliForum - 3D Printing Community — Flexible woes on a Da Vinci 1.0A

Re: Flexible woes on a Da Vinci 1.0A

2016-06-05T00:29:47Z

Decided to get a Lulzbot Mini + Flexystruder. Yes, a very overpriced setup. But I have more money than time.

It's printing fantastically.

Re: Flexible woes on a Da Vinci 1.0A

2016-06-01T07:17:32Z

The printer is printing now and honestly I am not that motivated with the schedule I have. However, installing it is pretty simple. Just jam/twist/put the guide onto the brass threads in the print head. Turn the filament guide so the threads pull it on tight. It should be a snug fit and take a little force to get it on. I used some slip jaw pliers to thread the guide onto the threads. If you are unable to put the print head back in then do one of the following. Turn the guide the other way. It is asymmetric because the two gears in the head are different diameters. You may have put the filament guide in backwards. If that is not the case, the guide is sitting a little too high to fit under the gears. Likely there is still a little bit of support material in there which needs to be removed. Just dremmel out a little more material from the bottom of the guide. Repeat the process until you have the correct height and are able to close the print head. If you get stuck post back. I will try to check this thread periodically over the next couple weeks.

Re: Flexible woes on a Da Vinci 1.0A

2016-05-31T20:16:44Z

Can u post a pick of the fully assembled unit. How does it fit over the existing feeder tube?

Thanks

Re: Flexible woes on a Da Vinci 1.0A

2016-05-30T03:34:39Z

I tried printing with the xyz flexible cartridge for days. At first it worked for maybe two prints. After that it would not stop kinking even when I pulled the filament out of the cartridge to ease the tension. I eventually made my own filament guide after looking at the one on thingaverse. That one did not work but surprisingly mine did. I've been printing flexible filament for about 37 hours now with no problem. I haven't touched it since. I don't want to evoke bad luck. I printed it in the abs yellow which came with the printer. The guide hole was drilled out smooth with a #47 drill I think? Well, whatever drill size is used to make about a 3mm hole. The supports for the center were routed out with a dremel and endmill for a snug fit. I am attaching the .stl and the Solidworks 2016 file.
I am using stock firmware (2.something) and xyzware without an external slicer. Basically, everything is out of the box. (Boy does this slicing software vacuum immense male anatomy)

Re: Flexible woes on a Da Vinci 1.0A

2016-05-29T20:51:35Z

So had several failed attempts at slowing the print speed down with slic3r gcode output (couldn't convert to a .3w format the printer would read).

Decided to stop messing around and just buy a copy of Simplify3D so I could control this.

First test print with default Da Vinci 1.0 settings using Simplify3D...

and it slammed the extruder into the side of the print bed. Breaking the X-axis assembly. Hopefully Simplify3D will consider that good enough reason for me to get a refund for their $149 software.

After I get back from dumping my Da Vinci at the landfill, I'm researching what printer to buy next. Requirement: prints flexible material without any modifications or crap that I've had to put up with on this one. Any suggestions?

Re: Flexible woes on a Da Vinci 1.0A

2016-05-27T06:08:33Z

I've been trying out samples of various flexible filaments lately and the best I hit on is Sainsmart TPU.
Prints very well with an E3D and is about half the price of other flexibles.
I even managed to print slightly faster with it up to 15mm/s.

Re: Flexible woes on a Da Vinci 1.0A

2016-05-17T05:25:25Z

As mentioned, a slow speed and reducing the gap between the extruder gear and the hotend is the key with flexibles.
Even with an E3D hotend, I have trouble if I try and print faster than 10mm/s.

Re: Flexible woes on a Da Vinci 1.0A

2016-05-16T00:20:28Z

Keep in mind they also claimed on the box for the 1.0 that it could print PLA, but once you bought it, unpacked it, and read the small print hidden deep in the manual in broken Chinglish you would find that you needed to buy , not offered, but needed to buy and upgraded head to use PLA.

So just because they say it can does not mean it can.

Re: Flexible woes on a Da Vinci 1.0A

2016-05-16T00:10:29Z

Speed: whatever the XYZware sets the speed to for flexible filament. Nothing custom. And it doesn't let me choose anything different anyway. (I haven't had any success trying the silc3r profiles for DV1.0, so I'm stuck with XYZware slicing right now.)

You might be forgetting XYZ is now marketing this filament from their own website as working with a stock 1.0A. So this is all supposed to be by the book, no customization. (Yeah right.)

I tried to use mordiev's filament guide, but it was more hassle than it was worth to try and install that between the gears. I may try some angle-cut tubing in there, as that may be good enough to solve the issue.

So far the pause and re-seat the filament at the beginning of a build is working well for me. Just wanted to share it for others having a similar issue.

Re: Flexible woes on a Da Vinci 1.0A

2016-05-15T23:04:45Z

What speed are you printing at? Flexibles should be run at half or even a 3rd of your normal speed and should never exceed 20mm per second on a DaVinci with a stock extruder. The 1.0 was never really intended to do flexibles due to the gap of about 5mm or more between the gears and feed tube. To use flexibles you need a feed tube shaped like an arrow head that will fit right betwee and near touching both gears.

Flexible woes on a Da Vinci 1.0A

2016-05-15T22:31:44Z

Bought a brand new 1.0A as a dedicated flexible filament builder. Bought the XYZ approved/branded flexible filament cartridge.

I got one good build out of it, then ran into some sort of filament feeding issue. Pretty sure it's the filament bending before the feeder tube, as it's always got a kink in it when I pull it out after cancelling a print where nothing (or very little) is coming out of the nozzle.

I noticed the filament loading process works fine, though. Filament comes out smoothly. I wondered why that should be different than the build? Slower feeding?

Anyway, my accident I stumbled across a partial solution. Start a build, but just as it's putting down the first layer, pause it. Then pull the filament out (sure enough, always a kink in it), re-cut and re-seat into the tube. Then restart the build. And it works now!

So it seems like there's something in the pre-build steps that is causing the filament to kink after the gears.