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Topic: Thicker PLA Extrusion

I have My Filastruder Running Vertically With PLA at 150C and am able to produce nice filament at ~1.5MM. If I Lower the temperature PLA does not seem to extrude anywhere near as fast (Inches/Hour). Is there any way to increase the filament width without drilling the nozzle? Any Suggestions?

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Re: Thicker PLA Extrusion

You can add more cooling, but drilling the nozzle is very quick and easy. It can be done with a hand drill.

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Re: Thicker PLA Extrusion

with my vertical setup, i drilled a nozzle out to 1.9mm and added some extra fans to get into the 1.7-1.8 range, for 3mm PLA , had to drill out quite a bit more to 3.3 or so to get decent 3mm pla, of course this is on a vertical with winder with a large loop so its a bit more of an extreme case.

I also have just used a 3mm nozzle and went hot with the pla and let it pull down to 1.7 and that worked actually pretty good, but not as consistent.

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Re: Thicker PLA Extrusion

What Size would you recommend trying out? The Die seems to be ~1.5mm, What size American drill bit would be ~1.75?

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Re: Thicker PLA Extrusion

The die is drilled to 1.6 by default. This is done because it is impossible to make a large hole smaller.

You will need to get a metric bit, McMaster sells them. I'd recommend 1.7mm.

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Re: Thicker PLA Extrusion

Kbowen99

If you happen to have Harbor Freight in your area, they also have a small metric drill bit set that has served me well so far.

http://www.harborfreight.com/high-speed … 61526.html

-os3dp

7 (edited by cor5151 2015-09-12 19:14:18)

Re: Thicker PLA Extrusion

i believe i used a 5/64 drill bit(1.9844mm) just to get the pla in range, that's just what i had around.
remember pla takes a lot more cooling, so add fans. especially on your vertical setup.

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Re: Thicker PLA Extrusion

I've been getting good results with 3mm PLA by mounting the Filastruder at a 45 degree angle on a stand I found on Thingiverse. I found though at 150C my motor really started to struggle, so now keep the temp around 155C-160C. Fine-tuning the distance of the fan to nozzle also made a difference - as did the angle at which I guided the PLA out of the nozzle onto the winder. It seems to be more of an art than a science for me atm...

On a slightly different note, how would I go about purging a previous batch of PLA from nozzle and barrel in order to clean everything properly?

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Re: Thicker PLA Extrusion

Because PLA is such a low temperature polymer, you should be able to run whatever you like through it at the new (higher) temperature, and it will purge the PLA automatically.

Going the other way, you'd want to run until empty, pull the nozzle, then pull out remaining polymer with needle nose pliers.