1 Topic by rdlady

  • rdlady
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  • Registered: 2016-01-27
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Topic: Can't do long prints in the da vinci Junior

I have been using the Da Vinci Jr. for a couple of months.
Until last week the maximum printing time per job I have tied was about 10 hours.

Last week I decided to print a bigger model, which would take about 30 hours. From 5 to 10 hours of printing the stepper motor clicked seldom, about every 45 minutes. When the print was reaching about 15 hours, the stepper motor started clicking more and more often until a point that it was clicking at every second. When this happened the filament was not being extruded anymore. If I pause the print, press the lever under the stepper motor, push the filament with my hands and resume the printing, the printing will continue working/extruding for another 30-45 minutes until all the clicking and not extruding comes back. In the end the print will look like the one in this picture, with large gaps because some layers were never printed, or the extruder will keep moving but the filament will not come out for good.

I tried cleaning the nozzle with the tools provided with the printer, but it didn't work. So I tried cleaning the nozzle by pulling the filament out from the extruder when the temperature reached about 90C, but it didn't work either. I cleaned the stepper motor gear, I tried to increase the printing temperature from 90 to 95C using the advanced mode version of the xyzware software, but the same problem happened again. I tried to increase the z offset to 1.4mm, but it did not solve the problem, and if I increase this any more the nozzle will be too far from the printing bed and the melted filament will not touch or stick to the bed. The other axis seem to be aligned and I've never had this problem in smaller prints. This problem seems to start randomly only in long print jobs, after 15-20 hours printing.

I don't know what else to try. Does anybody have any clue about this problem?

2 Reply by rdlady (edited by rdlady 2016-05-07 20:18:00)

  • rdlady
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Re: Can't do long prints in the da vinci Junior

Now I noticed that the stepper motor gets really hot after 7-10 hours printing. When it's clicking more often I can't even touch the motor because it's high temperature.

I wonder if the heat is causing the clicking noise, or the clicking is making the stepper motor overheat.
For solving the overheating problem I will install a heat sink and a fan in the stepper motor. But I'm not sure if this will solve the clicking problem.

Update: after adding the new heatsink and fan in the stepper motor I was able to do many >50 hours prints and no clicking noise at all!!!! Problem solved!