1 (edited by pricecg44 2015-05-29 09:33:50)

Topic: who is getting 300g per hour?

My extruder is OSP  (open source 3d printing llc) MG94 ASB slow at 8cm per min, less than 50g per hour.
I'm using OSP ABS and masterpatch at weighed 32:1 (not teaspoon estimation),
so it can not be the crappy masterpatch cause in that other thread on slow ABS.
Heating at 184C.

If this is seriously under a quarter the elmoret-quoted rate (300g/hr), we have a problem.
Is temperature extremely critical to get into a small working pressure range?

Seriously, am I only in the 5% problematic group?

2

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

ABS can be very different. I had low output when temp was too low for the given batch of plastic. Try rising the temp +5-10 C and see if it makes any difference. If filament becomes too thin, reduce the pulling of filament (make the loop smaller).

3

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

I've never quoted 300g/hr.

4

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

So what is the official output expected in grams per hour and filament cm/in per minute.

I've reread the 1/4 sticking out instruction which I missed as I put the collar on before reading that.
It looks like I have the distance between the two flanges too small by over 1/8 inch, so I'll rearrange
using the original layout (flanges on each side of the wood) and with the original black spacers.
Assume that the too close auger does not have enough space in the void between auger end and nozzle
inside surface to build up sufficient pressure.

If the distance betwen flanges is an obvious indicator of correct auger end, could this be stated as a correctness check in the instructions.

5

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

The output depends on the polymer family, the specific polymer, and the extrusion temperature.

Inches per minute depends on filament diameter. Generally people see 100-150 grams/hour with high flow ABS. Colorants definitely reduce that, you can compensate somewhat by increasing extrusion temperature as others have posted in this thread.

I don't know why you decided to rearrange the flanges, especially without checking with someone. The distance between the flanges is fixed by the black spacers, there's no reason to have this distance as a "correctness check" since it is not adjustable.

Its also worth keeping in ming that since you fully disassembled the motor, its possible it isn't performing as well as it once was.

6 (edited by pricecg44 2015-05-31 07:26:05)

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

Does the screwing tightness of putting the pipe on the flange, collar on and nozzle make for a range of space in the extruder which it looks like is crucial to flow rate? could there be variation In the dimensions due to where and how much the pipe threading was cut.  Perhaps an internal distance from the end of the auger bit to the nozzle outside end could help for extruders doing only 8cm per min.

Regards the motor, it operates about 6 rpm right? The torque on the motor had a wide range to very hard, bent the pipe a bit. I'm going to have to put a few washers on a side to get the pipe vertical.
I have put high temp epoxy in the gaps between the five commutators in the armature, will get a nice smooth surface as viewed under a 15x magnifier. It will be interesting to hear what happens. I'm hoping the gear noise is a resonator of the vibrations caused by the DC commutator gaps in the paper linked.

100g per hour will be nice, I got 370 in 21 hours, 17g per hour. Beautiful filament.

7

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

pricecg44 wrote:

Does the screwing tightness of putting the pipe on the flange, collar on and nozzle make for a range of space in the extruder which it looks like is crucial to flow rate? could there be variation In the dimensions due to where and how much the pipe threading was cut.

Of course. Which is why the instructions say to set the shaft collar such that the auger sticks out 1/4" with the thrust bearing compressed.

pricecg44 wrote:

Perhaps an internal distance from the end of the auger bit to the nozzle outside end could help for extruders doing only 8cm per min.

Again, this is already provided.

pricecg44 wrote:

The torque on the motor had a wide range to very hard, bent the pipe a bit. I'm going to have to put a few washers on a side to get the pipe vertical.

A wide range? What?

If you bent the pipe, you ran the motor without letting the plastic fully melt first. Bending the pipe can cause many problems - increased barrel wear, decreased output, etc. If the stall protection board is set properly, the pipe cannot be bent. Did you set it properly (turn ccw until you hear a click, then turn 6 turns cw)?

pricecg44 wrote:

I have put high temp epoxy in the gaps between the five commutators in the armature, will get a nice smooth surface as viewed under a 15x magnifier.

Myself and others recommended not doing that. At this point it's clear you're not interested in following advice, so why post questions here? I genuinely don't understand what you hope to accomplish by asking for advice, getting it, then doing the opposite.

pricecg44 wrote:

100g per hour will be nice, I got 370 in 21 hours, 17g per hour. Beautiful filament.

If you're seeing 17g/hour, I'd suspect your colorant requires higher temperatures to melt fully.  Just because OSP sells it doesn't mean it doesn't require changes to work well - you'll want to contact them about that. That or you've done something else in your series of not recommended modifications that is influencing output rate.

When you first got the machine and ran the natural ABS that came with it, what output rate did you see? Had you done anything (even disassembling the motor) before that point to make it different from the design? I'm guessing yes, since you mentioned not assembling the spacers per the manual.

If you don't have the info above (assembled per instructions without modifications or colorant), I recommend assembling as per the manual exactly (with the exception of your motor modifications, obviously), running natural ABS to purge out all the colorant, then setting the temperature to 190C (to rule out the possibility your controller is a little off) and checking output speed (and diameter).

Speaking of which, what's your diameter currently?

8 (edited by pricecg44 2015-05-31 22:42:59)

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

elmoret wrote:

Myself and others recommended not doing that. At this point it's clear you're not interested in following advice, so why post questions here? I genuinely don't understand what you hope to accomplish by asking for advice, getting it, then doing the opposite.

I do very much appreciate and value your advice.
I am university educated  and had a 20 year (short career) in IT research (no phD but basic computer science govt funded applied computer science). I say this in hope of gaining a bit more respect from you.

Regards the motor, Have you tired what I am doing? I probably am wrong, but why not try?
The paper linked implies something is there. Your point is noted of course, I will confirm it soon.
The noise is a major issue, given all day operation, its closeness, and the small amount of power < 60watts, this is a lightbulb.

Yes I stuffed up the flange geometry and would have saved my time and yours, sorry.

Still there is no actual internal end of auger to end of nozzle  dimension and its tolerance and subsequent effect on flow rate.
Remember there are three pipe threading tasks/ nozzle tightening to get within 1/8 inch tolerance of whatever this internal
vital dimension is. If people are having flow problems this dimension could be a quick check.

I have always tried to wait alt least 10  minutes at reported working temperature. I am experimenting with
different plastic mixtures so I am voiding any implied guarantees.  I have a setup  where I can unbolt the
motor and put a wrench onto the auger to feel the current torque, whilst the heater is still on. At times the
torque was guite large, yet the last full abs + 32:1 masterpatch was light to the pull. Still the motor grinded away
without the gears spitting teeth in all these cases.

9 (edited by pricecg44 2015-06-01 11:00:29)

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

Just viewed on old thread on slow extruding. Elmoret showed a close up of this barrel. Boy is it rough compared to mine. I wonder how I can roughen up mine. I'll try with my scriber as far inside as I can reach.

So 12 inches per min is a good rate.

10

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

Hi,

The new barrel replacement that I received did not look like, on the inside , the typical black iron
piipe that you get at the hardware store. It looked like the inside had been sand blasted with rough grit.
That would be an excellent way to really rough up the insde of the barrel evenly if you have access to a sand blaster.
I was actually thinking of blasting the inside of my barrel sometime with rough grit to see if it would increase
my extrusion rate.

11 (edited by pricecg44 2015-06-20 01:20:33)

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

elmoret wrote:

I've never quoted 300g/hr.

http://www.soliforum.com/topic/10892/speed/  just refound it

I've scribed out my barrel so I am hoping for better than 17g/hr. It took a couple of hours to get the grooves as thick as possible with a right angled scriber.

12

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

pricecg44 wrote:
elmoret wrote:

I've never quoted 300g/hr.

http://www.soliforum.com/topic/10892/speed/  just refound it

No, you found me saying that a couple users (out of thousands) with heavily modified Filastruders (not stock) and 3mm diameter filament (easier to extrude) report (but may be confused/dishonest) 1kg in 3 hours.

That is not me saying that the typical rate is 300g/hr. I have never said that.


pricecg44 wrote:

I've scribed out my barrel so I am hoping for better than 17g/hr. It took a couple of hours to get the grives as thick as possible with a right angled scriber.

No one has attempted this. It may make things better, or may make things worse. Have you tried the things the very experienced users in this thread recommended? (run natural ABS without colorant, increase temperature)? How about the things very experienced users have recommended in other threads? (clean the barrel)

13

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

Yes I have tried wrapping the upper barrel and raising the temperature 10C. I will wrap a bit more.

Looking back over the previous forum pages there were a lot of people with slow extrusion issues.
Did they all get resolved? The dialog seemed to end without an acknowledgement of resolution in many cases.
Did you communicate with them by PM or email.

Perhaps at this two year anniversary you could do a customer survey as to how they are doing. For thousands of satisfied customers there does not seem to be much comment on this forum. Where are they all?
All of us want your venture to be as successful as possible.

Cheers.

14

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

pricecg44 wrote:

Yes I have tried wrapping the upper barrel and raising the temperature 10C. I will wrap a bit more.

People have recommended cleaning the barrel (some folks use a blowtorch) and running natural ABS to eliminate the masterbatch as a variable. Have you done that? Have you at least tried a run of natural ABS without colorant?

pricecg44 wrote:

Looking back over the previous forum pages there were a lot of people with slow extrusion issues.

There have been exactly 9, including you. That is not a "lot", it is less than 0.5%!

elmoret (v1.3) - Problem happened after ~1500 hours of use, 95% MG94, 3% other ABS, 1% PLA, 1% ABS+black or green colorant. Prior to the clog, nothing my MG94 had been run for several hundred hours. Disassembled, removed plastic plug, reassembled. Problem has not resurfaced for ~200 hours since, extruding MG94 at temperatures from 180 to 190C. In the link, I detailed everything I observed - including the fact that after the barrel cooled, I could rotate the auger with a wrench - indicating the plastic was not even touching the walls of the barrel anymore. The jam occurred after heating up from cold - not after running for a period of time.
IanJohnson (v1.0) - problem happened after running Asaclean. Replaced barrel, problem did not resurface.
insta (v1.0) - problem happened after ~100 hours (5kg). Ran nylon pellets which seem to have pushed clog out.
digitydogs (v1.3?) Ran MG94 ABS and PLA for 200-500 hours, several jam/clean cycles to no avail. Two machines exhibit this behavior, two do not. One of the two exhibiting the jam ran GITD filament right before the jam, one of the machines that does not exhibit this behavior has run 50lbs of GITD filament.
kitcarguy (?) Ran GITD filament in the first few hours of use, jam occurred. Disassembled and cleaned twice, problem went away.
kszwab Improper assembly, problems stopped after correct assembly.
Ggalisky (v1.5)- Experienced 1-4"/min with MG94 and GP35 at 1.75mm diameter. Went up to 16"/min after clearing the clog, no issues since.
ericpaulbishop (v1.4) Experienced "dramatic slowdown", found that higher temperatures triggered it sooner, found that wrapping the barrel helped.

So then:
Myself, Ian: Cleaned barrel, no further issues.
insta - Purged with natural Nylon, no further issues.
digitydogs - Barrel replaced, no further issues. Also of noted that he has processed over 2000lbs of material.
kitcarguy - ran glow in the dark masterbatch, known to cause issues. Cleaned barrel, no further issues.
kszwab - improper assembly, no further issues after proper assembly.
Ggalisky - got a random plug of plastic stuck to the auger, cleared it, no issues since.
ericpaulbishop - experienced slowdowns, found wrapping barrel resolved it.

pricecg44 wrote:

Did they all get resolved?

Yes.

pricecg44 wrote:

The dialog seemed to end without an acknowledgement of resolution in many cases.

What cases?

pricecg44 wrote:

Perhaps at this two year anniversary you could do a customer survey as to how they are doing.

I do do customer surveys, randomly. Feedback is almsot universally positive. If I hear of someone having trouble, I try to help them. I'm trying to help you - I still haven't heard a complete list of the polymers and master batches you've tried to extrude. I also don't have an answer to the questions posed above. I'll repeat them here for clarity:

When you first got the machine and ran the natural ABS that came with it, what output rate did you see? Had you done anything (even disassembling the motor) before that point to make it different from the design? I'm guessing yes, since you mentioned not assembling the spacers per the manual.

It is hard to troubleshoot and help users without a full set of information, but I'm trying.

pricecg44 wrote:

For thousands of satisfied customers there does not seem to be much comment on this forum. Where are they all?

Folks tend to post to forums when they have problems/questions, not when everything's going swimmingly. For example I love my Macbook Pro, but I don't post to forums about it. On the other hand I can find thousands of folks posting about the problems they're having with their Macbook Pro. Does that mean the Macbook Pro is bad? Of course not, they sell hundreds of thousands of the thing so a few folks reporting issues are a very small percentage of the population. Often times, those issues are self inflicted - water damage, downloading malware, not updating software, etc. Anyway:

There's tons of folks enjoying their Filastruder. Some examples:

http://hackaday.com/2014/11/24/custom-f … lastruder/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMi4F-RXKLI
http://www.filastruder.com/pages/testimonials
http://www.soliforum.com/topic/10862/pcabs/
http://www.soliforum.com/topic/10731/abs-3mm-extrusion/
http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=6285
http://ggabrielson17.blogspot.com/2014/ … er-is.html
http://www.soliforum.com/post/97499/#p97499
http://www.soliforum.com/post/88187/#p88187
http://www.soliforum.com/post/46570/#p46570
http://www.soliforum.com/post/56808/#p56808

That's just some off the top of my head.

15 (edited by pricecg44 2015-06-16 07:59:17)

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

I over did the scribing! I'm getting 12 inches in 20 seconds. Unfortunately the dia is over 2mm and over 2.15 in parts, with lots of bumps.
I used 130g in under 20 minutes. So the setup is the spacers per instructions, and the bent barrel straighted to the motor with washers on side.

So I will have to file back the barrel.

I attempted to make masterpatch using CMYK ink on cornflour/starch for the powder and added about a tablespoon to 30g of ABS softened in acetone.  I put a 1:10 ratio in as I knew this was weak, but just got a background colour in the natural. Also bits of the masterpatch did not melt with this fast flow.

16 (edited by pricecg44 2015-06-16 07:47:04)

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

Polymer runs so far, (no more that 30 hours).

1/2 ABS and HDPE (shredded milkbottles on a large throated hopper, got about 5inch /min Filament brittle, snaps on bending.

ABS and about 1/3 recycled ABS print scraps. Go a dark brown filament,  Flow eventually stopped.

ABS and yellow/red masterpatch  from OSP in 1:32 weighed ratio. Beautiful filament with prober bendability, but 17g/hour.

And this quick flow 130g in under 20 minutes, ABS with 1:10 ratio diy masterpatch (too weak).

17 (edited by pricecg44 2015-06-16 08:03:22)

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

I wonder if this wavy and width fluctuating, width over 2mm will be OK for the volcano extruder?
The motor does strain more but I think it can take it, the teeth on the last gears are tough.

Can the winder cope with 36in/min?

18

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

pricecg44 wrote:

the bent barrel straighted to the motor with washers on side.

Like I said above: If the stall protection board is configured correctly, the motor cannot generate enough torque to bend the barrel. If the barrel is bent it is possible that the bend cause the inner surface to be polished or otherwise altered. Running with a bent barrel is bad news. How did it get bent? Also you can't really straighten the barrel with washers.

pricecg44 wrote:

Polymer runs so far, (no more that 30 hours).

1/2 ABS and HDPE (shredded milkbottles on a large throated hopper, got about 5inch /min Filament brittle, snaps on bending.

ABS and about 1/3 recycled ABS print scraps. Go a dark brown filament,  Flow eventually stopped.

ABS and yellow/red masterpatch  from OSP in 1:32 weighed ratio. Beautiful filament with prober bendability, but 17g/hour.

And this quick flow 130g in under 20 minutes, ABS with 1:10 ratio diy masterpatch (too weak).

What about the initial run of the included ABS that was in the instructions? Did you skip that? Why?

pricecg44 wrote:

I wonder if this wavy and width fluctuating, width over 2mm will be OK for the volcano extruder?

No.

pricecg44 wrote:

The motor does strain more but I think it can take it, the teeth on the last gears are tough.

The motor should not be able to "strain" more, it has a current limiting board which limits torque. You should be in current limiting at torques only 20-40% higher than normal running torque.

pricecg44 wrote:

Can the winder cope with 36in/min?

Generally no, depending on your spool diameter. You can get a faster gear motor for it, though.

19

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

I did do an initial run with included abs to get the muck out of the barrel. Just listing the main run. I popped the stall board when I foolishly reversed the wires, on order.  I clean the barrel by removing bolted on motor mount, pulling anger, chiselling any melted plastic. The bit seems to be clean when done. Any plastic in the barrel is easily removed. There is no hard stuck plastic that needs hard cleaning.

My quick pull apart extruder was simply modified by mounting the the motor wooden mount on a flat piece that bolts onto the main board.

The extruder is very sensitive to the friction in the barrel. Just a little scratches change the flow rate a lot.

20

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

I think I bent the barrel when doing the run with 1/3 recycled plastic. Likely I let the temp drop too low when stop starting. I just aligned the barrel onto the motor with the washers.
The auger is loose enough fit in the barrel. Does the cut out of the barrel weaken it so it susceptible to impatient restarting? Could a piece of pipe be welded around this port?

21

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

priceg44:

Yes the cutout does weaken the barrel such that impatient starting will twist it.  Been there done that.  Now I let it get up to temp and then wait an additional 10-15 minutes before starting the motor.  I'm thinking of putting a buzzer with a switch that will hook to the PID on the "up to temperature" pins or whatever it is called so that when it gets to temp, I will hear the buzzer, be able to then turn it off and then start a timer to let it finish heating.

Welding a pipe to part of the barrel would help, but would add possibly a fair amount extra cost to the whole assembly if elmoret doesn't have a welder as he would have hire out that step to an external welder which isn't cheap.

-os3dp

22 (edited by pricecg44 2015-06-20 01:21:33)

Re: who is getting 300g per hour?

Filed back the barrel so the roughness had no sharpish touch, still got the grooves.
But success, the flow is 12inch in one minute (previously 20 secs) and the filament is smooth (using a very dark blue masterpatch ratio guessed).
The dia looks close, (the lr44 button bat in gauge flat).

So it looks like you can assist flow rate via scribing in addition to  thermal wrapping the barrel.
The other idea of avoiding  problematic masterpatch means restricted additives.
Is this just an issue of the friction becoming less as the additive slicks the barrel or maybe the
gummy plastic just does not adhere to the barrel.  I do have worries on the effect of additives wrt to torque and bending the barrel, motor is ruggard.

If anybody considers scribing, be careful and go lightly. I kept scribing a grove for several minutes, too much.