Offbrand Filament problems for Solidoodle Press

155 Celsius ??????

Unless that's a typo, your "printing" temps are WAAAY off. 

ABS becomes soft enough to extrude around 195°C, and even there it's still a bit on the low side.  Most of us print with ABS at around 205°-220°C

Check your thermistor to make sure it's still properly attached, then check your temps again.

If it is jamming on the first layer you may have the nozzle too close to the bed.

You didn't give enough information to properly diagnose the problem.

When you say "it jams", do you mean the nozzle physically clogs up and you have to remove it, clean it and replace it before it will print again or do you mean that the filament just breaks at some point before it gets fed into the extruder.   

In other words, how do you "clear the jam?"    If all it takes to fix it is unscrewing the two screws holding on the plastic cover and the heatsink then pulling out a little bit of broken or bent filament above the heatblock, then the most likely cause is overheating. 

In this case, I'd suggest dropping the heat to 215-220 and opening the case slightly to allow some of the heat to escape.   I've seen this with third party filament where over time the heatsink can't dissapate enough heat and it ends up heating the entire extruder.   The filament softens BEFORE it gets to the heatblock and either bends or breaks between the extruder wheel and the heatblock itself.    I'm seeing this now.    I'm using at third-party filament now, and I'm seeing exactly this problem.   It usually occurs about an hour into a print (long enough for the whole extruder to heat up).

Check the wires to your extruder stepper motor. Similar symptoms can be caused by a break in the wire.

So I went back to Microcenter to get some Tech Support with my printing problems with the Microcenter filament. The Microcenter techs admitted the Microcenter Filament is a very low quality filament ($18.00 for 1kg) and I should attempt using a reputable brand name before making any major repairs.

I have a spool of Hatchbox arriving  soon and will attempt a print with that stuff. I have seen some of you guys using it on your Solidoodle press and thought I might try it.

I also bought Cleaner filament. Has anyone ever tried using cleaner filament on their Press?

I've never had filament trouble from microcenter inland filament.

If your extruder works fine when free extruding, but fails when you start to print, check your zoffset. if the head is too low, the print bed may be shutting off the flow of plastic from the nozzle. (How to check? Take, a flat piece of metal, say a box cutter blade, measure the thickness, and do a g0 move to that height. Now try and slide the metal under the nozzle. If it interferes by much, g0 until the metal just fits, then reduce your zoffset by the error.)

Awesome. I'll try lowering the temp on the Microcenter brand. I haven't tried lowering it yet, in fact I was jacking it up to 255c.

I was able to narrow down the problem just short of solving. It's not a drive gear issue but a clogging issue. It looks like both Hatchbox and Microcenter gets clogged after a few minutes of printing. I practiced using the Z offset calibration and the issue occurs at the +1 mark where the gear starts thumping and I have to stop the print, retract, then use a paperclip to unclog the nozzel.

When I remove the filament, instead of a clean needle like stinger coming out of the print head, I get a very long tail with a glob in the middle then another tail.

I've ruled out drive gear issues and Z offset issues.

Thanks Trayracing. I tooled with the z offset. Not necessarily using your method but re-adjusted for plenty of z space between the bed and nozzel. I dropped .02 from the norm and so far so good. My prints are looking better too. I'll let you know if I run into trouble.

The Z-offset instructions seem misleading. I just used trial and error. Here are my specs.
Filament: Hatchbox ABS White
Z offset: 3.60
Head Temp: 250
Bed Temp: 100

Test print, custom Lincoln Logs
roughly 6"x 6"

Thanks for the help guys, a combination of Temperature settings and Z Offset did the trick.