Extruder Clicking without Extrusion Problems

Question

I own a DIY Hypercube Evolution equipped with Tevo Titan extruder, Clone Chimera hotend and Capricorn's High-temp PTFE tube. I use RAMPS with Mega and A4988's.

During prints, my extruder motor randomly clicks. I touched the filament and during the clicks I'ven't felt any problems with extrusion. I looked at the motor shaft to control if it clicks at special angles or randomly, but it clicks randomly. My prints do look very good: clear and shiny.

Do you have any suggestions? (the sound really gives me headache)

Hi Mehmet and welcome to Stack Exchange 3D Printing! – 0scar Jul 21 '18 at 21:30 — 0scar, Jul 21 '18 at 21:30
It's hard to tell what kind of e3D hotend was used – Trish Sep 30 '19 at 10:20 — Trish, Sep 30 '19 at 10:20
What kind of e3D Hotend is used? – Trish Sep 30 '19 at 16:41 — Trish, Sep 30 '19 at 16:41

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 21 '18 at 16:55

Even though you may have acceptable extrusion, any clicking from that area of your printer is likely to be a missed step on the extruder motor. This may be insignificant with respect to print quality, but as you suggest, it is an irritation.

If you are confident that your nozzle is clean of debris (which is likely), you could consider to raise the nozzle temperature a few degrees. If the nozzle is not applying enough heat to the filament, it may resist being forced through and a click representing a delay, allows that much more heat to be applied.

You should not have to increase by much, certainly no more than five degrees. It's also possible that you can slow the feed rate a bit to accomplish a similar result.

Increased the hotend temp 5 C, but it just clicks:( Will try re soldering the extension cable of my extruder soon — Mehmet Aydın, Jul 21 '18 at 18:41

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 21 '18 at 21:16

3

If an extra few degrees of heating the hot end does not work, you could try to increase the amount of Ampere through the steppers. Increasing the current will increase the torque of the stepper.

The question is what your current V_ref of your extruder stepper driver is. To get a maximum current of 1 Ampere you require a V_ref of 0.4 V if you have genuine Polulu A4988 stepper drivers with a 0.05 Ω (R_s). Chinese drivers often have a different sensing resistor (R_s = 0.1 Ω). With formula:

Vref = I_TripMax * 8 * Rs

You can then calculate the V_ref to be 1 * 8 * 0.1 = 0.8 V.

answered Jul 21 '18 at 21:16

0scar

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My Vref is 0.8V now. But ı found out there is a lot of dust on my extruders gear, i cleaned them and ill try it that way first. Thanks for the answer btw – Mehmet Aydın Jul 21 '18 at 21:29
If you find a solution for the problem, and it is different than the already posted answers, please post this in an answer. This will help other that may stumble onto your topic while searching for their similar problems. You will be able to accept your answer after 48 hours! If cleaning does not help, please update your question to include that you had a lot of debris in the extruder gear housing and cleaning did not help. – 0scar Jul 21 '18 at 21:35
I will of course share the solution if ill be able to find it :) – Mehmet Aydın Jul 21 '18 at 21:36

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 18 '20 at 21:01

One thing or another limits (controls) the flow form the nozzle. in ideal operating conditions, the molten/softened plastic is kept in a small pool in the nozzle, without high pressure, and responsive to pressure by flowing from the nozzle. The plastic must be viscous and self-adhering enough that gravity and residual pressure on the melt will not be sufficient to draw the plastic out.

If the plastic is too stiff, such as through not being at a high enough temperature, as the filament is fed by the extruder the pressure will increase until the pressure is high enough to force plastic from the nozzzle. The plastic that is being fed by the extruder elastically compresses to generate the pressure. Hooke's law in action. This causes a delay at the beginning of extrusion, and a continuation of extrusion at the end. The elastic "wind up" of the filament gives us the delay. A printer in this mode will appear to work pretty well. It may require higher "retraction" lengths to unload the pressure.

If this is the operating mode, the filament outflow rate may be less than the rate at which filament is passing through the extruder. Pressure continuallly increases until the extruder motor has insufficient torque, at which point it skips. The pressure is not reduced very much by the skip, and plastic continues to flow, lowering the pressure until the extruder can again advance the filament.

It might be worth increasing the temperature.

Extruder Clicking without Extrusion Problems

3 Answers3