Stops extruding in one spot (area) of the perf board! Arggggh!

UP BOX/UP BOX+
1

areastopsprinting

A strange extrusion issue has occurred and we can’t resolve it.

Issue:

On the front left hand side of the board the extrusion stops and makes a shuddering motion when you feel the filament. The board is flat and calibrated and the nozzle is the correct distance above the board.

If you extrude the filament before printing it extrudes fine. If you print a model on the right rear, left rear, or front right of the perf board it prints fine. If you try to print on the front left quadrant no filament comes out and the shuddering of the filament begins.

We have tried:

  • Complete new extrusion assembly but this has the same issue;

  • Checked all the cables and ribbons are on correctly in case it pulls a lose connection on the ribbon when it is at maximum distance;

  • new filament;

-recalibrated the bed and checked that the nozzle doesn’t go too close to the board;

-reinstalled the software.

I have attached two pictures. The first is the on the first time it went wrong. You can see that it has printed perfectly for a while, and then all of a sudden it has stopped extruding filament in one area of the print bed. Everywhere else is fine.

The second picture shows that it prints fine everywhere on the board, except for the front left quadrant. We printed a big square and when it reaches the front left quadrant it stops extruding, but when it moves back to one of the other areas it starts extruding again.

Any ideas of what to try next?

2

Hi,

In case it helps anyone else I have resolved the issue. The ribbon cable has a break in it somewhere! You can’t see the break from the outside but when you continuity test it one strand is dead.

So if your stepper is shuddering, and you can’t work out anything else, you may want to try scrunching the ribbon in places and the stepper stops juddering intermittently!

I guess for me it stopped extruding when it was on the far side of the board because it broke the strand in the ribbon slightly when at full stretch.

Best all.

3

Hello Jamie. Ugh, me too, exactly, starting just yesterday.

Are you talking about the rainbow ribbon cable?
So did you replace cable(s)? Which ones?

Everything working now?
So glad to see your post.
Thx
Steve

4

I’ve dealt with this exact issue in several of my up printers, the cause of this is the “Extruder FFC Cable” for the up box. Its a long, white, flat cable that goes from the back of the printer to the extruder. Here is the tiertime shop link (UP BOX / UP BOX+ Extruder FFC Cable - Tiertime 3D Printer Store). In my experience this happens after enough movement has occurred that some of the thin internal wiring seems to wear out so when its put in certain positions, its no longer able to send the signal to the extruder assembly to tell the stepper motor to pull the filament through. That is what is causing the juddering. Sadly there isn’t much you can do about it aside from carefully replacing that cable with a new one