Ok thanks. I've had the extruder apart many times but not examined down inside the hot end I must admit.
I've tried what you suggested and the filament is hard to push through. Strangely it seemed good at first, but then got more difficult. I had it up as hot as 230C (and this is PLA not ABS) and it was still needing a lot of pressure by hand to feed through.
I have a suspicion that it's poor quality PLA that could potentially be the issue here since it was very cheap stuff. When I bought it, I didn't realise there was a big variation in quality but have read a lot on this since.
I might ask my mate if he has some I can use so that I can try it with known good quality plastic.
Another thing is that I've swapped from ABS to PLA and I've no idea if there's a particular method you should do in order to do this. Could it be possible for instance that due to the lower print temperature with PLA that there's a bit of ABS still in there that is restricting the flow of the PLA? Basically to change them over I pushed the ABS through as best as I could, then pushed the blank end of a 3mm drill bit in to push it all through, then I inserted the PLA.
On another note, I wonder if there is any design for an extruder that uses double the gripping area of a normal Wades extruder? I have an idea about having one where an opposite main gear meshes with the existing one and of course turns the opposite way, driving a second hobbed bolt against a second bearing, but higher up. I wonder how easy this would be to make, and if it would help reduce slippage and stoppages etc....
I've tried what you suggested and the filament is hard to push through. Strangely it seemed good at first, but then got more difficult. I had it up as hot as 230C (and this is PLA not ABS) and it was still needing a lot of pressure by hand to feed through.
I have a suspicion that it's poor quality PLA that could potentially be the issue here since it was very cheap stuff. When I bought it, I didn't realise there was a big variation in quality but have read a lot on this since.
I might ask my mate if he has some I can use so that I can try it with known good quality plastic.
Another thing is that I've swapped from ABS to PLA and I've no idea if there's a particular method you should do in order to do this. Could it be possible for instance that due to the lower print temperature with PLA that there's a bit of ABS still in there that is restricting the flow of the PLA? Basically to change them over I pushed the ABS through as best as I could, then pushed the blank end of a 3mm drill bit in to push it all through, then I inserted the PLA.
On another note, I wonder if there is any design for an extruder that uses double the gripping area of a normal Wades extruder? I have an idea about having one where an opposite main gear meshes with the existing one and of course turns the opposite way, driving a second hobbed bolt against a second bearing, but higher up. I wonder how easy this would be to make, and if it would help reduce slippage and stoppages etc....
