CW2 Gone Bad

[claudermilk]

So my printer was working great...until it wasn't. I ran several prints the other day that came out great & started to run a new job in the morning. The extruder started making nasty grinding noises and barely shoved an plastic at all. WTF? I have taken the CW2 apart and reassembled several times now; nothing looks amiss that I can see. Everything spins smoothly & freely. I have pulled the motor and run it loose and it spins fine. I've swapped filament (two different PLAs) and three different nozzles on my Revo--confirmed no clogs. I can issue an extrude command from KlipperScreen or Fluidd and it works normally. When I run my filament load macro or try to actually print it starts up with the grinding; it even does this with no filament loaded. I'm at a loss and welcome any ideas.

 

[NoGuru]

I have had the cable slip off the control board connector before.
I have had the idler gear inside the extruder become loose and not allow enough tension.

Do you have a new motor you can test? How about cable harness from motor to controller?
Reprint the Extruder?

 

[Mike Eitel]

Why are you sure that hotend has correct/enough temperature. Try to measure ore at least set quite high one.

 

[claudermilk]

Hotend temps are good. Just extruding from the Mainsail/Fluidd/KlipperScreen interface is fine.

I don't have a spare motor, and I checked the gears in the extruder--idler is fine and secure where it goes and--more importantly--the grub screw is damn tight. I did wiggle the wire while doing an extrude and got it to make the nasty noises. I suspect i might have worn out the wires in the cable chain. I'll slap together a patch cable to eliminate that and see if anything changes.

 

[Lalabanana]

I had same issues similar to your as well. Try to forcefully pull filament up when the latch is engaged on CW2. It should'nt be felt loose but tight. If yours happened to be loose, which is my case, swap the tooth gear with better ones (some said Bondtech ones the best...) . I have gone for LGW Lite mod instead and its print quality is superb compared to CW2 (print speed: 20m3/s & 9K accel). Hope this helps.

 

[claudermilk]

Nope, gears are good. When locked in it's locked in; I have the Bondtech gears in there so that should not be an issue. Again, this is an extruder that has worked well for hours and hours.
I am looking at Orbiter, or Galileo 2 when it's released as much out of curiosity as anything.
I have about 1700 hours on the printer, so it's not a complete surprise that the wire harness may be wearing out. I do appreciate the ideas, and hopefully they will help someone else out in the future.

 

[claudermilk]

It turns out the thread is mis-titled; it should be Wiring Gone Bad. 😒 It turns out that even PTFE wires wear out...after 1700 hours of use in a cable chain. I finally had time to tear into the printer and sure enough one of the extruder motor wires wore out and broke. So it's finally time to re-wire the gantry and swap to the toolhead PCBs I've had sitting here.