Hi, I hope someone on here can help.

For the last couple of weeks I have been having problems with my extruder, so much so that i've changed from v9 to a wades with a j-head nozzle, although it doesn't seem to have solved the problem.

When printing, the filament will not stick to the bed. (glass bed heated to 60 deg C, cleaned with acetone while cold, have tried on the aluminium plate + kapton combo). It has in the past. I noticed that the v9 was barely extruding anything, and not in a stream like usual, the extrusion would curl up to the nozzle. I assumed this to be a nozzle issue. I have since changed nozzle and extruder, and while now the extrusion streams from the nozzle, it almost seems to be cold as it is exiting the nozzle (using transparent blue PLA from reprap central, which I have made parts with before, so I don't think it can be the filament) as usually the filament is glassy, whereas now it has a whitish edge to it I assume this to be the cause of it not sticking. I have tried extruding at 185 C, and at 210 C, with no change. I have tried manually feeding filament at different speeds (100mm/min to 300mm/min) with pronterface, with no change.

The only thing in common now is the stepper motor, and the Gen 6 board. The firmware reports the temperature as being correct, so I don't see how it can not be melted!?

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated as this almost has me pulling my hair out

Hey,

I've since switched back to the v9 nozzle and have found that to get consistent extrusion, I need to heat the hot-end to 240 Celsius. I have also set up the extruder as shown here.

http://www.mendel-parts.com/new_forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=973&hilit=s+bend&start=10

yes you are right, I also set the temperature pretty high on v9, 230-240C for PLA.
Because in the inner PEEK core temperature is bit lower thats why.

actually v9 still needs more finetuning, im testing v9b last weeks on some machines, but maybe i want to do more finetuning, I know it can be much better even.. because i never had enough time to proper finetune it...

but for now im focusing on the insert piece, first we need very strong grip on the filament then we can start to finetune the hotend, else I cant finetune it enough, the brass insert slips..
That is something Ive never changed from adrian's geared extruder and not happy with since ages.. Conrad's quality is really crap sometimes and they change geometry on different loads etc, so we are busy producing those ourselves now.. and have some great news about it soon
check blog in next few days, ill post something about this that will also (probably) give you a free solution for that