Filament feeding issue on a Stratasys Dimension 3d Printer
Our ABS M30 like filament and Breakaway Support (BST) materials customer since 2015 ran into an issue where the BST wouldn't load. Of course since we sell wholesale or aftermarket filament the blame immediately gets attributed to the material. More often than not there is a mechanical issue with the machine. However, in this case it was a unique 3d printing job causing the issue.
How to fix a filament feeding issue on a Stratasys Dimension 3d Printer?
First we checked that the feed gears in the Dimension print head were clean and aligned well. A fresh tip was loaded and the problem persisted. It wasn't until the customer described that the part set-up had a lengthy ten hour Model filament run and then when the machine switched back to Support filament it wouldn't feed down the tip into the melt chamber. Problem solved: the support filament dwelling at the top of the tip was getting too hot and too soft to feed into the Support tip.
Maraca is not a dance, it is a Field Service software from Stratasys!
Customer found the Maraca field service software online, lowered the Support tip temperature by 5C and the Support filament no longer gets so soft at the lead in to the tip that is can't feed down into the tip when the next layer of Support is required.