Tevo Tarantula extruder motor clinking sounds

Question

The extruder motor makes these clinking sounds. I read about that and I tried to adjust it with its potentiometer, I tried reassembling the clamps, reinserted the leading tube in both ends, cutting them in a 90° angle but nothing helps.

It seems that if I have a print of 0.1 mm layer thickness, the nozzle does not put out enough filament and it gets clogged up in the leading metal tube to the nozzle.

On the extruder side it looks like the clogging up gets the motor the sort of skip the push of the filament.

This is my G-code.

What is going wrong here?? How can I setup these params to work together smoothly?

Answer 1

I'd advise against adjusting the driver's potentiometer without also taking a voltage reading and doing the math to find out what current is being driven through the stepper. Having the current too high can damage your driver or stepper. But having the current too low can cause that clicking as the stepper internally skips.

The filament may also be too cold, and is providing too much resistance to being forced out the extrusion nozzle.

Or the filament may be getting stuck in the area just above the heating element in your hotend. This is called heat creep, and can cause jams. Based on your description it looks like this is happening to your hotend.

Or your nozzle may be clogged with dust and contaminants. Check the diameter spec for your hotend and look up an appropriate cleaning method (for ABS you can soak in acetone, for PLA there are tiny drill bits to clear out debris).

Or you may be trying to print too fast. Lowering the print speed means plastic is extruded slower and there's less pressure built up in the hotend. I would check on the other options before adjusting print speed, because it can fix the symptoms but may not be the root cause.