Extruder Tension Control with Cable Guide by vivamus3d model
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Extruder Tension Control with Cable Guide by vivamus3d

Extruder Tension Control with Cable Guide by vivamus3d

by Thingiverse
Last crawled date: 3 years, 3 months ago
Update: added a version with cable guide
Initially I had problems printing flexible TPU filament on my CR-10S printer. It liked to ravel between extruder wheel and PTFE/Capricorn tube, especially after frequent retracts.
The problem with soft filaments is that frequent back and force pulling will squeeze the filament making it more flat and wider, so that eventially it can not be pushed back into the PTFE tube and forms a ravel/clew.
There are several solutions to mitigate that problem
control/reduce pressure of extruder wheel (this thing)
cool the stepper motor of the extruder to avoid making filament even softer
(I used a simple little USB fan for that)
tune rectract parameters, pull and especially push back filament slower
(normal fast pull/push will only strech-compress filamnet potentialy creating ravel when pushing into bowden tube)
Actually after controlling extruter tension (avoid squeezing) and keep it cool I have no more issues with flexible/TPU filament.
The tension control reuires a simple M5x10mm (knurled) screw + nut

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