Drive Gear Filament Pressure Adjustment

Drive gear pressure on the filament is one of the essential components of achieving good quality prints. If your filament is pressed too little to the drive gear it might slide and if it’s too tight, it will get crushed and change its diameter. Also, it might clog the extruder.

Correctly adjusted pressure causes the filament to retain its diameter while there are visible grooves on its surface.

To adjust the drive gear pressure, follow these steps. What you will need is M4 hex screwdriver and wrench 7.

For single (1.75 and 3 mm) extruder

To adjust the drive gear pressure you must adjust the position of bearing on the right of the extruder. To do this simply tighten or loosen screws on top of the bearing mount as shown. Please make sure that you do it symmetrically for both screws.

Extrude some of the filament to check the surface and adjust some more if it’s necessary.

For Dual Pro extruder

Unlike while adjusting the pressure in Single extruder, in Dual Pro extruder, moving part is the position of the whole stepper motor, but adjusting it is even simpler because there is only one screw (for each motor) to adjust its position.

Tighten or loosen screws as shown.

Extrude some of the filament to check the surface and adjust some more if it’s necessary.

NOTES:

1. You can always check the filament pressure by hand: heat up extruder and choose Feed. Now hold down the filament by hand while the motor is rotating. If you fell that your filament slips, adjust the gear pressure again.
2. Check the drive gear pressure (filament surface) each time you change your filament. Filament diameter might vary depending on its manufacturer and that might cause printing problems.
3. When printing with flexible filaments it’s not possible to determine the surface of the filament. In this case use different stiff filament (for example PLA/ABS) and adjust the pressure on it. Then change filament to a flexible one.
4. When printing with brittle filaments (like filaments with carbon, brass or copper) be very careful then adjusting the pressure. Too much of the pressure will break the filament instead of crushing it. Removing bits of it might pose some problems.