My problem is that the extruder initially works then the extruder stepper starts to stall (The clicking sound) I got better results by increasing the Vref voltage on the Extruder driver to 1.6Volts but that's forcing 2 Amps through the coils and a bit suspect. The stalling was reduced but still there.
I've read quite a few posts about swapping the motors or drivers but find it suspicious that the X, Y and Z motors are invariably fine and it's only the extruder bits that fail. My theory, which so far is looking pretty good, is that the spring which forces the idler pulley against the feed gear is too strong! It's acting like a brake preventing the feed gear turning. Steppers are fairly easy to stall (I worked maintaining X/Y vector photo plotters for 15 years which used them so I've been here before.)
I managed to find a weaker spring and fitted it, the filament now extrudes without the motor stalling, OK, so it doesn't do it consistently yet but I feel I'm on the right track. I've just ordered the aluminium feeder kit, 1.75mm/3mm (Right handed) to try and get some better adjustment. In the mean time I'm going to adjust the spring length which should increase the force needed to compress it and hence the force on the filament/drive gear.
A bit late to do the work just now but we'll see!
Play Bonny!
23rd April.
Fitted the aluminium extruder feeder and adjusted the feed spring tension to a bit less than needed to stall the stepper motor, now feeds fine. I also discovered that the default Slic3r config files that I'd downloaded from somewhere were for a 0.4mm nozzle. During the extruder strip down and rebuild I discovered that I actually had a 0.3mm nozzle (size is embossed on the brass nozzle - Doh!) Most replacement nozzles on Amazon are 0.4mm, maybe that's where I got confused. I'm also using a Pritt glue stick to help with print adhesion to the glass platen which seems to work well.
Print quality now a magnitude better than when I started!
Play Bonny!
Soadyheid