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Purging your Nozzle
With many of the pastes we work with, they begin to cure the moment they’re exposed to air. You might expect this to be less of an issue for such a small opening, but even for a small orifice like a 150 um nozzle can experience this quicker than you think.
If left long enough you can experience something called ‘skinning’. This is where we have a cured skin across the surface of the nozzle that may restrict the flow of the uncured ink behind it.
This is where purging comes in. Purging your nozzle is a quick step that will ensure you can get back to great prints quickly.
First thing you’ll need to do is home your NOVA. This will park the gantry in the back right corner, but more importantly it will home all of the axis and make sure you’re not dispensing onto your print area. To do this click the home button in the top bar of the software:
Home the system button
Once homed, you will need to navigate to the tool page for the smart dispenser. In the bottom left options area, click on the Hardware Attachments option:
Hardware Attachments button
Click on the Smart Dispenser either on the left or right according to which port of the module hub it’s connected to:
Selecting the Smart Dispenser
On the options page for the Smart Dispenser, you will need to HOME the dispenser. This will ensure that there is no longer any pressure being applied to your material:
Homing the dispenser
To manually purge the blockage in the nozzle you will need to gradually increase the pressure being applied on the Set Pressure option. We recommend that you you start in increments of 200. So start with setting to 200, wait for the dispenser to pressurize and see if any paste comes out the end of the nozzle. If nothing, try 400, then 600, etc. until you see paste flowing reliably through the nozzle.
Setting the pressure manually to 200
Setting the pressure manually to 800
Once complete you can return the pressure to the default 100 setting, close the Smart Dispenser options and return to printing.
Setting the pressure back to 100
Closing the Smart Dispenser options
That’s purging! If you find that purging wasn’t helpful, the ink in your nozzle may have been left a little too long and it’s fully clogged now. Swapping to a fresh nozzle should get you back to printing. If you’re unsure, feel free to reach out to our Support team.