I can’t print anymore with my relatively new K1C because extrusion completely fails.
What happended: I accidentally printed PLA with ABS settings, so it was way too hot and the nozzle got clogged. I noticed quite late, so the extruder was chewing on the filament for quite some time.
I replaced the nozzle, but extrusion still doesn’t work. I’ve disassembled the extruder, the gears inside look fine to me. Pushing a peace of filament through the extruder spins the gears.
Now the strange part: If I assemble everything, it works for one or two extrusions from the menu, gets slower until it completely stops again. I can hear the extruder chewing on the filament, it tries to push it through the nozzle but fails to do so.
I have no good explanation, everything looks fine to me.
My guesses:
Either the extruder is damages somehow and can’t apply enough force to push the filament through. That doesn’t explain though why it works initially
There’s too much resistance to push the filament through the nozzle. Not sure why that would be, and again initially after disasembling and reassembling it works.
P.S: It’s the nozzle that keeps clogging. Not sure why that happens, I’m printing PLA now with the same settings i used to print PLA before. Why would the nozzle constantly keep clogging?
What temperature are you setting the nozzle to when you are using the extrude command. When you do a retract after extruding, is it easy to pull the filament out?
I set my nozzle temp to 220c for PLA when manually extruding.
I had clogged my nozzle earlier this week on my new K1C and ended up doing a retract then removed the extruder and cleaned out a jam in it. Then I took the supplied metal rod and pushed it into the top of the nozzle to push the filament out the tip while it is at 220c. Don’t use the rod with the extruder in place, it will pull melted plastic back up into the extruder when you remove the rod. Once the nozzle cooled down to 180c I took it out let it cool and then using the rod went back in to clean off the walls as far down as it would go. Then reassembled and manually purged about five times.
P.S. if you can manually by hand push the filament through the nozzle with the extruder latch unlocked, then the nozzle is not necessarily clogging, might be a feed problem.
I’ve cleaned the nozzle numerous times already using the metal rod, removing the extruder every time. I’m extruding at the default 220C. Manually pushing the filament has the same result, there’s no filament flow at all. Pulling the filament out is quite difficult.
I suspect some heat creep building up, I just don’t know why. It feels lile the filament gets stuck in the upper part of the nozzle.
I’m brand new to filament printing, so no expert, just letting you know what I did to solve my problem.
After a successful retract, If you take the nozzle out and use the rod as a depth gauge, how far does it go in before the blockage?
When I checked my depth with the nozzle cold, I could get the rod To go in to the point where the threaded section start, maybe a mm or two deeper past that section. I se my thumb nail as the gauge stop then draw out the rod and hold it on the outside of the nozzle to see how far it went in. But when I lifted the rod back up and in as it touched the sides of the wall I could feel melted filament. I used the rod to scrap down the walls then lightly tapped the top end of the nozzle on a table to dislodge the chunks.
Tr y multiple retracts if the first one doesn’t work.
Hi. Extruding at such high temperatures is what caused the initial problem, I’m afraid to do so again. But yes I could go a little higher, maybe 230. I was running at 220 though before without any problems.
Probing with the “pusher tool” i can get in as far as the lower end of the part that is supposed to touch the heat brake.
I still think it’s heat creep. I’ve used some CPU thermal grease, maybe this is inadequate for the job to transfer the heat to the cooler. I’ve ordered thermal grease that is rated up to 350 degrees, I hope that will do the job. Also checked the cooler that’s cooling the heat sink, it’s running fine.
Another thing could be the extruder motor, it’s getting somewhat hot. Not sure how hot it’s supposed to get.
As said before, I can get in halfway through. After heating and pressing the remaining filament through the nozzle, I can reach the bottom. From now I’m sure the problem will repeat, i can extrude for a short time and then the nozzle will be clogged again.
Just a guess but it could be a temperature sensor. see if you can monitor the upswing of the temp and determine if it is the same as when it was working.
Good point. From the readings it looks fine, but it’s hard to verify I think, I have no way of reading the temperature other than with the sensor itself
You might want to run some eSun cleaning filament through the hot end. It’s really hard to tell if there is dirt or remnants of filament in the way. I had this problem and used a 1.75 mm rod I found on Amazon through the hot end with the nozzle removed, then some cleaning filament, and repeat this a few times. Then the problem cleared up. I think I ran into some crappy filament that caused the problem.
I finally found the issue, and I feel a bit stupid about it now. But then I learned something I guess.
After the clogging I took everything apart and then reassembled the hotend incorrectly, having the part that holds the hotend and nozzle in place touching the heatsink above. So the hotend was always too high relative to the nozzle. Then of course the tip of the nozzle isn’t properly heated, while the upper part is too hot and there’s heat creep. Stupid in mistake in hindsight.
I’m glad to hear that you got it figured out!
It’s always cool when you can solve a problem on your own like this, even when we do something wrong in the first place to cause the problem. I always view my stupid mistakes as a good learning tool!
Hello. I had exactly the same problem on the k1 max. Please show me how to properly reassembled hotend? When replacing the nozzle, I just screw it in after lubricating it with thermal paste.
