Hey everybody,
good to be here at the end since I just registered. I am Tobi and I was using the Enders 3v2 for 4 years now while doing a lot of fancy own prototyp printing and had a lot of fun. However, now I bought the K1C because of nice features and easier printing + ability to print other materials such as ABS. Nice upgrade so far and for now I printed around 20 to 30 hours with PLA (good results). Printer was bought 3 weeks ago but since yesterday nothing works anymore and I fail to bring it back to operation.
I cannot print anymore due to clogged nozzle
Hence, I rejected the filament, heated the nozzle to 220, and tried to get the nozzle free again (using the delivered-cleaning guy)
After that, I added the filament back to the extruder but the extruder itself was not able to push the filament through it
Thus, I dissambled the extruder as well, removed the remaining filament which got stuck
Reheading the nozzle and pushed out the remaining PLA out of the nozzle using the tooling guy
After reassembling, the printer extruded around 3 to 4s perfectly and then the extruder stopped again. Somehow the extruder also does make clicks noise since the force against the filament is to strong and the extruder simply cannot push it through the nozzle. Cleaned the nozzle again and again but the filament get stuck always (??) - I also tried to use other PLA filament - hoping to get it back working.
After all fails, I also removed the nozzle with the heater and clean everything (the linner inside the nozzle is hard to “totally clean” - no idea how to do that perfectly).
After reassembling, refreshed the ceramic-paste for the cooling part I do encounter the same situation: the filament came out for a few seconds and then got blocked again.
Thus, at the moment I am not able to bring the printer up working.
As I was only printing PLA, the fact that the guy is only 3 weeks old, I don´t want to believe that the printer makes already problems or parts are damaged.
However, I encountered two issues almost which should not be there (I believe):
The x-movement does have one position where the motion of the extruder-unit requires a lot of force (this however, is not related to the clogged nozzle)
One bearing of the extruder gear seems to be not really of good quality (it does not run smooth and does behave defect in my opinion - I cleaned it with isopropanol and relubricated it which helped but is not perfect though).
Question to all experts
Anything I can do, to clean the nozzle completely and reabling the printer to do its work?
How would you proceed in general? The printer is new (?) → get in contact with the service/seller - refund/send-back? Commonly I am a pragmatic guy who simply repairs things rather than resending it back (but I don´t want to pay for spare parts already).
What would you do with that bearing and hard movement in x-direction?
I hope to get some new ideas and insights.
Thanks for reading and best regards,
Tobi
You have to take nozzle off and extruder off and then clean heaterthroat by a heated iron wire of the heaterthroat diameter, after done that and you can push through filament easy by hand (nozzle off ectruder off) then problem is solved and you can put extruder and nozzle on again.
Yes I changed the filament already and tested with the one sent by the printer itself. Same issue. Furthermore, the filament that clogged the nozzle was used for the whole prints before without any issue.
I will try to get the nozzle free with some heated metal part. Not sure if I find some potential one with correct diameter. The one that was delivered is way Smaller to the nozzle diameter.
Furthermore, tjan, as mentioned, if I clean it, and filament can be pushed easily, it start extruding but stops after 3-4s and it’s clogged again.
Use a hard copper electric wire that you can heat with a torch and push it through the heaterthroat (that is not the nozzle but the throat where the nozzle top end is sticking in, so has nothing to do with the nozzle)
I think some filament is melted inside that heaterthroat. When you can clear/clean that inside you can do the next test by putting filament through that heaterthroat by hand. If that goes easy your problem could be solved and you can install nozzle and extruder again and try again printing.
Yes but filament gets wetter the more it is in atmosphere. You need to dry it at all times or at least just before you print. An Eryone snail is a good cheap dryer that would be of significant benefit.
I am using 3d printers since 5 years without any drying box. Worked fine, despite of small printing issues but I never had blocked nozzles and so on.
The issue is solved and I am still using the same filament. One bearing of the extruder was damaged, leading to higher resistance. I also replaced the complete nozzle in addition.
Since I did that, things work perfectly again. I hope that the new parts are better compared to the old ones and that I don’t have issues after 20h printing again.
Hi Tobi,
I have a new Ender 3 V3 Plus and have had the same happen to me once…total panic set in, what do I do???
This is what worked for me: I heated up the extruder and used a long needle that I bought on Amazon to try to clean up what was in the extruder. I moved it up and down and added a twist, did this a few times. Every time cleaning the needle with the plyers to remove any filament. I cut 2 or 3 inches off the filament to insert in into the head to have a clean end. It cough the filament and soon after I started to see the filament come out…I also did this 3 times to make sure all was good.
What caused the problem for me with that the filament got tangled and the printer keep going during the night. When I saw that, well we know the feeling of a failed print but I was worried about the extruder. When I just started to insert the filament I heard knocking for the first time, boy was I worried. I got it going again and since then everything is normal.
Good luck, don’t give up hope, it’s the small things that take longer to find.
