I have a K1-Max printer since a couple of months now. The printing itself is perfect but when I don’t print for a couple of days, my PLA is always cracked inside the bowen tube, which frustrates me a lot.
When I start a new print job some days after the previous one, I forget to check the state of the PLA wire inside the bowen tube and after some 30 seconds the printer stops since the PLA is cracked.
I have to retract, remove the broken PLA parts inside the bowen tube, put the PLA back in, extract again and then resume the print job.
It looks like there’s a kind of chemical reaction between the PLA (bought from Creality, by the way) and the bowen tube material which makes that the PLA wire is cracked inside the bowen tube.
I don’t like this at all.
Anyone facing the same issue and if so, how to solve this annoying issue?
Unwind the filament a couple feet and check if it still is cracking. Most likely it needs to be dried in a filament dryer or a dehydrator for at least 8 hours to get the moisture out.
It’s good to keep track of the humidity with one of those mini hydrometers in the printer room as filament absorbs moisture over time and then becomes unusable.
Thanks for the answer. However, I have an old 3D printer where there’s a filament that is already over 3 years old on that printer.
This is a printer without bowden tube. And when I do print something on it (not used a lot anymore since I have my K1 Max now), it prints without any issues. No cracked PLA, no nothing. Just printing.
The printer is in the same room as my K1 Max printer. Same temperature, same humidity, same everything.
So, I’m still wondering why the PLA cracks on my K1 Max. Just had it again today since it was 4 days ago I printed something. And yet again, the PLA was cracked.
Let me make a clear “history” of both rolls of filament:
I bought both rolls (the one on my old 3D printer and the one on my K1 Max printer) at the same time over 3 years ago from Creality (I bought several rolls of filament at that time since there was a nice promotion)
I immediately used a roll of filament on my old 3D printer, which is now halfway done (yes, I don’t print a lot, as you can see)
I now recently opened another roll of filament that I bought 3 years ago, to be used on my K1 Max printer. The packing of the roll was still original:
in the hardboard packing (so, kept it in the dark)
the roll inside the hardboard box was itself packed in a plastic vacuum bag
there was a moisture absorber pack (not sure how you call this in English) inside the vacuum packed roll of filament
I started to use that roll that was just recently unpacked on my K1 Max printer with the nasty phenomenon I described in the initial message of this post
The other, much longer opened roll on my old 3D printer is still working great, no problems at all
Hope I made it clear that it’s the same filament material from the same company and the filament on both printers have the same age. The only difference is that the roll on my K1 Max is only recently removed from the vacuum plastic package and used on my K1 Max.
