So, I have Had my Ender V3 Plus for a few Months. I have been printing Pla with good results. TPU however has been a nightmare. At first, using the default settings, it did print but with terrible quality. Very stringy and blotchy. I ended up moving the spool holder to the top and feeding the tpu directly into the print head instead of using the tube. I tweaked a bunch of settings and got some better results, BUT, NOW, about every time I print with TPU I it clogs in the nozzle and the extruder starts making a clicking noise and I have to stop the print. I basically can’t print with TPU at this point. I have tried temps from 215 up to 235. I have tried retractions for .4 to 2 mm. I have tried speeds down to 15 mm/s. What’s up here? Any help would be appreciated.
TPU is pretty temperature dependent. Print a temperature calibration and you will see that ±5°C can make a big difference, the calibration built into Orca is good. Retraction should not be greater than 1mm, I normally run with 0.8mm, I do that on my Enders, Qidi’s and Snapmaker. My favoured brand for TPU in Pinuoto but Creality seems to make nice TPU. I have some Tinmorry but it isn’t as good.
Brad, after the TPU issue, is printing PLA still ok?
Do you notice any binding or that clicking sound?
For me, I have a spool of really horrible PETG.
I tried to use the special config stuff to configure the printer for THIS particular spool, hoping that it would just work. On any printer, this spool of PETG just is horrible.
So I dried it with my Creality dual dryer thingy, hoping that that would “fix” the horrible print quality. It did help A LITTLE BIT.
So this is when I decided to go to the other Plus printer and try the config stuff.
This was a serious fail. What came out were just splotches and blobs of the stuff and not that much of it either.
This is where that clicking started.
The nozzle was clogged big time.
I tried to use the long pin but when it finally went through after a lot of pressure, it was still tight.
I took apart the extruder to see if there was any clog in the gears. Nope. They were fine.
I took out the nozzle itself and found that it was completely clogged! From the tip to the top! Yes, it was clogged right up into the heat break part!
I used a drill bit to try to reem out the plastic. This worked a bit.
I tried using my hot gun to melt the PETG still inside. SOME came out.
But no matter what I did, I could not get it cleaned out completely.
I replaced the nozzle with a new one and tested with PLA and all was well.
So I wonder, if in your case, the TPU did kind of the same thing. Perhaps it’s clogged the entire nozzle.
Just some ideas.
in my expirience with this printer I found it is not able to print TPU with .1mm layer.
Always getting the Clicking and Curling inside the Extruder.
With .2 Layer it runs smooth (I am using the Creality TPU 230 preset)
TPU isn’t suitable for fine details anyway
Neuroplant
My V3SE with a 0.2mm nozzle quite happily prints TPU, must be something different between a sprite extruder and that on a V3.