What happens if you feed 1.75mm filament through a 3mm hotend? Can it be done?

not a lot really, the filament will melt at the end and buckle up a jam, after a while the filament drive will strip the filament,

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I figured there would be some problem with that of course. But after I wrote that, and since this ebay company sent me the wrong size, I decided to try it anyway. Using a Prusa i3 and Greg's reloaded with an E3D hot end .4mm nozzle. First print came out pretty good. Trying another one now. I also print at high temps because I go for maximum adhesion, that probably helps push it through. I print 5c lower than ugly. 240c on this ABS.

actually if you make sure that the tube leading up to the melt chamber is about 2mm you could use the 1.75mm with no problem other than the retraction wouldnt work very well. you could probably get faster melt speeds because of the increase in surface area in the melt chamber, although you might as well get 3mm at this point.

I have done it b4, sometimes it jams, sometimes it does not, It will depend on the hotend, on the buda I just got a leak

Well I did several prints with it, including a 10 hour print. I am sure retraction suffers due to bunching of the filament in the 3mm tube. After more than 15 hours of printing, it finally jammed, I don't know why. But it worked for the most part. Got to get me a 1.75mm hotend.....

Quote
Antslake
Well I did several prints with it, including a 10 hour print. I am sure retraction suffers due to bunching of the filament in the 3mm tube. After more than 15 hours of printing, it finally jammed, I don't know why. But it worked for the most part. Got to get me a 1.75mm hotend.....

sounds just like how mine behaved.

Antslake,
another problem should be the reflux of melted filament. There are more room to the melted filament, it could travel to top because the section of hard filament (the part of filament that act as a piston) is smaller than the section of the nozzle.