extrusion problem

hi, recently i took out my 3d printer which i havent used in a long time and when i started prining with it the filament gets blocked in the hotend.
i tried everything the internet has told me and none of th m have fixed the problem.

what i did:

• increasing hotend temperature
• reduced hotend temperature
• increase fan speed to max
• changed the heatsink cooling fan air flow direction twice
• tighten the extruder
• loosen the extruder
• made sure that the nozzle isnt too close to the bed
• shorten the ptfe tube
• reassembled the hotend properly
• reduced the flow rate
• increased the flow rate
• checked the extruder steps per mm

i use an e3d v6 hotend 0.4 mm nozzle with esun pla plus blue filament

can someone please help.

If this is a clone e3d v6, it may just be bad. needs replaced

How old is the spool of filament? I have some 5 year old PLA that won't print no matter what.

Yeah, old filament could be trouble. At the very least it probably needs to be dehydrated. Push some through by hand and see if you can see or hear any snap-crackle-pop of bubbles forming.

Clean the nozzle if you haven't already (or buy a new one). I just hold it in a fire with pliers until all the plastic burns into white powder and then wash under running water, using a needle to scrape around inside. Clean the heatbreak as well if it has any plastic in it.

Whatever the case, it should be fixable. 3D printers aren't particularly complicated machines, and if it heats up properly and you were able to measure the extruder steps per mm, then there's nothing left to go wrong that would cost much to replace.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2021 01:50PM by dekutree64.

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dekutree64
Clean the nozzle if you haven't already (or buy a new one). I just hold it in a fire with pliers until all the plastic burns into white powder and then wash under running water, using a needle to scrape around inside.

Is there a possibility of damaging a brass nozzle with this method?

Quote
dekutree64
Clean the heatbreak as well if it has any plastic in it.

How exactly would you do that? Same method -- burn off the plastic into powder, then scrape/poke it out?

Fortunately I haven't had any really bad jams yet, but it can't hurt to be prepared.

Yes and yes. But unless your needle is super sharp, it will take some effort to scratch brass. Toothpicks are also useful to scrape around everywhere except the tiny hole, and to push a bit of paper towel through the heatbreak to sweep it out.

I've never had a full clog, but plenty of partial clogs causing inconsistent extrusion problems. One thing that helps is to use a binder clip to hold a piece of cloth around the filament between the spool and extruder, so any dust gets wiped off before going into the bowden tube/nozzle.

Quote
dekutree64
One thing that helps is to use a binder clip to hold a piece of cloth around the filament between the spool and extruder, so any dust gets wiped off before going into the bowden tube/nozzle.

Yeah, I've been recently using this for the same purpose:

[www.thingiverse.com]


About clogs, what I'm really worried about is if molten plastic (PLA in my case) leaks into the heater block and all around the threads. By heating up the heater block normally, I assume that I would still be able to unscrew and disassemble everything -- but then there still would be melted plastic all on the inside of the heater block's threads that would need to be cleaned up, where it's difficult to get at since it's inside of the small hole. Another thread suggested either re-tapping or using chemicals to clean the threads. [reprap.org] Sounds like a bit of a chore to clean up in this case.

Into the cleansing fire it goes So much easier than trying to deal with plastic. But do scrape off what molten plastic you can with a toothpick before burning, to reduce the amount of smoke and residue produced. And yes, use the printer's own heater for disassembly.

Nophead has a good method of cleaning a hotend.