Filament melting above hotend

While printing support structure feed is slow enough that filament melts and bunches. Would a fan blowing on exposed filament help with this. If I'm lucky I can catch it and pause print and remove melted section. A pain on an 8 hour print. thanks.

You're getting heat creep above the heating block. You need to cool everything from the heating block up. All-metal hot-ends are good for this due to the heat sink immediately above the heat break. I'm not sure how well a peek hot end can be cooled, but you could try directing a fan above the heating block.

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Printed and mounted a fan bracket today. Just need to wire it into the power supply. Thanks.

I wire my fan directly to the 12V supply. That way its always on and you never risk getting that heat creep. No speed control, but cooler is better IMO for the heat break

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2014 01:04PM by LNButts.

Man what a difference. I wired in a 1K pot for fan speed adjustment. 10K will work but makes for narrow window of adjustment. Filament has not over heated once during this 8 hour print. Best of all is that the extruder motor is barely luke warm. Before the new fan it was extremely hot. Thanks for the input. Once again this site has made 3d printing possible and fun. Brian.