MakerGear Forum

Hey Thrill Seekers,
All of a sudden I can't print a thing. All will go well then I look over and the nozzle is above the print and no filament has been extruded for who knows how long. Printing ABS and I realized the filament was backed up out of the hotend and has actually melted into and bonded with the filament drive.

In the attached photo you can see the short end that was in the hotend and the section above that looks like I was trying to shove a limp...well it wasn't satisfying here either. I've cleaned out the hot end and have had to redrill the filament drive (many times...new one on the way). I've aligned the drive as well as I can with the hotend. It all goes well for quite some time then just fizzles out. I thought maybe the temperature of the hot end had dropped so the filament would no longer feed and that was causing the traffic jam, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I'd love to get some idea what is going wrong before I nuke a new filament drive when it finally gets here.

Gripe #1: I'd love to have a phone number for Tech Support. I miss the days of real support
Gripe #2: I'd like the option of expediting shipments of spare parts. It's an Amazon Prime world out there

Thoughts?

Hi Andy - we recently added phone support, you can find the number of the support page. I am not sure what happened but for some reason your order was not processed. We are expediting it today. Sorry for the delay. Rick

Sometimes you'll just get a jam in the nozzle for what ever reason (could be dust on the filament, old burnt filament in the barrel, etc.) and the filament will no longer feed. Most of the time when this happens the gear feeding the filament just strips out the filament and it stops feeding but in your case it looks like it fed for awhile after. (Are you running a V4 hotend? and what temp are you running the ABS?) When jams happen the printer just keeps chugging along like it's still printing so that's why it's way above the print. Nozzle jams are just a thing that happens now and then (especially with ABS) so having spare nozzles on hand is not a bad idea. For ABS you can remove the nozzle (take the entire hotend off the printer first before removing the nozzle if it's a V4) and soak it in acetone for a while and then just pick out the crud with the tweezers.

Quick LINK to support page.

Yes ABS at 245 110 for the bed. Did soak in Acetone but never got a clean visible hole. Used cleaning filament and got all flowing well.

I have a new Filament drive on the way. The current one is trashed because the filament actually fused with the drive body and I had to drill it out. Would I be foolish to assume that is the sole cause and NOT replace the nozzle with a new one at the same time?

It looks like once something jammed, that the filament, because it was all in the hotend, bunched up, and as heat rises, got hot enough, far enough up the filament to bond to the ABS body of the filament drive. So...don't want to do that again.

Make sense?