Is this heat creep?
This article on help.prusa3d.com says "Printing PLA in a fully closed and unventilated enclosure is very likely to cause problems".
(The article is about "heat creep".)
I do indeed print in an enclosure, in fact this time I had my LED strips within the enclosure on full blast which would have taken the temperature up, and I was printing PLA as well.
Came home to find the printer was still going but had stopped extruding a while back so it was printing nothing into thin air.
Also I was printing on "draft" setting which has .3 layer height.
However I also noticed that about 7 layers back before it stopped extruding, the layers had become unbonded.
Does the above fact support the diagnosis of heat creep, or does it mean there may be some other problem?
RE: Is this heat creep?
When I tried to unload the filament, it would not come out. Then when I tried to extrude more, nothing came out of the nozzle.
After repeatedly heating the nozzle to 260 (higher than the PLA that was in there) and pushing more filament down there, also removing the idler door and attempting to get more filament down there) it started extruding again.
Then I was able to clear any clog, because it extruded again freely.
I put more filament in, and it worked.
Then I put more in for a second time, but this time the filament just didn't go into the PTFE tube (with idler door shut).
After a few more tries, it went in. The printer is printing now, but I am worried I won't be able to get filament back in again when it runs out.
What should I do?
RE:
Yeah, printing PLA (or even PETG) with the door closed is not a good idea. You may want to try some cold pulls but if the filament crept all the way up so may have to disassemble and clean the extruder.
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...