New Mk3 Clogged  

Re: New Mk3 Clogged

Photo could be better, but it looks like minor gear misalignment. Can't tell if the PTFE tube is where it belongs. But if Prusa built it, these are probably good enough.

All that dust will fall down the PTFE and into the heat break and will eventually (if not already) cause jams. Heat break jams do not clear with cold pulls. The nozzle must be removed and compressed air blown upwards to clear the filament path.

Why did it happen?
1) Using ABS or PETG instead of PLA isn't uncommon (wrong nozzle temp applied).
2) Low First Layer calibration (nozzle too close to bed, too much backpressure).
3) Bad filament ...

You need to determine if it's really a clog or maybe a tension issue (too little, too much). Then deal with the debris.

Re: New Mk3 Clogged

To follow up on your comments.

Why did it happen?
1) Using ABS or PETG instead of PLA isn't uncommon (wrong nozzle temp applied).
He was using PLA using files from the SD card
2) Low First Layer calibration (nozzle too close to bed, too much backpressure).
I wasnt present for the calibration of the printer but assume it was done at factory since
it was a fully built system. Just an assumption on my part.
3) Bad filament ...
Filament was fresh out of the package however I stressed he should have put it through a dry cycle before he moved forward...he did not.

I will admit he is very New to 3D printing and I honestly have no idea if he even read the manual fully.
I asked if he did and well the answer was a bit vague.
When he gets this thing back in order I will be present and I will do all calibrations and follow the manual before
he gets over zealous next time around.
Ive spent most of the day chatting with him over FB messenger and have stressed the importance of making sure he covered
all of his bases before doing any prints. I have sent him many links to info found on the Prusa site.

Yes the pic could be better, it was his 2nd pic sent to me the 1st was a lot worse.
I too also feel that it could have been a tension issue since that "blob" looks more like the nozzle clogged and the filament
got bound up just below the gear and then bent to the point to where the gears just couldn't do anything with it.
After this happened he was "all hands off" and took the stance of no one is touching it.
I was ready to dig in but he wasn't having it 🙂
If he does not touch it until I get there my 1st approach is to try and clip away that area and heat up the hotend to see if I can pull it out.
If it does not budge then we will tear it down and remove hotend and do a full clean up.
I totally get it, he was excited, he had previously printed off 2 Prusa supplied prints
I live about an hour from him so dealing with this through the week for me is a no go until the weekend.
Appreciate your response

Re: New Mk3 Clogged

If he was playing and tried up and down on the E motion he could have drawn up hot filament and then tried to push it back down.

Anyone's guess since he isn't here to defend himself. Also being third hand makes it virtually impossible to actually help.

Re: New Mk3 Clogged

@tim.m30
Your right its a shot in the dark scenario as to why or what happened.
At this point it sounds as if he is going to try to tackle this on his own.
I agree he should try to just for the experience but in the same breath he should have someone
like myself or some of our friends with troubleshooting experience there
during this process especially for his 1st trip down memory lane 🙂
Im going to reiterate this with him because 2 heads are better than one 🙂
Thanks a bunch appreciate everything
I cant wait to get mine and start building

Re: New Mk3 Clogged

The photo is really hard to see but you have to decide if the jam is like the one posted here: https://shop.prusa3d.com/forum/hardware-firmware-and-software-help-f64/printing-in-air-filament-feed-failure-won-t-unload-t27744.html

Re: New Mk3 Clogged

Yes same scenario.

Re: New Mk3 Clogged

I wasnt present for the calibration of the printer but assume it was done at factory since
it was a fully built system. Just an assumption on my part.

Yes the pre-built printers are supposed to be ready to go out of the box. They were built by humans though and we all make mistakes.

This is my first printer as well and I too bought the pre-built. I haven't had a failure such as this, but after I screwed something up on accident I had to re-do the calibrations and using the life adjust method I found that they hadn't calibrated the Live Z very well (it worked, but my prints are soooo much cleaner now). I also have a level issue that I still need to look into.

As far as this issue, I agree that the drive gear looks a bit out of place. As you are aware there is variance in the filament diameters, so it could be that the filament that jammed was on the larger size and less tolerant of the misalignment. I also ran into a spool of PLA recently that is on the brittle side (snaps rather than bending), I could see such a spool also being less tolerant of a misalignment.

It sounds like you know what you are doing and have a good plan to get your friend back on track. Hopefully he listens and follows direction 😉

Re: New Mk3 Clogged

@gnat

He has been stressing all week and almost got back online with Prusa to have them fix it LOL.
I basically told him to do what he felt was right but to understand, stuff like this happens and
they will not fix it every time and he needs to Slow Down and learn.
I have gotten him calmed down and he is expecting me Saturday morning.
I stressed to him the importance of making sure simple things like filament drying is vital
to good success in printing in general. Baby Steps for his experience level. And really stressed
Read Read Read....
I have a list of items to take with me and several Prusa links for calibration and such to get him
back on track. A buddy of mine who owns 2 Mk2's is going to give me a quick 101 tonight on
the calibration thing since it is also new to me but I have a good understanding of whats ahead.
Since I have a kit on order I have done nothing but read, the User manual and the Assembly manual
at least 3 times each. I will bring my laptop along for reference as well.

Re: New Mk3 Clogged

Thanking about it, the First Layer Calibration needs to be done with new factory built printers (and any time a printer is moved). Setting the Z offset incorrectly can mimic a plugged nozzle. If the Z-cal is less -1.000 - that's a place to start once the broken filament is taken care of.)

Re: New Mk3 Clogged

@tim.m30

Yea once I get the filament situation resolved Im going to look very close at what really has happened.
As per calibrations, I plan on doing them all just to be safe.
One thing I will need to cover with him is the calibration for sure especially the 1st large thickness
using the Live Z. I feel in his case once its set he will just move forward but he has to also understand
that this might have to be tweaked between filaments (PLA, PETG, TPU) so he needs to learn it.
I read a bunch of stuff yesterday about the Pinda calibration and setting the height, seems there is really
no common variable (measurement) one can go by but I gather its better to be too close than too far away
for the sake of a Nozzle crash.

Re: New Mk3 Clogged

Just wanted to touch bases on this past weekends Printer Repair.
After I arrived and situated my tools, coffee and myself I took a closer look.
1st things I did was move forward and remove the hotend.
After doing do I noticed that this "clog" was only at the top of the PTFE tube leading into the hotend
which is showed in the pic above. It wasnt melted it just looked like something caused the
filament to bind up just enough to toss a wrench into the works.
So I wanted to look at everything so I heated the hotend up enough to remove this piece of filament.
I then inspected the Heat block, Heat break and Nozzle and found no evidence that there was a leak
in any of the threads.
There was no melted filament inside of the PTFE tube which was a bonus and the filament piece
that came out didn't seem to show evidence of the typical Nozzle clog. (that little bulb on the end)
So in short I made sure everything looked good and cleaned out any filament dust, put everything
back together and proceeded to re-calibrate everything.
I went through the 1st layer setup a few times to get her pretty close and printed the Batman
symbol. Made some adjustments to the Live Z height and printed it off a 2nd time and called it a day.
Later in the afternoon he printed a Silica Gel holder and it turned out pretty good.
For the most part everything looked good and I couldn't clearly identify what caused the problem originally.
In any case he is up and going and life...so far...is good.
I will say that removing the Hotend was not as difficult as I had envisioned in fact it turned out to be pretty easy.
I expected a full disassemble to include the stepper motor (being paranoid I suppose)
I was really impressed with the fact that most of the items he needed, calibration for example
was all built into the menu. I took some time to look over all of these menu items and found
a lot of useful stuff in there.
I also particularly liked the fact that there are "Several" preheat settings for many different filament types.
I really like the live Z adjustment.
Anyway I could go on and on but she is up and rolling now.
Better news is...I got my shipping notification on my Kit today 🙂
Thanks everyone

Re: New Mk3 Clogged

Just to confirm - my prebuilt needed z calibration.