b7 extruder making creaking noise and underextrusion problems  

b7 extruder making creaking noise and underextrusion problems

Video
http://imgur.com/a/MJxu6uH

Week old mk3 with B7 extruder. Started making loud creaking noise yesterday after about 11 total prints. Been mostly printing PLA and a few PET. All week long, prints were coming out flawless. Then yesterday it started making the creaking noise, but prints were still coming out good. Today I ran a big PLA print and about 30 layers in, it started having major under extrusion problems and ruined the whole print, had to abort. Checked bondtech gear, coated in filament dust I had to scrape out. Now, it seems 3/4 prints have underextrusion problems, or some extruder skipping here and there. I thought it was clog, but now not so sure.

Things I have tried:

* Cold Pull
* Needle cleaning
* Recalibrate XYZ and layer height
* Different filament brand and material
* Extruder Idler tension
* Clean dust off bondtech gear
* Adjust belts

So at this point I'm at loss.

Something i noticed while cleaning extruder; it seems that the top of the tube thing that comes from hotend slightly touches the bondtech gear. Is it supposed to be that way? Maybe that is cause of creaking noise? My hot end is mounted properly though and can't go any lower. and it doesn't explain underextrusion issues.

Something else I noticed is that the creaking noise is a lot louder when printer is doing retractions.

Interesting thing about first layer calibration: Josef said that most live Z height will be around -1.000 but I'm getting best lines at around -0.500. Does that sound suspicious and indicate another problem?

By the way, when this issue was first starting to appear I was using glow in the dark green pla so it's not like I was printing anything exotic like flex.