Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in  

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

I had an extruder clicking problem with a pre-assembled kit also. Prusa ended up send me a new hot-end and it finally seems to be working OK, but in the few prints I've done, I've had 33 Y crashes and constant layer shifts. So frustrating when you expect to be up and running quickly with a fully assembled printer (mine is in a business setting). All I can say is get on tech-support chat and also send a video to their email address. They did help with my problem, but it was a very slow process. Good-luck!

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

Had a similar issue. The extruder motor got a bit hot and probably did "melt" the filament before entering the PTFE tube to the hotend.

Can you measure the temperature of the extruder motor during your prints? How hot does it get? PLA gets weaker at around 60°C, i.e. is possible to deform.

Do you use a 3D Printer cabinet? (which could as well increase the environment temperature)

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

Hi .
Have the same problem but only with the Prusa supplied silver filament.
Measured the Prusa filament and its vary between 1,68 to 1,72mm in diameter, when the extruder gears reach the 1,68mm point the clicking starts.

So i would say that its because really bad filament diameter.

All other filaments i have vary between 1,73 to 1,76mm and its cheep no name filament.

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

Hi .
Have the same problem but only with the Prusa supplied silver filament.
Measured the Prusa filament and its vary between 1,68 to 1,72mm in diameter, when the extruder gears reach the 1,68mm point the clicking starts.

So i would say that its because really bad filament diameter.

All other filaments i have vary between 1,73 to 1,76mm and its cheep no name filament.

Sounds like your clicking is tension based.
There is a flaw in the hot-end (heat-break specifically LINK) that if it's not machined perfectly, causes... issues.
Not limited to.
Clicking.
Jamming.
Unable to extract filament.
Hot Extruder motor.
uneven extrusion.
hair loss.

and worst of all.
Loss of stamina in bed.

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

Sounds like your clicking is tension based.

Nope. It's not.

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

Had a similar issue. The extruder motor got a bit hot and probably did "melt" the filament before entering the PTFE tube to the hotend.

Can you measure the temperature of the extruder motor during your prints? How hot does it get? PLA gets weaker at around 60°C, i.e. is possible to deform.

Do you use a 3D Printer cabinet? (which could as well increase the environment temperature)

No way to measure it, and no enclosure.

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

All I can say is get on tech-support chat and also send a video to their email address. They did help with my problem, but it was a very slow process. Good-luck!

Still no response from them.

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

Had a similar issue. The extruder motor got a bit hot and probably did "melt" the filament before entering the PTFE tube to the hotend.

Can you measure the temperature of the extruder motor during your prints? How hot does it get? PLA gets weaker at around 60°C, i.e. is possible to deform.

Do you use a 3D Printer cabinet? (which could as well increase the environment temperature)

No way to measure it, and no enclosure.

Thermometers are cheap, even the laser based ones are available around starting $15. Ir a kitchen thermometer could be attached to the motor to measure it.

Nevertheless: When your motor starts clicking. Try touching the extruder motor as an alternative way to measure temperature. In my case I wouldnt touch it long since too hot for my fingers. And compare to for example a motor for the Z axis.

Anyway that would be my guess.

Hope you get help by the support staff.

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

Yesterday i got a filament sampel that is 1,64 to 1,69mm in diameter.

This sucker printed without any problems at all.... so i was wrong about the diameter.

But still i only have problem with the supplied Prusa silver PLA

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

But still i only have problem with the supplied Prusa silver PLA

What temp do you print it?

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

i have tested with everything from 205 to 225C, and i dont notice any differens...

Some prints work others dont with Prusa PLA, tried printing the tree frog and had to abort 8 out of 10 because the klickning started at some point in to the print. and its not at a specific % of the print it variate a lot all from 6 to 70%

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

Keep an eye on it, and watch the temps. Is the hot-end temp dropping on you when it clicks?

I really don't have many ideas.

Here's where the problems can be.
1. Filament feed path. If the filament is jamming above the printer, it could cause this.
2. PTFE tube above filament sensor.
3. Bondtech Gears
4. PTFE tube between bondtech gears and E3D v6Heatsink.
5. Heat Break
6. Heat Cartridge
7. Hot End Thermistor
8. Nozzle

Here's Why I would rule out (or not) each of these.
1. It works with other filaments. This is quite a basic concept.
2. This is simple a guide tube. It works with other filaments. I know how hard those bondtech gears pull, no way is this the issue.
3. *
4. This can have 2 problems, that can cause your problem.
a. You had a bad thermal run-away, and this PTFE tube melted and is now too small. (Not likely, as it works with other filament)
b. You damaged the top of the PTFE tube, and now it won't feed straight, which causes it to bind. (Not likely, as it works with other filament)
5. **
6. Does the nozzle get hot enough to print at all? Ok, not this.
7. If this was the issue you would get MINtemp, or MAXtemp errors, and the printer would just STOP.
8. Nozzle is possible, but not likely given other filaments work.

So, let's read the fine print.

FINE PRINT GOES HERE
Nah, Just kidding.

* (Bondtech gears) Check to make sure that they are aligned properly, if they are not aligned properly, they can in theory cause binding, which would make the motor run hot, and make the bondtech hobbed gears get hot, and soften filament, which can cause issues... I however don't think this is your issue. PLA is PLA at this point. (Until it breaks 60c, almost all PLA is the same, hard, plastic)
** (Heat break) On one of my earlier posts, I post a link to my thread about the heat breaks. Read it there. I could not print with ANY of my Zyltech PLA. ABS printed fine.

My issues were EXTREMELY consistent however, so I am unsure if it's the same as yours.

EDIT: I doubt it's your PID, as you are not having issues on other filaments.
I found the Prusa Silver, to be a very "thick" filament, so it's more likely to cause issues.

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

Since yesterday i do have the same kinda problem.

After about two cm in height of the print it starts the clicking and starts printing in the air. Most of the time it is impossible to remove the filament in the normal way you have to cut it out and remove the blob at the end (2.15mm wide) to get it out of the extruder.

At a thorough clean this afternoon i had to disassemble the whole hotend and ther was filament residu at the top of the nozzle and the bottom of the heatbreak. I cleaned everything but problem was back as the print was again at 2 cm height.

I read a few posts about it including this one and tried to finf out what was going on.

I was printing PLA, same brand and color as the last two weeks.
Different models so as well different gcodes
Sliced with the current version of Slic3r and with a slightly modified Prusa profile in 0.15 mm layer height.
The change was about the temperature because i printed with this material a temperature tower to resolve the ideal temperature.
It was printing with first layer 220 c en then 215 c. A later print with 215 c and later 210 c also failed in the same manner.
I have my MK3 still not upgraded to the latest version of software so i am am one version behind. (felt not comfortable with it yet)

In the hotend the PTFE tube beneath the Bondtech gears (perfectly alligned as checked today) was a little damage at the top. (i know it should be a little wider) The PTFE tube above the gears was not 100% as well.
As i removed the PTFE tube from the hotend it stuck but there was some movement possible up and down so i set it up as best as i could but problem remained.
I even, because many write about the hot steppermotor, aimed a ventilator on the motor but it did not help.

After my fifth clogg i had it for today. I ordered a few items, because of this post, and hope they will solve my problem. I ordered two new PTFE tubes at the shop where i bought my MK3, more important i ordered the Micro Swiss Heatbreak because it seemed that some here had succes with it. And last i ordered some heat paste to use on the heatbreak when installing. I really hope that this will solve my problems because this is annoying, overall i love the printer but it should be working. Thought i write here about the experience, maybe it helps somebody.

Greetz Ronald.

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

So as a heads up, Prusa had sent me a new hotend and the same issue happened. After all the testing and fiddling, they then sent me a new printer as they couldn't figure out what was happening. New printer is printing perfectly so we'll see.

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

Allow me to share my experience:

My first pre-assembled MK3 machine had problems with under extrusions, many prints failed and jammed filament. Tried swapping out the entire hotend and changed the heat brake. The heat brake does solve the jamming issue but under extrusion and clicking persisted. I had to eventually return the entire printer to Prusa and had a replacement sent.

The replacement MK3 printed flawlessly for many prints, until clocking about 60 hours the clicking issue presented itself again. I changed the heatbrake with the micro swiss heatbrake but the clicking again still persisted. The heatbrake looks bent when I removed it, but it could be damaged due to my lack of skill. I tried tweaking retraction settings with some degree of success, but longer prints still failed disappointing towards the tail end of the print.

What should I do?

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

I've been having this problem since Friday. Since then I've had six failed prints using three different PLA with two companies. I've taken the extruder partially apart. Haven't removed the hot end from the mount.
I've completed the following and still have the same issue.

1. Ran cleaning filament through the pathway "manually".
2. Adjusted the spring loaded screws multiple times. Didn't even touch these until now because it was printing good since I received the printer in February.
3. Changed filament
4. Cleaned out nozzle. Manually I could push regular and cleaning filament through with no problem.
5. With nozzle removed I took a foot of cleaning filament and ran it back and forth several times. Did the same with regular filament with no catching.
6. Installed "new nozzle" so there shouldn't be any issues. I even took a .4mm needle and ran it through the nozzle before installation.
7. Thinking it might be the file so this morning I started a print of Adalinda from a file I've printed before. Called my wife and she said it failed again.... #6.
8. At about 3 inches from the bottom of the filaemnt you can see where the GEARs have ground into it trying to push it into the hotend. And this with a new nozzle.

This shouldn't be happening. The two screws for the idler door have been adjusted multiple times. I can run a print for about an hour to three, or an 1/8th inch to a 1/2 inch of print before it fails.
What's causing this?

UPDATE: All these failures have been on firmware code 3.1.3 becuase I can't get 3.2.1 to complete a calibration. For a full test I will upgrade to 3.2.1 tonight without updating calibration.

COULD something be out of alignment inside the hot-end? How can something inside the hot end get out of alignment to cause this?

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

I had this exact same problem- Mk3 preassembled- I'm not exactly what caused it, but I was able to get it back to printing more or less properly after adjusting the tension on the idlers and making sure there wasn't some kind of piece of filament stuck under/behind one of the bondtech gears from when it initially clogged (I had no specific reason to believe this but I wanted to do as much as I could without taking the entire damn thing apart) Right now, it's working, although this was maybe a week or two back and I've not been printing quite as much, so we'll see.

EDIT: I want to add that I heated the extruder up extra hot and fed filament through by hand before fully putting it back together.

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

My MK3 prints well from Slic3r, but has this problem with models sliced in PrusaControl. The filament gets "nutted" below the bondtech gear and I have to disassemble the 2 spring screws, open the hole door and clean the area manually.
But it was very difficult terrain model, so maybe the motor just went too hot. In that case some simple motor cooler would help.

Re: Extruder starts clicking and not feeding right about an hour or 2 in

Now i cannot yet confirm it but while talking to a coworker who has a lot of knowledge about 3d printers we might have a part of the answer to the problem.

When the filament is pulled out we often notice that there is a blob of filament at the bottom that is larger than the inner diameter of the PTFE tube.
What i noticed when i took the hotend apart is that the PTFE tube can be moved up and down a few millimeters. This i due to the fact that the embedded bowden coppler must be moved up to keep the PTFE in place but when it slides a little down the PTFE tube is not ket in place. So when the PTFE tube is a little bit to high then it will not be all the way down into the heatbreak. Then you have a little gap between the heatbreak and the PTFE tube.

This would explain the filament blob which is ussualy larger the 2mm which is the inner diameter of the PTFE tube and if i read right the heatbreak is 1.9mm in diameter. So the only place where the blob can be larger then 2 mm is where the PTFE tube not all the way fits, or is pushed down into the Heatbreak.

I have, as allrady written, ordered a new heatbreak so i will look into that the tube is all the way down. My reseller sells a small collet to push onto the Bowden coppler and so keeps the coppler up and the PTFE in place. So i guess its a matter of pushing the tube all the way into the heatbreak then pull then coppler up and set it with the collet. This could well do the trick. I will off course let you all know.

I hope my English was enough to explain this and that you peeps know what i mean.

Greetz Ronald.