PTFE tubing and collet jammed. New here and desperately need help!
I just started printing a few days ago after assembly. Had some great first prints just benchmarking. Suddenly I hear a clicking sound from my printer. Turn it off, check everything---No alarms. I think, "huh... That's weird." Then it happens again on the next attempt and I start taking things apart.
Definitely a jam. Seems like my PLA is stuck inside the PTFE tube. The pictures I see online of the collet on this model do not look like mine. Also, the instructions on taking out the ptfe tube say to press the collet down and pull out the tubing. I can't push my collet down. My collet looks smaller than the example photos. Has it been pushed into the hotend heatsink? The pla is stuck inside the heatsink and I can't get it loose. I've tried quite a few things.
(bottom view)I went ahead and ordered a new heatsink and ptfe tubing. So, I tried just pulling the tubing and collet off with plyers. Can't get it to budge. That's why there's damage to the tubing and the collet. Before I used the plyers they looked fine. I've read some tips of people printing clips for the collet to hold it in an upright position and I'll do that too.
However, I honestly have no idea what I'm doing and am not sure if I've diagnosed the problem, understand how the problem came to pass, and more importantly how I can prevent this from happening in the future.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Have I been loading and unloading filament incorrectly and that's why this happened? Did I leave the printer hot for too long without printing and that did it? Did I get the hot end hot and then cool it down and filament got trapped? Is the collet supposed to be this small? Did it get damaged?
Thanks for reading!
You will need a new collet and PTFE tube. It looks like you didn't compress the tube with the collet correctly when fitting it ...
Review that section of the build manual.
The clicking may have been related to the PTFE positioning or it might just have been a slightly low extruder idler pressure, usually adjusted with the screw on the side of the extruder.
Contact Prusa Support for help with untangling this: Log into your Eshop account, navigate to Company, click Contact Us and 24/7 live Chat is one of the options.
Cheerio,
RE: PTFE tubing and collet jammed. New here and desperately need help!
I just reviewed the manual's instruction on Hot End Assembly and it doesn't look like there's any instruction on compressing the tube with the collet. Maybe I'm misunderstanding youThe instructions just have my placing the hotend in it's correct position. See below:
You were supplied a pre-built hot end - but it's relatively easy to dislodge the collet and release the pressure.
See step 8 of:
https://help.prusa3d.com/guide/how-to-replace-a-hotend-ptfe-tube-mk3s-mk3s-mk2-5s-mmu2s_21664
Cheerio,
RE:
I read that and tried it...numerous times--nothing. I even used plyers to push down the collet with a lot of force and it never budged. I'm guessing it got jammed into the heatsink? idk. I had to drill out the hole in the heatsink that the collet was in to finally get the ptfe tube and the filament out. I see there's an extra 2 collets in my "extras" baggie, but no collet (unless I mistakenly threw it away). I've order a couple more collets, ptfe tube, and another heatsink just incase I damaged mine drilling the tube and filament out. So far no one has really hit the nail on the head diagnosing the issue or actually what happened. However, I GREATLY appreciate the responses from everyone!
RE: PTFE tubing and collet jammed. New here and desperately need help!
(youtube video)
You could be right but your collet was definitely out of place in your first picture - you will have seen how it should go in that video.
Cheerio,
RE: PTFE tubing and collet jammed. New here and desperately need help!
Oh, 100%. However, that's how it came pre-assembled. 🙁 wish that would've been in the manual to double check it. Well, now I know!