Hey guys,
My Hictop 3DP12 i3 Prusa was working great for several months, and I’ve enjoyed it. Just for a week now, it continues to jam after 10-30 minutes into a print. The nozzle will clog, nothing will come out, and the machine will go on without pushing any filament out. I’ve looked through many forums and tried all their suggestions, but none have worked so far. I have replaced the jet fan, throat, and nozzle. I have re-leveled the bed and raised the auto-leveler to avoid the nozzle dragging. I have cleaned out the extruder gear. Still no help. If I pull the filament out after it jams, snip the end, then feed it back in, it will work well again for another 10-30 minutes before clogging again. The interesting thing is that the clogged end always looks the same, 2 normal diameter sections separated by a long thin section (see attached picture
). It almost appears as if the filament is being pulled out of the nozzle faster than the extruder stepper motor is pushing it and causing that thin section, which then doesn’t transfer the pushing force and causes the jam. Could use some help ASAP as I have a delivery to make for this. Thanks in advance!
Matt
Hi,
I had similar issues, the print was starting just fine and after several minutes stats to clog up.
After a hard battle I did notice that this issue happens only when the outside temperature in the room was high on hot days and nights.
Basically, the filament stats to heat up sooner than it suppose to, wrinkles inside the teflon tube and clog up the whole thing.
Adding some heatsinks just above the heating block helped a little, to disperse the heat more quickly between the heater block and the extruder.
So, note the room temperature and see is this issue happens in colder room (you can try to place the printer in conditioned room for example).
In my printer, those issues appears above 27 degrees Celsius.
P.S. the thinner part of the filament is created when you pull out the filament from the extruder
Regards
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That’s incredibly helpful, thank you. So what would it look like to add some heatsinks just above the heating block? Does that mean some thermal paste, gluing some aluminum on, or is there something simpler? Thank you.
Well, my setup was a little bit improvised. I did find some aluminium heatsink from some old mainboard which will fit between the extruder and the heating block. Did make a hole in the block, thread the hole, then screw the heatsink on the threaded pipe and secure it with a lock nut. Didn’t put any thermal paste. If you do, you will need to find a high temperature one. The regular CPU paste is not made for such high temperatures and will dry out pretty fast.
Also, when I put the heatsink above the heating block, I left some gap between them like 2-3mm. Also if possible will be good to put in this gap some heat isolation like stone wool in order the to keep the heat inside the heeating block and not to heat the heatsink directly.
Hmm, not sure I have any aluminum heatsink as you used. I’ll check around when I get home from work to see if something will do the job. So basically, what you’re saying needs to happen is for the heat to not creep up the throat, but to be contained in the hotend block?
