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Hey guys,

I am turning to you because I’ve got my hands tied and have no hope that Santa will come and fix my printer.

This is my extruder:

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Whenever I mount it and start a print the filament doesn’t go directly straight to the nozzle, but rather does a very slight turn and ends up hitting the hotend at the wrong place and melting all over. I’ve illustrated this in my master-piece sketch right here:

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I have no clue what made this happen.

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IMG_20151223_042033.jpg3120×4160 1.13 MB

I’ve cleaned both nozzle and the tube like 50 times now. I have no idea what would make the filament guidance work better.

I’ll keep on trying, but figured maybe someone would have an idea , because it seems like a simple issue, but I just can’t figure out what to do … ;? Should I loosen up the screw to make the filament move easier?

Merry Christmas!

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I’m 99% sure that the designers intended to put a PTFE tube between the melt zone (where your filament clumps up) and the drive gear. If you use 1,75mm filament then use a 4mm (outer diameter) and 2mm (inner diameter). When using 2,85mm filaments then go with 6mm outer and 3mm inner diameter tubes. PTFE tubes are also known as PTFE liners or bowden tubes and can be found on eBay or suppliers of printer spares like e3d-online.com

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Hey Marius thanks for your response! Isn’t the black tube above the hotend the tube you’re mentioning? Or is it something inside it, because I had a guess that during the cleaning I might have took something neccesarry out of it.

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The “black tube” is called a coupling and you can use it to push in the mentioned ptfe tube. The coupling should have a movable ring on top and some tiny teeth inside the coupling. When holding the ring down you are able to move the tube in or out, when the ring is held (or secured) in the upper / extended position then the teeth are gripping the PTFE tube and hold it in place.

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Ah geez… And I thought that this PTFE tube was a leftover filament ,because I was just printing with natural color. Great, so now I am not only a dummy, but dummy in public :smiley:

Cheers Marius,

That all makes so much more sense now.

Since I can’t lose anything (already a dummy in publc) I’ll let you know that I added a copper tube like that in there just because I didn’t have anything else :smiley: I’ll get that tube and let’s hope it all works out

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You should definitely get the PTFE tube asap. Metal tubes have too much friction, but in this case the tube is very short so that’s just a minor problem. Additionally the metal tube could possibly damage the teeth of the coupling, hence you might have to replace that too.

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Hey, that is a fabrikator… :wink:

Yes there was defenetly a PTFE tube in there, and allso a metal piece (thread outside, hex inside) to press the tube against the hot-end.

If you want to switch to all-metal -> E3D-V6. this printhead is higher, but with an easy trick you an use it without using print height.

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Thanks guys, I guess thats how you learn… Makes total sense now. I now know what to do! Awesome help from 3d hubs community!