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Mar 2015

Try to tighten all the screws wile the hotend is hot. Dont burn your fingers wile doing it. Make shure the heatbreak is screwed into the heatsink tight and the nozzle into the heatblock. And then the connection beween the heatbock and the heatbreak. Do not use to much force in order not to damage the heatbreak. And, wile you have disassambled the printhead anyways clean the filamentpulley using a toothbrush or something simular.

Hope this helps…

florian

I’ve had some issues with my hot end in the past that are similar. Not oozing out the side, but I have had issues where there was an ever so slight gap between the top of the nozzle and the bottom of the feed tube that screws into the heater block. That tiny gap caused me more issues than anything that has ever been wrong with the printer otherwise. If you are able, I would recommend buying some ceramic and kapton tape, taking the whole block apart, melt the parts clean or get a new nozzle and rebuild it, making sure that there are no gaps anywhere. Be very careful of the wire on the thermocouple. It damages easily and they aren’t super easy to get a hold of. Also, if you are replacing the nozzle, be wary of the super cheap deals. the inner profile of the melting chamber makes a big performance difference.

I can appreciate all the troubleshooting you have put into this problem. We recently had a bunch of problems that were similar to this on both our gen 4’s, minus the leaking out the sides of the heater block. I tried all sorts of things from cleaning out the drive gear and using a blow torch to burn out the filament guide tube (the threaded part that feeds into the heater block) and the nozzle. I have reamed them with drills and wire brushes, and even added spacers on the spring to add tension to the filament on the drive gear. All of those things returned the same result as we were getting before; the filament getting jammed at some arbitrary point into a print, and the drive gear chewing a bite out of the filament.

The only way we have achieved lasting results, is to replace the nozzles. Seriously. Just find a new nozzle, order 3 or more, and install them using the best nozzle replacement practices (heating the printer up to remove the old one, letting it cool down, hand tighten the new one in then tighten with wrench or socket wrench, heat back up, and finish tightening it). When reassembling the extruder, just make sure all your parts are put together correctly and tightly. Look at your fan. Are there and missing blades? If so, this will cause vibration that loosens all your screws and components including those in the heater block. When purchasing your new nozzles, make sure to do a thorough background check by comparing reviews across the web. Hope this helps, these printers are tricky. Best of luck!

I have a low friction nozzle from P3-D on mine right now and I love it. when i switch nozzles and fixed my gap problem, I’ve not had a single jam since! You can get these on ebay. the company is local to me but I am only familiar with them via their ebay store.

Time to redo your hotend. disassemble it and replace the inner PTFE tube (3mm outer, 2mm inner diameter).

How to: unscrew the 2 lower bolts that holds the fan, heatsink and extruder, on the long cooling aluminum block there is 2 locking bolts that holds the hotend barrels in position, loosen them up and pull down both barrels. Loose the lock bolts that secure the heater resistors and the thermocouples, separate the barrels from the heater blocks and also take out the nozzles. Replace the inner tube with new ones and cut to size, cut out the insulation tape from the heater blocks and clean and run the correct size drill on the nozzle. Put all together again and install in position (do not assemble the extruder yet), once in position cover the heater blocks with Silicone tape from Autozone or any hardware store that sells them (they are for hot water pipes), run a bed calibration command from the printer and it’s first point, set both nozzles at the correct distance from the bed and then tight the locking bolts, finish running the calibration and once done, you can finish assembly the extruders. (It is a good advice though to open the extruders and clean the gears).

You are done for the next 3 to 12 months depending on how much you print.