Trying to reduce the amount of constant maintenance the my ender 3 printers require and one of the biggest issues i’m having is a buildup of sticky residue inside the ptfe tube inside the hotend/ptfe tube. It’s not leaking as i visually inspect before cleaning and i can see where the tube connects and there’s a clear line and no visible signs of leakage. Usually some rubbing alcohol and a scrub brush will fix the issue for about 100hours of print time before needing to clean it again.
I’m wondering if i might need to reduce the flow rate on the printers or maybe i’m missing something. Running this with a direct drive extruder so the ptfe tube is pretty short and since the residue is building up inside the heater and nozzle too i don’t think that’s the issue.
Things i have tried:
- less heat printing at 200 instead of 205 - marginal / no difference
- printing speed turned down to 20mm/s - it takes longer for the buildup to become an issue but it also takes as long for the prints to complete
- lowered retraction distance i thought the high retraction distance might be causing issues, while it made it better now i have stringing to deal with
EDIT: Added requested Photos -> https://imgur.com/a/XPKGI7D
the 7mm was a holdover from before i moved the extruder over to be mounted onto the x axisi don’t care so much about strining that’s simple to fix it’s the heatbreak clogging that’s the issue. As mentioned above, it’s not an issue with improper bowden seating as the residue is only inside the heatbreak and not where the ptfe tube sits. Also the ptfe tube is factory cut so definitely not the issue there. Nozzle does not push against the hotend tube as it sits on top of the heatbreak and does not go all the way through.
I’m thinking probably heat creep but turning down the temps should have helped with that.
there are pics please look at the imagur link.
I cannot post the pictures directly as the site is broken and i get a 400 invalid json error.
in case you didn’t notice the edit: https://imgur.com/a/XPKGI7D
Is this your hotend?
You moded your hotend by any chance?