3D Printer Club

[PLAfiller]

My Ender-3 Pro is giving me problems. Whenever I try to print something big, it gets about 35% done before the filament breaks and it stops feeding. What should I do?

Where is the fillament stored? What kind of spool holder are you using? Usually from my tiny experience, it's either:

- batch of filament ain't right
- spool has been exposed for too long/ not stored when not printing
- your routing ? - are there sharp turns, excessive strain on the filament?
- your extruder feeding gear is too tense and it snaps the filament. May be loosen it a bit. Do you know how many teeth is your extruder feeding sprocket? Usually it's 28 or 40T brass.

 

[jak_2456]

Where is the fillament stored? What kind of spool holder are you using? Usually from my tiny experience, it's either:

- batch of filament ain't right
- spool has been exposed for too long/ not stored when not printing
- your routing ? - are there sharp turns, excessive strain on the filament?
- your extruder feeding gear is too tense and it snaps the filament. May be loosen it a bit. Do you know how many teeth is your extruder feeding sprocket? Usually it's 28 or 40T brass.

I'll try a different batch of filament, but this happened with two different batches. The spools are stored in a closed box with desicant bags in it. There are no particularly sharp turns for the filament.

 

[Fokker]

I'll try a different batch of filament, but this happened with two different batches. The spools are stored in a closed box with desicant bags in it. There are no particularly sharp turns for the filament.

What's your general humidity like? PLA is pretty flexible and normally doesn't like to snap unless it's wet. Are they both the same brand/line of filament?

 

[jak_2456]

What's your general humidity like? PLA is pretty flexible and normally doesn't like to snap unless it's wet. Are they both the same brand/line of filament?

It's about 57% in the environment. One filament is off-brand while the other is from Micro Center. The Micro Center filament is a bit tangled, though, so that may be causing it.

 

[Octavean]

My Ender-3 Pro is giving me problems. Whenever I try to print something big, it gets about 35% done before the filament breaks and it stops feeding. What should I do?View attachment 406868

Maybe it’s as simple as the filament. I had some Creality PLA filament in my Ender 3 V2 but when I got My Elegoo Centauri Carbon it fell into disuse. After the CC went through three or four spools of filament I ran out and had to take the spool off the Ender 3 V2. Unfortunately the filament broke on the Ender 3 V2 even though it wasn’t used. After siting out for a while it just seemed more brittle

 

[Fokker]

It's about 57% in the environment. One filament is off-brand while the other is from Micro Center. The Micro Center filament is a bit tangled, though, so that may be causing it.

I would definitely recommend an active dryer in that environment. The Polydryer is nice because you can swap out storage containers from the actual dryer base and keep them stored with their own hydrometer and container of desiccant. Even when the humidity is higher for me (~40%), it can get containers down to 10%.

There's also files for a container to set on the dryer base and dry out the desiccant so you can keep using it.

 

[silentbogo]

My Ender-3 Pro is giving me problems. Whenever I try to print something big, it gets about 35% done before the filament breaks and it stops feeding. What should I do?

The most important thing you should do is replace that stupid stock extruder. It can't push the filament properly, so it just chews through plastic in the same spot until it breaks.
Ideally you should buy a direct drive upgrade kit and something like a cheap BMG clone.
Also, minimize the amount of retracts in slicer settings. This will prevent hotend clogs (which are partially responsible for your problem). Also, after direct drive mod you should change retraction amount in Marlin settings (for me it was around 1.1-1.2mm, but try printing a retraction calibration tower to see what works for you).
That's the best way around it.

At the bare minimum:
1) get a BMG and use it in Bowden setup as-is
2) Adjust motor parameters and re-calibrate e-steps
3) Calibrate retracts and remove unnecessary retracts in slicer
4) Preferably keep it under 3mm for Bowden. It may result in more stringing, but it will reduce the amount of clogs.
5) Swap the nozzle to 0.6mm. It costs pennies, doesn't really affect the print quality, but helps immensely on crappy setups like stock Ender3

 

[jak_2456]

Maybe it’s as simple as the filament. I had some Creality PLA filament in my Ender 3 V2 but when I got My Elegoo Centauri Carbon it fell into disuse. After the CC went through three or four spools of filament I ran out and had to take the spool off the Ender 3 V2. Unfortunately the filament broke on the Ender 3 V2 even though it wasn’t used. After siting out for a while it just seemed more brittle

I don't think it's the filament. I've tried three different filament spools, and all of them have failed in similar spots. I should also clarify that the filament is breaking right at the extruder.

 

[Mrgravia]

A simple filament guide was useful with the stock extruder, several easy to print examples out there.

The metal creality extruder wasn't bad, and the sprite SE was a good, cheap direct extruder conversion that helped a ton.


In unrelated news, got an email from elegoo:

Dear Customer,

We hope this message finds you well. First, please accept our sincerely apology for the delay in shipping your Centauri 3D Printer, originally scheduled to ship by July 15th. We understand how disappointing this is, and we truly appreciate your patience as we work to make it right.

During final quality checks, our R&D team identified key upgrades to enhance performance—specifically, improvements to print accuracy and component durability. To ensure you receive a product that meets our highest standards, we made the difficult decision to adjust the timeline for these upgrades.

However, reworking and reshipping the original Centauri units would extend your wait substantially—likely by 2 to 3 months. We believe this is not acceptable, so we're offering an exclusive solution to get you a superior product sooner:

Exclusive Upgrade Offer
Solution 1: Upgrade to Centauri Carbon (current price: $329.99, including shipping) for just $70 price difference as a thank-you for your patience.

• Your special price for Centauri Carbon: $299.99
• Only pay the $70 difference from your original order
• Expected shipping date: August 15th

How to upgrade:
1. Pay the $70 difference via our secure link: *link here*
2. Reply to this email with your new order number for the $70 price difference payment (from the link above).

Solution 2: Full Refund + $10 Off for Your Next Order
If you prefer not to upgrade, we'll process a full refund immediately. As a token of our appreciation, we'll also send a $10 coupon for your next purchase (valid for 1 year).

We value your trust in ELEGOO and are fully committed to resolving this promptly. Please don't hesitate to reply with any questions - we're here to help.

Thank you again for your understanding and patience.

Sincerely,
The ELEGOO Team

I wonder what they found that effects the non-carbon model, that seemingly doesn't effect the carbon.

 

[Rover4444]

My Ender-3 Pro is giving me problems. Whenever I try to print something big, it gets about 35% done before the filament breaks and it stops feeding. What should I do?View attachment 406868

Bad filament, tangled filament, too much pressure on the filament, or gaps between the nozzle and heat break. Check if nozzle is tight against the heat break and isn't just up against the heater block. Can always replace your extruder with a cheap BMG clone so you have a better gear ratio and reduce pressure on the filament further than what decreasing the spring tension on your existing extruder can do. Don't overpay for a clone if you decide to get one, they all do the same thing and are much better than stock.

The most important thing you should do is replace that stupid stock extruder. It can't push the filament properly, so it just chews through plastic in the same spot until it breaks.
Ideally you should buy a direct drive upgrade kit and something like a cheap BMG clone.
Also, minimize the amount of retracts in slicer settings. This will prevent hotend clogs (which are partially responsible for your problem). Also, after direct drive mod you should change retraction amount in Marlin settings (for me it was around 1.1-1.2mm, but try printing a retraction calibration tower to see what works for you).
That's the best way around it.

At the bare minimum:
1) get a BMG and use it in Bowden setup as-is
2) Adjust motor parameters and re-calibrate e-steps
3) Calibrate retracts and remove unnecessary retracts in slicer
4) Preferably keep it under 3mm for Bowden. It may result in more stringing, but it will reduce the amount of clogs.
5) Swap the nozzle to 0.6mm. It costs pennies, doesn't really affect the print quality, but helps immensely on crappy setups like stock Ender3

Direct drive upgrade isn't worth it on a machine like this unless you're going to turn it into an Ender 3 NG at some point, you'll already be paying nearly what the Ender 3 is worth. Best to just get a BMG clone and a bimetal heat break and be done with it.

Also, you shouldn't "calibrate" e-steps, you should just use the numbers given to you by the extruder part and calibrate extrusion multiplier (or flowrate) in the slicer on a per-filament basis instead. E-steps are entirely determined by motor type and extruder gearing, you shouldn't ever calibrate them.

 

[silentbogo]

Direct drive upgrade isn't worth it on a machine like this unless you're going to turn it into an Ender 3 NG at some point, you'll already be paying nearly what the Ender 3 is worth.

???
It's $3-$4 for a backplate and $5-$7 for BMG clone. If you print your own mounting hardware - you only pay for the extruder (which is what I did). I don't think you can find Ender 3 for ~$10.

Best to just get a BMG clone and a bimetal heat break and be done with it.

That was my initial route for my Ender3v2, and guess what - BMG also started skipping on the very first print. One cheap way around it is to swap the nozzle to 0.8mm and/or bump the temperature a bit, but that comes with its own can of worms. Swapping the heat break will solve help a lot with clogging problem, so it's a good inexpensive upgrade either way.

Also, you shouldn't "calibrate" e-steps, you should just use the numbers given to you by the extruder part and calibrate extrusion multiplier (or flowrate) in the slicer on a per-filament basis instead.

If we lived in a perfect world - then yes - just the motor spec plus gear ratio would do, but we do not live in a perfect world and there are things like flow resistance inside bowden tube and extruder itself, gear slippage, variance by plastic type, and tons of other things that can affect the amount of plastic going through(even without gear skipping). You can fine-adjust flow rate in slicer or in printer settings, but that's meant for fine-tuning. You need to get some sort of baseline first.

 

[Rover4444]

???
It's $3-$4 for a backplate and $5-$7 for BMG clone. If you print your own mounting hardware - you only pay for the extruder (which is what I did). I don't think you can find Ender 3 for ~$10.

I seriously hope you're not talking about just sticking the extruder motor onto your gantry. It's going to sag unless you do a dual-z upgrade, which is even more money. There's otherwise no reason to do it unless you really hate stringing; you can't even print TPU consistently because it's not even a real direct drive.

Lowest price ever for a new Ender 3 v2 was $50 at Microcenter, they're seriously not worth upgrading.

If we lived in a perfect world - then yes - just the motor spec plus gear ratio would do, but we do not live in a perfect world and there are things like flow resistance inside bowden tube and extruder itself, gear slippage, variance by plastic type, and tons of other things that can affect the amount of plastic going through(even without gear skipping). You can fine-adjust flow rate in slicer or in printer settings, but that's meant for fine-tuning. You need to get some sort of baseline first.

Yep I knew it, I didn't assume wrong.

Stop changing your e-steps. You don't do it for any other motor. And it matters least of all for the extruder, extrusion multiplier literally has the exact same effect and you have to change it anyways.

 

[silentbogo]

I seriously hope you're not talking about just sticking the extruder motor onto your gantry. It's going to sag unless you do a dual-z upgrade, which is even more money.

It worked good enough without second Z-axis motor for at least 4-5 months for me(and that's with slightly busted gantry mounts). I only did a z-axis upgrade not too long before selling it. Plus there are tons of old cantilever bedslingers that do just fine without even the possibility of having the second motor or even a second mount point, all while having a complete toolhead mounted on it. I know that it's a pain in the ass on Ender3, but some tweaking and occasional roller tightening gets the job done. My old printer was purchased already used with over 30kg of PETG clocked on it, then I printed another 15+kg for DrukArmy and half as much for personal stuff, and the only issues I had were with hotend and clogs (it could barely handle 250C without thermal instability). Gantry was barely an issue, with probe and bed mesh leveling it worked just fine, just about as good as you'd expect from ender3.

And even with dual z-axis upgrade it's not that much $$$. I think I paid $25 for a Creality kit with free shipping. If you can print your mount plate, then it's even less.
Not everyone lives in US and can just drive and get a $50 ender3v2 at microcenter. I think the cheapest used Ender3V2 in my area is over $100, which with later upgrades(bl-touch, PE sheet with mag surface, dual z-axis motors, BMG clone, new hotend, bimetallic nozzle, filament runout sensor etc.) at the time was still cheaper than used stock Ender3 S1 or V3 SE.

There's otherwise no reason to do it unless you really hate stringing; you can't even print TPU consistently because it's not even a real direct drive.

I don't think TPU is even in consideration for Ender3. Heck, even my K1 can't print TPU consistently. And I don't get what "Real" direct drive means? It's an extruder that drives plastic directly into a hotend, the same way I built for my very first Prusa MkIII clone, same way it's set up on my 300x300 machine, and the same way it's working on nearly all printers with direct drive. Having 2cm of tube guide hidden inside radiator and extruder doesn't make it "kinda bowden" all of a sudden. There are better direct drive toolhead assemblies, and there are worse ones, more expensive and not so expensive, but I've never heard of "real" or "fake" ones.

 

[Rover4444]

It worked good enough without second Z-axis motor for at least 4-5 months for me(and that's with slightly busted gantry mounts). I only did a z-axis upgrade not too long before selling it. Plus there are tons of old cantilever bedslingers that do just fine without even the possibility of having the second motor or even a second mount point, all while having a complete toolhead mounted on it. I know that it's a pain in the ass on Ender3, but some tweaking and occasional roller tightening gets the job done. My old printer was purchased already used with over 30kg of PETG clocked on it, then I printed another 15+kg for DrukArmy and half as much for personal stuff, and the only issues I had were with hotend and clogs (it could barely handle 250C without thermal instability). Gantry was barely an issue, with probe and bed mesh leveling it worked just fine, just about as good as you'd expect from ender3.

And even with dual z-axis upgrade it's not that much $$$. I think I paid $25 for a Creality kit with free shipping. If you can print your mount plate, then it's even less.
Not everyone lives in US and can just drive and get a $50 ender3v2 at microcenter. I think the cheapest used Ender3V2 in my area is over $100, which with later upgrades(bl-touch, PE sheet with mag surface, dual z-axis motors, BMG clone, new hotend, bimetallic nozzle, filament runout sensor etc.) at the time was still cheaper than used stock Ender3 S1 or V3 SE.

Even an Ender 3 with all those upgrades at $100 still isn't worth it, the V3 just blows it out that bad. Even with all those upgrades you're still not getting the strain gauge, the linear rods (HUGE upgrade), sprite extruder, and increased default print speeds. And that's not even mentioning the new CoreXY options on the market today like the K1, Centauri, or Adventurer 5M.

I don't think TPU is even in consideration for Ender3.

It's one of the materials listed for the Ender 3 V3 SE.

And I don't get what "Real" direct drive means? It's an extruder that drives plastic directly into a hotend, the same way I built for my very first Prusa MkIII clone, same way it's set up on my 300x300 machine, and the same way it's working on nearly all printers with direct drive. Having 2cm of tube guide hidden inside radiator and extruder doesn't make it "kinda bowden" all of a sudden.

I'm looking at these cheap DD kits and brackets and the bowden tube isn't exactly "hidden" with them. Does look like it works well enough with TPU though actually.

 

[silentbogo]

I'm looking at these cheap DD kits and brackets and the bowden tube isn't exactly "hidden" with them.

It's a 4-5mm gap. The rest of the tube is inside. With custom printed adapters like the one I had it's even less.
Looks something like this with BMG. On my setup it was almost flush. It's a random pic off the internet, I don't have a photo of my hotend.

There's also an option of looking for a used Sprite extruder, but that mostly depends on luck (new one costs waaay too much for what it is). I have one in my parts pile somewhere. Bought it for under $10 without PCB, paid another $5 for a board and a ribbon cable. I'm planning on using it for my other build.

It's one of the materials listed for the Ender 3 V3 SE.

Listed - yes. Though it's not like Creality ever overestimated their specs and capabilities . For TPU you need consistent temps at higher range, and I've never managed to get it stable at anything above 240°C(or other stock Ender3s that went through my workshop). That was one of the reasons I had to sell it.
I get PETG from my friend (he runs a manufacturing line, which I helped to build), and after switching granule supplier his print temps went up from 210 all the way to 250+C.
I think the only thing that could help is a 60W heater cartridge and bimetallic heatbreak which you've mentioned earlier.

My other friend runs a 3d print farm, and I think he only prints TPU on Bambu P1S and on his DIY hi-temp corexy printer (uses a 500C BTT H2 toolhead).

 

[Rover4444]

Listed - yes. Though it's not like Creality ever overestimated their specs and capabilities

Not this time. The Sprite's able to do it, I've seen good results and the internals look fine. The Creality of old isn't the Creality of today, and neither are the TPUs available now.

For TPU you need consistent temps at higher range, and I've never managed to get it stable at anything above 240°C(or other stock Ender3s that went through my workshop).

Uhh... skill issue? The V3 variants should be able to print it ok, though the ones with TPU linings should get a bimetal heatbrake before too long. With anything earlier of course you're bound to have issues if stock.

I was under the impression TPU was easier to print than nylon if you had a real direct drive and could live with the stringing, and nylon isn't all that hard to print...

 

[Morgoth]

i dont own a printer but i order lots of 3d prints to paint

 

[jak_2456]

1) get a BMG and use it in Bowden setup as-is

Would this extruder also work or should I only look for BMG clones?: https://www.amazon.com/Creality-Official-Extruder-3D-Aluminum/dp/B09LQKN5WG

 

[silentbogo]

BMG clone is the cheapest of the decent ones. That official creality extruder is the same single-gear crap, just made out of metal. I have 4 or 5 of nearly identical Mk.8 extruders laying around - and they all have the same issue (e.g. total crap).

I mean something like this:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005009241837337.html

And if you want to get fancy, you can get something like an HGX-Lite. It's lightweight(on par with plastic BMG), and costs around $16 with much smaller(and lighter) Nema14 "pancake" motor. But for that one you will definitely need to print a custom mounting hardware.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008682518142.html

There are also awesome planetary extruders like Orbiter or Sherpa. These are cool and all, but that's gonna be an overkill both in terms of budget and performance. I'd rather go with the cheapest BMG and a standard Creality mounting plate(or 3D printed mounts). The less you spend on it, the better.

 

[Rover4444]

Would this extruder also work or should I only look for BMG clones?: https://www.amazon.com/Creality-Official-Extruder-3D-Aluminum/dp/B09LQKN5WG

No, it would not work. The reason why we recommend the BMG clones is because it's just as cheap and ubiquitous and also has a better gear ratio, so you can use less force on the filament for the same amount of torque. You're just going to get the same problems you currently have with that one, the only difference between it and stock is that it's metal so filament will no longer cause wear on the extruder.

 

[Kwadratowicz]

Finally I've started building voron 0.2 r1 from formbot kit

 

[jak_2456]

I bought and installed a BMG clone extruder. How much should I tighten the screw?

 

[de.das.dude]

anyone know a good phone holder that can be stuck to glass and stuff. i need to attach my phone to one of my back windows so i can watch the rear glass, i want to do some aerodynamic experiments

 

[Rover4444]

I bought and installed a BMG clone extruder. How much should I tighten the screw?View attachment 408147

Try to prevent the filament from being extruded with just your fingers, then do an extrusion operation. If you can stop the filament from being extruded, tighten the screw. Really though just do what feels right, honestly.

 

[PLAfiller]

I bought and installed a BMG clone extruder. How much should I tighten the screw?

Nice! You can check by the filament: if the scars are too deep, then it might snap it. If the scars are too shallow then it may skip, depending on your spool holder. As a general rule of thumb, I'd go for the thighter setting, as it should be able to pull the string and also push it forward.