My 3D printer's hotend jammed right in the middle of a 12-hour print last night.

I was trying to print a custom bracket for a Raspberry Pi case, and about 6 hours in I heard a weird clicking sound from the extruder. I had to stop everything, take the whole hotend apart, and clear out a blob of melted PLA that had hardened around the heater block. What's the best way to prevent this from happening again on long prints?

3 comments

3 Comments

hayes.tara26d ago

That clicking sound is such a heartbreaker. When you took it apart, did you notice if the heat break fan was running okay? A lot of jams on long prints start because that fan fails and heat creeps up the filament before it even hits the nozzle.

mark7316d ago

Yeah, that fan is so easy to overlook. I had the same issue and just cleaning the dust out of the heat sink fins made a huge difference. It's running way cooler now and the clicking stopped.

noahclark26d ago

Ugh, that's the worst feeling. After my last big jam, I started doing a quick cold pull to clean the nozzle before any print over a few hours. Also, double-checking that the Bowden tube is seated all the way against the nozzle seems to help a lot.