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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?
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hayes.tara6mo 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.
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mark7315mo 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.
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noahclark6mo 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.
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