I have tried so hard for weeks to resolve a heat creep issue with my workhorse.
It all began when I got this printer as a freebie for my brother‘s office. It wasn’t in perfect condition, the thing would stop extruding every few hours into a print, which was annoying but at least it permitted me enough parts to finish a project I had at the time. One day, I left a failed print going a little too long and the nickel plated nozzle got so clogged with burnt filament that I had to take the whole tool head apart, clean everything and put it back together. Since then, the printer has been unable to print much higher than a millimeter or two without failing. The filament flow kept slowing to the point where the last layer would be fuzzy and then the flow would stop altogether. In early occurrences, the extruder filament, once removed from the tool head would always have a divot where the extruder would dig into indefinitely. Loosening the grip via the silver knob all the way prevented the divot from future prints, but the prints were still failing.
I tried so many suggestions from LulzBot support. I used a hardened steel nozzle, I used every Z offset you could think of, I even replaced both the heat block, heat break and thermistor and heat tightened the parts as best I could. Nothing truly fixed the problem.
There were only a few exceptions that gave me significant height of a part again:
After seeing progress improve with increased heat, I ran a print at 280 deg C and it actually printed over an inch in wall height without failing. I would’ve just stuck with that accept I realized that at that temperature, good overhangs were impossible.
It was that experience that eventually lead me to realize that the heat break needed thermal paste and that’s why excessive heat was the only work around: because that’s the only way the break could get hot enough without said paste.
I added the paste, reassembled everything, and I actually got a really great print the first time around on a normal temperature! I thought the pain was finally over, but then saw that the filament was leaking through the threads because I forgot to heat tighten it. I took the nozzle out, cleaned it, put it back with a proper heat tighten, and then the extrusion started failing again like I accomplished nothing.
I’m at my wits end but the fact that I was so close to a good print again compels me to fix this thing, please tell me something I haven’t tried.