Anyone else have the issue of occasionally having the printer head printing and then when you look back at it later, the filament is not being extruded from the printer head?
I did a couple of check where I either paused the print, restarted the print, changed the filament method, or just stopped the print completely and started a new print.
This issue keeps popping up occasionally. Please redirect the forum to another area if needed.
The extruder stepper motor can only move the filament if the hot zone is at a temperature that melts the filament and the cool zone doesn’t melt the filament.
If either of these conditions are not met and the stepper motor continues to turn, then the hobbed bolt will grind the filament until it can’t move even if the conditions are met.
Heat Creep is the term used when the cold zone is heated by the hot zone enough that the filament starts to melt in the cold zone causing a jam.
If your tool head has suffered from heat creep and the filament is stuck it is often possible to remove the filament with a simple trick… heat the nozzle to the normal filament printing temperature and block (or stop) the cold zone fan (i.e. force heat creep to happen). After a few minutes, manually pull on the filament and it should come out. When it does, set the nozzle temperature to zero and unblock the cold zone fan.
If the above procedure was successful, then you probably can resume normal operations after both the cold zone and hot zone have cooled down.