Head not extruding?

Hi, I am using a Lulzbot Mini and having issues printing everything. This is due to the fact that the head stops extruding. When first starting it’s print, its fine. However, about 5 minutes in, it stops. I then pause it, take out the filament, cut off the melted bit at the end, put it back in, and then it repeats the cycle, working for about 5 minutes blah blah blah. Before it was an issue with stripping, the gear would smooth out a huge groove in the filament preventing it from moving. I do not believe this is the issue now, because when I pull out the filament, it looks relatively fine. I tried changing the settings and such (reducing print speed, no retraction, etc.) but nothing worked, I use HATCHBOX ABS 3mm filament. Can someone help?

I also noticed on bigger prints, it fails at the same place.

Check that the heat break cooling fan (the one pointed at the aluminum heat break fins) is running. Some models have a standard 40mm fan there, others have a tiny “blower” design fan. If that fan stops, the heat break won’t be cooled and you’ll suffer from what is called “heat creep”, where the filament melts too high in the tube and buckles/jams.

What ScottW said was perfect, you will want to make sure that fine is running. If not, it can cause these issues.

With ABS, it could be a clog as well. I would try some cold pulls and see if that pulls anything loose. You can find links on how to do them here: https://www.lulzbot.com/support/unclogging-tips
http://bukobot.com/nozzle-cleaning

You could also try other filament and see if it fails. We haven’t tested Hatchbox here, so we don’t know exactly how it prints.

Thanks guys, big help. Working on it now.