Printrbot Simple 1401 - Fan Holder for Preheating Problems by astemoi

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

Until recently, I've ran across the issue that my printer would malfunction around forty to an hour into a print. What would occur was that the filament would clog up so much so that it would gather into a giant blob right before it entered the body of the hot end, right at the point where the stepper motor of the extruder was pushing the filament in.
I initially did not think much of this problem, only that it would be fine after I unclogged it after catching the problem right as I would hear knocking from the printer-extruder assembly. Soon I realized that however, this problem was something that would cause problems later on and should be addressed as soon as possible.
Researching online, I realized that this problem was due to "preheating" of the filament as it entered the warm/hot extruder assembly heated via conduction from running the motor extended periods of time. I tried to fix the problem via using nylon spacers in between the motor and aluminum extruder assembly, hoping that this would remedy the problem. This only merely extended my window of failure to one hour +/- thirty minutes.
Finally, I concluded that it would be a better idea to simply use the fan motor that I had originally removed from the printer as a method of cooling down the extruder assembly. After this attachment, I've ran 4+ hour prints without any problems.
A simple part has made all the difference in the effectiveness of the printer.