E3D bowden hotend - slow extact - extruder motor skips

Hello Reprappers!

I have a Prusa i3 clone, and I decided to convert into a bowden extruder configuration. I have bought an E3D hotend like this. My problem is the following: I heat up the hotend to 200C, I extrude 10mm filament with normal speed, and it goes ok. But If I try to extrude another 10mm of filament immediately, then the extruder motor starts to skip/jump some steps. The pressure raises so much in the the hotend, that the motor cannot press the filament that much. If I wait some seconds then it also can print, but after some extruding the motor starts to suffer again. I tought I might overcooling the full metal hotend, so I disconnected all the cooling fans, but the problem is the same. I don't think the temperature would be much lower than 200, the melted filament is felling down from the nose beacause of the gravity without any extruder pressure.
Anyone have this kind of experience with this hotend? What could be the problem?

Sounds like a typical problem of a cheap hotend clone. Please note that E3D original hotends are not sold via aliexpress, you got one of many clones of varying quality and makeup. Pricewise you are scrapping the bottom of the barrel with that one.
There are many possible causes and they have been discussed a lot here. Among them are gaps between heatbreak and nozzle, problems with inliner, insufficient cooling ....
The problems are numerous. If you old hotend did work, why not use that?

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[www.bonkers.de]
[merlin-hotend.de]
[www.hackerspace-ffm.de]

I changed configuration to bowden solution, because I had large mass on the moving "carriage" with the extruder motor mounted on it. I wanted to loose weight on fast moving printing carriage, so I decided to remove the extrduer motor and mount it on the printer's frame. Because of that, I needed a new hotend with bowden mounting on it, and this all metal E3D clone seemed modular, solid, and relyable to me. Can I modify this hotend to get it work properly? I have some tools. (Dremel, drillpress, files, etc.) What do you mean gap between heatbreak and nozzle? What is the inliner? (Picture of my current hotend is attached, fans are turned off)

If you only need an adaptor to use the old hotend do that.
I don't know how you know the new hotend is reliable, from what you said it did not work yet.
Maybe someone who is more experienced with these clone scan help you, i prefer to use my own or brand hotends.

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[www.bonkers.de]
[merlin-hotend.de]
[www.hackerspace-ffm.de]

I tought it is relyable, because I had seen that sold in many printer kits...
Okay, thank you for your answer! Does anyone else have experiences with this E3D hotend clone? Does it work relyable? Maybe I should order another one. Maybe only this is faulty.

If your wanting a reliable E3D hotend, order a genuine one from E3D. Yes they are pricey, but they work right out of the box. By the time you ordered enough clones to make a functional one, you'll have paid for a genuine. You'll get what you pay for either way you go.

Realistically, unless your planning to extrude some exotic materials, you might be good with the E3D lite6 which work up to 245C. Even at that temperature, you can keep replacing the PTFE tube on a lite6 if you ran it at 240C for long periods of time. And I imagine the E3D lite6 can't be too much more that the clone hotends that your ordering.

Hi!

I have found this website about E3D hotend troubleshooting. I made the following changes:
- Disassembled the hotend, and cleared as much as possibe. I burned the nozzle in butane torch to get rid of anything what maybe clogged it. The remaining PLA inside is turned into ash.
- Flattened the back end of the nozzle and the front end of the heat break tube on fine grinding stone. (Where they touch eachother when you assembe the hotend) I hope it prevents the PLA from flowing between this two when pressure is applied.
- Changed the filament to which I was very satisfied in the past. (And what is not black)
- Turned on all the fans to cool down the heatsink as much as possible. The article says it is very important to keep it cool to prevent filament to stick into the heatsink part.
- Drilled a new hole for the thermistor. Now it is on the other side of the heating block. The nozzle is between the heating element and the thermistor now.

The result is: I could extract 100mm of filament continously, without skipping / jumping steps. I hope I could help others who find this post in the future with similar issues.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/28/2016 05:10PM by DeXTeR323i.