Complete hotend assembly issues

Hi!

This post is more informational as I’ve already figured out the issue.

After swapping my hotend to a 0.6 nozzle for a vasemode, I wanted to go back to 0.4 and to preserve the 0.6 in working condition, I used a spare complete prebuilt hotend that I got with my printer - this was two days ago.

Ever since I started getting clogs in my extruder when printing PLA. Things were better with PETG, but I needed to print something in PLA and I couldn’t even get it started or print for more than 3-5 minutes before getting a clog.

I took apart the extruder probably 10 times in the past two days until this morning, each time to remove a clog. I had to even cut the PFTE tubing a couple of times with it, shortening it just so I can remove the clogs - which led me to replacing the PFTE tubing too.
The cogs of the extruder seemed always in good condition and I only print PLA and PETG. - I got a spare extruder but I wasn’t ready to give up on a perfectly looking one.

The issue was a heat creep that was caused most likely by a faulty ceramic heater/thermistor in the prebuilt or maybe poor thermal paste application - the extruder was always hotter to the touch than the hotend when I disassembled it.

If you need to get a clog out of the extruder, check the bambu wiki page as there are unlisted YT videos showing you how to open it.

After replacing the heater+thermistor with new parts, everything works smoothly, printing continuously for 12 hours and still going.

Heater should not cause overheating as its power is externally controlled. So it must have been a bad thermistor or bad contact in thermistor connector.