I think this might be my fault - I might have damaged the gears component by yanking out some filament instead of retracting it properly. I’ve spent hours on this and have taken everything apart, but I can’t get filament to load anymore.
I’m getting the error: “Extruding filament failed. The extruder might be clogged”
The printer tried to load the filament around 5 times before failing with this error.
I’ve confirmed it’s not a clogged hotend. I can push through filament fine by hand. So the filament is getting stuck near the extruder gear assembly.
I took the gear assembly apart and it seems fine to me. There is nothing clogged in here, and I can’t see anything broken or misaligned:
The only thing is that this little wheel was a bit sticky, but I don’t know if that’s the issue.
I also had a look at the filament sensor and tried taking the magnet off and putting it back in place:
But I don’t think it’s a problem with the filament sensor, since I can see the yellow gear turning whenever the filament tries to load:
So it looks like the machine knows there is filament in there. It just can’t pull it through into the hot end.
I’ve bought a replacement filament sensor anyway just in case this is the problem. I also just bought a replacement extruder gear assembly in case that helps too.
(Very grateful to PB Tech in New Zealand for having lots of replacement parts available to order.)
Another thing I tried is cutting 1cm off the PTFE tube that inserts into the filament sensor (I saw someone mention that in another post on here.) That didn’t help. I also tried cutting my filament at a 45-degree angle.
Has anyone had the same issue, and were you able to fix it? How did you fix it?
Apart from waiting for these two replacement parts to arrive, is there anything else I can try?