Heat Creep causing extruder blocks - "FIX"

Thanks to the lack of cooling for the heatbreak PLA, especially filled PLA can be a pain.
Right now I enjoy ‘winter’ but in a few weeks we call it summer again.
Electricity is becoming unaffordable, so the aircon is only used if there is no way around it.

Ever tried to print PLA without getting blocks when the room temp is already ABOVE 30 degrees Celsius ? LOL
To prevent me taking the extruder off and cutting the stuck filament out after every print I now use PETG during the summer…

But there is a quite logical ‘fix’ if you don’t suffer from extreme ambient temps.
Let me ask you what is more annoying:
Dealing with a BLOCKED extruder or dealing with a bit of chewed up filament?
I prefer the last option as cleaning out the dust and shaving IS EASY - you can take the support wheel and lever out, you CAN pull the filament out…

Ok, but how would we accomplish this?
Simple: Loosen the little screw for the tensioner spring :wink:
I do it like this:
Unscrew the hotend but leave it connected.
Loosen the screw quite a bit…
Now manually load a few cm of filament and prevent it from coming out by pushing it up with your fingers.
Screw in until the grinding stops.
That means you use only moderate force to hold the filament, not brute force!
If you never manually pushed filament through the nozzle by hand please do so to get a feeling for the required pressure - you want just a little bit more…

Put it all back together and do a quick testprint that contains some combined infill and 5 to 7 top layers.
If nothing grinds you are good, if it does crank the screw in a little bit more until it stops.
Of course this will NOT fix the heat creep issue!
But instead of ending up with a blocked extruder when things go wrong you get the filament chewed out by the extruder gears.
As said, far from ideal but beats the alternative if you ask me, especially if you can’t waste the time to fix a block…

It is also recommended to check the following guide, for a detailed explanation of why heat creep occurs, and how to avoid it.

Heat creep and how to avoid extruder/hotend clogs

The information presented in the guide can help in certain situations, but if the environmental temperature is very high, PLA and TPU could still have some issues when printed in an enclosure.

1 Like

@user_3026326371 The actual fix will be cool down the extruder but not affecting the chamber temperature. And the best solution I can find is to add an extruder cooler, I picked it up from x2hammer, it channels the air directly into the extruder by using the filament tube and cools the extruder ONLY. It simple solves my issue for good.

Solved it for me.

cutting a hole? have you considered a no harm solution like a extruder cooler though

Just went for the cheap and easy fix. The housing is cheap to replace if needed. Now it sucks from the side instead of the nozzle and bed. Havnt had an extruder jam in over a year

I just used an E3D Obxidian hotend and never had any heat creep issues again.
I even print PLA with the door and lid closed while the room is close to 30 degrees…
The issue is not cooling or airflow, just the restrictive Bambu hotends :wink: