Ender 3 feeder clicking free. 8 Ways How to Fix a Clicking/Slipping Extruder on a 3D Printer

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This is why I decided to make a simple-to-follow post on how to fix this noise. Pro Tip: Get yourself one of the best metal hotend kits to improve your extrusion flow. If you are interested in seeing some of the best tools and accessories for your 3D printers, you can find them easily by clicking here. It could be from your nozzle being too close to the printer bed on the first few extruded layers.

The hard metal material of your nozzle scraping on your printing surface can easily cause a grinding noise from your 3D printer. If this is a problem you are experiencing, the fix is pretty easy. How this causes your extruder to skip, which in turns causes the clicking sound, is by not having enough pressure build up to pass your filament through successfully. You can also run levelling print tests which are quick prints that show any levelling issues so you know if your extrusion is good enough or not.

Instead of always manually levelling your bed, you can let your 3D printer do the work for you, by implementing the popular BLTouch Auto-Bed Leveling Sensor from Amazon, which saves a bunch of time and frustration in setting up your 3D printer.

It works on any bed material and several users have described a significant increase in overall print quality and reliability. Being able to trust that your 3D printer is level every time gives you a genuine feeling of confidence in your machine, that is worth every penny. When the clicking happens in layers past the first few extruded layers, it means your extrusion temperature is too low.

The reason this works is because in some cases, higher printer speeds works fine going at simple angles like a straight line, but when it comes to sharp turns and different degrees, your printer can have trouble extruding accurately at higher speeds. Getting a higher quality extruder can definitely help out in this regard. Now you can either get the genuine Bontech, or the BondTech clone, you check the price difference and decide which to go for.

Many times, your printer will give you this clicking noise when your nozzle is blocked. When your nozzle is blocked up, the extrusion and pressure builds up which sets off your extruder to start slipping.

This can result in the plastic forming a plug, or small blockage on the cold side and can happen at random points throughout the print. Give your nozzle a good cleaning, maybe even a cold pull if the blockage is bad enough.

The solution for the thermal break and bad quality heat sink is to lower your temperature or get a more efficient heat sink. A faulty PTFE tube can easily go unnoticed for a while before you realize it is messing with your prints.

Apart from enhancing the quality of your prints, a good bed temperature can take away many print imperfections as well that cause some print failures.

Decreasing your bed temperature when it is too high is a great solution to this issue, leading to better print quality and more successful prints. The next layers ideally want to have a good foundation beneath it. Sticking within the range of what your manufacturer advises should set you on the path of getting the bed temperature for your 3D prints. Retraction settings are when your 3D printer pulls filament back inside the extruder to avoid the melted filament moving out of the nozzle while the print head is moving.

Retraction settings are useful for increasing the quality of prints and to reduce the occurrence of print imperfections like stringing, oozing, blobs, and zits. Retraction Distance or Length is how far the filament is pulled back in the hot end within the extrusion path.

The best retraction setting depends on your specific 3D printer and whether you have a Bowden-style or a Direct Drive extruder. For Bowden extruders, the Retraction Distance is best set between 4mm-7mm. The default Retraction Distance value in Cura is 5mm. Similarly, a too high value of this setting could jam or clog your extruder nozzle.

What you can do is begin at the middle of these ranges, depending on what extrusion system you have. For Bowden-style extruders, you can test your prints at a Retraction Distance of 5mm and check how the quality turns out. An even better way to calibrate your Retraction Distance is by printing a retraction tower in Cura as shown in the video in the previous section. Doing so would drastically increase your chances of getting the best Retraction Distance value for your 3D printer.

The retraction tower is composed of 5 blocks, each indicating a specific Retraction Distance or Speed value that you set. You can begin printing the tower at 2mm and work your way up with 1mm increments. After finishing, check yourself which parts of the tower look the highest quality. You can also choose to determine the top 3 and print a retraction tower one more time using those 3 best values, then using more precise increments.

Retraction Speed is simply the speed at which the filament is pulled back in the hot end. Generally speaking, you want to have a Retraction Speed as high as possible without grinding the filament in the feeder. When you set your Retraction Speed too high though, the force that is produced by your feeder is so high that the feeder wheel can grind into the filament, reducing the success rate of your 3D prints.

This is a good place to start, but you can get the best Retraction Speed for your 3D printer by printing a retraction tower, just like in Retraction Distance. Only this time, you would be optimizing the speed instead of distance. After finishing the print, you would again get the 3 best-looking Retraction Speed values and print another tower using those values.

For a balance between speed and detail, you want to go with the default 0. For increased resolution and detail, you can use a 0. Layer height is simply the thickness of each layer of filament in millimeters. It is the setting which is most important when balancing the quality of your 3D models with the printing time. The thinner each layer of your model is, the more detail and accuracy the model will have.

With filament 3D printers, you tend to have a maximum layer height of either 0. If you do choose to use such a small layer height, you should expect a 3D print to take several times longer than usual.

When you think about how many layers are extruded for a 0. Cura has a default Layer Height of 0. This layer height offers a great balance of good detail and fairly fast 3D prints, though you can adjust it depending on your desired outcome.

For models like statues, busts, characters, and figures, it makes sense to use a lower layer height to capture the vital details that make these models look realistic. For models like a headphone stand, a wall mount, a vase, holders of some kind, a 3D printed clamp, and so on, you are better off using a larger layer height like 0.

A good Line Width for 3D printing is between 0. For improved part quality and high details, a low Line Width value such as 0. For better bed adhesion, thicker extrusions, and strength, a large Line Width value like 0. Line Width is simply how wide your 3D printer prints each line of filament.

It is dependent on the diameter of the nozzle and dictates how high quality your part will be in the X and Y direction. Most people use a 0. However, such parts may not have the most strength. You can tweak your Line Width according to your use case to get better results in terms of either strength or quality. Another situation where increasing the Line Width helps is when there are gaps in your thin walls. An increase in Flow rate is usually for a short-term fix like a clogged nozzle, as well as under or over extrusion.

Flow or Flow Compensation in Cura is depicted by a percentage and is the actual amount of filament that is extruded from the nozzle. The main reason one would adjust the flow rate is to make up for an issue in the extrusion train.

An example here would be a clogged nozzle. The video below shows a fairly simple way to calibrate your Flow Rate, which consists of 3D printing a simple open cube and measuring the walls with a pair of Digital Calipers. Under Shell settings in Cura, you should set a Wall Thickness of 0. Another thing you can do you calibrate your Flow is to print a Flow Test tower in Cura. All things considered, Flow is more of a temporary fix to print problems rather than a permanent one.

The best Infill Settings are based on your use case. Infill Density is simply how much material and volume is inside of your prints. The higher your infill Density, the stronger your 3D prints will be, though it brings diminishing returns in strength the higher the percentage used. You can save plenty of material by using the optimal amount of infill, as well as decrease printing time.

As you can see, the Gyroid infill pattern looks denser than the Cubic pattern. When you think of your infill, it is technically a supporting structure for layers above. If your Infill Density creates many gaps in the model when you see the preview of the model, you can get print failures, so make sure your model is well-supported from the inside if needed.

The best Infill Pattern for strength is the Cubic or Triangle Infill Pattern since they provide great strength in multiple directions. For quicker 3D prints, the best Infill Pattern would be Lines. Flexible 3D prints can benefit from using the Gyroid Infill Pattern. Infill Patterns are a way to define the structure which fills up your 3D printed objects.

There are specific use cases for different patterns out there, whether for flexibility, strength, speed, a smooth top surface, and so on. The default Infill Pattern in Cura is the Cubic pattern which is a great balance of strength, speed, and overall print quality. It is considered the best infill pattern by many 3D printer users. Grid produces two sets of lines that are perpendicular to each other. Being one of the best Infill Patterns, Lines forms parallel lines and creates a decent top surface finish with satisfactory strength.

You can use this Infill Pattern for an all-rounder use case. It does happen to be weaker in the vertical direction for strength but is great for faster printing. However, at a higher Infill Density, the level of strength does drop since the flow gets interrupted due to intersections.