Hi folks, this is my first time posting here and unfortunately it is because

3D Printing
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1

Hi folks,

this is my first time posting here and unfortunately it is because I am at the end of my wits. I am running a P3Steel with E3Dv6 0.4mm hotend (hardened nozzle), E3D Titan extruder with 1.75mm filament.
In the past I bounced around between different filament vendors. After the review of DasFilament by @Thomas_Sanladerer I was really intrigued by the combination of price and quality and wanted to switch to it as my daily driver.
Sadly my Titan starts to grind through the filament on most (nearly all) of my prints. Most of the time directly on the first layer. As soon as I switch to a different filament my printer runs fine again. I don’t need to clean the nozzle or anything between filaments. Every filament except the one from DasFilament runs fine through my printer (or as good as I expect from some cheap PLA). I tried now two different PLA colours from DasFilament and one PETG colour.
I even swapped out my nozzle for a completely fresh orignal hardened E3D 0.4mm nozzle, but the problem with DasFilament remains.
This whole thing is really really strange and I don’t want to blame DasFilament, but rather think that I have a very strange problem in my printer. Beside swapping the nozzle, altering the hotend temperature (on PETG to up to 245°C on PLA to up to 230°C) and trying out different extruder idler spring tensions I don’t know what to try next.
Thanks in advance for your help.

2

Temperature and spring tension were my first thoughts too. Was thinking maybe the filament was thicker than “standard” and that was causing your problems.

I know in the past I have encountered jamming with higher-end filaments like ColorFabb. A little bit of canola (?) oil on the tip before loading the filament always seemed to help.

3

Thanks for your answer. Do I simply use an oil soaked paper towel to put the oil on the tip?
Also what problem does the oil exactly solve? Did your filament jam due to friction? I thought that was what the PTFE tubing was for?

4

I just dipped the tip of the filament in a small container of oil, so less than a drop on the filament.

Not sure if it greased the PTFE tube, the lower shaft of my hot end, or was purely a placebo fix, but it always seemed to work for me.

5

So I just tried a short print with a bit of olive oil on the tip of the filament (I simply pushed about 1-2mm of filament in the oil). And what shall I say, the small print finished without any issues. I still have to verify that the filament doesn’t jam on longer prints, but so far this solution seems to help.
I would be interested to hear what our expert @Thomas_Sanladerer thinks about this solution. But so far thanks @John-Paul_Hopman for your hint.

6

Ok, now I’m really stumped. This morning I tried another print. The first try failed, although I didn’t touch the filament or the printer after last nights successful print.
I then did a cold pull applied a bit of oil to the tip of the filament and retried printing and it failed again. I tried this process three times, but somewhere on the first layer I always hear a clicking sound which means that my extruder is grinding again instead of extruding. Any other ideas what could be happening here?