Right, that somehow slipped my mind. 1mm works well for direct-drive, but might be a bit too short for bowden. If a lower retraction fixes the problem, that would point to an issue with the hotend (or filament).
@NathanielStenzel regarding my filament, I’m almost done with the roll and it’s been printing without any hiccups. I’m not sure I’m getting what you’re saying, though - you mean that the components of the plastic actually separate in some way?
@Thomas_Sanladerer yep. The filament does actually separate at a temperature 20C under the print temperature and does a slow ooze and leaves filler or something left in the nozzle. As you feed more in, it will float to the top and if you do not feed filament for a little bit or you slow it down, it will go down and clog it up. For that reason, I recommend actually cutting off 1/2 inch before printing and then extruding a few inches of actual nozzle output immediately before printing.
We try to print without retraction but we didn’t solve the problem at all.
We try to slice with slic3r, cura, simplify, and it happens anyway.
We instead drill a little deep the hole of the nozzle (as suggested from a user on the E3d forum where this problem is fully discussed) and now we can print pla at a more correct temperature (196-198°C) and changing filament seems to solve the problem (seems 
)
@Joe_Spanier that e3d 30mm fan can cause issues. I had mine wired direct and it eventually slowed… Then failed. In fact both 30mm fans I had with my e3d’s have failed in this way. At least the second time I knew what was happening when I started getting pla jams. Now I run a better quality 40mm fan. Those 30mm fans in 24v are hard to come by and of questionable quality. 40mm fans are much easier to source at 24v.
@Eclsnowman , there’s actually a “hot end fan” pin selection in the Marlin firmware that will turn a pin on any time the hot end is above 50C. Keeps your fan off when its not in use, and on when you need it.
@ThantiK I will look back into that. I tried it at first setup… But knew less about arduino then and couldn’t get it to work on my azteeg while using dual heads. I moved back to single extruder now.
Well I got some 30 and 40s from the place I got my 24v cartridge from but I haven’t converted. I was going to hold of until I rebuild my printer. I have all the stuff to build the new revised vs completely but I need the printed parts. That’s what all this is.
Alright ran same code with the same filament at 260 and it made it quite a bit farther but had a weird issue about 3/4 of the way through were it lost a few layers and started printing again. Trying now with IC3D Natural ABS at 260 also with only 1mm retract. I know this probably isnt enough but I enabled 4mm of “coast” in simplify so hopefully that offsets some of the pressure that retract would normally take care of.
I had a thought about the retraction issues on the e3d. When running a retract like I was, around 5.5mm your effectively pulling the filament out of the melt zone because its so short. And since every time you pull the filament you form a plug that hardens its starting to make since why this is such an issue especially at the “lower” temps.
Have you tried the old ‘Seasoning’ trick with a drip of canola oil on the filament to reduce the stickiness of the heat break? This is normally only necessary with PLA but might be worth a go.
Do keep at it, I’ve finally route caused a layer alignment fault that’s been dogging me for a month. (Turned out to be the RUMBA board) . What I recommend is too isolate every variable, including electronics boards, you can alter pins.h in firmware so e0 uses a different driver. Have you swapped out your thermistor?
If seasoning fails, get a film canister (if you can find one), poke a hole in the bottom of it, thread the filament in from the top through the bottom, cram a few cotton balls inside around it and douse the whole lot with a tonne of Singer sewing machine oil (or something similar)
I had this same problem with my Bukobot which also has an all metal hot end and this solved all my problems.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62766551/3D%20Printing/P2120139.jpg
Ok. I just noticed something was not mentioned. How are the temperatures for the driver chips on your controller board? Is one of the chips hot to the touch at the time of the failure? If this is the case, some heat sinks and/or fans for the controller board may help. Try to avoid having the fans make an air current for the ABS though, because that would be bad.
The drivers should be cool. They are all heat sinked and have 20 40mm 9cfm fans directly over them. Good thought though!
@Tim_Rastall and @Miles_Flavel a while ago I seasoned it and ran with an inline oiler for pla and it did great things. But I’ve cleaned all that oil out I’m sure in this process. I’ll try seasoning again.
I did successfully run this code last night with the new filament at 260
Also to get that I dropped retraction to 1mm which again I think points to hotend issues. I’ll season one of the new nozzles coming today and report back
Alright so heres where Im at. Im back to making successful prints but it came at a bit of a cost as far as Im concerned.
To not fail Im running at 260C with 4mm of Coast and 2mm retract. I’m still getting some strings and some corner blobbing, but I’m getting parts.
Im curious if the E3D would benefit from a slightly even 2mm longer melt zone so that when running a 5mm retract for bowden your not pulling your filament all the way from the melt zone and forming a plug? Although I guess your really just pulling the still solid or soft filament away from the liquid. I just feel there should be a better resolution. Ideas?
@Joe_Spanier the short melt zone on the E3d is what makes it so responsive, extending it would likely increase the nozzle ooze and reduce the efficacy of retracts. Something I meant to mention is that the heat break seems to be the route cause of theses jamming issues. The v5 heat breaks can suffer some internal machining scars that make soft filament more prone to jam. With this in mind, it may be worth encouraging extra airflow across the break itself to ensure the filament stays as cool as posdible. Perhaps by dropping the heatsink fan until it pushes air across the top of the block…
Incidentally, the impending V6 has a heatbreak machined in a different way which (according to E3d) significantly improves the internal surface finish.
@Tim_Rastall to add to that, its entirely possible that in all these tests and things with jams I have scarred my heat break up worse as well. I have been using a 2mm drill bit to press the filament through. Maybe Ill order a new heat break to go with my new nozzles. I was also going to print a new fan shroud tonight to accept a 40mm fan as per @Eclsnowman 's suggestion.
btw this forum kicks a** just sayin…
@Joe_Spanier when you design the shroud you can split the flow 30mm at the heatsink and 10mm blowing through a slit duct at the break. Also I wrap with kapton over the top of the heater block surface prior to assembly to help with heat isolation.
Care to try http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5971 and http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:181115 and get your fits and gaps working well and see if your edges blob after that?
Ohhhh I like those parts haven’t seen those I’ll try them