I get so many questions on how to maintain your Ender three the most
important area to focus on is the filament path the extruder the PTFE tube
the hot end and the nozzle this is where most of the problems occur and if you
maintain it you'll have better prints and I'll show you how to do it on
today's Filament Friday Filament Friday is brought to you by these patreon
supporters my buddy Angus over at the makers muse channel he did a great
video on how he maintains his Ender three and gave some great tips I'll link
to that up here somewhere and also in the description below but there's one
area that was different is he had direct Drive installed on his Ender three where
most people I think have the Bowden setup at least that's the way it comes
stock and there's some different things that you need to take care of on this
that maybe you wouldn't do on a direct drive it's far more important at least
so that's what I'm gonna focus on because if you get these right you
literally will see better prints less stringing cleaner edges everything I get
so many emails asking me how do I fix this problem or that problem and almost
always comes back to these simple tips I'm going to show you the first step is
to take the filament out of the filament path so preheat the hot end push a
little filament out once it's heat it up and then pull it all the way out so it's
completely out so you can actually remove the filament from the machine
next while it's still warm we're gonna unscrew this coupling and
then pull the PTFE out of the hot end but before you do that put your finger
near the top of the hot end if it's really hot and you don't want to keep your
finger there or if it's really warm this is a sign your fan may be failing
it may be spinning and blowing air but it's not blowing enough so that's a sign
that we may have another issue and may have to replace the fan but for right
now we're gonna unscrew the coupling and then pull it out of the hot end and if
you look at mine there's a little bit of filament down at the bottom now it's not
blocking but it's stuck to the inside of the PTFE tubing it's right there where
it touches the nozzle when you pull it out you'll always see a little bit of
filament there but when you see it all the way around on the inside like this
that's a sign that the PTFE tubing is losing some of its
lubrication right down where it touches the nozzle because it's so hot and what
happens is if as that builds up that's going to affect retraction slow the
filament down from retracting and also going the other direction so you'll end
up with gaps in your prints and you'll really notice it has little strings on
your print like these flags that I'm showing here see the little strings
going across the flags those shouldn't be there that's a sign that the PTFE
tubing is starting to fail now sometimes you remove it and you'll see the end of
that PTFE tubing is black that means it's burned and it's shot that's never
gonna work it's gonna give you terrible retraction results and terrible prints
so you need to get that fixed you can replace whole PTFE tubing but an
easy way is just cut off the last 20 millimeters a tubing cutter like this
from Capricorn it's got a nice notch to hold the PTFE tubing so you get a clean
cut and just cut that last 20 millimeters off screw it back on and
then push it all the way down to the nozzle and you're ready to start
printing again how often should you do this well on my print farm back here which
is running almost every day I do it about once a month I go across the
machines clip off that 20 millimeters put it back in and start printing again
but it depends on what temperature you're running at how big your prints
are and how often you're printing so if you're just average printing you could
probably get away with once every 2 or maybe 3 months that you have to cut that
off but when you do I highly suggest you also replace the nozzle again while it's
still hot you can replace the nozzle very easily and I like to use this thumb
ratchet I'll put a link to this in the description below it's really
inexpensive and then I use a quarter inch socket now I think it's a six point
five millimeter but I just use a quarter inch socket here in the US and it fits
really nice it's a little bit loose which is fine I'm not stripping anything
but it stops me from over tightening as well so I can just ratchet this thing on
or off and keeps my fingers away from the heat so replace the nozzle and I buy
these sets I have this nice set that I got on Amazon I'll put a link to this
in the description below you get twenty five zero point four nozzles now you can buy
a variety set too but it comes with cleaning wires as well
which I don't use too much I just replaced them but for the price it works
out to like 36 cents per nozzle so very inexpensive so why not replace it when
you cut that PTFE tubing when you replace the nozzle I almost guarantee
you're gonna have to tweak the bed you're gonna have to re-level it so
just know that going in but it's worth it you're gonna get better prints now
remember I mentioned the top of this should not be hot if it is then you need
to take this cover off and look at your fan and odds are there's gonna be crap
in there or there's gonna be little pieces of filament they may be slowing
it down you may have a broken blade but if none of that is there and it's
spinning and everything looks fine but the top this is still hot replace the
fan I don't care what anybody tells you replace the fan because it's just not
spinning properly now you can get a set of fans you can get one for the side for
the cooling the filament and then one that will fit inside the case you can
buy these in sets I have a link to these as well in the description I buy then in sets of
two sets so I can fix two machines with these these are by Winsinn I'm not going
to say they're the quietest fans but they're not bad either
and they last a lot longer and then the Creality fan so I haven't replaced
the fans of mine very often now the wires themselves are a little bit short
so I've showed this in a previous video I actually just cut and splice the fan
to the existing wire so I cut off the old one and I splice a new one in and
I use these solder sleeves that make it a lot easier to to do this you just heat
it up with a heat gun and it's soldered it in place so I highly
recommend it now these will sometimes fit tight within the case you really
gotta pry it out sometimes sometimes they'll pop right out but replace the
fan you'll be happy you did and then the top of it will be cool and you're going
to get more consistent printing because you're gonna get more consistent heating
of the filament the final thing you need to do is this gear on your extruder
anytime you have resistance and that PTFE tubing or issues with that fan that
cooling you're gonna get grinding of the filament up here at the gear and what
you need to do before you printing again is take a brush now I
like to take a stainless steel brush and I run it against it now it's a
brass gear on this but the stainless steel for me seems to work better I use
a brass brush to clean the nozzle have a plastic brush to clean dust and stuff
but this one I use on the gear all three of these are part of my Filament Friday
tool kit I'm not saying you got to go out and buy my kit you can get these at
any hardware store they usually come in these three styles but it's the
stainless steel one I just brush as I spin it brush the teeth and look for
wear in the gear if that gear is worn replace it but you can usually get away
just by cleaning it and cleaning the filament out because if you don't it's
kind of starts slipping and then you're gonna have problems even though you did
everything right down here at the hot end it's gonna be slipping up here at
the extruder and you're gonna be why why is it doing this so clean that off it's
a real easy fix I will put a link to all these items in the description below
they are affiliate link so if you use them it does help the channel but if you
don't want to use those that's fine as long as you buy the parts to fix your
hot end so you can start printing good again this is how you maintain the
filament path and it's very very important especially on a Creality
machine especially the Ender three now how does this happen though really well
if you ever lose power while it's printing all that heats got to go
somewhere because the fans not blowing anymore it goes right into the heatsink
it goes right into the nozzle goes right into the PTFE tubing and starts to cook
it also if you're in a hurry say it's printing and you have to shut it off and
go somewhere all that heat goes right into the PTFE tubing and the filament
expands causes you problems if that fan should fail whereas the heat going all
into the PTFE tubing so that's how it typically happens or just you know
printing over a long period of time it just slowly wears out if you do decide
to replace the PTFE tubing there's the standard PTFE the clear stuff so you can
see the filament inside and that's typically a two millimeter inside
diameter you can go with a Capricorn which is what I have here that's
typically a one point nine millimeter inside diameter which is fine the only
issue I have with that is if you're printing with some filaments that
have metal infused into it or wood infused then you want a little bit
bigger diameter that's where this clear stuff is actually better so it depends
on what you're printing but the Capricorn is higher temperature
resistance so you'll have to cut that off far less if you use it and if you
use that Luke Hatfield method that I showed in a previous video with just a
little section then all you have to do is pull up that little section replace
it and you're back to printing so there's a lot of options but this is
maintenance this is what you have to do to keep your printer working properly
and getting really good prints if you like what I'm doing here maybe check out
some of the other videos that are popping up and if nothing else click
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time right here at Filament Friday