this is an ender 3 it's been part of my print farm and it has a lot of printing
hours on it but recently it's been giving me prints that are weak and also
some under extrusion and I've had some blockage that I've had to clear well it
turns out the PTFE tube is wore out needs to be replaced so I'll show you
what to look for and how to replace it on today's filament Friday filament
Friday is brought to you by these patreon supporters to show you the issue
I have to take the PTFE tubing out in order to do that I got to get the
filament out so first thing I have to do is preheat the hotend now I can take out
the filament I'll push out just a little bit and then pull it back now
normally I take it all the way out but I'm only going to take it out partially
to show you where it's blocking and while it's still warm I'm gonna take the
coupling out so I could pull the PTFE tubing away from the nozzle so you're
just loosen it with the wrench and that wrench comes with your under three and
then I finished it off with my fingers and once it's loose enough I should be
able to pull this right out and there we go if we look closely you can see
there's filament stuck in there and it's stuck tight I couldn't push it out with
the filament now normally what I could do here you just come in with the tool
the cutters from Capricorn and just clip that end off and put it back together
but I found there was another issue when I was pushing in the filament I would
get to a certain point and I would feel it was hitting and I realized it wasn't
going all the way to the end it was actually stopping at the coupling so if
something aside this coupling causing the filling with the stop so I need to
take this coupling off or slide it up so I'm gonna push it down on the lock and
pull it up and there's a big gouge here huge gouge and when I pulled the
filament back and it wiggled this thing I could feel that it was cracked so it's
cracked or cut all the way through and this is what the filament was hitting so
this PTFE tube is bad it needs to be replaced even cutting that off it's
gonna be too short that cut was causing issues I was getting stringing that was
affecting the retraction so it was more than just you know
Bock nozzle there was bad prints coming because of this cut so I'm gonna replace
everything I'm gonna replace the PTFE tubing and I'm gonna replace the
couplings because the couplings from Cree allottee are not the best and the
PTFE tubing I've got has new couplings so I need to cut the tie straps off away
from the wiring then they need to remove the filament the rest of the way and
then I'm gonna take this final coupling off and this one's just hand tightened
because I loosened it all the time to feed filament in so I can just hand
loosen that now I'll just set this aside because the only reason I need this is
to measure the new PTFE tubing I'm going to replace it with authentic Capricorn
PTFE tubing and this kit comes with a tool to cut it and two sets of couplings
and then the locks for the coupling along with enough PTFE tubing to do this
more than once
a mine looks a little bit different here it's a different color because this is a
special set that they gave me for filament Friday it's all the same
couplings and everything it's just a little bit different tubing it's a red
tubing which is what I love I love the red tubing so that's what I'm going to
use but other than that it's the same high-temperature PTFE tubing same cutter
same couplings
so the next step is to take the old PTFE tubing assuming you haven't cut that end
off too many times and measure out the right length and I'm gonna cut it just
above the top of the coupling that went into the extruder bracket so just cut it
nice and flat and now I can double-check the length and then I'll set this old
tubing aside to be thrown out now take out two couplings one small and one
large and set the other ones aside and then the first step is to take that
small coupling and push it on to the PTFE tubing now I can tell already these
are better they go on tight but if I push the clip they come right off so
just push it on until it stops and now we need to install it on the hot end so
the trick that I use is I put the coupling on top of the fan and then I
push the tubing in until it hits the nozzle and then right at the top of
where the wrench would go I put a mark with a magic marker and you want a
permanent marker it's going to rub off but it's long only has to be there long
enough to see it so there's the mark and I'm gonna use that as reference now I'll
take the coupling and I'm gonna screw it all the way in to the hot end you can do
most of it by hand and then I'll finish it off with a wrench but take it all the
way until it stops until it's almost tight and then I'm gonna use the wrench
to just give it one more turn to make sure I'm tight and then I'm gonna back
it off 3/4 of a turn so just three turns here with the wrench and now I can push
the PTFE tubing and I want to go all the way down to the nozzle that's why I did
that first step so if I push on the coupling lock push this down until it
hits the nozzle you'll see that my mark is right at the top that way I know I've
gone far enough now I take the wrench and I tighten it
back those three turns and this crunches the PTFE tubing down
against the nozzle which is what you want
the next step is to install the coupling into the extruder bracket and this
should fit nicely the threads feel really good nice and smooth and it goes
right in so I just hand tighten these I don't use a wrench on this because I'm
going to have to take it back off at some point so now we need to put the tie
straps back on so I push the hot end all the way to the one side and then I line
up the wires and I put one tie strap here and you want it tight but not too
tight you know you want it snug but you still want that PTFE tune to be able to
slide a little bit in there so I'll put one in the middle so it's basically all
about the same spot they were originally then I'll put one right down here just
outside the coupling and then once this one's in place I'll clip the wires on to
the little bracket on the extruder and then test it go back and forth and make
sure you're not feeling any binding or grabbing by that PTFE tubing and if it
feels good then just clip the tie straps and you're done your kit should also
have these clips and they go on to the couplings and they hold the locks in
place so they can't be pushed so that way the PTFE tubing can't accidentally
slide out so I'm going to heat up the hot end again and I'm going to by hand
push filament through the nozzle and at first I felt some resistance so there
could have been some blockage in the nozzle and I could have replaced the
nozzle as well but once I pushed a little bit through I could see it
starting to flow nice and straight and no stringing so this looked really good
it looks smooth I'm ready to go I like testing with a bridge because I like to
see how smoothly is coming out and you can see it's working really well here
this bridge test is printing beautifully and after I finished printing it I could
see just a little bit of sag in the center so my cooling was working the
flow was working everything looked good so I was happy with the results so now I
can start printing in my print farm that's a really easy fix and it's
actually an upgrade because the PTFE tubing from Capricorn will work to a
higher temperature than the stock PTFE tube that comes with the under three and
I've experienced that it lasts a lot longer based on my machines back here
that I've been running it since the start normally I
this on a machine for my print farm right at the beginning I wanted to see
how long that original PTFE tubing would last and it did it lasted quite a while
I was really surprised but these couplings are way better I can
just feel that the release works better and they're just smoother and as I push
the filament in it you can just feel there's less resistance it's much much
smoother than the original PTFE so overall I think this is a good upgrade