u/OneToeInTheCesspool

Yeah, so this goes a lot faster than my last printer, and when it's going full tilt you can feel the vibrations all through the table it's on and all the furniture it is touching. Including my husband's desk. He has registered a complaint about it and would like it to stop or lessen. What can I do about that that's easy? Can I put a mat down underneath it or something?

I see a bunch of people talking about using a cold plate. I think I've figured out it's a printing plate you don't need to heat? Is that right? What's the reason to use one?

A few days ago I asked you all for help figuring out why my printer would not extrude. You gave me some ideas and I tried most of them. I got it to print one item, except it ran out of filament in the middle, so I don't even have a complete item, and now it's back to not printing. Bastard.

For posterity, I tore apart the extruder and the hotend and inspected them thoroughly. I replaced the extruder gear, bowden tube connectors and bowden tube, heat break, nozzle, thermister, and the cylinder that makes the heat. Yes, I pulled off the bowden tube and tested to see if the extruder was able to push things through into fresh air.

I may have done some other stuff too. I don't remember. Some of this stuff I did at least twice.

At this point it's been out of service for months. I'm done. I got four years out of it, and had a lot of fun tinkering with it and upgrading it, but this is too much. It's not fun any more. And it's been four years. I've gotten my use out of it. But in the past four years, low end 3D printers have added so many features. I've ordered a new printer, the Anycubic Kobra X. It has automatic bed leveling, wifi connectivity, and can print with four colors. It will be here Monday and I'm very excited.

All good things must come to an end. Adieu and good luck.

Also, if you're in the Boston area and you want an Ender 3 Pro for parts, or a whole bunch of nozzles and other spare parts, send me a DM.

I am tearing out my hair here! My printer was working just fine, until one day it wasn't. I've checked the filament path from end to end. I've torn apart the extruder. It's a metal one, and there are no cracks or excessive wear in it. I tore apart the hot end. I have replaced:

extruder gear

extruder end bowden connector

bowden tube

hotend bowden connector (I think. I may be wrong)

heatbreak tube (with a nice new bimetallic one)

nozzle

It is still not extruding. I tell it to extrude, the extruder gear and the wheel it presses against turn, it pushes the filament forward a little bit, and then it jumps back with an audible thump.

It feels like the hot end clogs, but if I put a nozzle unclogging wire up there, it will go all the way in with no resistance.

If I try to unload the filament, however, it doesn't want to come out. Even with the nozzle nice and hot, I have to pull really really hard, like wrap the filament around my hand and haul, and sometimes it will come out, and sometimes it won't even. I was wondering if when I changed the nozzle I hadn't tightened it enough, which is why I tore apart the hot end. When I unscrewed the nozzle, the filament in the heatbreak tube sprung out like a spring, which made sense because it was jammed in and coiled up just like a spring. I haven't seen anything like it.

That's when I replaced the heatbreak tube (and the nozzle again). I did run the PID autotune after this.

I don't know what to try next. What the hell do I do?

I went out at 10:45 pm to pick up my brother from work. He works at Station Landing, so my route takes me down McGrath. There were cop cars on opposite corners when I turned onto there from Pearl. There were two more cop cars at Broadway. There were cops at the light by Stop & Shop. More at Assembly Square. More at the light at Station Landing. I had time to see these were staties. At least four at Wellington Circle

Is this normal for Fourth of July? Is this left over traffic control from the fireworks? It seems pretty far out for that. Does anyone know what they were doing?