Heat Creep - 3D Printer Troubleshooting - Chris's Basement
Today we discuss Heat Creep. What is it? How do I fix it?
00:00 Introduction
02:18 What is Heat Creep?
05:43 Trouble Shooting
08:54 The Fix
21:42 Conclusion
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I've heard lots of people talking about heat creep, but haven't understood exactly what was happening until now. Thanks for another great deep-dive!
Thanks for watching!
I’m glad I watched this because I’ve changed the nozzle 6 times, replaced the PTFE tube, got one good (short) print. Thought I had fixed the problem so I started a long print before work, came home to maybe an eighth inch of good layers and then nothing. I’ve been a 3D printer hobbyist for 6 years now and have never run into heat creep before. I was getting so damn frustrated, thanks for the video.
Happy to help! Thanks for watching
Now I know why my MK3 "log" prints fine for the first three layers then clogs up! Thanks for sharing this procedure Chris, I'm on it as I write this!
That's great! Good luck with your projects
Great in-depth look at the causes and fixes for heat creep! It’ll be interesting to see how our various techniques will change to deal with different ecosystems such as e3D Revo and the new Prusa nozzle/Nextruder setups.
It will be interesting. Thanks John
Definitely one to watch out for, especially once you been printing for a while ! awesome topic !! stay safe ! happy extruding !
Thanks Ron!
It will be interesting to see how the enclosure affects your hot end, not something ppl usually think about.
Stay tuned!
Bimetal throat is a must ! No clogs for a looong time. Also use plated copper heat block and nozzle. This combination is a trouble free setup. Thanks Chris !
Cool, thanks for the info!
I have this and im pretty sure this is whats causing my heat creep
@@chevallavehc5591Did you fix it? Maybe your heatsink colling is not good enough. I had heat creep problems so I bought a damn 12000rpm 40x40x20mm fan and had no problems since!
The wiring on that heat block looks like a fire hazzard. I was never fond of the V6 wiring to begin with, but that looks like it needs replaced. I like the revo wiring so much better. I've actually had to make some repairs where I'm like.....oh damn there goes my heater core......nope still works great. If it was a v6, the heater would be toast.
I was never a very good at keeping house! 😉
@@ChrisRiley Just for safety reasons you should replace that heater.
4:05 - sure it's a bit more difficult to get heat creep, but if you don't have the PTFE tube perfectly flush with the nozzle it'll still jam. As an Ender 3 owner . . . I'm happy I switched to an all-metal hot end (Revo CR) instead of sticking with the original hot end.
Thanks for the tip! That's a good hotend.
Chris. THANK YOU 🙏
Thanks for watching!
@@ChrisRiley I look forward to seeing you at ERRF
See you there!
Thanks, it just started happening on my artillery genius today :P i also read that printing too hot can cause heat creep too. I can clearly see it on mine, taking the filament out is still possible, but it is twice as thick where it got stuck, will take it apart soon.
Thanks for watching and thanks for the heads up!
I've managed to heat creep clog a V6 printing ABS inside a heated chamber. I had to switch over to a PTFE based heat break. Works fine, even if it's old school.
As long as it works! Nothing wrong with that.
Thanks for the video. I start to have this problem with my Ender 3 and turns out that it was caused by a really dirty heatsink fan!
I'm glad you got it going!
I had a half broken fan to keep top part cool on my ender 3 neo and i was like it was making unnecessary noise anyway and i had soo much problem with heat creep. Thank you a lott.
Happy to help! Thanks for sharing
you should also check retraction distance and speed deal with how the filament is pulled out of the hot end. Both will require tuning to find the sweet spot between retraction performance and the hardware limitations of your printer. Retraction distance changes how far back the filament is pulled. Too low of a value will not properly relieve pressure in the hot end, but too high of a value can cause jams and clogs. To find the optimal value, start with the default Cura settings and tweak the distance by 1 mm at a time until you reach the best possible results.
Thanks for the tip!
Thanks for the exellent video. I share your suspicion, that this might be due to the elevated temperature in an enclosure, as it was one of the problems of my mk3s after I started printing ABS. It is possible to drill the filament out of the heatsink with a 2mm drill. Did it, because I couldn't buy a replacement because of Covid, and I'm still printing with the same hotend. I don't think that a Prusa is the right printer for an enclosure. Other than this problem I had parts of the printhead deformed by the heat (PINDA) and the einsy board stopped working. No heated chamber, with temperatures around 41°C. To anyone who wants to use a Prusa Printer in an enclosure, I would strongly suggest to reprint the printhead plastic parts in a more heat resistant material and to get the electronics out of the enclosure.
Thanks for confirming and good tips.
I completely solved heat creep by creating a watercooled V6 hot end system for my Prusa Mark III. My design is simple to retrofit extremely elegant low parts count and requires no modification to the printer other than that required to the hot end heatsink. Just requires filing or milling some of the fins in an alternating pattern to create the water flow pattern then epoxy the copper jacket (3/4 inch copper barbless coupler) which just so happens to fit perfectly over the V-6 heatsink fins. Then drill and solder or epoxy some brass water barbs and epoxy the copper jacket to the heat Fins I leak test at around five psi easy to accomplish with just a syringe. then widening slightly by about 2 mm the extruder body and extruder cover lower opening. I've used it now for for 3 years and print high temperature such as carbon fiber polycarbonate at 270 C for hours on end with no issues. I typically print PETG at 250 C which would create heat creep after a short time of constant printing. I literally can print nonstop for days. Bimetal heat brakes suffer from poor bonding and therefore difficult to tighten the print nozzle correctly without the lower portion spinning and not seating properly. I used titanium heat breaks with steel nozzles. unfortunately KZhead does not allow to post photos on the comments or I can show you how simple it really is. a picture is much easier to discern than the description. Anyway the system is finished with a small water pump, 80 MM radiator and fan and some silicone tubing. I use an optional PC flowmeter/thermometer. in conclusion I'm happy to report that in 3 years of running the system my heat sink temperature has never climbed above 32C while I am printing as high as 280 C. I'm not a KZhead creator or I would've created a video showing my modification which is dead simple if anyone is interested I can type up some detailed instructions about how to create the mod
Is your Mark 3 the one with the side duct and the noctua fan? They did a specific fan duct to increase the effectiveness of silent fans that have low airflow, but I somehow keep seeing at least some issues. How much did your spend, more or less? And where? I'm definitely interested in cooling a hot end with water just because yes.
@@AnnaVannieuwenhuyse yes it is and I will print up some detailed instructions I actually did a spreadsheet of parts I sourced on Amazon but some of them are not available anymore. all up it cost me less than 100 bucks. But it's a one time expenditure and I create custom hot ends that I can swap in and out easily
That sounds like a really awesome design! Thanks for sharing.
I've had heat creep on my revo twice. I installed the revo after losing two different V6 hot ends. The first time I had a clog that I was trying to fix. I had the printer for less than a month. I had no idea what I was doing. and ZAP the hot end was shorted. It also blew a fuse, but I doubled checked, the hot end was still shorted. So I bought 2 replacements from prusa. About a month later I got black blobs. It was leaking. As best as I can figure prusa assembled that hot end incorrectly. Someone guessed it was loose and it was, but I couldn't fix it. I never once tried to do anything with the nozzle that was factory installed before that point. Anyway....eventually it was Grant at 3d musketeers that got me much needed help by asking if there was a gap. There wasn't. So I lowered the heatbreak into the block, tightened the nozzle......no gap. After 3 failed attempts I realized it was stripped. At this point I've been into 3d printing for 2 months. I had the other spare hot end, but I wasn't looking forward to round 3 especially with the super cramped einsy box. Then I heard about revo. I'm like yeah that sounds great. screw these horrible V6's. My original nozzle is almost a year old now. I was having trouble with a PETG print so I replaced it, but had the same issues. I fixed that issue by dropping speed to 70% on the printer itself. So I can still use the original nozzle. The new revo works great, but I did have heat creep twice. I never did figure out why. The fan is clean and is in great condition. But it was easy to fix the first time. Just removed the nozzle. Used a heat gun and pulled it right out. The worst part was waiting for it to cool before I could remove the nozzle. Unfortunately the sock broke on the nozzle. I now know......NEVER USE A REVO with out the socks on the heater and the nozzle socks. It happened again a month or two later, but this time I couldn't get the nozzle off because it was glued to the heater by the trace amount of filament that gets caked on. Without the sock it happens easily. I had to remove the whole hot end. Thankfully because revo uses an extension cord, it makes removing and installing it so much easier. This is when I thought I might have killed the heater core. I had to remove and repair the wire strain relief part, but it's still working. I do have a spare core now. I also bought spare socks. This time was about maybe 3 months ago. It hasn't happened since. I still have no idea why it happened. I did have a similar issue happen this week though. It's not possibly heat creep because it would have required a fire to actually be possible. And it definitely didn't catch fire. My MMU was jammed. I was trying to print with prusament lipstick red pla that's about 6 months old. For whatever reason I neglected to put it in a vacuum sealed bad like most of my filament. It would barely print at all at standard 200 degrees. So I tried my silk/pla + profile which is 210. Better, but massive under extrusion. So I created a 220 profile. In the end the 220 profile seems to print fine on this spool. But for whatever reason one of the failed attempts wouldn't unload the filament. It was really jammed up in the MMU. Nothing would fix it. So I had no choice but to take it apart. It's actually the first time since I built it a year ago (almost to the day) that I've had to take it apart this far. I had to remove the selector completely. The I could take the front panel off where it exposes the PTFE tubes. At this point it's just a 1" at most long piece of filament jammed in the tube. Even now I can't get it out. I went to my spare parts bag and used that to replace it. It acted like heat creep. Like that part got swollen some how. I did notice an issue with the MMU though. Those front PTFE tubes were installed according to the instructions, which I now firmly disagree with. I figured I did it wrong, but I literally right now just this minute checked. They wanted the beveled side facing out? WHY!?!?!? The bevel should help with the loading process. By having it face out, you're loading filament into the blunt side. Someone in the comments mentioned that his was beveled on both sides. So apparently prusa realized that it's important for the bevel to exist for loading. Anyway.......I reversed all of them. I've since discovered that loading filament is FAR, FAR easier now. I am curious about my prusament though. Why would it need 220 degrees to print when it was printing great at 200 when it was new 6 months ago? I can't imagine moisture made that much of a difference. And I was drying it for several hours before and even during. I had my oldest spool, which is sunlu it's super brittle, but it printed just fine at the standard 200....but........it has been in a vacuum sealed bag all this time and it was still vacuumed. I hate sunlu because it doesn't play nice with the MMU, but I would think prusament wouldn't be having this temperature problem.
Sounds like some really strange issues. I am surprised at the REVO heat creep just in the way it is designed. I have yet to try one, but I will be on the look out for all of this when I do. The V6 hotends have always been a real pain to get sealed up.
@@ChrisRiley It's happened twice. But It's been a while. It's completely random. lol
To clean a metal heatbreak after a clog because heat creep, what I do is clean the best I can, then heat it up past up the heatbreak, and pass cleaning filament or PP, that really cleans the inside of the metal very well, sticking the residues of filament to it, and keep pushing until it cools off. Then after that, it works perfectly
Very nice, great tip!
What’s heat creep? All I have is Slice hotends! Haha! Good job Chris as always! Man, that hotend looks worn in! Lol
It's got some mileage on it! Thanks!
Good tip put your printer on the Mediterranean Diet. Is olive oil the best? Lots of other great information. One of my biggest problems was when my cheap filament had spices or blobs in random places. It kept getting stuck in the extruder - lots of problems and hard to find.
I would never recommend using oil on a heat break especially olive oil which burns at extremely low temperature and carbonizes . I never understand why Chris or anyone else would recommend that
Hi Dave, Vegetable oil is better. Quick fix only though. ;)
I can see you are printing a Trident. I like! :D #TheWorldNeedsMoreTridents
Thanks, we're working on it!
Well I had a similar problem, on 2 different printers. On a cr10s pro (with microswiss direct drive and all metal hotend) and on an ender 3 S1 pro also with a directdrive extruder (i think its called sprite) I was printing doll house furniture, and the cushion and upholstery was printed in tpu, 85A, so pretty soft. I had the seat cushions setup with the cura setting: one at the time, so i had 4 cushions on each build plate, and one cushion taking an hour. I encountered the same problem on both printers. 1st cushion printed fine, (even perfect).. the second one started super, but at 30% the filament stopped coming through the nozzle. it then rolled itself up around the gear of the extruder.. and started coming out at that place. it looked like a mess. I took the microswiss hotend apart, changed the nozzle.. and it worked perfect again, but after 1 and a half hours, same thing.. exactly the same thing. So i changed to the other printer with the sprite extruder.. and after an hour, exactly the same problem.. there was a piece of rolled filament .. to fix it.. i just heated the extruder to 260 and pulled and pushed out the filament with plain pla.. and it works perfect again. In my analysis of the problem: as the that type of TPU needs 240 degrees, the heat goes upward.. softening the filament to such a point it wraps around the gear of the dd extruder. What i now do to avoid the problem: i limit the print with this extra soft TPU to 50 minutes. And in between two prints I let the hotend cool down completely. Of course if you have a better advice i'd love to apply it. Luc
Interesting thought limiting the print time. Are these all metal hotends? Maybe the filament is just being driven too fast? Have you tired reducing the print speed? Sometimes I go 50% of what I would with PLA.
@@ChrisRiley yes microswiss is all metal, and the sprite on the ender s1 pro is also (i think) but its a direct drive that i know for sure and it can go up to 300 degrees C--- so yes they are. 30mm/s is i think not to fast--- as with pla i would go like more than twice the speed.-.. for a simple rectangular object (ok with rounded corners).. i definetly stopped printing 5 one hour objects in a row... but again.. maybe its not heat creep at all and only my settings.
Dont forget PTFE Tubing. The cheap crap brands swell up, causing the tube to expand and grip the filament within its inside diameter, which also stops the filament from passing through and to the nozzle!
Thanks for the tip!
@@ChrisRiley Your welcome hommie. been following you since 2018 my g! :p
And just having a hotend with the PTFE tube going up to the nozzle almost ensures having a small gap between nozzle and that tube on retraction, which then fills up with plastic that then gets cooked over and over, hardening and expanding until it blocks the still decent plastic and then nothing flows anymore. PTFE-lined heat-breaks should just be outlawed...
if you had this issue and filament stuckl in hotend and isnt pushing out when heated up even when pushing ptfe tube heres a fix: boil some water not to hot just until it is smoking,grab hotend with a pliers and poor the water in, wait a few seconds, push out with a screwderiver, if that didnt work keep pooring try from both sides.
Cool, thanks for the tip!
Thanks!
Happy to help! Thank you so much!
I have a Bibo Touch 2, nad it runs PLA without many issues, but PETG seems to have a ton of heat creep. I got one good petg print, then the next 3 clogged inside the heat break. I dropped from 240C to 220C to see if that would help, and it did the same thing. I don't know if it's a machine issue, or a filament issue, or an idiot operator issue.
While check hot end temps with an ir thermometer, it's showing the hot ends being colder than programmed. They're set to 220 and I'm getting 190. at 200 I was getting 180. I assume that could be a problem with my cheap thermometer.
With some setups it's just hard to get good results with PETG. I have never had much luck with PETG and PTFE lined hotends.
@@ChrisRiley Yeah, it seems to be a combination of ptfe liner and too little cooling on the heat breaks. It could probably be fixed with larger heat sinks, but I'm leaning towards water cooling to eliminate the possibility of it coming back.
I had that problem recently on MK4, turned out that some nozzles (my was one of the first production sold outside) - had a bit of a tendency to get jammed causing this sort of issue. But it wasn't heatcreep.
Interesting, thanks for sharing.
The possibility of the extra heat inside the enclosure could cause the heat creep issue because the part heat sink fan cooling is not sufficient to prevent heat creep due this specific design.
Thanks for your insight! Consider subscribing to our channel!
This extruder setup is a disaster. So much work just to get the hot end out! I use an Anycubic printer and I just relocated the bowden extruder to right above the hot end. Feeding the filament straight in. Just use a small sheet of polycarbonate and screw the stepper to one side and the extruder to the other. Screw the whole thing to the existing bracket.
These can be a pain for sure.
One other cause of heat creep is printing a model that do many retractions. It will bring the heat to the cold zone.. Oh yeah, it will be interesting if you could investigate structure of makerbot's hotend Chris, or stratasys
Workin' on it! Thanks for your insight!
I apologize for being dumb with this I'm new to the 3d printing scene. When you say heat compound do you mean thermal paste like what you use on electronics such as computers and game consoles and such?
Hey, no worries! It's a lot the same thing, you just have to be aware of what temps it will get to. This is what I use. www.sliceengineering.com/products/boron-nitride-paste
gun bore rod cleaners are what i use, they work perfectly
Cool, thanks!
I'm using silk and it goes about half way would this be the issue I then have to also relaod the fillement
Yes, this could be the cause of it. Silk filament is what we like to call "slurpy" it acts really strangely in the hotend, almost like elastic.
@@ChrisRiley I carnt be sure it it's that or was when I was last inside my excuder I tightend a small screw that was holding my gear in I have a direct drive
On my ender the heat creep was caused by bad hotend fan bearings. The fan was running but not at full speed all the time.
Interesting, I'll check it out.
Weird note near the end from Slice Engineering ... Why would you add heat paste on the hot side of the heatbreak? On the threads of the nozzle, sure, but I'd expect that you want as little of heat as possible to get into the heat break as that will just increase the risk of heat creep ...
it works both in and out
@@420247paul Of course it conducts heat in both directions, but that's my point: why would you want heat to better get from your heater block into the heat-break? That will increase the risk of heat creep as this heat now also needs to be removed again via the cold end and hence heats up that cold end.
Honestly, it's hard to wrap my head around. As far as I know, slice is the only ones using it on the hot side. Maybe as just anti-seize? Not really sure.
Too much retraction can also cause heat creep. I had this problem the first month with my Ender 3 V2. Almost every print failed, anything from 1 to 10 hours in with the filament ground off in the extruder. I reduced retraction from 6.5 to 5mm and the problem has never returned.
That's great, thanks for the info!
I got a sudden weird issue where the fan was stuck, so it didn't spin - therefore clogging the hotend quite bad...
I've had fans fail like that, very frustrating.
@@ChrisRiley The fan and hotend still work just fine. I had to replace the PTFE lining since it was burnt and the PLA got stuck inside it. It was clogged so bad it even clogged the entry point for the filament, so the output of my DD extruder.
👍 you the man😁
Thanks, man!
where to get the tool for removing the nozzle
This is the one I use, but they are hard to find. olssonline.com/the-olsson-nozzle-tool/
I just swapped the fan on my ender 3 thinking it was causing heat creep. It turns out my extruder idler was way too tight and chewing the filament when it started doing retractions. Every benchy was failing at 70% with the dreaded clicking extruder. When I swapped the fan and did another benchy it failed at the same spot so I then looked at my filament and it was bulging in places. Maybe another thing to check especially if you have a bowden extruder. I've since backed off the screw for the extruder and it prints fine now. I guess I have a spare fan now :)
That's great, thanks for the tip!
What screw. I wanna try.
Do you have a link to that torque wrench?
This is the one from Olsen Ruby. filament2print.com/gb/spares-extras/982-olsson-nozzle-tool.html
Heat creep, yeah, just keep it on the downlow 🎶 🎵
Thanks for the earworm! 🎶 'cause nobody is supposed to know... 🎶
Does the e3d revo help with these issues
By it's design, it would be really hard to get heat creep unless something was really wrong.
12:10 how long and profanity laced was that jump cut? Hehe
🙂👍
Creality-style MK8 hotend is begging for heat creep, because - heatsink is small, fin area is small and it's not very good for airflow (maybe it's designed for ABS that doesn't melt as easily as PLA?) - even if back plate has some holes in it - fan blows somewhere in general direction (mostly around) of the heatsink, there is no ducting or air guides. Upgrading to silent fan (less airflow) makes things even worse Satsana duct tries to direct air to the heatsink, but the duct part is too short and blunt and mostly rotates air in and around the fan blades 🙄 Now Creality has bigger heatsink (wavy fins reaching for the airflow) in Neo / E5 S1 and "integrated" heatsink in E3 S1 (blower pushing air through it, I guess) that should perform better. V6 is good design and is cooled by silent (4020, at least in hot climate) fan, if ducting forces all the air to go through the fins. Those 30mm fans, though pushing respectable amount of air, tend to be really really loud 🙉
All good points, totally agree.
chris, do you still read your patreon messages?
I responded today!
I shorted a board by cleaning the heat block with a brush, while the heater was on.
brass bristle brush?
Yeah, you gotta be careful. Thanks
@@Matthewjohnwilson It was a steel brush I saw a small electrical spark and It would not heat any more.
Heat creep doesn't get enough attention, and it's insidious. My used print would run white perfectly, and jam in any black filament, and the first suggestion is always "add more heat"....
💯 Thanks!