Trying to reduce the amount of constant maintenance the my ender 3 printers require and one of the biggest issues i’m having is a buildup of sticky residue inside the ptfe tube inside the hotend/ptfe tube. It’s not leaking as i visually inspect before cleaning and i can see where the tube connects and there’s a clear line and no visible signs of leakage. Usually some rubbing alcohol and a scrub brush will fix the issue for about 100hours of print time before needing to clean it again.
Running this with the extruder mounted on the X axis (if there's a proper direct drive mod for the ender 3 i would love to try it)
Things i have tried:
- less heat printing at 200 instead of 205 - marginal / no difference
- printing speed turned down to 20mm/s - it takes longer for the buildup to become an issue but it also takes as long for the prints to complete
- lowered retraction distance from 7mm to 3mm - i thought the high retraction distance might be causing issues, while it made it better it did not fix the issue
new to forum not sure why image tags aren't rendering.
