So I stayed up till 1am last night waiting for a print to finish (the fan shroud for my brand new E3D V5 extruder - YAY!) and so I was just watching a show and not watching the printer. Well... it evidently got to about 75% and the PTC fitting at the EZStruder decided to let go. When I later looked at the bowden tube, it looks like there was a defect in the connector as there was only 3 little points where the metal was holding it (the metal piece also fell out of the fitting). It wasn't a complete ring holding onto the tube. I guess I'd just been lucky up to this point. I thought maybe the hot end jammed, but I pushed on the filament by hand and it pushed easy as pie.
I took a picture of the tube having come detached and then the filament just looping in the air beside the EZStruder, but for some reason it turned out like I was taking a picture of bigfoot. Super blurry.
- Filament sputtered out and was printing dry in the air for about 1/4" (probably 20 minutes)
- The culprit! This was the only metal piece inside the connector
The hot end came with a fan shroud, but I wanted to print my own to keep the 'black' look. I wish the picture could do it justice; this was the smoothest print I had made to date. It was also my first attempt ever at ABS. I thought PLA was the bees knees having never used ABS... I now see it can make some awesome prints. I had a pretty decent issue with stringing with PLA, but there's not ONE tiny hair or bump on this ABS print.
- Looks much smoother than the 'stock' E3D print, but I was obviously using a much thinner layer height
Right now I'm just letting some glue dry on the PTC fitting. I ordered a bag of 10 of these fittings. They are almost impossible to find in Canada, but I managed to find a bag of 10 on Amazon.ca for $7... shipping included. Only problem is waiting a month for them to come in from China.
