Don't dismiss this information as obvious or basic. 6-7 years of 3d printing, 95 percent of issues I faced were addressed in this video.

Great video awesome tips, for specific points. 0:22 Badly Levelled Print Bed 3:03 Dirty Print Surface 5:38 Worn Motion Components 9:27 Dead heat break fan 11:16 Worn Feeder Gear 13:20 Blown out (abraded) nozzle 16:18 Electrical faults 18:16 Lack of Thermal Runaway protection

I printed 100,000+ hours on Ender 3s in 2020 and had almost all of these issues. PTFE cooking is a big one, and not obvious. Capricorn is awesome, but still only lasts 2-3x as long as standard. You can usually just cut a few centimeters off the end rather than replacing the whole thing. Stainless steel feed gears are a very worthwhile upgrade. A 30mm Noctua fan on the heat sync can help with noise and lasts way longer than stock (may need a buck converter). If you're pinching pennies you can try and clear a clogged nozzle with a torch or lighter. Heating to red hot can usually get foreign materials out. But nozzles are cheap, just replace them frequently. Set your Z height so that the springs are very tight to reduce the chance they loosen. Oh! And one really tricking thing was getting cracks in the extruder tension arm. An aluminum extruder assembly can help with this if you don't just go direct drive. So many hours, so many face shields. :-S

Preventative maintenance is a must for any moving mechanism, especially if you don't want failures and down time. Having spare parts on hand will make problems seem less significant. No one should still have springs on the beds, silicone spacers or steel standoffs are far superior depending on the lack of, or type of ABL. Great video topic Angus.

Thank you for this video! It helped me immensely already. My wife got me an Entina Tina2 printer bundle after I looked it up, and after half joking about me learning to 3D print things to join her selling at craft shows (she crochets, AKA 3D prints with yarn), she said "that's it, we're getting it" and purchased it. It's done fun little things and I learned through some misprints and growing pains, but I am glad you brought up the fan on the heatbreak. My fan is making that noise right now, and I've also been having trouble with builds not sticking to the build plate. Admittedly, the surface of it is covered in what feels like the back of some masking tape. I also kept forgetting it was a magnetic attachment and was probably unleveling my bed by yoinking or scraping prints from the bed. This information is critical for veterans and novices alike. Thanks so much!

Wish this video came out a few months ago. I've been mad at my printer for a few months and just replaced the hot end and now it works like a dream

Gave my printer a servicing before starting a long print this afternoon, then sat down to watch some KZfaq and saw this video -- perfect timing! 👍🏻

Some notes on my recent Ender-3 Pro from MicroCenter: 1. The extruder gear, and all gears, for that matter, are press-fit onto a round stepper shafts. Can't replace the brass extruder gear without a puller or something. 2. The electronics cooler's fan is wired to the same rails as the part cooler fan ... that is just WRONG. Stepper drivers are not being cooled, unless blower fan is on. 3. The heatbreak cooler fan is the awful sleeve type, as described in this vid. Starting whining on startup after one day of use. The replacements I have on hand are 12V, and this unit is 24V (sigh). Must order some better ones. 4. The MCU on the controller board is not an STM32, but rather a GD32F303RET6. A clone -- chip shortage. The stock (github) Marlin Creality upgraded/modded firmwares will not work (last I checked). Was able to compile Marlin, but that is an adventure. 5. My rotary encoder knob seized. Weird. Never experienced that before. This one may just some freak accident on my part.

Another tip: the screws that attach the gantry to the printer's base can loosen up over time and cause the gantry to move while printing. Make sure they're always tight (add thread lock if needed). Additionally, printers that don't have extra stiffness rods like on the Creality CR-10 or CR-6 Max can have inconsistent layers due to the gantry flexing in the Y direction. Fortunately you can buy these rods separately and install them on many other brands (I put them on my Artillery Sidewinder X1 and now my walls almost look like they were injection molded).

I just ran into that heat break fan issue a few weeks ago. Started getting a ton of clogging out of nowhere, with the filament end mushroomed out just like you showed. Then I noticed the fan was getting much stiffer than it used to be, and remembering how the heat break works it occurred to me the filament might be melting too high up if it wasn't getting enough cooling. Another thing I ran into recently was the nozzle tip wearing down. Since I have a BLtouch I don't have to physically check clearance under the nozzle very much, but periodically my first layers would stop working right and I'd look for something to tune to get them back. Noticed the texturing on the stock bed was wearing out, replaced it with a nice PEI plate. Deep cleaning it after every few prints, printing almost everything with a brim, glacially slow first layer acceleration, built a semi-enclosed acrylic shroud around the printer to keep drafts out... One thing that perplexed me for a while was that I had to baby step the Z offset down a little every month or so, on the order of .3mm or so over a year, at a fairly consistent rate. How is that even possible?? Then I got the nozzle completely clogged up with a failed print that went for a good hour before I caught it and decided to replace it (blob of filament smeared all over the outside surface, silicone sock was getting pretty deteriorated too). Looking at the new nozzle next to it I noticed the old one was worn down very visibly from the original tip. By roughly the amount of accumulated Z offset change I had observed up to that point. As a hobbyist who genuinely enjoys learning how to troubleshoot and modify systems (and not someone running the machine to make money) it's really interesting how all the different failure modes can pop up.

This has been happening to me the past few days and I literally just posted on r/ender3 about my issues a few hours before you uploaded this! Thanks for the info, Angus! It's like you read my mind!

Lot of people do not know this old hack, but a 30 to 50 gal tub, fill it half way with cheap white rice, take you opened filament packaged, put in tub fill the rest of the tub with rice close it and store it away. Rice can absorb moisture very well. Helps keep the filament free of it long term storage wise.

Thank you so much for this video. I've watched a ton of videos trying to find out why my prints are having so no longer sticking to the bed. While many of them did mention leveling, they did not say that a regular releveling was necessary. So thank you!

Hey another great video! Everybody in the 3d printing community should know these things. And while all this information can be found on KZfaq, putting it all in one place like this is awesome! And this is a very good video that not only long time 3d printing doods can find useful information from; but this video should be seen by ANYONE who wants to get into 3d printing or has just recently started the hobby

the biggest thing in my experience is all the little slicer tweaks you've made for specific prints that you've forgotten about. reset your printer profile every so often, you'd be surprised

Great video as always. Swapping out the original bed springs with the smaller diameter yellow ones found in several kits made the biggest improvement for me. Way less releveling of the bed with those. I also like the idea of using a piece of Capricorn tubing in the lower part of the hot end.

You were a huge help to me. Found a worn extruder gear, something I hadn't even considered. Slapped on a new dual gear extruder I had sitting around and I'm back in business, thank you!

Thanks for a bunch of tips here My tip on cleaning the bed surface is to use a damp microfibre cloth with water, just tap water. This removes most of the oil and dust so far as you won't notice it, without "chemicals" (except that dihydrogenmonoxide is a needed substance, but again that's for another time).

Drying filament and tightening belts/assemblies is my guess for this 20 minute video but as someone who's had 2.5 printers for 3ish years without these issues I'm looking forward to learning what other things I can look out for / prevent proactively instead of reactively! Thankfully my CR6 SE is an absolute workhorse who gives me zero issues even after all this time abusing it

Great Video, and I strongly agree, ALWAYS check if your printer has thermal runaway protection! Especially if you leave the printer unattended. I just had my Monoprice Select Mini V2 do a thermal runaway, luckily I was sitting at the work bench where the printer is, so I caught it before it could catch fire, but the whole hot end assembly an PTFE tube was already smoking. The smell was horrible, too. I guess the thermistor lost connection, because it was happily heating and showing 153°C, while smoking like crazy. My more frequently used Artillery Genius Pro has thermal runaway protection, but I am a bit concerned to leave it printing while I leave the house now. I don´t want to imagine what could have happened with the Monoprice if I hadn´t been there to stop it...

Thank you for all of the information. I have ran many types of machines and you have pointed me to many different suggestions to repair my ender 3 Pro. Never would have thought of them.

Replace your bed springs with those silicon spacers. Works much better than springs and provides more tension against the bed screws so they don't undo themselves in my experience.

Thanks angus! I've been printing for several years and while some of this stuff I knew was causing problems I didn't have exact words as to why but now I do!

3:45 For my Prusa Mk3 I found that putting the removable print beds in the dishwasher for a cycle (without detergent, running with hot water only) is the best way to get the bed 100% free of contaminants. The majority of prints I just wipe it down with rubbing alcohol (mineral spirits), but after so long the oil build up just won't come off completely and will only smear. That's when it goes in the dishwasher.

Great summary of post initial print issues. Always enjoy your insights and experiences.

I’ve been a nerd about printing and well versed in it. Got that ender 3 deal over a year ago to challenge myself to design and print upgrades to modify this thing to death. One of my best printers

Thanks Angus. Good suggestions. I have a Makerbot Method X printer. The only time I have had issues was with Metal Filament printing. worked fine for a week and then the filament became brittle and the extruder Teflon tube cooked. Fortunately it is easy to replace in the Labs extruder I was using. It is not easy to dry the filament as it can become too hot in normal dehydrator. I might try to dry slowly at a fairly low temp. I have put off metal filament printing until summer.

Great video! Been battling quality issues for months, thanks for you tips!

Watching this video I just realized my nozzle is blown out! I have been racking my brain trying to find what's wrong because it seems like under extrusion but I have been printing with that filament fine before and now it is so clear... thanks man great video

Reason 1 is why every one of my printers has an auto bed leveling feature added... it never goes "out of level" because it does a 4 corners every print and adjusts. Get a bltouch or crtouch, you'll like it. Also... while you can get ball bearing fans very cheaply, if you have the money go noctua.... theyre so nice...

Us both being in Australia, you got me all excited for a $100 printer!!! Stupid ads from America... Keep up the good work down under!!

Great video sir. I like how most of the possible issues you name you described how to spot if it’s the issue and how to fix. I wish I had this when I first started learning but even now is a nice reminder.

Incredibly useful information for a beginner like me. Thank you!

Again as always, great information to help get better quality printing! Great video Angus!

Thank you so much for this video!!! I have was about to dropkick my printer out the back door when found this. I went through all the hard ware and found a piece of threaded rod where I thought was a bolt. this held a concentric nut on the gantry that was able to vibrate and tighten ovr time. thanks a million again.

The having to level less when using a flex plate is, for me, one of the best arguments to use a flex plate. Great point! I still like the self-release plates more (seem a bit more reliable and flat), but still.

This is an excellent video. Thank you! My header fan is making that screeching noise and also, I’m seeing lots of blockages. Time for a decent replacement. Super happy you made this video :)

This video does make me appreciate my prusa a bit. Many of these exact problems addressed and overengineered; * A fancy bed that keeps forces away from the bed. * A fancy fan that likely will outlast the printer. * Hardened feeder gears. * Rods that are a little better than the wheels(but not without problems) And a printer that just keeps chugging along. But all of the coolest stuff is on the Ender platform.

Hey man this video was like a sent from heaven!! I was literally just about to look for smth like this cuz I have been running into issues with nozzle and belt. And they are the exact things you were talking about! There nozzle is half clogged and my belt is too tight!! Thank you so much man your content is incredible

I also took the $99 Ender 3 Pro deal. It got me into 3d Printing, I love it.

Angus, you have been a source to goto for all my printer needs since i started this hobby years ago. Thank you sir for all your patience and will to share your findings. ;) good ppl are far and few. Im leaning towards you beeing one of these dying breed of humans. Good luck to you sir and may you live long and prosper. XYZ to you from Norway. PS. I use fans from noctua. never failed me.

Thanks for the tips. I am at almost 2 years with one of my printers and starting to have issues. At least now I know what to check.

Excellent video, thanks. Something that caught me out for ages...twice. is a blown pololu for the extruder. It wirked enough to extrude tests but too weak to maintain a print, often diminishing after the first layer. I'm pretty sure it was where I used to pull the filament out of the feeder when changing rolls causing a back emf and blowing up the controller.

Did I learn anything? No. I knew all of those. But you had be double check my printers and I identified 3 things that needs to be changed / adjusted. It's always nice to watch your videos. Thanks Angus

The PTFE one happened to me and I was so confused. I was trying to change filaments and it was stuck on the carbonized PTFE. It was completely black and smelled horrible. Luckily I figured it out and it works great now.

Thank You very much for the ideas on troubles with printing, and what to look for. I had a thermal run away , and it really shocked me when the alarm went off. I started over with the same print, and at the exact same place and time, it happened again. I re-sliced my print, and tried it again, and it never happened again. There must have been a glitch in the g code is all I can figure. I really learn a lot of good ideas from your videos. Thank You again. Michael

thank you for pointing out the heat break fan issue, my Ender 3 V2 has been making that same noise but I didn't think anything of it because it always fixed itself when it reached 80 or so degrees. now I know it should be replaced sooner rather than later

Get out of my head Angus! This is the exact video I needed to see right now. It sure feels good to know I am not the only one... Feels even better to have some possible solutions to pursue. Thank you!😃

Pretty sure I’ve encountered at least half of these in my travels. For leveling, I check the base regularly, along with a probed 3-point tilt at the start of every print. The print surface is a tricky one; I use a PEI magnetic sheet, and that picks up oils like it’s stocking a car mechanic. Regular IPA spray/wipe passes, and a less regular dish soap wash, are my sequence there. Motion components haven’t really been an issue for me so far, nor has a dead heat break fan, however I do use one of those red aluminium clone dual gear extruders; I did replace the centre bolt that the outer gear runs on with a cut-down short-thread M3x35mm bolt. This means the gear is turning on and against a constant-radius surface, instead of against screw threads. (The 35mm is the correct length to take off around 14mm of the 18mm that is threaded, leaving the rest to sink into the tapped hole without coming out the other side, and the balance being the shaft for the gear.) Also ensure that the idle gear runs smoothly against the top and bottom surfaces of the extruder arm; if it’s scraping, it will wear away the aluminium and move out of alignment, causing inconsistent extrusion. The one I have has some copper washers in between these surfaces. Moisture in the filament has been a huge issue for me; the ambient humidity sits around 68% in the room where my printer is. A well-sealed dry box helps, and I recently got a dehydrator to use for the same purpose. I took the opportunity to upgrade the heatbreak to an all-metal one in order to avoid having burnt PTFE ahead of going into PETG printing, as I’m not wanting any of those off-gas chemicals. In the same vein, my printer has a (working) smoke alarm mounted in its enclosure; hopefully it never gets used. That’s on top of the thermal runaway protection already in the printer. One other thing I do is coat the heater cartridge in a small amount of thermal compound when installing it to aid the transfer of heat into the heat block, increasing the efficiency of the heating. One other thing I’ve done is to move the printer electronics and power supply outside of the enclosure, to try to avoid heat shortening their lifespan. This means extension cables, and more inline connections, meaning more potential points of resistance. I lost my first printer motherboard to a badly tightened power terminal; make sure they’re solidly screwed down where appropriate!

Thank you for the couple of tips I haven't thought about. Brilliant!

Wow, great info to know and perfect timing. It’s the algorithm gods. I’m still new and learning as I go and currently experiencing all the issues. I’ve had my ender pro 3 last holiday season and finally set it up about 4 months ago. I swiped out the regular PLA for a silk and have not had any success with it yet. I just got a metal extrusion replacement and stronger nozzles. I’ll add these steps to my tool bag and cross my fingers and toes, lol. Keep up the great videos very helpful.

Lol, I bought a 3d printer at a pawn shop , just to start out , because I knew nothing about it , and I was really intrigued., and it was only a 100 bucks , but yes with this printer I ran into all these problems , but learned how to fix them through alot of trial and error , I must say it was a learning experience, but I loved it , because it forced me to really pay attention to how the machine was set up , instead of relying on the manufacturer to do all the settings!!!

You are one of my favorites on this topic. Just entertaining and educational at the same time. Cheers.

Very good video! well explained. Thanks for sharing!

All of these tips helped! Had almost all of these issues today!

Thank you! I think I have to check the heat break fan on one of my units, that's the only thing that makes sense! Awesome! Thanks!

What a timing for this video. I've just started getting problems with getting the first layer to stick.

Thanks for the vid , printer has been driving me nuts but have it sorted now after following your suggestions.

well done, all topics directly to the point. Thanks. Greetings from the Galilee.

This knowledge is invaluable, especially for newbies to 3D printing like me…. Thank you so much for giving your time to making this video. 🙏🏽🙏🏽💯💯👌🏽👌🏽

Thank you sir. I learn something new every time I watch your videos.

i just got a 3d printer, i printed the benchy just fine everything else was failing immediately. I was beginning to lose my mind.... I finally came across your video that mentioned finger prints and the oil from your skin, i wiped some dust off my plate with my hand after the benchy. A lot of videos i watched talked about cleaning but i never considered mine being dirty because i didnt so much and there was no residue or anything so wow thank you

THANK YOU! Got it for $99 at Micro Center. Adding BLTouch, upgrade bed springs, upgraded Boden couplers, and uSD to SD cable/adapter for another $79 with $21 left over. Again thanks.

Perfect timing! Man, you had me rolling with that intro. Great video sir, thank you 😁

I'm hearing that exact noise from my heat brake fan when it fires up, good to know it's better to get on that sooner than later.

One other issue for 3D printers to start failing is machine structure. It was apparently my fault at assembly; but my z-axis rail came loose enough to cause head to bed misalignment. So, not only check rollers, belts and the extruder feed gear; but also check the rail for play.

Hello, I live in Perth Western Australia, so far I haven’t had any issues with humidity. Have a great Christmas and new year.

This is an absolutely amazing video. Literally the morning after I watched it, I was able to solve someone's issue by sending this link.

Thank you Angus, love seeing informative videos again :)

My 2.5yr old Ender 3 with no maintenance is somehow, still incredible -- haven't had to level in 18 months (silicone ftw) & OG plastic extruder too!

You might have saved my printer with your tip at 7:15. I did a lot of PETG printing and it always worked. But a few months ago I had severe extrusion issues, even though I never really changed anything. I tried changing the nozzle, change parameters, play around with bed leveling and nothing worked. I'll definitely try this! Great video!

Easiest fix for the burning PTFE for most Creality printers is to get one of those dual metal heatbreaks that move the location where the tube connects to further up and out of the heater block and into the radiator. It's worth it to get the dual metal one as an all steel one will cause heat creep and clog up with PLA after an hour or two of printing. This makes your standard Creality hotend into an all metal one without much effort and I haven't hat to change tubes since!

Thank you! Thank you! And once again, Thank you! My printer was printing, how to say in, not good and after 2 months, you are my printer saver :D The ptfe tube was litteraly turned to charcoal

Tip for the bed leveling. Changing your springs to silicone springs/bushings allows to be slightly more rough on your bed without throwing it out of level. Now that and being gentle should allow you to basically set it once and forget it.

Living in Arizona I don't really have an issue with Moisture and filament. Great information. I have a Tevo Tornado (Gold) with the glass bed and I just spray some Aquanet unscented on it and the PETG sticks great and releases when it's cool. A little IPA and a rag cleans it off and I keep it clean. My printer is 3 yrs old and working great. Thanks for the info to help me keep it that way. The BLTouch helps with the leveling.

As for the bed getting out of whack due to adjustment knobs turning itself ever so slightly due to vibration during printing or contraction and expansion may I suggest screwing on a wing nut just below the adjustment knob which when tightened against the knobs, act as lock nuts to the knobs. In doing so the adjustment knobs remain in the position you have previously set for much longer. Cheers and thank you for all your educational and very useful videos.

This was litterly the best video I’ve seen on 3d prints tysm

For me, it was the Bond Tech drive gear that was loose. The retaining screw is so small, and mostly hidden that I honestly forgot it existed. Once I aligned the gears and tightened the screw, all was well. It's all good, though, because it forced me to conduct all kinds of maintenance that likely helped with print quality in the end. I was amazed how loose many of the screws/bolts were after relatively minimal use of the printer (under 100 hours).

Mate - I love that video. As a 73 year old newbie your commentary is most informative. Keep up the good work. If you come to WA please come and sort out my ender 3!!

2 foot by 4 foot by 6 foot "grow tent" on Amazon. You can make slight mods and have an amazing enclosure. I have 2 printers set up in one tent and it's amazing.

Great video, thank you for sharing all this.

Can we get a part 2 THIS was really helpful for me to point out problems That didn't even know existed?

" I'm super gentle with this bed" mashs springs down wiping with towel 🤣 love the content

I picked up 2 of the ender 3 pros using your discount code! thanks alot man!

This was really useful and I have a bunch of things I can now check because I've been having trouble with it basically not spitting out any filament during printing so maybe I can finally get it back up and running now. (once I have time at least)

Thanks Danie, good hints and tips as always. :)❤

Thank you for your knowledge and great presentation skills. Your video helped sort ('help sort'!? It was ALL you, I just followed your advice), so I'm enormously grateful.

Great video as always 👍 Good points Thanks for sharing your expirences with All of us 👍😃

Always a great topic to touch even every now and then , never forget the basics ty for your great work good sir ❤️🙏🏻 we are all one

Very helpful video. Thanks!

I have found that disassembling the hot end and making sure the nozzle is clean and putting everything back together (with potentially a new PTFE) is necessary every five kilometers or so. I've always found "take it apart and put it back together again" fixes all kinds of "why the heck has this stopped working?" situations, from computers to engines to printers.

Great video thank alot man. Extremely underrated.

I’ve had this problem and this video show up, thank you so much!!!

Great video. I've had several of those problems and it can be very frustrating trying to analyse.

Dude that tighten the Bowden tubing after inserting the tube to prevent the backlash is so smart! 9:06

Super glad I watched the last 2 right before bed with a 3D printer actively running in my room

You are lucky to still have a chain like MicroCenter down under. In many nations all similar chains have gone bankrupt within the last decades. It's a shame, thinking how much fun it was to just go there and browse between all the stuff ..

Great advice ... thanks Angus.

I've been fighting my printer for so long wondering what the heck was happening. When you talked about the fan making that noise I remembered it making that sound months ago. Yep, blower fan was dead, no wonder I had so many warping issues! Thanks for pointing that out, who know how long I would have not noticed the problem.

Thanks Angus! Some chapters in this one would be great.