1 Topic by talimore

  • talimore
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Topic: Filament comes out when being loaded, nothing comes out when printing

So, when I load filament, I can see it coming out to confirm its being loaded properly. However, if I try to print anything (even the test prints) nothing comes out. It heats up like normal, the bed moves, ect. It lines up the print and starts printing the design of whatever I wanted printer with the exception of no filament coming out.

I thought the filament might not have been loaded right or I had bad filament because Im using 3rd party filament so I actually purchased some XYZ filament, took out my filament hack, loaded that filament and same issue. It comes out when loading to show its loaded properly but when it moves to print.... nothing.....

HELP!!!

Thanks in advance for the advise or help on this topic!

2 Reply by rodnebridges

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Re: Filament comes out when being loaded, nothing comes out when printing

Ive had mine for about 3 weeks and that happens to me sometimes too. I just chalked it up to bad stls. If anyone knows why, I too would like to know.

3 Reply by BotFeeder

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Re: Filament comes out when being loaded, nothing comes out when printing

That's weird.
Is the filament feeding motor moving during the print?

Since your filament is extruding properly before the print.  Should not be related to your filament.  It is possible related to the circuit board itself.

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4 Reply by carl_m1968

  • carl_m1968
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Re: Filament comes out when being loaded, nothing comes out when printing

BotFeeder wrote:

That's weird.
Is the filament feeding motor moving during the print?

Since your filament is extruding properly before the print.  Should not be related to your filament.  It is possible related to the circuit board itself.

The only difference between loading the filament and printing is where the move instructions come from. one comes from a button press that generates g-code commands internally and one come from g-code that is read from a file and then precessed internally.

My suspicion is something buggy in the g-code header. Are you using a different method of slicing and loading the files?

Printing since 2009 and still love it!
Anycubic 4MAX best $225 ever invested.
Voxelabs Proxima SLA. 6 inch 2k Mono LCD.
Anycubic Predator, massive Delta machine. 450 x 370 print envelope.

5 Reply by ShadowWizard

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Re: Filament comes out when being loaded, nothing comes out when printing

I would suggest the possibility that the problem has nothing to do with the stl files, or the gcode files, but rather has something to do with the machine.  I had the same problem, just backwards (Before it got worse, and also was printing a whole bunch of nothing, like yours.)  It would not heat the extruder when in parked position, but if I moved the head somewhere else, it heated fine.  The problem boiled down to the connector that connects the ceramic heater to the mainboard.  If you look just above the whole extruder assembly, you will see heat insulated white wire (White wire that has a braided thread sleeve on it) that connects to one end of a black connector, and the other end of the black connector leading to white wiring.  From what I have seen online, that connector is a known issue.  Power off the machine, unplug it, clip that connector off and simply solder the wires direct.  I did about 2-3 hours of testing before I went ahead with this, but because it was an intermittent problem, it was hard to test.  At the end it was a deep breath, do I wanna void my warranty by finally doing this thing.  I haven't had any print problems since.

talimore wrote:

So, when I load filament, I can see it coming out to confirm its being loaded properly. However, if I try to print anything (even the test prints) nothing comes out. It heats up like normal, the bed moves, ect. It lines up the print and starts printing the design of whatever I wanted printer with the exception of no filament coming out.

I thought the filament might not have been loaded right or I had bad filament because Im using 3rd party filament so I actually purchased some XYZ filament, took out my filament hack, loaded that filament and same issue. It comes out when loading to show its loaded properly but when it moves to print.... nothing.....

HELP!!!

Thanks in advance for the advise or help on this topic!

6 Reply by carl_m1968

  • carl_m1968
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Re: Filament comes out when being loaded, nothing comes out when printing

ShadowWizard wrote:

I would suggest the possibility that the problem has nothing to do with the stl files, or the gcode files, but rather has something to do with the machine.  I had the same problem, just backwards (Before it got worse, and also was printing a whole bunch of nothing, like yours.)  It would not heat the extruder when in parked position, but if I moved the head somewhere else, it heated fine.  The problem boiled down to the connector that connects the ceramic heater to the mainboard.  If you look just above the whole extruder assembly, you will see heat insulated white wire (White wire that has a braided thread sleeve on it) that connects to one end of a black connector, and the other end of the black connector leading to white wiring.  From what I have seen online, that connector is a known issue.  Power off the machine, unplug it, clip that connector off and simply solder the wires direct.  I did about 2-3 hours of testing before I went ahead with this, but because it was an intermittent problem, it was hard to test.  At the end it was a deep breath, do I wanna void my warranty by finally doing this thing.  I haven't had any print problems since.

talimore wrote:

So, when I load filament, I can see it coming out to confirm its being loaded properly. However, if I try to print anything (even the test prints) nothing comes out. It heats up like normal, the bed moves, ect. It lines up the print and starts printing the design of whatever I wanted printer with the exception of no filament coming out.

I thought the filament might not have been loaded right or I had bad filament because Im using 3rd party filament so I actually purchased some XYZ filament, took out my filament hack, loaded that filament and same issue. It comes out when loading to show its loaded properly but when it moves to print.... nothing.....

HELP!!!

Thanks in advance for the advise or help on this topic!


You can also just take a tie wrap and zip tie the connector together. That has been also posted and seems to work and does not void your warranty and you can still remove your extruder if you need to.

Printing since 2009 and still love it!
Anycubic 4MAX best $225 ever invested.
Voxelabs Proxima SLA. 6 inch 2k Mono LCD.
Anycubic Predator, massive Delta machine. 450 x 370 print envelope.