self posting my reply...

yesterday, i went back for a second round of trying to get this thing to work.  i unloaded a roll of black filament, and tried to load a roll of white filament.  the white filament would not load, it would not get past the coupler that attaches at the top of the feed gear block/box, where the white feed tube attaches.  taking that all apart i found that the black plastic ring inside the brass piece is all messed up.  trying to feed a simple 3" length of the white filament through the coupler, separate, all by itself, resulted in the black piece breaking up into about 5 pieces.  i found the following link here on soliforums, which basically follows my symptoms leading up to the failure of the black parts: http://www.soliforum.com/topic/14300/da … -detached/

not wanting to buy from walmart, i bought this instead:  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J5 … &psc=1

i will post here when it arrives, and post whether it works or not.

Isn't this the the version that the other thread mentioned? Not sure the differences to be honest.

http://go.soliforum.com/?id=80794X15320 … &xtz=0

yesterday, i went back for a second round of trying to get this thing to work.  i unloaded a roll of black filament, and tried to load a roll of white filament.  the white filament would not load, it would not get past the coupler that attaches at the top of the feed gear block/box, where the white feed tube attaches.  taking that all apart i found that the black plastic ring inside the brass piece is all messed up.  trying to feed a simple 3" length of the white filament through the coupler, separate, all by itself, resulted in the black piece breaking up into about 5 pieces.  i found the following link here on soliforums, which basically follows my symptoms leading up to the failure of the black parts: http://www.soliforum.com/topic/14300/da … -detached/

not wanting to buy from walmart, i bought this instead:  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J5 … &psc=1

i will post here when it arrives, and post whether it works or not.

the printer itself is bone stock.

the specific test print was created using the xyzprinting software, and has printed successfully in the past.

the printer loads filament correctly
the extruder is reaching temperatures between 204 and 209 celsius

i have torn down and cleaned the drive gear (deep clean)
i have torn down and cleaned the extruder (deep clean)
i have torn down and adjusted the z axis arm to make sure it is not sagging
i have adjusted the z-offset in .05mm increments over a .3mm range, starting at the level where a single sheet of typing paper is a tight fit between the extruder tip and the bed.

the attached photo is an example of what the last 10 prints look like after what should be about 10 layers, after that 3 hours of "adjusting".   it is actually looking worse now than it was before.  the reason i did all this is because it was not completing prints.  they would "die" after about 10 minutes of printing.  if it was a tiny shallow part, it was fine.  if it was more than 6 or 7mm tall, it would fail.

there is no known problem with the feeding of the filament.  when i "load" filament, it comes out of the extruder in a nice thin line.  it is simply that when i try to print something, it appears that nothing is coming out of the extruder.