e3d on solidoodle clogs

I am holding on to a brand new E3D .40 nozzle (just the nozzle) and I can easily see through it.  If you have one and that wasn't the case when it was new then you may have gotten a bad nozzle.  Of course if it is used it will be full of plastic so you will have to clean that out first to check.  The only time I have plugged an E3D .40 nozzle was when my cooling fan stopped about 2 minutes into a 6 hour print.  I let it run just as a test and it made it 5 1/2 hours before it clogged.  I am of the opinion that the very humid and old filament I was using was partially to blame.

Thanks for the fast replies. Calibrations were all done and rechecked. The printing temp is 215. I have tried a couple different brand filaments and even extruded some fresh natural abs. I just placed some filament in a vacuum bag with a ton of silica to make sure it is good and dry. I will test that tomorrow to eliminate the moisture element.

Have you tried stepping up the temperature a bit?

Shouldn't that be close to .48?

I think I found the problem but not quite sure how to fix it. If I print a 50mm x 50mm square, the first layer walls print perfectly. When the printer prints diagonally to fill in the walls, it begins to act starved and prints broken lines. I kept my fingers on the filament while it printed and could feel the extruder skipping during the diagonal prints. I double checked my feed calibration and it is good. The skipping makes me think it is feeding to fast but why just with the diagonal lines. I do not see anything in the firmware where there is different stepper settings for different print types. Have I missed a setup step in using the e3d on the solidoodle? I have done and rechecked every setting I could find on the forum. I also surmise that overfeeding could cause melted filament to backup and cause the cold clogs but I could not cause an issue by manually extruding large lengths at high speeds.

As a footnote, I also found the perfect nozzle cleaning wire. There are wire needles used by bead makers. The are called open eye needles. the wire has a rough texture and the small fits well in the .4 nozzle. The texture does a good job of scrubbing the sides of the whole clean. I sort of screwed it in until it came out the other end of the nozzle then pulled it back and forth. I checked the size of the extruded thread afterwards and it was the same size as before so the "scrubbing" did not make the whole itself larger.

Hmmm, easy enough to test. It should be very close as I turned down the top of the e3d to fit in the aluminum block that the solidoodle hot end fit into. There is a tiny bit of play. I will run a snug fitting rod through the drive gear/ bearing straight into the hot end and measure and shim as needed. Excellent idea.

I am also having excessive E3D clogs. On same filiment I used with the stock hot with little problem. Granted the stock hot end clogged every 6 weeks or so but the E3D seems to clog daily and twice today. I'm pretty sure my temps and general setup is theoritaclly fine anyways

I have been printing in PLA. I was originally printing at about 190 to 195 but went upto 200 in hopes it would help the clogs.

I had adjusted my temps but but not that fa up. For example my PLA used to work well for me at 165-170 appox on the old stock hot end.

I haven't gotten around to ABS, but it is like that for ABS also?What temps do you use for ABS?

elmoret is dead on as always. If you haven't yet, do the heat tightening with a good pair of thick leather gloves. I use two other gloves inside my leather ones and never felt a thing while holding a 290c hot end.

I currently print ABS at 240c.

Thaks I'll try this once my E3D is back up again. Seems after cleaning several clogs and thus handling it enough to unscrew it etc... the wires on the temp sensor got broke from even inside the kapton tape. Now I have to await parts again.