If you’ve been lucky enough never to experience the infuriating problem of filament grinding, it’s when the extruder chews away at your material. Mostly it happens when your filament gets stuck but the extruder gear doesn’t stop moving. Instead, it keeps going and strips the filament with its toothed gear.
When this happens, the filament ends up becoming so concave that the extruder gear can’t reach it anymore. You can identify filament grinding by seeing your filament chipped or stripped in one area around the extruder.
This problem is very annoying and can be challenging to fix, but don’t worry, we have some solutions. To identify the correct solution, though, you’ll need to first locate the cause, so that’s what we’ll look at in the following section.
Before we get into the solutions, pinpointing this problem’s causes will help you both fix it and avoid it in the future.
The direct cause of filament grinding comes from the extruder attempting to push the filament. Failing to do so, the extruder leaves a divet in the filament, as seen in the image above.
That’s not the only cause of this problem, though; a few different factors contribute to filament grinding. We’ve listed most of the known causes of filament grinding below:
Now that you know some of the causes, let’s get into the solutions for filament grinding! Basically, you’ll want to counteract any of the reasons that might be causing filament grinding to happen.
Following these solutions and looking at the causes can significantly improve your chances of fixing and preventing this issue. Other factors can contribute, too, so make sure you watch out for unique or rare problems.
Lead image source: walter via Thrinter
License: The text of "3D Printer Extruder: Grinding Filament – How to Fix It" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.