I have two 3D printers and both are KEs. The printers are cheap but provide a good print for the price. I read atomicelementzero’s posting and the comments on his problem with the the KE hotend (Ender 3 v3 KE exploded) and suffered the same problem on both my KEs. In both cases it was a print that I left unattended thinking it was printing fine only to return and find the blobby mess. Up until this point, I had both printers and various filaments fine tuned to print perfectly.
The first time this happened was early August. I ended up having to order a new hotend and a wire for the touch sensor. I did contact support and was told I would have to buy and replace the hotend. I ordered the part on Amazon (no shipping charges) and it is the correct Creality-brand hotend for the KE. I took apart whole thing apart and intalled the new hotend and replaced the severed wire on the touch sensor. It worked despite getting a couple clogs from the printer that I had to clear. It is working perfectly for now.
Yesterday, the same thing happened to my 2nd KE printer:
I find this weird to be happening to the KE printers. I have already ordered the hotend and will repair it when I get the part next week. The printer I had previously repaired with a new hotend is working fine. Here is a 24 hour print which I left overnight with 3 1/2 hours left on the print:
This is caused by your print not adhearing to the build plate properly and then coming off, once it has come off the nozzle continues to deposit filament on to… itself…
I see from your pictures that you are using PEO build plates with the patterns in them, while these are cool to use and leave a neat result, they have hands down the worst adhesion of any build surface I have ever used. This doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t use them, cause they are super cool lmao, you just have to make sure that you keep an extra close eye on the prints to make sure everything is going tickety-boo. Alternatively you could switch to a PEI sheet which has far better adhesion, but they will not have those interesting patterns on the bottom.
Past that, if you get one of these explosions, it is inevitable, I just got one here on the weekend. You are best to try and heat the nozzle up to 300C, this will really melt the pla, I recommend opening a window or turning on some sort of ventilation, doesn’t smell the greatest. But once it is up to 300C you can usually just pull the pla glob right off. Clean what you can using some brass brushes, make sure that you are careful around the ceramic heater as it is reasonably fragile. Then you can try and get all of the cables and such dug out of the mess once you have successfully removed it. If you are not having any luck with heating up your hotend then you will want to just replace the old hotend with a new one.
In terms of upgrades, I would personally upgrade away from the build plates you are currently using towards either the stock PEI build plate that comes with the machine or a different aftermarket PEI build plate. In terms of hotend and extruder the machine comes with pretty well the best already, any upgrade will be more of a side-grade rather than an actual upgrade.
For your nozzle I also would not bother with upgrading that, as long as you are not printing with any abrasive materials there is no need to go to a stainless or hardened steel nozzle. Just stick with the brass nozzles you have laying around!
And make sure to always keep an eye on the prints!!
Thank you for the advice. The plate I use has a gold PEI side which I use normally. I starting using these to deal with a bed adhesion problem. I will definitely try your suggestions for the next time. I just bought the MicroSwiss FlowTech Hotend to try and their FlowTech brass plated nozzle. Probably a side-grade as you mentioned but I want to try it out.
Since having the blob of death on both my KE printers, I have been incredibly frustrated. I spent an enormous amount of time calibrating the printers and the filaments and had everything setup to get great prints with very few issues. I now want to chuck them in the garbage and start over.
I am waiting on my order from MicroSwiss (FlowTech hotend, heatsink, nozzle) to get my 2nd printer up and running. I did buy a replacement hotend on Amazon (Creality brand hotend to replace the broken one and it is the correct part).
Here is what I have done:
After I installed the new Creality Hotend, I ran the Equipment Self-Test on the printer’s Nebula Pad (firmware was and is up-to-date). Still had issues printing.
I got a couple clogs and cleared them with no clogging issues since.
I was able to print again for a while but eventually issues started again and failed prints became more frequent.
I took the hotend off again and the extruder to check to see if anything was loose or incorrectly installed and everything was fine (I have done this at least 3 times to try and figure out the issue.
I leveled the gantry to make sure that was not the issue.
While I was trying to fix the 3D printer, I installed a Creality Light bar and noticed a screw missing on one of the gantry spots below (see photo). I had a correct machine screw to replace it with a lock washer and regular washer.
I tightened all the screws on the 3D printer to make sure nothing was loose.
I auto-leveled the bed again running the Self-Test (I have done this numerous times)
I upgraded the Creality 5 slicer to the latest version.
I leveled the gantry again after installing the lightbar.
I recalibrated the Elegoo PLA filament I am using (which has been one of the most reliable filaments for me).
I used the stock plate that came with the printer and used both sides of the PEI/PEO plate (https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0CNT46W9C/) that I was using that had been giving me better adhesion than the stock bed plates.
I have tried slowing down the first layer when it prints which improved the adhesion but still had severe issues.
I have increased/decreased both the bed temp and printing temperature with no luck.
I have cleaned the plates with Isopropyl alcohol.
I have cleaned the plated with warm soapy dish detergent.
I had my first KE working perfectly and bought a 2nd one because I liked them so much. I am regretting buying these printers now.
Think I found the problem. The hotend I bought was defective. It leaked and it even looks like the nozzle was rusty but you can’t really tell with brass. I replaced the nozzle but no luck. Something was blocking the filament from going down. I got fed up and returning it to the dealer that I bought it from on Amazon. Came in a Creality box and all so I thought it was authentic and may still be but it was definitely causing me a lot of problems. I won’t know if that was indeed the issue until I get another hotend.
Thanks Matt. That will be the first thing I do to avoid 3 days of frustration. On a more postive note, I have learned a lot about 3D printer hardware, especially the KE’s in particular.
That’s how I learned most everything I know about it now, just trial and error. I messed a lot of things up but eventually things started working correctly!
On the PEI sheet and adhesion - I have the stock one that came with my CR 10 Smart Pro - and I found I get my best results by A) cleaning it periodically with warm soapy water, drying it well with a towel, then put it on the printer and warm it up to ensure it’s dry.
B) I then grab some of the lovely Elmers glue stick that starts off purple, and apply a few good swipes of it on the now dry, and cooled PEI sheet. I then get a shop towel that I’ve dampened, and use it to smear the glue stick all around until it’s a thin, slightly foamy coating all over the PEI sheet. crank your bed temp up to 40 or 50 degrees to dry that glue. When it’s completely transparent, you’re good to go.
I can usually get 4 good prints before I have to redo, and I’m not above minor touch ups in a spot if I have something that really locks on.
That and tweaking my Z offset to get really good first layer squish has really helped. I still have a problem in that nothing wants to stick on the right side of my heat bed no matter how I adjust the bed levelling, and the CR touch doesn’t seem to compensate properly for this. One of these days, I’ll get OctoPrint setup to look at things…
