I am still having a few clogging issues with silk PLA, but ONLY with silk PLA. Regular PLA, “Pro” PLA, Nylon, CF Nylon, and GF Nylon are all printing beautifully in my J1 without a single issue.
My machine is stock, but with the following changes:
#1 Definitely made a positive impact as I tested it before proceeding with #2 and #3.
Thanks! I know they coat their nozzles, but I never had one of their heatbreaks in my hand.
Then it seems
might be the way to go.
I tried increasing spring tension about a week ago by adding some 1.5mm thick 3D printed spacers behind the springs. It had no impact on the clogging. I didn’t want to increase the tension any further given the risk of cracking the plastic carrier. I pulled the spacers and went back to stock.
Out of curiosity, I compared the drive force against my Prusa i3 MK3. Even without the spacers, the J1 pulled much harder without skipping than the Prusa.
As for modifying the PTFE tubes, the friction in those tubes is incredibly low. By far the biggest source of drag in the whole drive system is the friction of unwinding the filament spools.
I have since tried a very tiny modification to the heatbreak. It seemed to have a positive impact, but I could not confirm the results as I had to quit testing and get some production work done with my J1.
German:
Ich habe jetzt keinerlei Sprünge mehr, eventuell hilft es auch bei euch…?
english:
I no longer have any jumps, maybe it will help you too…?
The 6.5mm where in the settings of Luban with snapmaker original (kickstarter, so loong time ago) too, this was never changed by snapmaker, don’t know why.
Probably you are right and this was a default setting in cura…
Yes, I guess that one of these things might help, but which one it is depends on your printer and your material. FDM printers are still not “plug & play” - no matter what the manufacturers tell you 
(At least if you do not want to use a really expensive one with only the material supplied by the manufacturer…)
I’m completely new to 3D printer maintenance and am afraid of breaking my J1 if I attempt to disassemble the extruder and apply the thermal compound to the heatbreak. At the same time, prints keep getting ruined, and this topic has me convinced it’s heat creep.
The step-by-step disassembly instructions in this topic are great. Is there perhaps an even more fundamental recommendation of a video or tutorial I could watch to see the steps in actions and hear the considerations along the way? I’ve heard that everything needs to be heated before disassembly or the heatbreak can snap, for example, and I really don’t want to break anything.
Thanks in advance!
Scroll for German
English:
Don’t be afraid of disassembly, don’t be fooled, it’s relatively easy.
In the Snapmaker description, everything is actually already described, except for the direct disassembly of the nozzle and heatbreak.
But that too is self-explanatory, you just have to use the right tool and know that it is a normal right-hand thread.
If I had known that there are people in 3D printing who don’t really dare to do it, I would have recorded my conversion with the camera.
Just keep your head on the matter and don’t let yourself be distracted, then it’ll be easy for you too.
Keine Angst vor der Demontage, lass dich nicht verrückt machen, es ist relativ einfach.
In der Beschreibung von Snapmaker, ist eigentlich schon alles beschrieben, außer die direkte Demontage von Düse und Heatbreak.
Aber auch das ist selbsterklärend, du musst einfach nur das richtige Werkzeug einsetzen und wissen, dass es ein ganz normales Rechtsgewinde ist.
Hätte ich das gewusst, dass es Leute im 3D Druck gibt, die sich das nicht richtig zutrauen, hätte ich mein Umbau mit der Kamera aufgenommen.
Sei nur immer mit dem Kopf bei der Sache und lass dich nicht ablenken, dann geht auch dir das leicht von der Hand.
I just took my hotends apart as well before even powering on the printer for the first time. As far as I can tell the main obstacle Snapmaker has to overcome when it comes to the hotends is the difference between an enthusiastic developer and the guy in manufacturing who does not give a sh*t:
I highly suspect reworking these saved me some trouble.
Hey @Mechanikus
Ein bisschen Off Topic, aber … hast du zufälligerweise ein YouTube channel oder irgendeine Social Media wo du deine Wissen mit dem Welt verteilst?
Ich finde deine Kommentare hier sehr informativ und hilfreich. 
(@english speakers: a bit OT, hence in german: dragos asked me if I were present in social media… scroll down for the answer)
Danke! Nein, soziale Medien und ich sind keine Freunde - ich hab was besseres zu tun, als irgendwelchen Likes hinterherzuhecheln
Ich bin da noch ganz altmodisch und kann nur mit einer Homepage aufwarten. Da steht bisher aber noch nichts zum J1. Erstmal will ich meinen zum Laufen bringen, dann kann ich darüber schreiben.
Thank you! No, social media and I are not friends - I have better things to do than to chase after likes
I can only come up with an old-fashioned homepage (only in german). But there’s nothing about the J1 yet. First I want to get mine up and running, then I can write about it.
I was able to get the courage up to unscrew the heatbreak and apply the thermal paste. It wasn’t a big deal at all – thanks for the encouragement!
I’m still getting grinding on silk filament to the point where if the print goes longer than 1-2 hours it will be ruined.
I’m using Luban, and it seems that the “Minimum Extrusion Distance Window” and “Maximum Retraction Count” parameters combine to explicitly address this issue with the filament no longer being grippable and causing the grinding that leads to no extrusion and ruined prints.
Has anyone experimented with these settings, especially with silk filament? I’m going to give it a try, and if this doesn’t work, I guess I’m going to give up on silk filament with this printer?
Note: the settings were 90 for the count and 6.5mm for the window. As an extreme test, I’m dropping it to 5 for the count and increasing to 10mm just to get a bound for the impact of stringing.
I’ve also tried dramatic decreases in temperature (210-190) when the extruder is waiting as a hack for heat creep, and I’ve tried to keep all velocities the same so that the pull rate on the filament remains constant throughout the entire print.
If it was loose, do not forget to check the position on the motor axis - the rounded teeth must be centered to the filament. It might be the viewing angle, but on your picture it looks like the wheel is quite a bit too far on the right.
Oh! I didn’t think of that but it totally makes sense (and could contribute significantly to slippage I would imagine?). Will do. Thanks!
Hallo i3sven,
danke für die Ausarbeitung. Ich habe das gleiche problem und die Antwort von Zendesk war ich könnte diesesn autostop ausschalten.
Aber das behebt das Unvermögen des Transportes nicht. Es scheint, das der Zug über dass Filament nich groß genug ist um den Widerstand in derTeflonführung und die Abrollkraft auf der Rolle zu überwinden. Die Friktion über das Filament zum transportueren ist nicht tief genug. Meiner Ansicht muss hier ein besseres Trabnsport zahnrad eingesetzt werden. Erstaunlich, dass dies nicht schon bei Snapmacker gemerkt wurde,
Bitte in Englisch oder bilingual deutsch/englisch schreiben - das hier ist ein internationales Forum, wo viele Teilnehmer kein Deutsch verstehen. Es ist doch nun wirklich nicht schwer, den Text einfach in DeepL.com zu kopieren…
Ansonsten rate ich Dir, erstmal die anderen Posts zum Thema Extrusionsprobleme zu lesen. Mit zu hohem Widerstand beim Einzug hat die Sache nämlich wenig zu tun.
Please write english or bilingual - this is an international forum and many people don’t unserstand german. It should not be too hard to copy your text into DeepL.com and paste the result here.
Apart from that, I suggest you might want to read the other topics about extrusion problems here. Too much friction in the area between extruder and filament roll is not really the cause here.
Thank you for your info. Greetings Christoph
Just needs length adjustment depending on the heatbreak
