<p>I've been wrestling with a filament grinding problem for a few weeks now and I'm stuck.</p>
<p>The problem manifests itself as starting a print alright then extrusion stops while the printer keeps moving. When I pull the filament out I see indents from the gear then a depression where it ground down the filament.</p>
<p>Filament used is 1.75 mm Spool3D PETG on a Hictop printer, which is a clone of a Prusa i3. I don't know the exact part number though. The extruder is direct drive, and the 28 mm heatbreak is connected to a heatsink block rather than something with fins. Nozzle is standard 0.4 mm.</p>
<p>My print settings are quite conservative. Speed is 20 mm/s, retraction is 20 mm/s (though it never grinds on retraction), temperature is 255 °C, which is 10 °C higher than what works in my other printers. No print cooling.</p>
<p>At first I thought there was a clog, but I can push the filament though by hand quite well. I also use cleaning filament frequently and it never pulls out any debris. Heatbreak and nozzle have been changed to fresh items.</p>
<p>Does anybody have any other ideas of things I can try, or should I just get a new extruder?</p>

[{'answer_id': 14260, 'author': 'Trish', 'author_id': 8884, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/8884', 'pm_score': 3, 'selected': True, 'text': "<p>Thingieverse does respect the orientation an item was designed in, just like most slicers will. Designers will often choose any one of the three planes (XY, YZ, ZX) as their first by preference, then work out the other parts in relation to the first. This does often not take into account the actual print orientation it should be printed in.</p>\n<p>In the case of this box, you'd have to turn all items around the Y-axis (the front-left to back-right one) by 90°, first to the <em>front</em>, then the <em>back</em> then to the <em>front</em> again, getting almost 0 overhangs.</p>\n"}, {'answer_id': 14261, 'author': 'henradrie', 'author_id': 20024, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/20024', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': "<p>When I design parts in CAD software I pick a starting plane and go from there. And that starting plane doesn't correspond to how the part is designed to be printed. That usually comes later.</p>\n"}]
['https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/14263', 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com', 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/20024/']