Ender 5 extruder motor skipping

Hi!
My ender 5 pro extruder motor started skipping steps, causing under extrusion, and a clicking sound. When I turn on retraction in the slicer, the filament gets squished when it goes through the extruder a few times (ie. feeding-retracting-feeding again on the same part of filament), and then the squished filament gets stuck in the capricorn tube. With retraction disabled, everything works fine (apart from stringing etc. caused by no retraction). I tried lowering the extruder spring tension, but that didnt solve the problem. As I lowered the spring tension, the extruder gear started slipping on the filament (I checked and there are no clogs, simply the extruder gear has not enough friction on the filament), and I could not find a sweet spot where the extruder spring has enough force to push the filament, but not that much to squish it. I tried various filaments (PLA and PETG) form different brands, and the same problem happend with all.
Does anyone have an idea to solve this? I think upgrading to a dual gear extruder would solve the problem, but I dont want to spend that much if not necessary.

Hi DavK26,
I've just joined the forum so don't know if you've managed to sort this or not.

If not, Is the extruder body plastic or metal ?
If plastic please check carefully for cracks (mine had one which allowed it to flex).
I recently replaced my extruder with a dual geared on and it did make a difference. They are quite reasonably priced on Amazon now. If there is a problem further down the the tube the dual gears won't help.

Anyway, hope this helps you.

Cheers,

Andy

I found there's a small sweet spot with the extruder spring tension that you have to hit. For example, on my Ender 3 2 washers on the spring seat was squishing the filament, but none wasn't enough tension. Also maybe take off the nozzle and bowden tube and see if you can see daylight from the cold end through the hot end, filament could be melting it's way up in there and slowly building up a jam, happened a few times on my ender 3. If there's a jam in the hot end you can pull off (or jam with your finger) the cold-end fan so it's not blowing across the fins and crank up the heat, this will heat up the cold end to melt your jam so watch your fingers. then use one of your allen keys to push the clog through.

I very highly recommend the Microswiss direct drive extruder and hotend upgrade set if you never want to see these types of problems again. Not sure if they fit an Ender 5 though.