I got an Ender 3 pro about a year ago. I assembled it with no issues and really enjoyed the first few weeks of tweaking settings, improving print quality, making cool stuff, etc. I printed some really cool stuff in virtually flawless quality. I learned more about the tools available to make it even better like cura, chep profiles, octopi. I printed upgrades for my printer and even bought some upgrades like a metal extruder and a glass print bed.

Everything was great until one day I had a failed print, it has been a nightmare since then. The failed print basically accumulated filament over the course of a few hours and really messed up my hot end. I disassembled and cleaned and reassembled the hot end countless times. I went through tons of different nozzles and tried a few different filaments. I tweaked my print settings. Nothing seemed to help the variety of issues I was having (under-extrusion, stringing, failed prints, shifted layers, prints that would finish but crumble in your hand). At this point I basically gave up and assumed that something that I could not identify or fix in the hot end was causing my problems. I bought an all metal hot end on amazon and installed it with no issues.

All of my previous problems went away with this new hot end, but now I have a new set of issues that I am also not having any luck solving. I am getting blobbing and stringing (really thick stringing, like almost the volume of intentionally extruded filament) and while my prints actually finish and hold together, they look like garbage. They also lack the precision to be functional in certain applications.

I know that all metal hotends are not always recommended and are prone to certain issues, but I cannot find any information on my specific problem with them. My gut tells me that there is nothing wrong with my printer as a whole, I have just had 2 major issues with my hotend. But I do not want to keep throwing good money after bad and unless I can get back on track with good quality prints for a minimal monetary investment, I'd honestly rather just upgrade to a better 3d printer.

TLDR; After installing an all metal hotend, I have thick stringing, blobbing, and imprecise prints with my ender 3. Prior to this I had issues with the stock hotend, but prior to that I had no issues. Here are the pictures https://imgur.com/a/icIiv0P

I don't usually post about my issues because there is so much good information out there that you can just search for but I am desperate to fix my issues. To get out in front of any overly basic/generic advice, here is what I've tried.

* Buy and use new filament/store filament in optimal conditions
* Change nozzle
* Use bigger diameter bowden tube to help with retraction
* Change retraction settings in cura according to spec of all metal hotend (i've played around with combinations of 3-5mm and 30-50 mm/s)
* bed leveling
* slowing print speed/increasing print quality
* using a variety of temperatures (195-230)
* creating a temperature tower (stringing and quality issues existed on every layer)
* calibrate e-steps (i will admit i haven't done this in a while but I have tried it a few times)
* temperature calibration

I should also mention that I only have/print with hatchbox PLA, but I have and have tested several different colors with no difference in result.