Ender 3 V2 - Prints go wrong after upgrades (images attached)

[forge-printer]

Hello all, I'm new to the forum and 3D Printing as you can probably tell. I recently purchased an Ender 3 V2 and while waiting for my new filament I started printing right out of the box with the small amount of stock/provided white PLA. The prints weren't the most detailed but it printed reliably, every time.Since I ran out of the stock white Creality PLA filament, I upgraded the printer with:

1. Blue Capricorn tubing
2. A 6mm nozzle (the 4mm wore out
3. Tougher springs that you see on all the Youtube videos

With these upgrades I immediately started printing with ABS with 0% success, the ABS was not sticking to the bed plate at all but that's not what this post is about.I since switched back to PLA AND the problems I am facing are (refer to the attached images for reference):

1. The printer will begin either really nicely OR be full of blobs that the 'skirt setting' tries to get out but not always successful
2. The print can be smooth and high quality and then all of a sudden the nozzle hits the print off the bed, requiring me to start again
3. Random blobs or clumps of plastic form which then either clogs up the nozzle or creates a catch and pulls the print off the bed
4. The images show a tall handle that I had to physically hold down at the end to stop the nozzle from knocking it over and the other is one of many unsuccessful Temp Towers

What am I doing wrong? Please help! Note: I also haven't been able to get the bed perfectly level - the center of the bed always seems to be a little higher than the sides (I have a BLtouch on the way). This post isn't about this issue but if anyone has experience on why this is now happening since the above upgrades please shout out.Final note: I printed an almost flawless calibration cube but it also formed a could of blobs along the way - it seemed I got lucky.

[curious aardvark]

okay - first, why did you change an extrusion setup that was working ?
Rule 1 in 3d printing - as in life - if it works: LEAVE IT ALONE.

Unless you are autowiz - and he makes his own rules ;-)

The nozzle definitely did not wear out. It might have got clogged, but a brass nozzle does not wear out without extensive use of carbon fibre filled filament :-)

Capricorn tubing is notorious for being a bad option on creality bowden printers.
the ender 3 uses a terribly positioned bowden tube that goes from straight to almost bent at a right angle in one traverse of the printbed.
Capricorn tubing has a really tight internal diameter and should only be used in places where it is not going to bend much - or preferably not bend at all.
So what happens is that your filament is pinched - increasing friction, when the tube is bent and released when the tube is straighter.
And even when the tube is not quite so bent, the friction between it and the filament is much greater than with your original tubing.
I presume that's why you bought a stronger spring ?
To try and force the filament through the incorrect tubing some idiot told you to fit.

This extra friction creates uneven filament flow, which causes the problems you are now having.

Go back to the original bowden tube, you know it works :-)

As far as the bed goes - bltouch is a crutch - not a solution.
Your bed is not flat - many cheap printer beds are not flat.
The solutions is to fit aflat print surface.

The easiest way to do this is to buy a sheet of properly flat glass and use that as your bed, me I'd also stick a sheet of PEI to it as well.
I've tried glass and it's not great - but it is flat :-)

So get the glass and pei, remove whatever is curently stuck to the aluminium heatplate, and replace that with your glass&pei printbed.

Now you never need to worry about having a wonky bed that things don't stick too :-)
Replace the levelling knobs with locking nylock nuts and you'll almost never have to level the bed again either.

But basically you've been watching youtube and been told a load of crap by idiots who have no real clue what they are talking about and almost no understanding of the mechanics of 3d printers and the ender 3 in particular.

And if i seem annoyed - it's not at you.
It's at the morons on youtube who just have no frigging clue what they are talking about, and creality for making such a badly designed machine in the first place.

The thing with the ender 3 is that it sort of works, because eevrything is delicately balanced, change the worng part in the wrong order and that balance is disturbed, and things go wrong. . If you want to upgrade it, then the upgrade route is NOT what most youtubers tell you it is.

1) add a second z-axis screw to stabilise the x-axis and make it level enough to add
2) a direct drive extruder.

I have no doubt that the existing extruder could fairly easily be converted to direct drive.

Do those two things and you've fixed 90% of the problem with the ender 3.
And you won't need to change the extruder, hotend, motherboard, stepper drivers or any of the other somewhat pointless 'upgrades' popular among ender 3 user groups.

the closer you can get it to the original prusa I3 design - the better it will print.
Keeping the creailty design and just changing bits of that - is just throwing money away.