Quote Originally Posted by curious aardvark View Post

Now if this is the extruder fan then what is happening is the filament feed tube is gradually getting hotter the longer you print. softening the filament and causing dodgy filament feeding, the longer you print the worse it should get.

The fans are there for a reason :-)
I'd say that's what's happening yeah. The Nozzle is having trouble regulating heat because there is no fan too cool it, it needs both. I think people think they need cooling fans to just cool the print as its printing - On on a Kossel have 1 fan because it's easy to angle it at the nozzle and the print at the same time, other machines not so easy. But to have No fan? well you just wouldn't print or try because you could basically burn out the thermistor or ceramic heater - some machines don't have a failsafe (like the flashforge! lol)

I did this the other day, I ran my flashforge without the fan because I was trying to see where my blockage was. The thing could not keep it stable. Set it to 230c. Without the fan.. 238..... 242... 250... OK time to switch off now. The output from the print pretty much looked identical to his first pictures. Fat over extruded layers compacted because it printed so hot.