Extruder not pushing or pulling filament

[MichalisDiak]

Hello everyone, I am quite new to 3D printing and I have printed some things before I got this problem. At first my extruder started making clicking noises so I was advised by the Internet to loosen one of the screws on it. It worked fine but then I saw that my filament was grinding on the extruder. My next print was a total disaster since the printed lines had a gap between them. I tried cleaning the bowden tube, leveling the bed, loosening and tighting the screws of the extruder but now it seems that the extruder can't push or pull the filament to and from the nozzle. Any ideas of what went wrong??

P.S. sorry for my poor vocabulary, it's my first time posting a question that has to do with printers and English is not my mother language.

[Reefsider]

Sounds like you might have a clogged nozzle. Did you take the hot end apart and clear it out? Or for cheap enough you can just replace the nozzle. If you’ve never done this it’s probably best to watch a YouTube video on how to do it. It’s not hard but there are some important details like you have to undo and tighten the hot end parts while hot, little things like that.

[Reefsider]

As for why it went wrong, it could have been any of a number of things. First check your temperatures and make sure you’re not extruding too cold. Next make sure you have decent filament that is dry.

You might want to check the extrusion multiplier. This is done by extruding a length of filament then measuring what comes out and comparing it to what the computer says came out. Probably how to videos on youtube for that.

If you are running a Bowden system (extruder is separate from the hot end) you could try shortening the tube as much as allowable and/or replacing the tube with a Capricorn tube with finer tolerances.

[curious aardvark]

well first: strip the extruder down and clean the hobbed gear as it will now be clogged with plastic.

Then tell us what printer you have, what print settings you were using - anything you cn think of - the more information we have the better the chance we might be able to correctly answer your questions :-)

It's like going to the doctore and saying: 'I am Ill, please cure me.'
After 10 minutes of asking you questions and examining you - they might have an opinion. But first they need lots of information.