MakerGear Forum

After some printer sketchiness the past several months, I noticed that the ptfe tube in the heatbreak was in bad shape. The inner diameter was super worn. Before I splurged on a new heatbreak, I wondered if I could just replace the tube, just like I’ve done for other non-makergear printers. I took the hotend off, (carefully!!) removed the set screw at the top of the heatbreak, and fished out the old tube. It was in such horrible shape that I didn’t even bother trying to measure its length. I figured out that the required length is 10.0 mm. Using my high-temp Capricorn ptfe tubing, I cut a piece to that length while ensuring that the cuts were exactly perpendicular. I chamfered the inner diameter of the upper end slightly to aid in filament loading. Then I put everything back together. Test prints came out perfect! This was pretty easy to do and definitely beats having to replace the entire heatbreak.

Thanks for the tip! It never occurred to me to check that when I'm messing with my hotends. I'm assuming you used this stuff:

https://www.amazon.com/Capricorn-Bowden ... B079P92HN9

Yep, that's the stuff. There's definitely a quality difference between the cheap PTFE tubing and the Capricorn brand. The cheap stuff melts when printing at 240 C, whereas the Capricorn stuff has a much higher melting point. Found that out the hard way on my other printer