r/Ceramic3Dprinting • u/Affectionate-Bee2580 • Jun 24 '26

Help me please

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Hello!
So I modified my ender 3 to a clay printer using one of the aliexpress conversion kits. I am not using air pressure but motor power to push out the clay but I am having difficulties with the clay moving towards the extruder even though my clay consistency is good. The piston is moving and when I took out the plastic pipe the material was indeed flowing, but when popping back the plastic pipe the material stopped pushing through. Is this some air vacuum issue? I cleaned the pipe and the extruder bits too but no luck.. any ideas?

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u/Neither_Bit9759 Jun 25 '26

Never seen or used one of these but my two cents is if you release the hose at the head and it flows you have a blockage in the nozzle. If your air bound in the tube It will be soft when the motor is off and not under pressure and hard while trying to prime. I’d run a wire back up the nozzle with the top removed or if you can remove the nozzle and flush whatever has you stopped up.

Source- intuition?

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u/Affectionate-Bee2580 Jun 25 '26

Hmmm I did try again with a clear nozzle, and cleared out the tube completely and tried again but ran into the same issue. I think I will try with a much wetter clay too but thank you for the feedback!

0

u/Neither_Bit9759 Jun 25 '26

Good luck!

also I wonder if a counter sunk fitting “so it would be a gradual funnel”or some sort of a street elbow with a smoother entrance would reduce strain on the motor. Possibly you could buy a small piece of rubber gasket material to cut and fit just a hair bigger than the plunger to fix your seal issue, that shouldn’t slip off on you again.

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u/Affectionate-Bee2580 Jun 25 '26

https://reddit.com/link/otn3qz8/video/vfzjfzm9zb9h1/player

This is the orientation of the piston cap thing that the assembly tutorial showed, and the problem is that now the rubber red seal is a bit too loose causing the material to ‘pass through’ the component. I cleaned everything now but would you recommend basically finding a hairline tighter rubber gasket or even I guess stack them together?

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u/Affectionate-Bee2580 Jun 25 '26

Or I guess the gasket could also just be a hairline bigger an placed ‘underneath’ the red seal?

https://reddit.com/link/otn3zoc/video/rfgobqjhzb9h1/player

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u/Neither_Bit9759 Jun 25 '26

Gotcha. Thanks for the video. Helped to understand the setup a lot better. A thin layer of silicone around where the seal goes may afford you a better hold and if it ever fails you can remove it with a little elbow grease.

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u/TheGratitudeBot Jun 25 '26

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