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I have a very unusual problem with my extruder on an Ender 3 Pro. I've had the printer for about 4 years, installed a BLTouch about 2 years ago, and have never had any issues until recently. The extruder stopped extruding during the print and made a clicking noise, like when there was a filament jam or something. I cleaned the nozzle, but it wasn't clogged.

I could initially solve the problem by turning the stepper motor manually when the printer was off. The motor turned freely, so it didn't seem to be damaged. It would work fine for half a print, then start making the same clicking sound. When I tried turning it manually again with the power off and then printing, now the extruder would make a ringing sound. I checked the wiring connections, but they seemed fine.

I bought a new stepper motor from Creality and had the same problem. So the motor was clearly not the issue.

Now what I can't understand, is when I go to the prepare settings and move the extruder to extrude filament, it works fine. (as it turns out, the old motor could do this, too.) When I tried printing this time, there was no sound, vibrating, or clicking for the extrusion operation, but the motor did perform the retract operation.

So surely if there were a problem with the wiring or the driver, I wouldn't be able to extrude at all. Right? Everything works, except when I print from the G-code. My only guess is that this is the motherboard.

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  • $\begingroup$ What is your current firmware? Did you change it recently? It may be a good idea to install the most recent official firmware from Creality. Otherwise, if you ruled out wiring, it might really be a motherboard issue. $\endgroup$
    – Edson Jr.
    Commented Aug 25 at 14:10
  • $\begingroup$ The only changes I have ever made to the electronics have been the installation of the BL-Touch. Otherwise, it's all stock. I also tried using a different SD card, but still had the same problem. Essentially, only the signal for extruding is not being sent, and only when the instructions are being read from the SD card. This makes me think it could be a faulty card reader. $\endgroup$
    – Mal-Printing
    Commented Aug 27 at 19:47

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I tracked down the problem to a faulty motherboard. I decided to replace the stock motherboard with one from BTT (SKR mini E3 V3).

When removing the old board I saw the connectors to the PSU wires were burnt and partially melted. The extruder is working fine now that the new motherboard is installed.

Note: Burning would be from overheating the board. The cooling fan is mounted underneath the housing in these models, and this probably resulted in poor ventilation/cooling. Raising the printer up should help prevent this from occurring again.

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