this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2025
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Flashforge AD5X, how long do nozzles last? Premature wear (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 week ago by batmaniam@lemmy.world to c/3dprinting@lemmy.world
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Hi All,

This will be difficult to pin down, but getting pointed in the right direction would be helpful.

Purchased a FlashForge AD5X ~5 weeks ago. Worked great, one button calibration out of the box, I proceeded to do what everyone does when learning: print a bunch of stuff, mix success and stumble over the usual stuff. Ie: Learned why you clean the bed, learned how supports work, deal with filament breaks etc etc.

About a week ago I had a print fail, it looked like there was a broken filament that wasn't being pushed. I do a cold pull on the nozzle, and was able to print successfully for a time (although there were some small features on some prints that seemed sloppy compared to previous prints).

After that though ALL my prints started to fail. Even after cleaning the bed, double checking bed/nozzle temp, I'd get bad adhesion. I'd also get the nozzle dragging through layers, as if the Z was off (even after running calibration repeatedly and before each print). There was some popping and oozing, which I put up to not storing my PLA dry (although ambient was only ~40%). However the problem persisted even with a freshly opened vac-sealed (confirmed seal was good) roll of PLA.

I ordered a replacement nozzle that arrives today, but can anyone give me some insight? I only ran ~2kg of PLA through, that seems like really premature wear; I must have done something wrong.

Thanks for anything putting me in the right direction.

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[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (3 children)

For reference I have an Anycubic s1 with 1,000+ hours on the brass nozzle and it was still fine when I changed it.

[–] batmaniam@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Thanks! This kind of insight is super helpful. Are you a poster here often? I was able to get decent prints again by changing the layer from 0.16 to 0.20. Still disappointed and confused as to what happened, but will probably keep the printer. Not sure if it makes sense to do a "wrap up" post for anyone else searching later.

Also: go team venture!

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Great to hear your prints are working again. Maybe extrusion problem and you need to hand tweak your flow rate for .16?

[–] batmaniam@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

Me to! I was almost done with a batch of prints for a friends fundraiser (30x hat looms for knitting. Great little project, they're knitting hats for the premies at the NICU, so they needed a custom model for the tiny babys). I think you're right. With the oozing and whatnot that has to be it. I brought up the fundraiser because it had me making multiple prints of the same file. When I found a setting that worked (moving to the 0.20), the first few worked, but were a bit stringy, but by the 3rd/4th one they were printing flawlessly.

I guess maybe when things got screwed up at 0.16 the nozzle had some funkiness, and with enough material it worked itself through? Still doesn't explain why that brand new nozzle screwed up in the first place at 0.16 (which suggests the flow rate issue you brought up), but I'll take the win.