Ender 3 V2 - extruder motor running hot

[PjLLL]

My extruder motor is running hot enough to swell the filament running through the extruder and jamming it. Basically it heats up the drive gear and the filament gets stuck.

Does anyone know if there any indirect drive systems where the filament is driven by a gear that isn't attached directly to the stepper shaft? That would be my favourite option.

I'm expecting an all metal extruder today so that might act as a heat sink to reduce the temp.

I do run the printer in an enclosure and it can get quite warm in there, currently it's a toasty 35C while printing. Good for the print but probably not for everything else. The enclosure does have a fan that forces air out through a filter and onto the filament to pre warm and dry it but that never gets above 30C so not significant.

After cooling down and starting a new print, the stepper is at 50C, but so are the other two steppers, so it's not the motor.

Any other ideas or solutions out there?

[JObrien67]

When I converted to the aluminum two gear extruder, I ran across this issue. The spring was too powerful and was crushing the filament as it passed into the bowden tube, causing it to change form from round to oval. This increased the friction in the bowden tube, stressing the extruder stepper motor and causing it to heat up, which transferred to the aluminum dual drive. This softened the filament in the drive, causing it to lose even more form, creating friction in the tube and straining the stepper in a self-perpetuating cycle. No print lasted more than a couple of hours before the filament became entangled in the extruder and I was forced to print in the air. The solution was to remove the stronger yellow spring and replace it with the factory extruder's weaker bare metal spring. It's not powerful enough to twist the filament, therefore the issue is resolved. If you're using the stock extruder, the source of friction might be somewhere in the filament flow chain.

[PjLLL]

Thanks. On further examination, I think there was a kink in the filament that caused the initial stoppage, the filament got scrubbed by the gear and then everything heated up.

I did try a dual gear extruder, changed the spring as it was too strong and then dumped it as I couldn't fit the manual feed wheel, which it turned out, I used a lot. Turns out the original works fine and at the price of an Ender 3 V2, why would you want to spend around £80 on a better extruder?

I now have a slightly better set up where I printed a plate to move the extruder away from the Z axis screw giving smoother curves on the filament and bowden cable runs, not by much but enough to make a small difference. Haven't seen the problem since. (See https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5266463)