Hey there,Picked up a relatively shitty Prusa i3 kit from AliExpress (I know, I know…) a few weeks ago. It’s been working generally fine after spending almost the cost of the printer again in replacement parts, as well as printing replacement parts in general.One thing I’m stuck with is extruder skipping. Sometimes it is super constant, sometimes it is really intermittent.General info:Genuine E3D v6, all metal, BowdenExtruder is an unknown bowden extruder, it came with the printer. It looks like this. I noticed when it was retracting it kept pulling down the clip (pulling the tube rather than the filament) hence the elastic band.Surface is aluminium (unfortunately slightly bowed) with borosilicate glass on top, with 3M blue tape. It is as level as I can get.Bowden tube is as short as it can be while reaching the extremities of travel.Printing with rigid.ink PLAUsing Marlin firmwareThings I’ve tried:Releveling the build surface. Over, and over, and over. It obviously bangs a bit more if it’s too close but it seems “perfect” now and it still does it.Took apart the extruder and put it back together, no difference.Tightening and untightening the drive gear. Too loose and it stops gripping, too tight doesn’t seem to do too much (though begins chewing the filament heavily).Adjusting retraction. I’ve tried 2mm-4mm. 3mm and above seems to stop stringing — above 5mm is too risky according to E3D. Tried speeds from 30-50m/s, none of which seems to make a difference.Adjusting E steps. I’ve went from it extruding bang on 100mm to slowly reducing it in the hopes that something weird is going on, seems to help a little bit but feels “wrong” — requesting 100mm should output 100mm, right?Temperature. 180 C to 230 C. Can’t seem to print at 180 C at all without it banging hard. 210 C seems to be the sweet spot but it’s awkward due stringing.Layer height, and starting layer height. From 0.2mm to 0.3mm, with both decreased and increased starting layer height.Different slicers. Slic3r, Cura, Simplify3D, all the same deal.Is there anything else I should look at? Totally out of ideas for what else to try beyond entirely replacing the extruder.Oddly, my prints are mostly fine.Thanks! http://ift.tt/2chaCVK