UM3E Feeder Problem

[dmboston 2]

Hey folks! I realize this is something of a common problem, I'm hoping I've got a little twist on it. So sometime in the last couple weeks I noticed our printer (a UM3E) started randomly failing prints by stopping extruding. I looked at the filament and found a nice little divot ground into it from the drive gear. Instantly thought "oh, my feeder tension must be off," so I started playing with it, but never fixed the problem. So I started looking at other things: cleaned the hot end who knows how many times, switched out the bowden tubes, cleaned the feeder assembly, etc. Checked everything on the second extruder, which worked just fine. Finally noticed that there was a channel worn in the side of the outlet on the feeder housing:

Extruder 1

 

And for comparison:

Extruder 2

 

Don't know if this might be the problem. I'm thinking the filament is having a problem staying centered on the drive gear and it's catching on either the housing or the bowden tube, which gets it hung up long enough to chew the divot in the filament. Anyways, I'm at something of my wits' end trying to diagnose this, definitely spent the better part of a week trying different things. Would love to hear if someone's had a similar problem, how they fixed it, or anything else I might try to solve the problem. Have people printed a new housing? Made modifications to the UM3 feeder? Thanks!

[dmboston 2]

Sorry, found this thread after posting:

Seems to be the same issue.