Trying to reduce the amount of constant maintenance the my ender 3 printers require and one of the biggest issues i'm having is a buildup of sticky residue inside the ptfe tube inside the hotend/ptfe tube. It's not leaking as i visually inspect before cleaning and i can see where the tube connects and there's a clear line and no visible signs of leakage. Usually some rubbing alcohol and a scrub brush will fix the issue for about 100hours of print time before needing to clean it again.

I'm wondering if i might need to reduce the flow rate on the printers or maybe i'm missing something. Running this with a direct drive extruder so the ptfe tube is pretty short and since the residue is building up inside the heater and nozzle too i don't think that's the issue.

Things i have tried:

• less heat printing at 200 instead of 205 - marginal / no difference
• printing speed turned down to 20mm/s - it takes longer for the buildup to become an issue but it also takes as long for the prints to complete
• lowered retraction distance i thought the high retraction distance might be causing issues, while it made it better now i have stringing to deal with

EDIT: Added requested Photos -> https://imgur.com/a/XPKGI7D