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Topic: Best way to clean stock hot end?

Printed quite a bit, never cleaned it out.. Now it seems to much force is required to push the plastic through (yes its getting to the correct temp). It has slowly gotten worse, small slippage of the gear that rides on the plastic filament, greater slippage, and than fully plugged. The gear drives the stock filament out of the channel, resulting in a ton of wasted filament, that never even made it to the hot end. It's now done this repeatably a few times, and don't want to waste any more time or filament. Whats the best break down procedure, tool to clean the inside out.

Thanks,

Diyengineer

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Re: Best way to clean stock hot end?

Soak it in acetone or full disassembly and cleaning.  Neither ended up working that great for me.  The best solution is to replace it with an all metal hot end such as the E3d.

Printit Industries Model 8.10 fully enclosed CoreXY, Chamber heat
3-SD3's & a Workbench all fully enclosed, RH-Slic3r Win7pro, E3D V6, Volcano & Cyclops Hot End
SSR/500W AC Heated Glass Bed, Linear bearings on SS rods. Direct Drive Y-axis, BulldogXL
Thanks to all for your contributions

3 (edited by n2ri 2016-07-13 14:22:34)

Re: Best way to clean stock hot end?

mine was like this and seemed to get partial clog from something in a roll of filament. I have bought some .2mm nickel silver rod at hobby shop and slid it up intohot nozzle with extruder wheel loose and short peice of filament and pulled slow until rod came out top of extruder with filament removing all melted filament and debree repeated a few times and think I got clog out but very hard even under high magnification to see what foreign object/s where stuck in it just not magnetic and maybe not metal just wouldnt melt and pass through nozzle with ABS. havnt printed much since so not sure if worked 100%. next time I will replace hot end like Wardjr says. I have put most 3D printing work on back burner lately due to all the recent agrivation with it and scanner I fought with.

PS the rod will not be reusable so its trash after each use. 6 12" long sticks come in tube for about $6

Solidoodle 2 with Deluxe kit cover & glass bed with heater. and 2nd board SD2 used not 3rd and alum platform not installed yet still wood. also need cooling fan installed to board. use Repetier Host couple vers. Slic3r also have all free ware STL programs

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Re: Best way to clean stock hot end?

wardjr wrote:

Soak it in acetone or full disassembly and cleaning.  Neither ended up working that great for me.  The best solution is to replace it with an all metal hot end such as the E3d.


Cleaned it really well after soaking it. It was fully clogged. Not bad for running so much ABS through it. I don't think It will last for round 2 of cleaning as the plexi glass holder pretty much fell apart. Need to print the new parts for the new extruder. I picked up a solidoodle 2 pro for cheap so that I can have a backup to print parts while overhauling the 3.