Guide to printing PLA on a Solidoodle (Page 2 of 3)

It looks like melted plastic was pulled up from the hot end then solidified. That may be difficult to remove without disassembling the acrylic jigsaw.

Hello,

I have the same problem except that I have enough left of filament to grab it with tweezers. But, I cannot pull it out or even push it in...

I just go my solidoodle 2 weeks ago so I am really not comfortable with it yet.... I was printing PLA @ 180°C.

Help please !!

Even then, impossible to pull it out. and I tried quit hard....

if a disassemble, will I be able to unclog it or I will need a new hot end?

Hunter Green - I note over in the Repetier-Host thread you mentioned you had some Acks etc enabled in Repetier-Host.

You should try disabling everything but the default - having it display the OK and Conf messages actually slows comms down with the driver board. Its complicated, but you are much better off disabling this function to preserve CPU cycles for actually processing Print data rather than displaying "OK" ... Ditto you should disable filament path drawing etc because it uses 3D code that can be quite CPU Intensive and often can be the cause of 'hiccups' in printing...

Not saying its the only issue - but its a thought that occured to me might be worth at least trying with switched off to give the maximum available CPU to the job of printing.... (and thus small defects that can appear in prints...)

Was just checking based on

Didn't say you did,  was just sharing a thought and expanding the reasoning for that thought.... *shrug*

It's ok, I misunderstand myself on a regular basis

Best of luck with the guitar string - thankfully not something I've had to resort to so far with my hotends (but maybe because I 'stole' some E-String from my Muso mate (Sidecutters and a momentary distraction ) and Murphys Law states due to my adherence to the 7-P's (Prior Planning and Preperation Prevents P(*s Poor Performance) that I will not get clogs... similar to religiously carrying wet weather gear on your bike will prevent any chance of rain occuring )

I'm not sure what people mean when they say 'the jigsaw'.  I'm talking about removing the hot-end, cleaning it out while I can get to it from both ends (and pushing up on the cold filament jam above the PEEK while it's off), then putting it back on, as described in this video:
http://vimeo.com/55528973

Is that what you mean by "putting the jigsaw back on"?  (Somewhere, I bet there's a diagram that shows which parts y'all are talking about when you use these terms, but I haven't found it.  I did accidentally stumble upon one that told me what the PEEK is, and I'm pretty sure that other things referring to a "peak" have meant that, which has caused a fair bit of confusion for me before, since it's nothing like a peak of anything.)

Heating up the hot-end now to see if the guitar string works for breaking up the clog in the hot-end like John insisted it would.

Hunter,
Is it at temp?  You won't be able to punch through cold plastic.  A guitar string should be able to move pretty far into the nozzle provided it's smaller than the nozzle diameter.

As for the jigsaw, that's the acrylic extruder pieces that attach to the stepper motor to move your filament into the hot-end.  It's called a jigsaw because it's made up of about 8 pieces of acrylic that are kind of difficult to put back together once you've got it apart.  This is why most people are told to print up the Mk4 extruder by lawsy as one of their first print.  If your jigsaw breaks when you try to clean out a clog by removing the hot end, you're pretty much screwed unless you have an alternative. 

If you need someone to print you one, I have a spare set sitting around.  As I was helped in my hour of need, so shall I help...

Yes, at 200, and the string doesn't even start to go in, not even a tenth of a millimeter.  Either the clog is far too solid, or the needle tip did break off and is blocking the tip, or both.  (Even the needle wasn't getting in more than a millimeter or less, and never got more than a couple of drops of PLA loose.)

I did print the lawsy MK4 set, and I have it set aside.  Of course, I can't be totally sure everything in the print came out perfect, but it is stashed away.  I just found the directions (such as they are) far more baffling than the hot end removal video was (not that much, really), but maybe it's one of those things that makes perfect sense when you're in it and actually doing it.

I'm emailing support to ask what they suggest considering the tip is completely impassable now.  I have already probably made a bad situation worse and I don't want to do anything else that might have the same effect.

Interesting article, with tips I mostly concur with:

https://www.matterhackers.com/articles/ … ing-in-pla

Hello, I have the same issue as Hunter Green.

A got a guitar string 0.3mm thick.

I can get it in the nozzle quite deep (3,5 cm) until it get stuck. i could not get any plastic out.
With 3,5cm into the nozzle, I'm getting pretty close to the filament entrance.

So what should I think of that? I have a jam at the entrance? or melted plastic up there?

How should I fix that?