Third print in with my printer and it clogged up so much no filament would come out at all. I now have raw fingers from turning a small drill bit to try remove as much of the plastic as possible. The good thing was that I didn't need to remove any tape to get the head apart. Just disconnected the two connectors and unscrewed it. I think I might have had a problem from the start, when I extruded filament before the clog it always curled up, now it goes straight down and it extrudes more evenly now.
Good to hear things are working better for you!
]]>heated up the hot end to 200c, stripped some wire from cat5, got it all gobbed up with ABS, then stripping it off with wire strippers, repeated. 8-10 times, until almost no ABS came out on the wire. I gently worked it around in the barrel.
ramped it up to 210, and fed the fil in. it curled for a second, then it started extruding straight as an arrow.
working like a charm running at 200c.
]]>This is a video of how my extrusion looks when running it away from the bed.
It didn't do this when I got it, and It was extruding slightly thicker based on what I've got left in my scrap bucket.
Is this a problem?
See how it doesn't drop straight down? It curves off to the left right after exiting the tip of the extruder?
]]>I read somewhere that some tainted filament from China had small bearings in it. The bearings were small enough to be encompassed in the filament but large enough to clog the extruder.
Let's hope not, this filament was from solidoodle
I had knee surgery today I doubt I'll be well enought to try to clear the clog for a day or two.
]]>If it's the actual tip that's blocked
according to the sales page, the tip is 0.35mm
that makes about a gauge 11 guitar string. (cuold blockages there be fixed with a sub melting heat (to soften the plastic slightly, (so around 100*c) and pushing plastic out with wire, (this temperature is obviously easily reached by dropping the part into a kettle.
I'm guessing that'd clear the very tip. the video seems to show cleaning the barrel. I've got two questions.
is burning really better than just dissolving the plastic in either acetone or petrol?
(for either the heater barrel or the actual tip.)
does the carbon residue left from that burning make the nozzle more likely to clog in future, or does a coating or carbon actually provide lubrication? (I'm guessing that it's going to lead to contamination of the plastic and sooner failures)
if there was such a vast clog, would if be better to use a drill to clear the clogs (adapter to have a very sharp tip, and blunt flutes to avoid damaging the brass, and use it as a hand held tool rather than a machine tool. (or if you have a lathe using that to properly centre and ordinary drill?) (only really useful for the barrel not the tip).
]]>Heat the extruder up until the plastic is able to come out. Shut off the power and unplug the connectors for the heater and thermistor, and pull off (without using bare fingers) the black insulating sleeves from the nozzle. Very carefully try to unscrew the nozzle, taking care not to crush the thermistor. You can cut the kapton and take the thermistor off now to make it easier, but you don't want to give the plastic too much time to freeze up again. You might need to do something to secure the black insulator barrel if it keeps spinning.
If the whole barrel unscrewed from the insulator, then that's fine, you can clean that out too. Carefully unscrew the heat core from the barrel, which should be easy. If you need to unscrew the nozzle from the barrel, don't hold the barrel directly with pliers because you could crush the threads. Run two nuts down the barrel and tighten them against each other. Hold the nuts with the pliers while you unscrew the nozzle using a socket wrench. You might need to warm it with the torch to soften the plastic inside.
Warm the nozzle and barrel enough to soften the plastic just enough that you can pull it out and it will stretch and pull more filament along with it. Then go outside and start torching the nozzle and barrel (separately) in earnest. When you start to see smoke and flames, you know the stuff is starting to burn out. That's why you are outside. Keep a small cup of alcohol handy and drop them in to cool off after they have been flaming a bit so you don't get the brass too hot.
Once the nozzle is cleaned out you can try shining a flashlight through it onto a piece of paper, as if you were viewing an eclipse. I'm not sure how useful it is, but you can see if the edge of the opening is clear. You might also see a couple lines that seem like a blockage, but are actually the filaments in the bulb.
Check out this video for a demonstration of the torching-
When you put everything back together, make sure the heater core is screwed down as finger tight as you can get it against the nozzle. When you tape the thermistor back on the nozzle, make sure it is covered completely with as little air surrounding it as possible.
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