Completely gunked extruder - Help!
I started a 3.5hr print as I left for work. I know I know, I shouldn’t have left it unattended. I’m kicking myself hard now. I had a great looking outline and two or three layers down when I left it.
Apparently, the print didn’t adhese to the plate as well as it seemed. When I got home, I found the printer happily reporting that the print was finished, all 3.5hrs of it, but no print on the bed. Instead, all of the filament was pushed up into the extruder for 3+ hours, somehow without any thermal anomaly errors or anything else.
Is this something that’s even worth trying to repair/replace, or did I just completely trash my printer? Are there any walkthroughs on rebuilding an extruder?
Search for 'blob of Doom' here to see how others have dealt with this - with care you can restore your printer to use although it's common to need a new fan shroud.
The usual cause is a dirty print sheet leading to poor adhesion - sometimes other first layer issues contribute.
Cheerio,