Clogged Extruder
Yesterday I had some old, cheap, PLA filament break right at the entrance to the extruder tube.
On the MK3 and my other printers I would heat up the extruder and use a 1.75mm metal tool that I have to manually push the filament through. However, on the MK4 the filament drive gear cannot be moved and the tool can't curve around the drive gear. Instead of taking the extruder planetary drive gear apart I took a different approach.
I heated up the extruder to 275 degrees C and then using some strong PETG filament and the manual motion control, I took a small needle nose pliers and a few millimeters above the extruder housing pushed as hard as I could.
With the extruder drive gears clicking as they slipped on the filament it took a while and a lot of pressure but I was finally able to push the bad filament out. It took a lot of patience and cutting and using fresh PETG filament.
Yes I could have used ABS or ASA but I had a reel of PETG already mounted on the printer.
It would be nice if there was some way to move the filament drive gear out of the way so that a 1.75mm round metal rod would be able to work.