Broken Filament in Extruder – Please Advise  

Re: Broken Filament in Extruder – Please Advise

I ended up using the socket version for the nozzle + fixed wrench for the block. That gave me enough space for the tools. It is still quite cramped place, and those wires are so thin and so close... and despite the heating you still need some force initially to get the nozzle moving.

After that it was easy to clean the nozzle. Did this so that I clipped the extra off after I saw the problem, screwed the nozzle just halfway back in, heated it, and pushed it totally clear of all filament with the needle.

Then heated up (after removing the nozzle again) the thing up and poked 1.5mm hex trough to get the piece that was deep inside the tube.

Was bit hesitant to load new filament as it didn't came through 1st time, like oozing... thought that will I not feed it more, instead just went on printing after z-calibtation. Sure enough, some lenght was missing from the cleanup pre-print line, but print / feed itself was fine from the start of the perimeter.

So everything was fine, but today I got extruder fan error... has been working fine until this point. I did upgrade the drivers and softs, but going back to previous version of firmware did nothing, so I guess I need to check the wires... bummer. Been working six months flawlessly and now I got this and that... oh well.

Re: Broken Filament in Extruder – Please Advise

...And the tools...

Re: Broken Filament in Extruder – Please Advise

So everything was fine, but today I got extruder fan error... has been working fine until this point. I did upgrade the drivers and softs, but going back to previous version of firmware did nothing, so I guess I need to check the wires... bummer. Been working six months flawlessly and now I got this and that... oh well.

Solved... I had flashed 2.5 firmware... :ugeek: installed MK2S and no more "extruder fan error". When rolled back to previous version I did that also to 2.5...

Updating drivers should be easy, but it's not when you got Mk2IIturboGen3.2rev2 names 😀 Should have named these Prusa 1, 2, 3 and so on?

Re: Broken Filament in Extruder – Please Advise

Hi Mike. The mk2.5 uses a noctua fan with a tacho output
Where as the mk2 does not
And needs to be manually confirmed
Regards Joan

Re: Broken Filament in Extruder – Please Advise

Yeah, that's why it failed and gave the error... couldn't obviously get the feedback firmware wanted because hardware didn't had that 🙂 Printer seemed to work otherwise, so took me a day to figure out that I had installed wrong firmware update for this model.

Re: Broken Filament in Extruder – Please Advise

With the extruder door open, you should have a clear path from the top of the extruder to the PTFE tube.

You don't think the drive gear would interfere with the path of a straight rod from the top down the PTFE tube??
Just a quick follow-up. I had a mid-PTFE jam today and was prepared. After swapping between NGEN and PLA today, I had the usual tell-tale signs of a jam. I inserted cleaning filament, only to have it start twisting around the extruders. I wasn't able to push filament down, nor did removing the nozzle help. I managed to cut most of the errant cleaning filament away, open the extruder doors, pre-heat to 250C.

Based on our discussion in this thread, I'd prepared a length of soft solid-core copper wire of roughly 1.6mm diameter by smoothing the ends with a file.

My 1st thought was to repeat my previous method of poking up through the nozzle, but I was worried about molten material gumming up the exturder. I was able to insert it through the top without issue:

It dropped straight past the extruder gear into the PTFE tube without any coaxing or pressure, stopping at the blockage:

A bit of gentle downward pressure was enough to unplug things:

I'm not sure where the black material on top came from, as I'd removed the black NGEN earlier and printed a bit with the yellow PLA before trying the translucent cleaning filament. The black was up higher in the PTFE tube, so I can only assume a bit had broken off somewhere and managed to gum things up.

I got lucky and no physical damage occurred. The whole process took 5 minutes and I've learned a new trick.

RE: Broken Filament in Extruder – Please Advise

@joantabb

Ayyy the "pushing the hex wrench into the hot end from the bottom" technique totally worked for me!

I was reeeeally not looking forward to disassembling my extruder, so many many thanks!