Questions about effects of a tangle event
When I came home today, I came home to the printhead trying to print in thin air but nothing was coming out of the nozzle. At that point I realized that the filament had tangled and locked off and would not pull off the real. It was so tight it looks like the filament pulled the extruder away from the print center. In any event I hit the cancel button as fast as I could but who knows how long it had been there. I cut the filament and try to unload, but I just got a grinding sound, assuming that was because the filament was stuck in the PTFE tube And so the Bondtech gears were just running over the mangled filament.
So anyway to make a long story short I’m gonna need to rebuild the extruder because I try to extract the stuck filament and used a hairdryer, but because I’m an idiot I melted a bunch of the PETG printed parts so I would rather just do a rebuild. It’s probably overkill but I bought a whole new hot end assembly and some spare parts so I could try to figure out what makes the hot end tick.
so now my question is this. Do I need to worry about the Bontech gears being stripped? It seems like they are ok with a bunch of silver filament dust. How about the motor? It made some aweful sounds but I hope that was just the chewing of the filament not the motor. It seems like the shaft turns ok no resistance or noise. Is there anyway to test these items to see if they are ok?
RE: Questions about effects of a tangle event
Ouch. There was hope until the PETG melted. Next time this happens, try opening the extruder door and poking a wrench or 1.5mm rod from above. If that fails, remove the nozzle and poke from below. You should be able to grab the filament out using tweezers or needle-nose pliers.
Bondtech gears should be fine. Watch out for the tiny bearings and make sure the axle sits in the extruder door properly. Just follow the printer kit assembly guide for the extruder and you should be OK.
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He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two dimensional thinking. -- Spock in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
RE: Questions about effects of a tangle event
Those extruder gears are STRONG. As I said in another thread I once checked on a print to find the filament wrapped around the spool rack pipe and the one front foot of the printer actually pulled about 1/4 inch off the surface. It was still actually printing. I don't know what would have happened if I had not caught it.
Coincidentally, this was PETg.
I really don't know what we can do except to check the thing regularly when a long print is running. When starting an overnight print I always check to be sure that the filament is feeding smoothly from the spool to the extruder.