Mosquito - Clearing a heat creep jam easily  

RE: Mosquito - Clearing a heat creep jam easily

I want to thank you!  I had a print that broke free from the bed, and of course I hit reset to quickly stop the print since I sent the file through Octoprint and would take too long to boot up my laptop.  The fan stoped for a minute and created a jam that I thought was hopeless.  After nearly giving up, I decided to do a quick search and came across your post.  Sure enough it worked.  Again, thank you!!

Mark

RE: Mosquito - Clearing a heat creep jam easily

Happy the tip helped someone out.

RE: Mosquito - Clearing a heat creep jam easily

I had the is fortune to have the filament break right at the bondtech  feed  gears and I think the plastic is heat creep/seized up in the copper and ptfe part of the hot end.  Should I just try to take apart the hotend to find out where it's lock up?  Hopefully I haven't trashed the nozzle/heatbreak or the copper cold zone tube.

RE: Mosquito - Clearing a heat creep jam easily

@tfsyth

Ive just had exactly the same problem. Filament snapped right at the gears. Any tips on how to fix it?do I have to dismantle the whole thing? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

RE: Mosquito - Clearing a heat creep jam easily

I made huge mistake.  I heated my Magnum up to PC Blend temperatures and unloaded the filament.  Mine is jammed all the way up now.  I will have to try to unload it.  I will try this, wish me luck.  

RE: Mosquito - Clearing a heat creep jam easily

You're a rockstar. Was trying to think how I can heat up the cold end without disassembling and your cardboard trick is just genius. Thank you!

RE: Mosquito - Clearing a heat creep jam easily

Yep, that trick is genius.

I switched to some relatively hard TPU after printing PETG and was too aggressive in feeding the TPU in during the switch (at a slightly lower temperature than I'd have the hot end for PETG). Some retraction and then re-insertion of the TPU and the result is a bunch up of TPU above/in the heat break that cooled. Totally jammed Mosquito.

This trick allowed me to pull the offending block out the top after a minute or two of heating with the fan blocked.  

I'll add one adjustment: I used a small sticky note to block the fan instead of a piece of cardboard. Worked perfectly. 

Thanks!

RE: Mosquito - Clearing a heat creep jam easily

I'm fed up with the mosquito. Heat creep at another level!  And today the thread has been damaged and no nozzle will screw in. One month ago I replaced the hotend! Not buying into anything you might have to say. I'm talking by experience with this shiz. no more bs thanks. 

Posted by: @bunny-science

Although the Mosquito hot end is known to reduce heat creep and jams associated with that issue, it is not completely immune to heat creep jams. If you ever let the Mosquito's heat sink cooling reduce while the hot end is still hot, you will get a very solidly stuck filament. Fortunately, the Mosquito can do a trick that you can't with a heat creep jammed E3D. A mosquito can melt itself free if you let it heat while blocking the hot end fan. 

Release idler tension so you can manually feel and move the filament.

Set nozzle temperature to your filament's usual printing temperature

Block airflow going into the hot end fan (the Noctua on left) with a piece of cardboard. This causes melt zone to go above the normal heat break region. Don't do this for more than maybe two or three minutes or you risk melting stuff that should not melt.

As the melt zone is being expanded by lack of airflow, gently try to move the filament. Eventually, the filament will move. 

Push filament downward with your fingers and extrude a few cm

Do a pull / push ramming motion to fully clear plastic from above the heat break transition zone

Finally pull filament out

Let airflow go back to normal. 

Your jam is cleared without taking apart the hot end, extruder or pulling PTFE tube like you would with an E3D.