Monday 25 January 2016

Unclogging failure

After last weekend's fiasco, I've decided to take my extruder apart, at least enough to see if there are any obvious signs of blockage or damage. I also ordered a better (hopefully) hobbed bolt from arcol.hu, will certainly take macros when it arrives.

Taking the extruder off was not as bad as I feared, I didn't even have to remove the fan shroud. Helped by the fact that I got a proper set of hex keys at Bauhaus, it was simple enough to unscrew the two main screws and the D-Sub connector (plus unplug the rerouted wires).

The first thing I noticed was how there was marks on the hot end, as if something had been flowing down the next of it:



Once I got the appropriate bit for unscrewing the nozzle (slot screws? Really?), there was ... nothing special to see. I put it together again and tried to extrude to no avail.


I got a small amount of progress through following nophead's instructions, to the point where I could extrude into thin air. I noticed that the extrusion went a bit sideways, and sure enough, as nophead warned, it clogged up again when trying a test cube. The pin I grabbed was not thin enough to get properly in and get the gunk out, so I'll have to get a thinner one, or some wire.

In the meanwhile, I design stuff. Last thing: A ring light holder and reflecting lens hood for my macro lens. OpenSCAD is quite handy for that kind of thing.

4 comments:

  1. Hmmmm... If you remove the nozzle and heat it up thoroughly, as in: hold it over a spirit or alcohol flame, you should be able to burn out any remainders of plastic that might have clogged it up. Also, if you have some over standing end of brake cable on your bike, you can cut off a bit and use one of the quite sturdy threads to poke free the nozzle hole...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm not sure how much heating the wires going into my nozzle can deal with. We might have some useful wire around, though.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete