A severe case of false economy

I haven't posted much recently, partly due to other priorities (fighting, and rearranging my work area), partly because in a bout of false economy I tried to use up the very last bit of a roll of filament and ended up running out before I noticed, and now the remainder is stuck. I've tried pushing it through with other filaments, with hex keys, and with tiny screwdrivers, with no luck. I tried taking photos through the filament hole to see if I could figure out the problem. I eventually took the entire hotend assembly off, so I could see the top of the E3D. There is the white filament, nicely stuck:

It's not easy to see the problem even here

Why is it so stuck? I presume that is due to the end of it getting either squished or ground or both in such a way that it doesn't quite fit in the narrow part of the the hotend. I had to take the cooling ribs off the hotend, then I could easily pull it through. Here's what the end looked like, clearly bent:

Once pulled out, the bend is clear

Putting it all together as always took a bit - it's a quite compact construction. I found a nice trick for the fan duct mount. It's always particularly tricky, since it mounts on two screws that don't have a lot of leeway - screw them out too far and they fall off their nut traps, and those are even harder to get back in place. Instead, screw them out sufficiently, then use a magnet to hold them out while putting in the duct. Easy peasy. Getting the filament pull idler also seems to be getting more and more difficult, not least because there isn't a proper backstop for the screws, so over time they dig further and further in - into the stepper motor, hopefully it can hold up to that.

Taken apart

Anyway, the printer now works as before: