I'm in a jam!!

I just received my Lulzbot Taz 5 everything assembled and level. However, I was never able to complete a print, outside of the bed calibration print. Any time I tried a print, the gear would eat through the filament. I tried various slicers and profiles, temperatures, and hobbed bolt tensions, but the end result was always the same.

I was content to tinker and attempt to find the solution myself, until this caused a length of filament to break beneath the gear, in an area, where I can’t even get needle nose pliers on the filament. Basically I have a length of filament that I can’t extrude and I probably a clogged nozzle at this point.

http://imgur.com/NBzLAOU

Check that you have the mini blower for the hotend heat sink connected to the right connector.

The heatsink fan runs on 5v, the other fan is 24V (I believe). They have the same connector, unfortunately… but there is a dot to signify which two connectors plug together.

If its plugged in wrong, chances are the little fan is bad from too high a voltage.

Contact lulzbot support they’ll take care of you.

I had a piece of hips do that to me yesterday. I took the extruder apart today and grabbed it from the bottom with the needle nose.

Printing in PLA?

I’ve had a similar problem before when I ran out of filament. I probably could have used pliers but I just used the next roll of filament to push that bit through to extrude it out.

This particular filament was ABS. The mini blower doesn’t seem to come on when I turn on the machine and I tried to bring the extruder up to temp and guide the filament through with one of the supplied hex wrenches, but it didn’t budge. I didn’t want to put too much force on it and make matters worse. It’s in there for good it seems. I’ve reached out the lulzbot support team, so I am sure it will all get resolved one way or another.

That mini blower fan is supposed to be running all the time when the printer is powered on. Contacting support is the way to go if yours does not turn on and stay on.

Just wanted to give a shout out to the Lulzbot customer support team. They were very responsive over the weekend and got me back up and printing with a new hot end yesterday. You guys are awesome!