Hi,
I’m very new to 3D printing, I’ve only had my Mini for about 3 weeks - but I love it!
That being said, the last print I was doing - I checked on it about an hour in and the nozzle was around 2mm above the print surface and clearly not extruding material. I stopped the print, checked and the head is blocked. I have tried cleaning it and it doesn’t seem to work and it appears totally blocked.
I don’t know what to do next… can anyone help?
Thank you
Remove the filament from the extruder completely clean the cog gear. Try heating up the extruder to about 240 and push the filament into the extruder to force out the blockage. It may push out the blockage. If it does make sure the cog gear that feeds the filament into the hot end is clean and no build up of filament in the teeth. See if that helps.
Try a cold pull to clear the nozzle clog. Heat the hotend to print temp for the filament. Let hotend cool, open the idler and pull the filament out. The idea is the filament will trap any debris in the nozzle and pull it out.
What type of filament? For ABS, heat to 240 then pull out at ~160C. I’m not sure for PLA.
I had a really bad filament jam with black ABS a while back. Black, for some reason, is always more difficult to get off the bed. anyway, I ended up having to completely disassemble the hot end, and what I found was a thick wafer of filament jammed into the top of the hotend, right above where the hexagon heatsink is. After removing that disk, my printer worked without a hitch!
I’m trying to reassemble the hot-end to clean up the inside too. I wonder how you clean up the blue seal on the hot-end thread and what did you used to seal it after reassemble? Thanks!
Lulzbot uses “Resbond 907TS Blue thread sealant”:
https://ohai-kit.alephobjects.com/project/cf3b0638-1e1e-4bff-a00e-c3308d914c68/
As far as price goes, I saw one website asking $55 for a 4oz bottle – an ebay seller looking for $25 (including shipping).