TAZ5 clogging. Leads to more issues.

Alright, so after about a 2 week wait I got my extruder tool head back from aleph. I made a few successful prints, and let another print go while I was going to sleep. I woke up and it said it was complete, but it was only about half way finished. After hours upon hours of trying to get the clog out with cold pulls, small wrenches, and any other way I could think of, I found a thread in which the user had heated up the hot end, and then used an 18mm wrench to hold the hot end, and a 8mm wrench to get the nozzle off. I attempted to do this, and what do you know, the nozzle stripped. There’s very little threading left on the nozzle.

Now I was wondering, I have a 3mm nozzle and a 1.75mm nozzle from reprapdiscount. Will the 3 mm nozzle fit the lulzbot hexagon hotend? If so, does anyone have any tips on how to get the rest of the nozzle out of the hot end? I’m fairly technically inclined, I’m a mechanic for a living, and have been programming/making/hacking since the age of 11.

So please, any tips on how to fix this. I ordered extra nozzles from makerspace too in case they will fit this hot end. When my taz works its a beautiful thing. I have an art show that I was going to bring it to and show off, but that is in early June. Please help :frowning:

Unless you are printing with really crappy fillament, it is very rare for the nozzle to actually physically clog. If it ever does, the best way to unclog it is to just pull the fillament out of it from the top side when it is warm enough to move, but not hot enough to flow. That usually gets any foreign objects.

The fillament probably stopped extruding due to nozzle backpressure. That usually happens because A. the part you are printing partially lifted and pressed up against the nozzle end for too long and caused an effective blockage, B. You might have the fillament diameter set wrong in slic3r and it was overextruding, or C. the idler arm tension screws might not be tight enough, or might be too tight.

The nozzles you have “should” fit in theory. The AO variant hotend has a longer heater block, but the nozzle threading itself is likely the same.

As far as getting the remaining threads out, thats not going to be an easy process. The reason the nozzle stripped is that plastic leakage tends to act like glue. If you don’t heat the nozzle up prior to attempting to remove it, the glue doesn’t melt. You can try removing it with Acetone if this is ABS, but even then you are going to need something like a small dental pick to get the threads out, or possibly something like a Tap. Might be worth your time to just buy one of these and swap it in. http://www.amazon.com/RepRapDiscount-Hexagon-Hotend-Heater-Cartridge/dp/B00W4AIFBK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1432580778&sr=8-2&keywords=hexagon+hotend+ao

Thanks for the response. I haven’t had any issue with this filament until now. I think the brand is eSun. Decent packaging, caliper shows consistency. I did heat up the hot end before removing the nozzle. In fact, like you said, it had filament around it. At first I was amazed at how little threading there was. Then I realized that it wasn’t a silicon solution or anything around the nozzle, it was just extra abs plastic. I literally just got this back from aleph a week ago.

All of the slic3r settings were settings directly from the lulzbot site. It was the fast abs, no support. I thought I had the filament unclogged, but it began to spit out double lines of filament, which would lead to a mess of a print. I have two hexagon hotends from reprapdisc, but they are no longer listed on the site. To my knowledge, they are not the AO versions. They have a smaller heater block, and longer/skinnier heatsink. I can’t find the specs for the 2 reprap hexagon hotends I have either, and I’m wondering if there will be voltage problems if I switch them out. Any clues?

Should work if they are nozzles made for the reprapdiscount hexagon… doesn’t have to be the AO version. I think you’ll need to heat the heater block to 165C+. Put the 18mm wrench on the heater block, and 8mm (or 7mm) on the nozzle. Keep the 18mm steady, and turn the 8mm to the left… “Righty-tighty, Lefty-loosey”. :slight_smile: Keep the hotend temp above 165C while unscrewing the nozzle, if it drops below 160C the nozzle will seize up.

If part of the nozzle is stuck in the heater block… that’s going to be difficult to remove. Maybe an appropriate bit from a screw extraction kit or drill it out…

I had the hotend temp set to 220, and the nozzle still broke, leaving a good amount of threading inside of the heating unit. I’m not sure the threads are going to be able to be removed in order to put in one of the other reprap hexagon nozzles that I have :frowning: Not with my skill level anyways. I’m afraid I’ll just end up messing it up more and sending Aleph back a part that they could have recycled if I had not attempted to get the rest of the threads out.