Extruder Head encased itself in ABS overnight!

I am in a very tough spot… I was printing an ABS print that was going to take overnight to print. So I began printing and it seemed to go along all right at first. So I went to bed.

I put a NEW roll of ABS on from Gizmo Geeks, black 3mm.

When I came down in the morning I was shocked to see that the model had come off the bed and that the TAZ6 had continued to extrude overnight and somehow managed to FULLY ENCASE itself and the wires around it in ABS… It is almost a half inch thick… It followed the wires, encasing them as well.

This effectively shuts me down as I cannot heat up the extruder to the point where it can soften the exterior encasement of ABS. I have NO idea what to do in this situation.

How can I get this stuff removed? am I supposed to use acetone? If so it will take days to remove a half inch of ABS… I am completely bewildered. I dont even know how this could possibly even happen!

I wanted to attach the image I took but there is no upload.

There is an attachments tab next to the options tab.

In this case I’d say acetone is your only hope. Just remember all the other plastic pieces on your toolhead are ABS so you don’t want to get those soaked. I mean…what’s hte worst that oculd happen right? :slight_smile:

The ABS typically won’t stick to the metal… a heat gun might soften it up to the point where you could remove most of the filament. Might need a knife to cut

The wires are concerning… but its only the heater block and thermister wires that should be affected. Hopefully the ABS didn’t wrap around any of the wires and you could salvage. Ultimately the thermister and heater isn’t very expensive.

I am not sure you will be able to get it off the weave on the thermistor leads. The heat cartridge/sense wire are Teflon coated wires so that is possible to clear with a heat gun and care. But you should be able to at least clear the screw heads.

Here are images of this crazy issue… NEVER had this until I put on a roll of the Gizmo Geeks ABS…


IMG_7536.JPG

HA! That’s a lot better than some I have seen. That should be pretty easy to clean up with a heat gun after you get the shrouds and such off.