Cleaning PTFE tube jam.

Discussion in 'E3D-v6 and Lite6' started by The Dark Shadow, Nov 25, 2014.

  1. The Dark Shadow

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    So I finished building my first 3D printer, a Prusa i3 kit, I bought an E3D V6 1.75mm hotend for it right of the bat as I heard great things about it.

    I took my time to calibrate everything, I PID autotuned both the hotend and the heated bed, after a few test extrusions (in mid-air) that gave positive results I tried printing the usual test cube.

    Long story short after a bunch of failed attempts (bed adhesion problems I'm using ABS by the way) I didn't notice that the fan did not turn on automatically at the start of the print (not sure if it's normal, I will check if M106 is in the Gcode start or add it if it isn't).

    I since turned off everything thinking I clogged the nozzle, then once everything cooled off I opened the guidler and noticed that the filament was bunched up before the PTFE tube.

    I tried searching but couldn't find anything other than the causes, which I think I understand now (the fan should've been on and the filament melted before above where it was supposed to) but no solution on how to clean the tube, hopefully it wasn't right under my nose, if it was sorry about that.

    Basically I tried pulling the filament out from the top but it's stuck in there, I didn't want to pull too hard and risk breaking something, what would be the best way to go about this? Should I just disassemble the hotend from the extruder or can I take it out by perhaps heating up the hotend and pulling the filament?

    I used both Pronterface and Cura, hotend set at 230 and 240 then 260 after I thought I clogged the nozzle to see it if would start coming out again and it did albeit slowly.

    Thanks for the help, at least I managed to print a few spaghetti and a bit of a square, I will call this first attempt a success. :p
     
  2. sungod3k

    sungod3k Active Member

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    Id say heat it up and pull slowly.

    The bunching up happened to my all the time when the filament had to much unguided space after coming out behind the drive gear.
     
  3. The Dark Shadow

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    It seems like it was the fan being off that caused problems, I since them taken apart the hotend and the filament was stuck in the heat break and the short PTFE tube, I swapped the tube with a fresh one and soaked the nozzle and heat break in acetone for a couple of days (could've probably done it faster).

    I sometimes took them out of the acetone and removed the outermost layers of ABS so that the acetone could get in deeper.

    Once cleaned up I washed off the acetone, reassembled the hotend, did a test extrusion to calibrate the extruder steps per mm (as seen in this great guide by Thomas Sanladerer) added a brim to the cube, 240c on the hotend, 100c on the bed with some hairspray (no tape just a 20x20cm mirror) and it printed pretty much flawless, especially since this was my first proper print ever, it actually came out dare I say better than the printed parts of my i3 kit a part from the first couple of layers, really happy now.
     

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