Hi guys, after my very first print (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maNcTcc2gpU), I have problems with the hotend. After the print was finished, I retracted the filament 30mm, so that is wont stay in the hot side. Now it is stuck in the cool side. I tried to pull really hard, with no effect. When I remove the nozzle, there is no filament there (so the retract worked). Did the partly melted material glue itself to the heat-break? Any ideas how to solve this? (heat up the cool end?) Any ideas how to prevent this in the future? Is retracting after the print not a good thing to do? Thank you for you help! Cheers Jean
It probably is PLA which has a tendency to swell enough to make if get stuck like that. Heating the cool side with a hot air gun will heat it enough to get the filament out but you can do damage to the plastic parts. It may be better to cut the filament off a few inches before the hot end then remove the hotend then heat it gently while pulling on the filament. As you have seen, it is not a good idea to retract the filament that far out unless you are changing the filament. Retraction that leaves the filament still partly in the hotend is never a good idea. Best of luck getting that out without damaging surrounding plastic.
Just experienced such a jam in the heatsink after testing out Cura. For some reason I didn't notice that Cura never turned the fan on until the extruder started grinding up the filament. Fixed it by dismantling the hotend completely, clamping the heatsink in a vice and then carefully heating it with the hot air gun on my soldering station until the filament became soft enough to simply pull out from both ends. Quite an ordeal (Yeah, I know what the manual says - "fans hould be connected to an always on output"