I managed to get one of my 0.4 mm nozzles clogged this weekend. Luckily I have a replacement at hand, but does any of you have experience with these tools ?
I haven't used specific nozzle cleaning tools, but I use hypodermic needles for the same purpose. They are widely available in a range of different sizes to suit different nozzles and dirt cheap. I mostly use 30 gauge (0.3mm) but a 32 gauge would even do a 0.25mm nozzle.
To clean the nozzles all I do it put them in some acetone for a bit. Take them out and torch them a little. The filament just pulls out and its clean.
Rob, yes it does. I have done it a couple of times already with mine. Actually have a couple of nozzles so I can take the clogged one off, put a new one in and continue printing. I use a lot of pla and it has worked every time. Thankfully lol.
Rob, With filament still in place but the clamp released, I just heat the nozzle to around 170 and push a fine wire up then push the filament in then pull it out quickly. I then cut the filament back to a clean position and push it back into the hotend for a couple of seconds then remove it again before removing the wire; this means the new filament picks up any garbage before it melts fully and brings it out when you pull it out. Repeat the process until you can feed filament through the extruder; this sorts out most of my jams. It would be interesting to know if the cooling effect of the work piece fan is causing more heat to be pumped into the heated block such that it transfers into the heat break more than intended, as any extra heat travelling up there can be instrumental in jams, because it softens the filament before it reaches the melt zone; this means that feed pressure causes the filament to expand and stick in the tube. For PLA this is more of a problem as the product is very "sticky" when warm. You wouldn't believe that when the work piece departs from the bed during a print!!! Before starting a print with PLA already loaded from a previous one I always extrude a good 25mm (1") of filament to get the expanded stuff out of the extruder. Perhaps @Greg Holloway or @Sanjay could comment? The caveat here is that this is for my non-E3D hot end but others with them also use this technique.
