Hello, it appears I’ve hit a bit of a wall. I was processing a print and the ABS material behind the printer got stuck. I paused the print, unwound the mistake and hit resume. Then when I went to unload the ABS from the left extruder filament would not come out of the printer head. I had to snip the filament off and left about .25 inch sticking out of the print head. The problem now is that I can’t seem to remove the remaining ABS filament from the print head either by unloading it or by printing or by trying to use it as a guide to load more filament. Can anyone help? Greatly appreciated. I’ve attached a picture of the printhead .
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Aram perhaps i say funny things bur nevertheless. Is you want to extract filament out the extruder be sure that the extruder is at temperature!
if the filament is to short and the extruder gear can not extract you have to help with a plier to extract the last piece
succes
You will need to unscrew the two bolts that start at the bottom of the fan and end in the threaded bit of your stepper motor. *First be sure to disconnect your stepper wires so that you don’t accidentally damage the connection.* Once the bolts are loose, you can pull off the fan, spacers and heat sink straight out all together. *If you pull the carriage to the front of the bot you can place the fan assembly on the top there for safe keeping while still wired in.*
At this point you should be able to lift the stepper assembly straight up and off the filament. The spring tension bearing will still be tight against the filament and against the stepper gear, so holding down the carriage and lifting the assembly with some force may be needed.
Once you have all this off, you will see the filament sticking out of the down tube. Clip the filament as flush to the nut/tube as you can leaving a flat surface for the next bit of filament to contact and push through.
Reassemble and heat up for filament change procedure. Load like normal.
There are a bunch of youtube vids on this and I suggest you pick one to play while you’re doing all this.
If there is a curveball thrown at you, I’ll try and respond here.
Hope this is helpful.
Same thing happened to me when I first got my machine and some cheap abs. Raise your preheat temp to 245 and pull it out… You may need to remove the top plate so you have more filament to grab on to. If that does not work… Preheat and unscrew the nozzle and PTFE tube… Use a wrench on the block to prevent the set screw from tearing up the stainless tube. If your not careful, you will have to remove the steppers and tighten that setscrew back up.
Gloves are recommended when removing a heated nozzle. If using a glass plate… remove it before working on extruder. Falling tools and or steppers are hard on glass. 
I try to not use the unload or load feature. Ignore that and just use your hands to pull the filament out and push new rod in… Once the plastic is flowing manually, use the stepper to clear out the other color. When the rod is pulled out and hot, it will leave a little blob on the end… If you don’t cut that blob off, it will get stuck in the PTFE tube before it gets a chance to heat up. I suspect that your PTFE tube is crushed.
I haven’t had a jam since I starting using a filament cutter. Palmer's Pocket Razor Blade Tube Filament Cutter Plus Box Opener And Wire Stripper Pill Splitter Slicer by Paintballmagic - Thingiverse I designed it to alleviate the issues you describe.
Welcome to Troubleshooting 101, congratulations Aram on achieving a milestone! This is a pretty simple fix. Using needle nosed pliers, pre-heat the extruder to 230, depress the feed lever on the side of the block and pull the filament out slowly with the pliers. Two things could happen: 1) the filament will come out as a strand with a tapered end to it, or 2) it’ll break again. In scenario 1) go ahead and reload new filament, allowing the system to flush out the old material. In scenario 2) you’ll have to disassemble the extruder to see what’s up. It’s probable that the ABS got worn at the pinch rollers inside the extruder. Other possibilities are the PTFE tubing is clogged or deformed or that the nozzle is clogged. Here’s a diagram for the extruder assembly so you know the basics: http://rigidtalk.com/wiki/index.php?title=File:ExtruderAssembly.jpeg Here’s a linke to a forum in case you have more questions: Redirecting to Google Groups
jasonk
6
You have to heat up the extruder and unscrew the nozzle. You may also have to unscrew the fan and tensioner from the front of the extruder. Your machine came with a bag of Allen wrenches you can use to do this. Good luck!
eckerj
7
I agree with BarnStormStudio about the needle-nosed pliers. If you’ve preheated the extruder (at least 230), and the filament still seems stuck, try pushing it down until a little bit of filament comes out the hot-end. At that point, you should be able to pull it up and out with the pliers.
If you are unable to push the filament down, chances are you need to clean out your nozzle.
Hey, if it’s stuck and not moving up or down at the right temp I’ve had this before also. Best method with abs sometimes can also be to just soak the nozzle in Acetone over night and then just push it through once done. Or heat up the ptfe tube with heat gun. It’s hard to remove the wiring on FlashForge though so be careful with the acetone method
Thank you everyone fore the great advice. After spending my entire Saturday morning taking the printer head apart I was finally able to locate the source of the issue. The left extruder had a pretty bad clog. I was able to disassemble the printer head and remove the nozzle to push the clogged filament through the tube.
I must say that I feel like I had to go through all that to full be initiated into the 3D printing community. I was pretty aprehensive about taking the printer head apart myself, but after careful research and watching some youtube videos, I took the thing apart and put it back together. I was even able to print a beautiful topo model after.
Thanks again for all your support.
Cheers!
