Hi guys.
I had a clog in the nozzle in my wanhao i3. So I then wanted to remove the PLA filament. I heated up the hhotend and feeded backwards with the stepper, but it couldn’t drag it out all the way out so I then tried hand force, and the filament snapped.
I now have a small piece of filament in my hotend, I can’t remove. I tried different temperatures from 210 to 235 degress, but I couldn’t remove it with hand force.
Anyone have a good advise to remove the filament?
2 Likes
Enza3D
2
@jorgensen20044,
As long as it’s PLA, if you remove all the electronics from the hotend (which it looks like you have), you can throw it in an oven and burn out the clog. Crank your oven up to 300degC and just leave the hotend in there until the plastic all burns out. Your house will smell like burnt sugar for awhile but it will remove the clog.
You can also take a blowtorch to it.
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Okay thanks. I think the ptfe coupler has a melding point at 320 degrees celsius so I think I have to be careful with the 300 degrees.
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Hi,
I just had this happen, what I would do is reassemble the thermaster and heater to it and mount it back where it came from with the two screws on the bottom. Reheat it and then attempt to carefully yank the filament out from above. If the filament breaks then find a small drill bit and push it in from the top until you start to see the filament extrude. If all this fails, since the extruder is at melting temp now, you should be able to unscrew the tip and pull the tube out.
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BTW, the blowtorch and oven are bad advice and could end with you getting badly burned.
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if you don’t want a super clean just buy a pack of surgical needles you will need 0.4., heat up the extruder only to 260 use the needle in a spriral action at firstwipe, make sure no grease on needle, after 2 clears with spiral motion slide full legth of needle in and out. its likely that your blockage is extending into the cooling block, if it is its a full strip down wash with acetone I’m afraid, take the opertuinity to re wrap your hot block while you can get at it. 
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sorry only just saw your photos, if you have the bock totally off then soak in an acetone bath for about 1 hour, try to remove the ptfe carrier although to me that’s what looks like its burned. if you use a tap ti grind the ptfe carrier mostly out then maybe the rest will heat out. don’t try heat with the ptfe carrier in it will only clog more. Or buy a micro swiss hot end and whiszz the old liners away.
Wasatch
8
All metal hot end? If so, insert a tiny drill or piece of wire that’s smaller than your nozzle size while heated and see if it will pull then.
Probably crystallized PLA stuck.
If not all metal hot end, the Teflon tube might be bad. Heat up and take apart to clean out
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Please read comments already before adding your own you may just be reiterating old advice.
Perry_1
10
Clip the filament as close to the entry hole as possible.
Hook your extruder back up.
Bring it up to temperature.
Hold the heater block with pliers. (I use pliers with kapton tape wrapped around the pliers) You dont want the heater block to move, so you dont muck up the thermister and heater)
Unscrew and remove the nozzle.
Take tiny needle nose pliers and pull the ptfe tube (with the filament in it) out of the nozzle.
In the future, to change filament, feed it forward, following the old filament with the new until it purges.
2 Likes
So my quick fix is to heat up the block to 210 or whatever the specified melting point is for your PLA and grab an allen wrench or drill bit that can fit through the hole where the filament inlet and push out the melted filament. The force of the allen wrench or drill bit should be high enough to overcome the force of the debris.
If you have any filament cleaner such as this stuff from eSun, try running that through your machine to remove any debris that could be running the clog. You could also put the nozzle in an acetone bath and scrub it with a wire brush to try to mitigate the clog issue.
