Hi there, today I will talk about what I have learnt from helping to fix the class printer which had become clogged from its nozzle to inside the extruder head. We began by removing the printer block which contains the extruder, the heating element, a fan and the nozzle.
The printer block is connected to the machine by a magnet and there is a ribbon that plugs into it which unclips easily. To access the extruder cog there is a number of small bolts which are removed using an allen key. Removing the nozzle from the block requires a small socket wrench which comes with the machine.
After trying to remove the nozzle and unclog it, we realised that it is much easier to do so when the block has been brought up to printing temperature which is 260 degrees Celsius. Once up to temperature we unscrewed the nozzle and ran a special piece of wire that has a rough surface inside it to clean it out. We also used a drill bit to clean out the extruder which worked quite well because turning the bit inside the head caught all the softened plastic and bought it out in one go.
How it became clogged in the first place is unknown, it may be the type of plastic or it may have been a breakage with the cord causing it to harden inside the block. What we have learnt from this is to stop trying to extrude it once there is a problem because it can cause the cord to start to clog the whole block once the nozzle has become blocked.
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