21

Not yet. I was thinking the next step would be to heat it up to some high temperature and let all the plastic drip off. What temperature should I go for for the PLA that’s caked on?

22

I bet it would burn out fine with a small butane torch light. 250c should vaporize it. But your hotend isn’t meant to go that high.

23

check out www.soliforum.com we are a solidoodle based board

24

Hi, first off I don’t have the same printer as you, but the nozzles are similar.

The nozzle (tip) is very short, and the throat is the pipe that feeds plastic to the

heater. Ok well undo the Nozzle from the Aly Heater Block. Remove the thermister,

sometimes they slide out, sometimes they are held by a screw (in which case it looks like

a wire with a crimp on the end). Remove the heater element. Again, some extruders are loose fitting, others have a tiny Allen Grub Screw nipping them in place. You should then have the nozzle, heater block, and throat as one assembly. If there is insulation around the Heater Block, carefully cut it at one of the corners, and gently peel it off (you will replace it later and tape it back on with Capton Tape). Ok, now grim the heater block in a small adjustable spanner, and use a 6mm spanner to unscrew the nozzle. Then use a pair of pliers to grip the throat, and unscrew the throat from the heater block. You will have three pieces now (nozzle,Heater Block, and Thoat). Look at the nozzle.

Inside some nozzles is a small piece of PTFE tube, the throat is normally fitted with PTFE tube as well. Try to remove the tubing if you can.

To clear a nozzle of PTFE (really easily), mount the nozzle on a nail held in a vice or pliers, and heater the nozzle up until it’s glowing Bright Red. (The PLA Plastic expands, then burns off. By heating it till it’s bright red turns the PLA in to dust). When the plastic has firsted burning off drop the nozzle in to cold water (the PLA dust will drop out). That’s the nozzle clear, and any PTFE debri burnt out. You should be able to see throu it now… OK, the heater block needs any spilt PLA plastic burnt off of it. So treat the Heater Block in a similar manner. Same goes for the throat, but you must remove the PTFE tube inside it. You can pick it out with a pin. Burn the plastic off the throat as you did with the nozzle and heater block. Reline the throat (and nozzle if it had it) with 3mm O.D. PTFE tube with an inside diameter of 2mm. To put it all back together first screw the nozzle in to the heater block, and tighten it. The screw the throat in to the heater block.

Re-assemble the extruder as you took it apart, using CAPTON Tape to repair the insulation.

25

Thanks for the instructions. So to do this, I need to buy Kapton tape, and PTFE tube. I think I have a blow torch. Is it really safe to heat the heater bock till its red hot?

26

Hi Marvin. Yes you really need a the PTFE tubing and Kapton tape. Both will always be handy anyway. I take it your using 1.75mm filament. So you need 3mm OD (Out Side Diameter) tubing with an ID (in side diameter) of 2mm. The Kapton tape is expencive, but worth it as it withstands the high temperatures. The Nozzle and throat you can heat till they are Bright red (the PLA burns off and becomes dust) and are easy to clean. The heater block you must remove the electrics first, but I prefer to heat it up wipe as much of the molten PLA off as possible, then heat it again till the PLA is burnt off. The LEAK you had has happend because the throat and heater block became loose. The molten PLA is very good at finding loose connections. The original CTC nozzles have the PTFE tube continue from the throat to throu the heater block and in to the nozzle. It’s tricky to get the PTFE tube length just right, But I’m sure you will manage it. I use the Mk8 1.75mm 0.4mm nozzles from Ebay, and they normally don’t have the tube inside of them. The original tubing has an OD of 3.2mm, and is a tight fit in the throat. So the makers grease it when they fit it, but I don’t like that idea. I found 3mm OD tube works well, and retracking the filament when changing filament spools is easier. I would like to get some spare CTC nozzles, as they do work better than the Mk8s I use, but as I said, the originals use PTFE tubing inside of them. You can get the tubing and Kapton from Ebay if you can’t get it locally. The Kapton tape is that golden / bronze stuff that was on the Build Platform originally. It’s good stuff, but so so soft. I print on Plain 3mm Glass here. I don’t know if the glass would like the higher temps of ABS thou. Good luck, and Happy New Year BTW…

27

Oh I meant to say. When you remove the insulation from the heater block it might fall apart. That’s normal. I intend to try using a bit of Denim covered in Kapton on mine next time I have it all adrift. There is someone that sells the correct stuff on Ebay, but it was quite expencive for what it was, so I just patched mine up as best I could. In fact, the next time I do mine I will put the thermistor under the insulation to help it do it’s job. :slight_smile:

28

Thanks again. My heater electronics are held in with a ceramic glue of some sort. so I need to figure out what that is.

IMG_0138_0.JPG
IMG_0138.JPG4032×3024 1.73 MB

29

I have decided to upgrade my hot ends with E3D V6. I will be using this mount

Which model of the E3D V6 should I buy?

Where is a good place to buy it. I see prices all over the place from $20 to $80

https://www.google.com/search?q=e3d+v6+&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=e3d+v6&tbm=shop