At my workplace we have a Velleman K8200, every time I try and change the filament it gets jammed and a little bit of filament gets stuck somewhere in the extruder. This time, its stuck just before it gets to the hot end bit and its stone cold. It cannot reach the hot end as its jammed. Any ideas on how to get it out? Ive tried to pull it out, I’ve tried pushing new filament through to see if that helps ease it into the hot end but it doesn’t work the filament just gets stuck.
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cobnut
2
Hi @Harvey_Long the only way to solve such jams is really to ream out the filament using a 0.5mm drill bit (assuming you have a 0.5mm nozzle). You can usually do it by hand (rather than using a powered drill), but essentially you need to clear a path and if you can’t heat the extruder enough to push something through it, you’ll need to drill through it. Others have also used a guitar string to clean clogs, but that won’t give you an initial passage to thread it through.
How do you change filaments? I found a lot of problems when I was still trying to unload a filament before loading a new one. Jams/clogs are a lot less common if instead of trying to unload you simply cut the old filament near the extruder head then manually extrude, feeding the new filament in behind it (so you never really unload, just replace).
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Didn’t think about that. Ill see if I have a small drill bit and try to do it that way.
As for unloading the filament, I unload it instead of cutting it. In future, I’ll cut it and extrude the excess.
