I would like to see a device that enables us to heat up the hotend Independently of the printer to unclog nozzles.
I suffer from acute back pain, stretching or bending to access the hotend to unclog them is awkward and painful.
Would any other users find such a tool useful?
1 Like
Yes, I’ve thought of this as well.
My plan was to use a cheap soldering iron controller and an adapter board so I can plug in nozzles to heat them up and control the fan speed.
1 Like
I’ve used a cigarette lighter (assuming hot end removed, no plastics, etc. nearby). Remove the sock, and use lighter on opposite side to the thermister/heater wiring. I use 0.6 nozzle, don’t get many clogs.
1 Like
That board for T12 tip won’t work. T12 tip has heater in series with thermocouple. Most of solder tips/heater elements use thermo couple, unlike 3D printer hotend using thermistor. I don’t think there is off the shelf product that just works.
I feel you man. Same back pain doing so.
I probably can draw up a simple circuit using arduino to control heater for you guys
1 Like
Wow! $.99 for the controller, you could make the entire product for a couple of bucks (3D print the case) Another Idea would be to make a cheap 28Volt PS and just plug the entire hotend/fan assembly in to heat up and unclog…When do we start the business?
Wait a minute, 60% tariff on the 99 cents, and the filament, labor costs at about $17.00 per hour, it would end up costing more than just buying new hot ends…
Just for fun, wasting 20 minutes of my free time 
Part list is less than $10 including pcb and arduino nano clone
1 Like
Now all that is needed is a stand to hold the hot end while it is being heated up.
I can probably model this, however, my CAD modelling is very slow.
My 0.6mm hot end is currently clogged as well as a 0.4mm one also, when I bought my X1C I bought an additional kit from my vendor which included one of those stainless steel push rods to push the snapped filament through the hotend, however, I can’t find it, I need to make one of those Gridfinity tool walls!
I guess there is a bit of cleanup afterwards in order to remove the soot from the nozzle, but hey if it works!
Use a small hex key (with the ball end), heat the nozzle, push in the key, let it cool and pull it out, hopefully with the slug of filament attached. Then do a few ‘cold pulls’ to clean it out properly.
I’d love to join in on this project. Maybe add a little display and some controls? If you have this on github somewhere…
We could probably design it so that people can just send the files to JLCPCB and get it completely assembled, lowering the threshold to get this tool in hand.
You can pick up the ball from here. I don’t have x1c to test with. It is possible to make it work with p1s/p1p hotend as well but I don’t know what is the name/part number the connector used in p1s
1 Like
I useed a heat gun today to remove melted petg from around the hot end
That is my usual method, my problem is that I have acute back pain that is exacerbated by reaching into the enclosure to perform the task.
Thank you!
This is just what I need, and I have some spare Arduino boards also, I knew someone else somewhere would have the same issue as myself and would have designed something to heat up the hot end outside the printer.
Now I just need to make something ergonomic to mount the hot end to while working on it, that won’t be difficult though
I got thinking that maybe just some extension cables for the hotend and a mount for the hotend might work.
Any thoughts?
Yeah, it might do, about 30-40cm long is enough I think
1 Like