I am an 80 year-old female with severely arthritic fingers and I am not very experienced at 3D printing. I have very little pulling strength which is preventing me from pulling about 8 inches of filament stuck at the back end inside my H2D Bowden tube where it exits the back wall of my h2D.
It won’t push through to inside the machine from the external end of the tubing and I have attempted to push it out from inside the printer with no luck. I assume that the black ring at the end of the tube triggers a claw to open so that I can slip off the tubing but I cannot get it to work, even using a small pusher which I had previously printed and which works on other Bowden tubes. In desperation I have attempted to grab and pull the tube with pliers. I assumed that that it would crush the tube (and it did) and I assume I will have to trim a small piece off but thought that that would be doable. However, the small black ring does not seem to have any flex at all and won’t “retract” so of course the tube doesn’t budge.
Could I “circumcise” the tube (without cutting into the filament) and slide the tube backwards off the filament? Is there any method to fix the stuck black ring? I’ve tugged and pulled on this for 2 days now without,luck.
While pushing the black ring in, push the ptfe tube back n forth, until it comes out. There are metal prongs in the fitting that embed themselves in the tube like hooks
Thanks for the suggestion StreetSports, but unfortunately the black ring is already “flat” against the plastic, as tho’ there is no spring action in it.
sounds like your ptfe connector is broken, you may need to replace it… its not very expensive… but then again… try to find out why it got into that condition, probably got stuck on the ptfe tube the wrong way, blocking the spring mechanism to work
Firstly, sorry to hear you have limited mobility, I too have the same problem with tremors which always seems to be a fun addition to tasks.
As others have said the black part should depress. You have stated it doesn’t, I have also thought that on more than one occasion, to be surprised my positioning was the issue.
For reference, you push the black ring down with a bit of pressure, it only moves a couple of mm.
As there is one at each end of the cable, you can try both ends and use another spool of filament to use that inserted into the tube to shove the filament along. Essentially throwing a snake down a hole to chase out something.
This wiki article gives you detailed step-by-step instructions.
If my experience is anything to go by, it does become doable after a bit of practice.