I know about the cold pull method for cleaning clogged nozzles, but I recently saw a post where that wasn’t working. Is a Clog Poke worth having on hand, and has anyone used a Clog Poke on an H2 before?
The H2S comes with one. Its the tiny wire in a tube in the accessory box. I believe the one it comes with is .4 mm. I have used them on other printers, haven’t had to on my H2S yet. It works, but not the easiest thing to do with a hot nozzle.
I got one of those with my H2C. The end of this tool is 1.7mm and designed to force the clog through the nozzle without actually going through the tip. I just don’t know if it would mess up the extruder gear.
I just wish they would redesign the extruders to make those gears WAY more accessible than they are.
It would also be nice to build some kind of “jig” you could mount a nozzle on outside of the printer, that uses a carefully controlled heating plate (not a freaking blowtorch), and a guide rail perfectly positioned to allow you use a needle plunger to “push” the stuff out of the nozzle and clean and pull outside of the machine. An “external” extruder gear in the wide-open you could use to push in cleaning filament, etc., and not worry about screwing or chewing up the extruder gearing on the machine itself.
I definitely wouldn’t push this tool through the extruder. You might damage more than just a nozzle then.
With a spare heater block and a controlled power unit you, can get something to work here. You might go further and add an Arduino or Raspberry Pi to create a closed loop temperature control. But I guess most people would prefer to use a blowtorch as an easier and faster method.
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Thats the poker I use. Works great when you have a tpu clog all the way up to the cold section of the nozzle. The tiny needles they give you are useless against these clogs
And you don’t see any damage on or interference from the extruder gear?
That would be nice. I had an ABS clog on the left side of my H2C yesterday. The little poker that came with the machine didn’t work so, I tried something new. This may help specifically for left side clogs only. I removed the Dual Extruder Filament Guide and left the nozzle in place. I told the machine too heat the nozzle to 280C. The cutter left about 3mm of filament sticking out of the nozzle so, I was able to grab that with some needle-nose plyers and carefully remove it. I then grabbed a fresh length of filament with the plyers and pushed it into the nozzle, bypassing the extruder, using the space left by the Filament Guide. Burnt filament eventually came out followed by the new. I thought that this did a good job of clearing the clog, keep your fingers away from the hot stuff and don’t beat the extruder back and forth with the plyers.
No. Been using them on printers for a long time. Maybe on non hardened gears, it could possibly be a problem. I mean, we feed rough carbon fiber through them for 1000’s of hours. Im not sure ive ever seen anybody post a Pic of worn out gears.
First, I use the printer to feed the poker in. when it stops, I shut the printer off, turn it back on, heat the nozzle and push. If the motors arent energized, the gears will roll. Really bad clogs that would require alot of pressure, I just remove the nozzle from the printer and hit it with torch while pushing.
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Nope, don’t do this when a hotend is on the printer. You can’t even get to the hotend without first having to go through the extruder gear.
I use this technique, but only when a nozzle is off the printer.
IMO that’s kind of high for ASA. Could explain the “burnt filament” that eventually came out. 250-260º might work better. That’s the range I use. 4 spools of ASA mostly used up, not a single extrusion issue…
Another thing to look out for with the left nozzle is if the filament is in the open air (like hanging on one of the spool posts on the side of the machine). Dust collects on the exposed filament, and that dust rides the filament all the way to the nozzle. The plastic doesn’t burn but the dust does and that can cause a blockage.
I’ve got the external filament threaded through a small piece of foam/sponge that acts as a “wiper” before the filament disappears in to the PTFE feeding tube.
This was Eryone grey ABS contained inside an AMS-HT. Its temp range is 240-290C but I’m finding that it prefers lower temperature. I suspect the clog was caused by the flow ironing flow being only 15% which worked well for Sunlu ABS. I had been printing at 270C but turned it up to 280C, just to get the clog out.