Filament-caked hotend - salvageable?

Absolutely it can be salvaged. It happens to me every couple of months when I’m not paying attention and find a print has come lose off the print bed.

The first thing is to let the filament cool to room temperature. Then it should just crumble off under pressure from your fingers. Then once you get the bulk of it off, put the silicone sock back on and fire up the nozzle and manually heat up the filament to 250C. Then just push filament directly into the PTFE tube manually if the extruder panel isn’t working hard enough. Once you start to see filament flow again, you’re good to go. Easy peasy!!!

The cause is usually when a model comes lose on a plate and you don’t notice that the filament has backed up underneath the sock. As I said, happens to me every couple of months.

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