I have been printing successfully with the previous 1.7…beta version for about a week when the new version was made available. I upgraded 2 days ago. And immediately got 2 Plugin upgrades a day apart. All was going well until yesterday afternoon when in the middle of a print the printer stopped. The black filament stopped feeding. The black spool is about half used and has been in use for the last 3 days since new. I got the “Retry” warning on the filament but the filament would not move. When I tried to clear the filament the filament would not come out of the extruder. The motor hums the AMS does not move and all the filaments in the AMS soundingly are showing screwball names for the filaments that I have been using for weeks. It also says I may have a broken filament in the Extruder. And to reconnect the PTFE tube if the AMS is to be used…
I finally, with great effort, was able to pull the PFTE and the filament out of the Extruder and the AMS retracted the filament. How ever the extruder will not clear. It hums and hims then shuts down with the same messages. See image. There is a lot going wrong my question is where do I start to clear this mess? AND BTW there is nothing on the outside rear spool that it claims is loaded…
There’s a gap between the extruder gear and the input side of the hot end. If you have heat creep, the filament can soften enough that it squishes in this gap, instead of pushing filament out of the nozzle. Then you try to unload the filament and the little “knob” that’s been created by the squishing prevents it from pulling free. You broke the filament to get it back to the AMS. There’s still a piece in the extruder assembly that’s fooling the printer in to thinking the filament is still there.
You can take the extruder apart and use the “allen key” method to try and extract the piece that’s stuck. Heat up the end of the 1.5mm key that came with the printer, jam it in to the filament in the top of the extruder, let it cool down and then pull. But you could also heat up the extruder and try and push the blob further in to the hot end and that might free it up.