Hi All, newish user here.
When swapping filaments I somehow managed to pull the filament too soon and snap it just at the point where the filament goes in the nozzle, so nothing to grip onto to pull it out. I removed the nozzle and resorted to using a butane burner to heat up the nozzle till filament was soft then using a drill bit (the non cutting end) to gently push the melted filament out. After a couple of goes, I put it all back together and its printing fine.
It did make me think if I should get some spare nozzles though, but surprisingly I cant find them on the Bambulabs website? I can find a ton of them on Amazon but not sure which ones are any good. So could I have recommendations of what to get and who from.
Many thanks.
Hi, a Butane burner and a drill bit sounds a bit harsh to me for what its worth. You can buy replacement nozzles, and hot ends either from Bambu or that well known online retailer who sells just about everything and whose name starts with A.
Personally I use a heat gun to heat the nozzle as its a bit more gentle and doesn’t overheat any part of the hotend. I use a nozzle cleaning pin/wire which is designed for the purpose and they’re not expensive.
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You find them in the Accessories section.
The A series nozzles are very inexpensive and as you likely noticed, very easy to swap.
The P and X series are far more expensive to get halfway near as easy to swap.
What I do when that is happens is leave the hotend in the machine, heat it up to like 260C and then remove it with a set of pliers and hold it and use the needle that came with the machine from the nozzle side to push the filament out the top side. Remember that the hotend is SUPER hot and DO NOT TOUCH it.
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Spare nozzles (@MalcTheOracle sent the link) are always a good idea. As a minimum, you probably want a .4 readily available.
As for snapping off the filament at that place, you should be able to use the display to feed out the length stuck in and below the extruder. That should provide enough length to grip the end with some tweezers.
Plenty of models for those on MakerWorld
I would recommend a hardened steel 0.4 as well.
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You should have just left it alone.
BBL printers can switch filaments, and to do that, they need to cut the filament in order to retract it to load the next filament. The cutter cuts the filament just above the point it goes in to the hot end. So on any extruder where the cutter has been used, if you remove it you will see a stub of filament you can’t grip to pull out. It’s supposed to be there. When the next filament gets fed in to the extruder, the end of that will push on the stump that was left over from the last filament, and in so doing drive the old filament out of the extruder. It’s what the printer is doing when it does a purge between filament switches.
Brand new extruders from BBL are tested, so when they come out of the box you’ll find they have this same stump of filament peeking out of the top of the extruder assembly…
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I’ve cut the filament as close to the hotend several times and never had any issues. I did it to make it easer to put in when I change nozzles. The extruder will just push the filament in there when the nozzle reaches its temperature.
Should have just left it alone, but now you know.
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could see everything but the nozzle, found hot ends, silicon socks etc. nothing coming up under search either. probably not looking in the right place.
Cheers
use an acupuncture needle. In my decade of 3d printing, I think I’ve only ever clogged one nozzle and even trying to unplug it didn’t help, because you’re just pushing the piece of debris back up into the nozzle so it just ends up getting stuck again.
They are listed as hotends…