Feeder gear wouldn't grab onto the filament. Filament is now stuck in the feeder. Can't get one of the feeder screws loose.

[rwig 2]

First 3d printer. Ultimaker seemed the best way to go. Just got it the mail today. So excited. All was well with calibrating. Then came the step to insert the filament into the feeder. The feeder wouldn't take it though. One forum guy said to cut the tip to a point. I only have regular scissors and cannot get a sharp point when I cut the tip. The UM site says "This may require some force." So I pushed it a bit harder and started hearing the clicking I guess because the gear was trying to grab it. I then pressed the next step button to see if the gear would speed up and be able to grab it that way. A loud clicking started and now the filament is stuck inside the feeder (with nothing showing coming out the bowden tube). So I use the allen wrench to unscrew 3 of the screws to the feeder, but the 4th screw won't come loose. Who would have thought this was going to be such a pain. Any thoughts before I go through the pain of having to ship it back.

Photos and video:

http://tinypic.com/2mpn7xo5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK3ypmCJrWo

Edited December 30, 2016 by Guest

[Torgeir 212]

Hi rwig,

Welcome in here and happy new year!

The first thing to do before installing a new filament is to cut it with a 45 deg. angle.

Well, not any 45 deg. angle, but the one leaving a tip on the outer side of the filament curve! Ok., hers a picture.

Not the best picture, but look at the shadow then you'll see what I mean.

Beware, you have a feeder installed on the left hand side (never seen this version?), anyway you see how the cut should be. If you do this, there should be no problem.

So to the last screw you could not remove; -well this is the last screw and trying to remove this screw without supporting (holding the stepper motor inside cabinet to avoid it to falling down) may lead to this problem, but not likely..

Put the 3 screws back in and try this;

Normally you can remove it easily by holding on the feeder with the left hand and pulling the filament with the right hand (some hard) firmly right out of the feeder, even if it is "grinded some" it should come out. (An alternate method to remove filament piece of PLA (?) trapped in the feeder is to release the feeder roller by using a plastic rod, but we might come back to this if needed..)

Here is two detail pictures of the feeder unit with filament (and stepper motor);

Filament cuted the right way beside the feeder unit.

Next, is with the filament installed and visible cut direction after passing the feeder and normally here inside the bowden tube.

Ok., good luck.

Thanks.

Torgeir.

[rwig 2]

Thank you very much Torgeir! I was a bit negative sounding in my original first post because expected simple plug-and-play, but this post is much more positive!

(The feeder is on the left side of the Ultimaker 2 Go printers, which is the one I have and I'm sorry I forgot to mention that.)

Steps I took:

I first tried pulling the filament but it would not budge, so the feeder had to be removed. The 4th screw was stripped, so the wrench would not loosen it. But I managed to loosen it by applying a dot of JD Weld in the screw, sticking an allen wrench inside and letting the JD Weld set for 24 hours so the allen wrench and screw stuck together. Then after 24 hours, I was able to loosen that 4th stripped screw. To remove the filament I had to pull open the front feeder a bit, and this made the stuck filament slide out with ease. I then managed to follow other people's Youtube videos to screw the feeder back in successfully.

Now that the stuck filament was removed from the feeder, I followed your advice, and used utility shears to cut the filament at a sharp/45-degree angle. I also spoke with Ultimake email support and my reseller who both thought the issue was the knurled wheel in my feeder was rotating in the wrong direction, and this can be solved by updating the firmware. So I updated the firmware. But when I went to load the filament again, the feeder wheel still rotated counter-clockwise, so I don't believe updating the firmware changed anything. I stuck the filament up, and this time, the feeder took it and I was able to press the quick load button and it printed the robot beautifully!

So the knurled wheel in the feeder rotated in the same counter-clockwise direction before and after I updated the firmware, so I guess that was not the solution. So I guess the solution was that I had to cut the filament with utility shears at a sharp 45 degree angle for the feeder to be able to grab it more easily. I am going to mention this to Ultimaker support to perhaps include this in their walk through set up process so that others don't run into the same problem I had.

Thank you again kind sir, Happy new year, and I'm on to more printing!

New video and pic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GoHMe7yvbs

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