Clogged print head after botched print

[budde 1]

Hi,

we have had a erroneous print with our Ultimaker 3 (PLA/PVA) that completely clogged up our print head. Apparently, there was insufficient adhesion on the build plate and the material flowed into the head:

The material "glued in" the print cores so that they can not be removed anymore. Heating the cores to clean them does not work, as the material also went into spaces that are not heated. The printer is effectively broken right now.

Did anyone encounter a similar problem and can give us pointers on how to clean the head? Is this maybe due to a manufacturing error (we've had a few working prints before that and now this)?

Any help is appreciated, as we need to find a quick solution...

Thank you,

-Matt

Edited April 3, 2017 by Guest

[gr5 2,172]

Oh, Matt - this sucks. A few things:

1) The only cure is a heat gun and a few hours of patience. Or send it back to the manufacturer - who will do the same thing.

2) There is supposed to be a silicone pad - a white flexible thing with 2 holes in it for the 2 nozzles. You seem to be missing those maybe? I can't tell in these photos. That is supposed to prevent this exact accident.

3) You really need to get your parts to stick to the bed better. You don't want your parts sliding around the bed. Here is a long but full of useful information (I shortened it a lot in editing) video about how to avoid this in the future. Also *ALWAYS* watch the first layer going down - at least the 4 corners - to make sure you are getting good "squish" (again - see the video).

 

[budde 1]

1) The only cure is a heat gun and a few hours of patience.  Or send it back to the manufacturer - who will do the same thing.

Actually, a service technician from our reseller suggested something that worked surprisingly well. Heating up both cores to the maximum temperature possible and carefully pulling the filament out with a pair of tweezers got rid of the problem quickly, at least to the point where we could remove the print cores and swap them for spare ones. I thought I'd share that in case someone else had the same issue.

2) There is supposed to be a silicone pad - a white flexible thing with 2 holes in it for the 2 nozzles.  You seem to be missing those maybe?  I can't tell in these photos.  That is supposed to prevent this exact accident.

We had the pad installed, unfortunately without effect. Our pad didn't look to good though:

[media-thumb=59480]

[/media-thumb]

3) You really need to get your parts to stick to the bed better.  You don't want your parts sliding around the bed.  Here is a long but full of useful information (I shortened it a lot in editing) video about how to avoid this in the future.  Also *ALWAYS* watch the first layer going down - at least the 4 corners - to make sure you are getting good "squish" (again - see the video).

Thank you for the video, appreciate it. We did watch the first layers go down, but I guess they came lose later. I will make sure to see what else we can do to improve adhesion.