Filament Broken in Extruder

[Kathryn 0]

I recently purchased a ruby-tipped nozzle from 3dSolex to help print chopped carbon fiber filament. So far the new extruder and nozzle have worked extremely well and have made some beautiful prints. Today though, I noticed it was under extruding on some smaller pieces I was printed, so I decided to do a printhead cleaning to clear out the blockage.

 

The hot pull went fine, but the cold pull is where I ran into issues. Essentially when I went to pull the cold filament out, it did NOT want to come out. I've done cold pulls before with little to no trouble, but this time the filament was so stuck in the extruder that it was literally pulling the nozzle up when I yanked on it. I ended up getting a coworker to come help and instead of finally freeing the filament it instead snapped somewhere inside the extruder. 

 

I figured this wouldn't be a big deal just because you can reheat the nozzle and start pushing the filament out again. No such luck. I've tried setting up for another hot pull and also manually changing the temperature of the nozzle to 220C with no extrusion taking place. My fear now is that whatever was initially blocking the filament has moved to keep the broken piece from being able to exit the nozzle, leaving the small chunk of PLA stuck inside. 

 

That said, any advice on how to free the blockage from the inside of the nozzle? My best guess as of right now is increasing the temperature and maintaining a more constant pressure, but other than that I can't think of many other options.

 

Edit: Fixed issue

Ended up having to disassemble the printcore to reach the set tube the filament was stuck in and then heated it up with a heat gun. Ideally there is an easier solution out there, but for the time being it seems to be flowing again.

Edited June 13, 2018 by Kathryn
Issue fixed