Clear Clogged Hot Ends with metal wire through Bowden Tube ?

[ian 32]

Clear Clogged Hot Ends with metal wire through Bowden Tube ?

I was testing laywood again last night and it clogged up my hot end 4 times... ahhhhhhh :-(

anyway, after taking apart my hot end 4 times, cleaning out the brass and then restarting... that was enough.

So I thought what might be nice, would be a long wire cable, maybe 2.5mm wide, that I can heat up the hot end, open up the extruder hatch and pushed up the metal cable and clean out the head with that.

havent tried it yet but if i can put my finger on some nice wire this evening... ???... i will and report back.

Ian :-)

 

[ian 32]

has anyone tried this ?

Ian :-)

 

[gr5 2,170]

1.25mm seems much to large? How about cleaning from the nozzle end with .4mm wire? Of course that seems too small.

What *has* worked for many people and I find interesting is to:

1) heat up the nozzle

2) insert filament by hand only (don't clamp feeder onto filament). Let it melt for a few seconds.

3) turn off nozzle heater

4) When temp gets low - maybe 150C, maybe 80C (not sure) pull hard on the filament back out the bowden. It will pull out much of the debris and junk with the filament. Cut the end of the filament and throw away.

5) Repeat

 

[gadgetfreak 7]

Ian, I read that Laywood might clog with smaller than 0.5mm hotends so you might want to use a 0.5mm one instead of your 0.4mm one.

Here is the reference I found:

http://www.soliforum.com/topic/2868/nice-print-with-laywood3/

It might also be that different rolls have different "wood particle size" because this is still kind of a beta filament...I'm receiving 60 rolls of laywood / laybrick next week, really keen on testing it on both my Ultimaker and Delta Tower. But now with your experience I might switch to 0.5mm nozzle in the Ulti :-)

About the actual cleaning I think that Georges suggestion sounds interesting.

If the particles are bigger than the nozzle hole then you need to clear the way from the top.

For other types of clogging I've used some of these thin steel "needles" you use to clean nozzles for welding equipment. From the nozzle tip side then.

 

[gadgetfreak 7]

I also found some really nice blog posts from Ultimaker users regarding printing with Laywood:

From Jeremies post http://www.tridimake.com/2012/10/shades-of-brown-with-wood-filament-via.html:

"Trying to find the proper temperature ranges

 

The filament seller recommends temperatures from 180 to 245°.

 

On my side, I failed some prints when going below 200° or above 250°.

In both cases the filament is not fed appropriately out of the nozzle. A good range for me was 205 - 245° (updated values!), as it results almost in the same range of brown shades in my opinion. So no need to take some useless risks.

 

Indeed, when the temperature is too high, be prepared to clog your nozzle and fail the print because the wood starts to burn. Reciprocally low temperature makes extrusion too difficult to get a proper flow.

 

Note: I should have tried lower speeds, I printed all these objects at 70mm/s, it may be too much since I usually stay at 60mm/s with regular filament.

"

and lots of other good laywood tips here:

http://www.tridimake.com/2012/10/wood-filament-becoming-brittle-after.html