Massive jam of PLA between nozzle and print core - suggestions?

[FranciscoSonder 0]

It appears the print core has a jammed full of the extruded filament and it has continued to extrude filament for the entire print causing a mass of PLA plastic to form between the print core and the nozzle. 

 

I've found similar such errors on Ultimaker forums here and have contacted them for advise and approach to repair whilst in warranty.

 

Has anyone been able to get this covered by warranty? 

 

What is the suggested approach, heat the PLA with an airgun and remove?

 

The explanation on the forums is that the part failed to stick to the bed despite using the recommended settings. The part was dragged around on the bed and the nozzle kept extruding on the same large mass of plastic.  

[FalmouthLouis 3]

I've just had the same problem. It was an overnight print. Something slipped on the plate,with the result that I have this badly bunged up print core. I had this happen once before, some six months back, and that involved nylon so all I could do was get it repaired by Ultimaker/3DGBIRE. This time around, the blockage is PLA. I did a bit of work with a heat gun, and started to be able to strip away bits on the congealed mess. Clearly, it will take hours to clear the major blob, but is it worth it because, the closer I get to the actual print core, surely my heat gun will be damaging the electronics and producing subtle distortions. Has anyone successfully cleaned up one of these messes? If so, how did you do it?

 

[FalmouthLouis 3]

I've had this advice from 3DGBIRE

 

Heating the nozzles up to 260 and leaving for around 5-10 minutes should soften the material around the nozzles allowing for easy removal. Once removed the initial blob, using a brass wire brush on the printcores can help clean these up and allow removal from the printhead for further cleaning using the wire brush. Using a soldering iron on low heat can also assist with this if the material is around the wires on the printcores. Avoid using the heat gun as this will put heat on components that are sensitive to heat

[DF-Werkzeugservice 9]

I've had the same with PLA.

 

I couldn't even heat up the nozzles anymore because the material pulled out a cable on one of the printcores, which caused the UM to fail out immedeately after starting up. 

As I feared to damage anything with the heat gun, I decided to use a soldering iron to cut out the material piece for piece. I used a temperature regulated one to keep it hot enough to melt the PLA kind of fast but not so hot that it melts the other plastic parts of the print head when I accidently touched them.

 

So it was many hours of work and as soon as I could recover one part of the print head, I disassembled that one to get better reachability of the remaining PLA. 

Unfortunately I could only get one printcore out in the end by destroying it completely. But still better than having to buy a whole new print head assembly.

[Smithy 1,144]

A regulated heat gun can also help if you don't have a regulated soldering iron. If you can go to 80° with the heat gun, you should be able to soften the material enough without destroying something else. But in any case, it is a work of several hours. 

 

Check Youmagine; there are some brackets to print, to secure the print head fan door that it cannot open by an accident.

[FranciscoSonder 0]

We corrected the issue by going to the reseller. We did preheat the extruded and use a hot air gun to remove but the reseller stated it was best to wait for them as this can void your warranty.

 

They provided a replacement head.

[Smithy 1,144]

Thanks for the feedback and I am glad that your printer is in a good state again.