3 times Ulimaker 3 extended head has "glued" itself shut and ruined the head

[gherndo 0]

My business has had the print head get completely encased in plastic ruining the head and several of the print cores. I've caught the printer before during the "print blob" just sit there and dump plastic in the same spot without moving and I was able to kill the power before it completely encased the head again. It seems like a bug but I doubt Ultimaker will ever admit it. Anyway, I have to babysit this machine until it successfully makes it through the print blob phase at the beginning of EVERY print. Cool.  My actual question is about spare parts for the print cores...when I've dug out the plastic to salvage pieces of the head and the I've managed to break the little metal piece that the heat block attaches to (see attached pictures). Can this one piece be purchased so I can repair my print cores without having to spend $125 each to replace the cores? Between new heads and cores I'm at around $800 in parts. About ready to throw this thing in the dumpster and buy a different brand, or buy another Extended 2. That thing is a champ.

 

[Smithy 1,141]

18 minutes ago, gherndo said:

I've caught the printer before during the "print blob" just sit there and dump plastic in the same spot without moving and I was able to kill the power before it completely encased the head again. It seems like a bug

I had this problem too 2-3 times, but only after I aborted a print job. It seems it is a bug, but I just reboot the printer after I need to abort a print job and everything is fine. It never happened without aborting a print before.

 

21 minutes ago, gherndo said:

My actual question is about spare parts for the print cores...when I've dug out the plastic to salvage pieces of the head and the I've managed to break the little metal piece that the heat block attaches to (see attached pictures).

There are not spare parts for the print core, you can just replace the whole core.

[Travis7s 22]

When I first got my UM3 a couple years ago I noticed some strange prime blob behavior too. It would once in a while make the blob way too big although it would never get to the point where it flooded the head. I haven't really noticed it again in the last 12-18 months so I figured it must have been fixed in one of the updates.

 

Its worth noting that I almost never enable prime blob now, it doesn't really seem useful and even with a small blob it sometimes gets dragged back into the print zone.