Evolution of a Blog

This blog has evolved as I have as a maker. It starts at the beginning of my journey where I began to re-tread my tires in the useful lore of micro electronics and the open-source software that can drive them. While building solutions around micro-electronics are still an occasional topic my more recent focus has been on the 3D Printing side of making.

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Nozzle Cleaning - Extreme Edition

One of the advantages of having a removable nozzle is that you have additional options for clearing a nozzle jam.  In the old days the only solution was to do an atomic, or cold pull, clean.  Sometimes it may have even been necessary to use a 400 micron drill bit or syringe tip.  

With a removable nozzle you can still use these methods but obviously the fastest fix is to simply pop on a new nozzle!  With the feeder upgrade from the plus upgrade, coupled with my cleaning and lubricating the filament prior to the feeder, I have not had many jams to work with but my strategy is threefold.  

If I am in a hurry, just change the nozzle and come back to cleaning it later.  If I have time, or if I have come back to a nozzle from a prior jam, I will do a cold pull.  If this does not work, or if I want to be lazy, I toss the nozzle aside and come back to it later with my torch:


There is something about heating a nozzle to the point where it glows, and then holding it there for ten or fifteen seconds, that does a fine job of cleaning up a nozzle jam.  

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