MN-S 3D Printers

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Filament

Filament is NOT included in the membership fee.

We have a limited amount of donated filament that you can use. If you make big parts or a lot of small parts, then you should bring your own spool(s) of filament. You might consider buying an extra spool and donating it to the common supply.

Specific Models

General Info

Big ball of plastic on the extruder of Prusa

A large ball of plastic attached itself to the nozzle and heat block, and in removal, the wires for the thermistor were damaged. To clean up an issue like that, don't try to remove the plastic while it is cold, you will break things every time. Typically, first thing to do is to remove the filament through a normal filament unload (preheat the nozzle ONLY - no need to preheat bed & unload filament). Then, raise the z axis so you have plenty of room to access the ball'o'plastic. Bring the nozzle temperature up to 30-40 degrees over your printing temperature. Be careful, this is obviously going to have hot plastic all over the place, and it sticks to skin. Wear gloves, use tools, do not try to grab plastic with your bare hand!!!

Once the hot end is at temperature, slowly begin pulling out loose plastic. What is contacting the hot end will get molten. Start scooping/pulling it out, push more plastic against the hot end, repeat. Be very careful of the wires attached to the hot end. There will be two sets, one for the heater cartridge, one for the thermistor. If you damage either, you'll be replacing them. Work the plastic blob into contact with the hot end until it starts to soften (as a blob). You can then try to start working larger chunks free, but again, don't force it, the wrapping for the thermistor, in particular, likes to bond to melted filament because it is a woven wrap. Some time and heat will free up the hot end. Once the majority is gone, cleaning up with a coarse paper towel that won't leave towel fibers is fairly easy. Again, it's HOT, be careful.

So that's what you do if you're at home, if it's one of our printers, ask for staff!

Typically, a failure like this is a first layer adhesion issue. If it failed after the first layer, there are a lot of potential causes. A good takeaway though: get staff of us to deal with it. There are specific ways to clean that up, but if you do it wrong, you'll break wires. In this case, we lost a $9 thermistor. Not a big deal.