June 16, 2016
I was starting to get some clogs and it seems that the cause is due to the filament and maybe a bit of clogging. I think I got a batch that's just not so great. Either way I thought I take this apart again as someone had suggested on the forum for the cb after I finished my last print just to make sure things were really clear inside.
I'm now using these longer tips and last time I tried cleaning with acetone, that just took a long time and a lot of work and then I still had filament that needed to be dug out. This time I decided to try something a bit different. I noticed the tips had a bit of metal particles inside when they were new, so after taking it apart I decided to use a small drill bit, under 2 mm to just clean the inside of it. I had to use the drill on the slowest setting which is for screws and this seems to have worked out great. I figured if there were any internal burrs and filament this should clean things up nicely. It sure did.
I got these small set of drill bits from harbor freight a while back. These are metric so they are perfect for this. Here you can see all the plastic that came out, even after I had manually taken out the filament and pushed whatever was left over inside with the smallest hex key in order to clear as much filament as possible. While it was hot and still installed of course. A paper clip works great to make sure you move anything out of the way, then tapping it on the table to get as much of that out. I did this a few times with the drill until I could feel the drill bit touch the end. I actually did this without even running the drill to find out how far it went in. Check the length with a new one to begin since a used one will have filament in there.
Here you can see it fits fine and I lightly went in and out until I got all of that out. I then used the tiny drill bit on the end to clean the hole until I could see the light on the other side. Now I know for sure that there should be no burrs or filament in there at all. I ended up doing this for the other new ones I had to make sure they were cleaned before I use them when the time comes. Don't clean the tip with any brushes as that can deform the brass easily and make the how larger as I found out at the beginning with my original. Maybe it was already like that, but still. These seem to be holding much better than the shorter versions. You can check my other pages for the information on where to get these.
This will not only save you time, but keep you from smelling all that acetone too. And you will be up and running in just a moment or as long as it takes you to clean them and install everything back, assuming nothing else happens while doing that.This should also work for cleaning the shorter stem type too.
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