Cleaning printer nozzle with a wire brush

I tried an experiment with a wire brush I had from an old Stratasys printer. I printed a bracket to hold the brush and then ran a print, sending the extruder nozzle through the brush after each print layer.

Results weren't good.

I tried playing with the path through the brush, the height of the brush, etc., all to no avail.

Live and learn.

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Son of MegaMax 3D printer: [www.instructables.com]
Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Maybe a wire wheel brush with a ratchet? So it would rotate a bit when the nozzle goes forward, pushing the wheel over a cleaning scraper. Coming back through the brush, the brush would stay still, hopefully cleaning the nozzle. Dunno.

I do not have any first-hand experience with cleaning a nozzle that way during a print but what could help is if you extrude ~20mm of filament just before you move over the brush, that way the blob that gets cleaned off is attached to the extruded filament and is likely to fall off into a bucket or something keeping the brush "clean" for the next wipe. I am thinking of the way BCN3D implemented this on their SIGMA printers (they use a silicone(not sure of the material) wiper instead of a brush).

Something i wanted to experiment with for a while but never got around to testing it so far..

I thought about trying something like that. The brush is still on the printer. I'll try it and see if it works. Thanks.

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Son of MegaMax 3D printer: [www.instructables.com]
Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Maybe your brush hairs are too short, I use a brush with long sturdy hairs and do not face your issue.

Me I have good results with "teeth brush":



start gcode:

G28 ; Home all
G0 F9000 X325 Y110 ;Move over bucket
G92 E0 ; ZERO EXTRUDER LENGTH
G1 F250 E20 ; Extrude 20mm
G92 E0 ; ZERO EXTRUDER LENGTH
G4 S3 ; Wait 3 seconds
G0 F9000 Y170
G0 F9000 Y130
G0 F9000 Y170
G0 F9000 Y130
G1 F250 E-2 ; Retract 2mm

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D-BOT custom
HYPERCUBE protocreation
[www.facebook.com]

I'm trying to clean the nozzle, not melt the brush!

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Son of MegaMax 3D printer: [www.instructables.com]
Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

It's not melt, just black TPU stick on nylon brush