Filament Stuck in the Wades Geared Extruder assembly [solved]

Hi,

First a quick hello, this is my first post from a new RepRap user and I'm hoping for some advice.

I recently bought a mendal90 kit, built it and had success printing using it. Last night I left the printer printing something, I came back this morning to find that the printer had stopped printing and the filament appeared to have started slipping next to the hobbed bolt in the wades Extruder assembly (Well it had stopped extruding half way through the print). So I heated the the J-head up to 185, started reversing the extruder motor and pulled with some pliers like I have done before with no luck. After about 10 minutes of trying pulling and pushing, the filament snapped just above the entrance to the extruder assembly.

I then proceeded to dissemble the assembly. I expected the hotend to be blocked. When taking the hotend off however, the filament again snapped (I think it was pretty much broken anyway and there was nothing I could do to stop it breaking fully). The filament came out of the hotend easily, however now the filament has sheared at both ends of the wades assembly which you can see in the photos I have attached.

I cant grip either end of the filament as it is sheared basically in the hole of the assembly. At the Jhead end it appears that the PLA has melted to as size larger than the hole and seems to be completely seized in the hole and the hobbed bolt has worn away most of the filament in the middle.

So at the moment I have no idea how to get the filament out. Has anyone get any ideas/suggestions?

Thanks in advance

Cheers
John

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/2015 07:37PM by John Palmer.

Well typically after trying one more time before going to bed, it finally gave and I managed to push the filament out!!

I've had this happen once - a combination of a hot day, slow print speed and the old design meant that enough heat was building up and rising up the hot end into the bottom of the wades block, causing the filament to soften, buckle, and eventually clog. This was after many months of problem-free printing, so the increased ambient temperature definitely contributed to the problem.
If you have one of the newer kits then this shouldn't happen - there is red insulating silicone tape around the nozzle and a small hole in the top of the fan duct to direct some of the airflow upwards that helps to keep the extruder cool. Did you leave it going without the fan running?

Glad to hear you got it out anyway. I remember it was a real pain for me - I tried heating up safety pins and everything to dig it out. I switched to ABS after that.