Folgertech I3: changing filament??

This topic is kind of a retread, but this is the second time I'm changing filament (from one color PLA to another) and the extruder just doesn't want to cooperate. Can anyone with the Folgertech I3 tell me how you do it?

Those with a Wade extruder say to heat the hotend to the filament glass temperature, open the spring, and tug gently to pull out the softened filament plug. That's not an option here, as it's a closed direct drive extruder. I heated it and tried to retract a mm at a time, but it just won't budge. I kept upping the temp right up to print temperature (even turned off the fan) and it will not come out. I'm having to take the whole thing apart, cut out as much as I can, heat it up again, push the remaining down into the nozzle, put it back together and feed the new filament. Maybe even take the nozzle out and clean it.

"THERE'S GOT TO BE A BETTER WAY!!" Or is there?

I´ve only seen pictures of the Folgertech extruder.
There is a spring, that you have to compress and then pull out the filament. Switching off the steppers might help too?
-Olaf

This must be an older design. Mine's in an injection-molded enclosure, with no spring. Maybe that's why the price just went down by $10.

I found a video showing just snipping it off above the extruder and feeding in the new filament, so I'll try that next time. But it seems like the new filament could easily just slip past the old once it's past the gear and into that gap. I suppose the throat tube could be moved up closer to the extruder exit. Or I could snip it off just above the throat.


(I find it funny that the spell checker here flags "extruder"..)

Honestly? - print a Wades style geared extruder, buy a genuine J-Head or E3D and toss the MK8 into the garbage.

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My updated Instructable on our Prusa i3 Build
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