Hotend Support

Today was the second time when I used this fitting and I decided it makes a real difference when a piece of filament is stuck into the hot-end. In fact this second time was for a clogged nozzle - the “quality” of the print was extremely poor.

Having a piece of filament stuck into the hot end or a clogged nozzle is something that quite happens - probably too often I would say.
 

My process to solve the issue was: 
- One hand keeping the removed, heated hot-end. Stopping all the time accidentally that nasty small fan and from time to time getting fried in the hot zone.
- One hand keeping a tool prepared to extract the stuck piece of filament.
- One hand keeping a heat source to heat up the tool from hand two.

- One hand keeping the continuously falling front cover.
- One hand pressing the powered electrical connectors to avoid a disconnect while fully powered.

With only two hands it never worked too well - I got a few times the connectors disconnected and I am probably lucky to have the P1S still running.

I have designed a simple fitting that keeps the removed heated hot-end and the front cover, while all the connectors are safe in place.

I need now only the hands two and three from the above list for the simple filament extraction.

This tool is 30g of plastic and one hour printing - such a tool is very useful for any P1S user. 

How to use it:
- Move the printing head somewhere in center and remove the top glass cover. 

- Power off the machine.

- Place the fitting in the RHS of the printing head.

- Open the front cover of the printing head and place it on tooling fitting,

- Remove the two screws of the hot-end, remove the hot-end keeping the electrical connectors in place.

- Place the hot-end on the tooling fitting.

- Check once again the electrical connectors - if OK power on the machine.

- Heat up the hot-end.

- Heat up the thin tool and push it in the stuck filament.

- Wait 10 seconds.

- Remove the thin tool -  the stuck piece of filament should come out too. Some cleaning with the thin tool of any residual filament might help too. I have a Ø0.4 steel pin and I make sure the very nozzle is free too. 

- Stop heating the hot-end. Wait to cool down.

- Power off the machine.

- Re-assemble the printing head.

- REMOVE THE FITTING!

- Power up the machine. Use bed leveling for the next print.