Hello, 3D Printing Friends! Today on the BV3D Channel, we'll find out how to
disassemble and reassemble the extruder on the Monoprice Maker Select Plus 3D
printer. And as a bonus, we're going to learn how to clear a filament jam!
Stick around and we'll get into, it right after this. I'm Bryan, and you... are watching BV3D!
Hi, welcome back! You know, when you have a 3D printer, it is inevitable that at some
point you're gonna need to take apart the extruder. Maybe to clear a
particularly gnarly filament jam, or for cleaning or for troubleshooting. And then,
of course, you're gonna need to know how to put it back together again. And when
that time comes, you'll be glad you watched this video. Assuming you have a
Monoprice Maker Select Plus 3D printer, of course. Or a Wanhao duplicator
i3 Plus, or a Cocoon Create Touch, or one of the other printers that all share
this design. Because we're going to do ALL those things I mentioned: The taking
apart thing. The unjamming thing. And the putting it back together again thing.
So, what tools will we need for this? I'm glad you asked. we're going to need the
hex wrenches or Allen keys which came with the printer, and the Poker Hook.
That's the J-shaped wire thing that came with the printer. Here's to hoping you
didn't throw it out! If you did, I have a link in the description where you can
buy another one for about four bucks. Okay, so that's the tool list. Now as I
said, I'm going to cover the disassembly, the jam clearing, and the reassembly, in
that order. So, without further ado, let's take this thing apart! First, with the
printer on, set the Z height about halfway up. This will give us plenty of
room to work. Then, turn the printer off, because when the printer is on the
extruder fan is on, and since we're gonna have tools in close proximity to the fan,
let's not tempt fate. We don't want to break a fan blade. Been there, done that,
the t-shirt sucked so I didn't get it. Oh, also make sure you've let the printer
cool down, and the nozzle is cool. We don't want to get burned. And if you have
any filament still going into the extruder, clip it off. We don't want that
to get in the way. And you might want to place a small, folded towel on the print
bed. This will protect it from damage if parts fall on it, and yes, extruder
stepper motor, I am looking at you. Also, if small parts fall off, this will
help keep them from bouncing around and getting lost. So, while supporting the
stepper motor with one hand, loosen the two long screws which hold
the fan, heatsink, cooling block, and stepper motor together. And I mean loosen
them to the point that they're not holding on to the stepper motor any
longer, but don't actually remove them yet. You'll see why in a moment.
Okay, unplug the cable from the back of the stepper motor, and then remove it
from the right-hand side of the extruder assembly by lifting up. Then you can set
it aside. The fan and heatsink should still be connected with the long screws,
and the screws should still be going through the cooling block. So now, while
holding the fan and the heatsink together, slide those parts out to the
left. If you look at the fan and the heatsink, you'll see a pair of
cylindrical spacers in between the two. Those little spacers are why I told you
not to yank the screws out earlier. If you had done that, you might still be
looking for one or both of those little spacers. Trust me, I know. I've done it
multiple times. So now that you know those spacers are there, take that fan
and heatsink sandwich, and place it in the palm of your hand, with the heatsink
as the top piece of bread. Now you can lift the heatsink off the screws, and set
it aside with the stepper motor. Now you can remove the spacers and set those
aside. Then you can remove the screws from the fan, and set those aside. I'm
using a rear-mounted blower and parts cooling duct, so my stuff is around
behind everything, but if you have the stock parts cooling fan, it's mounted at
the front here. You'll want to remove the two screws holding it in place.
And this fan you can probably just tuck out of the way, up and over the top of
the X carriage, but if you want to unplug it and set it aside, you can do that too.
Electrically, both fans are still connected to the breakout board at the
back of the X carriage, so to remove them we'll need to remove that metal cover,
and then we can unplug the fans. So remove the two screws that hold the
cover in place. And you may also want to remove that ribbon cable, so you can
better see what you're working on. We'll get the ribbon cable up out of the
way, and we'll take this cover off. So, follow the fan's leads back to the
breakout board, and unplug the fan from the socket. Make note of which socket
that the fan goes into, so when you're reassembling all this, you don't get your
fans plugged into the wrong sockets. Set the fan aside with the rest of the parts.
Hooray! You have successfully disassembled the
extruder! Now, let's pretend there's a filament jam
down in there. Time to get rid of that problematic plastic! Now, I want to start
this out with a word of warning: We're gonna be heating up the nozzle to clear
the plastic, so I want you to be careful! So, at the start of this video I
mentioned that one of the reasons you might need to disassemble the extruder
is to clear a clog, or filament jam. Now, generally, the first step in trying
to clear a clog is, with the nozzle at working temperature, to pull the filament
out, and then, using the poker hook, try pushing what's still in the nozzle on
through, to see if we can force whatever's blocking it to squeeze on out.
But sometimes, that doesn't work. And the reasons vary. Sometimes, your printer ran
out of filament and there's not enough for you to grab on to and pull back out.
And to make matters worse, when you try using the poker hook to push that
existing the filament down into the extruder, you can't! The end of the
filament that's still in there doesn't have a nice flat end on it, so the tool
can't push straight down on it. Or, sometimes, the printer finishes the print
job, though having had a jam, the print itself is unfinished. In this case, the
filament has cooled down inside the tube between the heater block and the cooling
block, and no matter what you try, you can't get enough heat up into the
cooling block part of things to soften the filament. And there are probably many
other reasons, but let's just say sometimes, you need to take the extruder
to bits in order to get things cleaned up. And that's why we're here now.
We've already disassembled the extruder and removed the fan, so everything is out of
our way. I'm going to clip this filament off right about where it would be if the
printer had run out during a print. So you can see there's a little bit we can
grab onto and try pulling out, once the nozzle is up to temperature. But what if
the filament had snapped off right at the opening? Now there's nothing at all
to grab onto. The only way out is forward, and by that I mean we need to try
forcing this filament out through the nozzle. So if you unplugged the ribbon
cable from that breakout board, you'll need to plug it in again, since it
carries power to the heater cartridge. And we can remove the towel we put on
the bed. We don't want to get a filament on it, right? Now, let's turn the printer
on, and we'll use the filament load/unload feature, because that heats the
nozzle without heating up the bed.
And again, this is going to get hot, so be extra careful not to burn yourself. Now,
I'm using the ADVi3++ firmware on this printer, and if you haven't
installed it, I highly recommend it. I have a video covering that process, and
there's a link to it in the description. I've set the nozzle to 240˚C,
which is going to get plenty hot. And because the fan and the heatsink are no
longer attached to the cooling block, that's going to warm up too. In fact,
that's kind of the reason that we've removed them. Also, I want you to be
careful around the rest of the metal here, like this bracket where the stock
parts cooling fan mounts. This metal is all going to be soaking up heat, and
again, I don't want you to burn yourself. Ok, so once this gets up to temperature,
let it sit for a few minutes so some of that extra heat can get up into the tube
connecting the heater block with the cooling block. If filament had jammed in
that part, and then the printer cooled down, we need this heat to get up in
there to soften the filament. I'm gonna start pushing down on the filament with
the poker hook, and that should be enough to get the filament moving...
Yep there we go. Now, you can take this tool and poke it
down in there a few more times just to make sure you get that filament down
through there. There we go. Okay, now that we've got
filament flowing through that nozzle again, let's turn the printer off and let
it cool down. If this hadn't worked, we could try using a nozzle cleaning kit,
such as this one from REPKORD. It has a bunch of different sizes of wires
corresponding to common nozzle diameters. You find the one that matches your
nozzle, which in our case would be the 0.4 millimeter size. And you poke it up into the
nozzle from below. The idea is, if there was an impurity in the filament which
was stuck in the nozzle, this could help break that up and allow it to flow out.
And if THAT didn't work, we would need to remove the nozzle from the heater block
and replace the nozzle. If you want a video showing how to do that, let me know
in the comments. So again, make sure you've got the printer turned off, and
you've let it cool down completely. Because now it's time to put it all back together!
First, let's plug the fans back in. If you unplugged the parts cooling fan,
make sure you plug the fans back into the correct sockets. If, like me, you only
in unplugged the heatsink fan, there's only one place for it to go.
With those plugged in, we'll continue. Next, I want to get the cover put back onto
the breakout board, at the back of the X carriage. Get that lined up, and then put
the screws back in. And you'll also want to make sure to plug the ribbon cable
back in. The next step is to assemble the fan, spacer, and heatsink combination. So
slide the long screws through the fan.
Then add the spacers. And then add the heatsink. Note that there's a notch on
the heatsink for those spacers, so make sure you've got everything facing the
right way. Oh, by the way, when you're putting the fan back on, the fan is
supposed to blow air across the heatsink. So make sure the label side of the fan
is facing the heatsink. Now that you've got all of that assembled,
slide that into the cooling block. Now we need to reattach the extruder stepper
motor, so let's plug the motor in. And then the motor sits over here on this
side, and we're going to hold that together with the long screws.
There, that wasn't so bad, was it? You know, one of the things I like about this
printer is that basic maintenance tasks like this aren't too terribly difficult.
Other tasks on this printer are a little harder, like removing the heated bed,
simply because you have to take the bottom panel off the printer to get to
the bed's power and thermistor cables. And when you put it back together, that cable
has to go back inside the printer body. And getting it all arranged
properly so the cable doesn't snag when the bed moves can be a bit fiddly.
Well, now you have the knowledge needed to disassemble and reassemble the extruder.
you'll find this handy not only for clearing filament jams, but also when you
inevitably need to replace the heat sink fan. By the way, if you DO need to replace
the fan, I recommend going with a Noctua fan. Those things are SUPER quiet.
But they're 12 volt fans, and this is a 24 volt printer, so it's a little more
involved than just swapping the fan out. If you're interested in that procedure,
I've got a video covering it, and there's a link in the description. Well, we've
reached the end of this episode. Thanks for making it all the way to the end!
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Links for both are in the description. Well, now that I've got the extruder
un-disassembled, I'm gonna go print something cool.
You do the same, and I'll see you next time!