Nozzle went from .35 to 3.0

[Vprints]

Honestly not sure how this happened. I had a failed PLA print -- just 215C, part way through the print the nozzle apparently clogged (guessing a wide spot in the filament? Only measured at 1.8 at the spot. It's esun, I'm half way through the roll & it's been good so far.) Retracted the PLA, put some of the esun cleaner filament through just to be sure things were still flowing, then fed the PLA back in. Started printing again, 2/3 through the first layer it started getting really blotchy as if it was having trouble feeding plastic through. Backed the PLA out to see if it was too wide -- didn't seem to be. Fed it back in -- and it started extruding in a big, wide blob because the nozzle diameter was now 3.0mm. Not sure where the tip of the nozzle went -- presumably in the blob of plastic extruded, though I couldn't find it. It's a nice, smooth, clean break though!

Is this "normal"? I don't recall reading about that happening before...

[Jules]

Nope, not normal. Never seen it either.

[willnewton]

Wow, I'm kinda impressed. It's the first time I have seen that.

[Jules]

Tell you what, that cleaner filament can be a real bear. If you tried to push it through too fast, it might have pushed part of the nozzle through or something. Although usually the plastic just oozes out through a crack somewhere.

It almost looks drilled. (Definitely wins the prize for most spectacular nozzle fail!)

[jimc]

awesome. i like it.

[Vprints]

Update: It's not often that an interaction with a company's tech support makes me want to buy MORE from that company.

I have a .5 nozzle I hadn't had the courage to try using yet, so I figured this is the perfect excuse to make myself attempt to put it on this hot end, and just order another hot end along with the replacement .35 nozzle. My wife suggested also getting a spare .35 nozzle while I'm at it, given its primary use -- can't argue with that -- but the individual nozzles were grayed out as unavailable. I sent a note to MakerGear asking when they expect to have more of them -- and, brief exchange later, MakerGear says this nozzle failure looks like a manufacturing defect to them so they're replacing it; if I still want to place an order, they'll just include it with that shipment.

Yes, of course I'm still placing an order: I am consistently impressed by this company. MakerGear rocks!

[insta]

That's an amazing failure.

[Vprints]

Yeah, I'll be keeping this one as a souvenir. Of course, that means now I need to design and print a nice display for it...

[wmgeorge]

Or.. I wonder if S3D will let you set the nozzle size at 3 mm, it would really speed things up

[MagicEngineer]

Just out of curiosity, have you been using any metal infused filaments?