Partial Answer Filament not entering extruder

Hey folks,

I've had the worst luck with my secondhand robo r1+- I've cycled through basically every single issue and I'm dealing with what I believe to be a clog. This is my first foray into 3d printing and it has been awful haha. Trying to get through it like a champ tho. Please, if you can provide an answer- I'm not too familiar with all the terms, I know heatsink, and nozzle haha.

My hot end fan was dying out and I have a replacement ready. In printing the last part before the swap I noticed that my extruder stopped extruding filament by itself. By going into Matter Control I was able to extrude filament after pressing extrude 10mm a few times. When resuming a print the big gear would retract quite a bit and the next time I paused to extrude I'd have to press 10mm a few extra time.

By pushing filament through by hand I noticed that now all of a sudden it feels like the filament gets stuck on something in the heatsink. I tried as best I could to look inside with a flashlight but I can't seem to see anything in there. When I dismantled the extruder it almost looked crooked to me. I've attached pictures because I have no clue if this is what it should look like. I don't know the model so I can't look up pictures to see what it should look like.

My assumption is that it is a really bad heat creep clog because I only just recently noticed that the hot end fan shuts off sometimes. I never had extrusion problems before and this is definitely a new development.

Thanks all!
D

 

Oh also, the two white wires (second picture, behind square rubber thing) came loose during my following of Robo's instructions (heat to 240 and wait). MatterControl noted a hardware failure but I was able to plug the wires into the hole of the square rubber part and rebooted again and everything seemed ok.