My Printrbot simple metal's extruder is jammed and I need to heat it up to unjam it. Unfortunately, the printer does't want to connect to my laptop regardless of the program I'm using (Repetier-Host or Cura 15).
Is there a way to use a micro SD card to heat up the printer hotend but not print anything?
Sure there is. As you use Cura, you can grab any G-code file (you already have) and use it to set hotend temperature (delete the actual printing part from the file) to get something like this:
;FLAVOR:Marlin
;TIME:102
;Filament used: 0.0573674m
;Layer height: 0.2
;Generated with Cura_SteamEngine 3.3.1
; M190 S60 ;-> this sets the bed temperature so we can comment it out
; the next line sets the hotend to 200 degrees Celsius
M104 S200
As every line that starts with a semi-colon is a comment and is ignored by the printer, M104 S200, would be the only line you need in the printout file.
If you're interested in knowing more - look here: G-codes on reprap wiki
I heated it up and was able to extract some plastic that had gotten jammed in the hot ends opening.
I heated up the hotend by commenting out all the other lines of code in Cura's start and end G-code tabs (must have missed some because the printer moved. I would just unplug the printer when it stopped moving). I used an SD card but it would probably work with USB too. I tried to force the filament in to force the jam out of the hotend, but that did nothing.
I took apart the extruder assembly and discovered that a section of filament that was too wide got stuck in the hotend's entrance. I pulled the filament out using me multitool and put the extruder back together. Hope this helps others with a similar problem.
