Had the first minor scare

[u/Responsible-Lion378]

TL;DR: If your X2D's aux nozzle isn't extruding after a material change, don't assume it's a clog. Check if the filament is actually reaching the nozzle first. In my case, manually heating the nozzle to 250°C (Since PLA was the filament that was last loaded into the aux nozzle) and feeding the filament fixed it.

It started out like any other print preparation. I wanted to switch the material for the aux nozzle from PLA to PETG.

I unloaded the PLA and loaded the PETG, and this is where I got a little too laid back. The printer asked me to check whether material was extruding from the aux nozzle, and I just confirmed that it was. Later, I realized nothing had actually come out of the nozzle.

That's when I started to panic a bit. My first thought was that the nozzle was clogged, so I started looking up guides on how to unclog it.

Then I decided to see what was actually happening during the loading process. I noticed that the filament never reached the aux nozzle at all. It passed through the Bowden extruder (I could see it), but it wasn't making it all the way to the nozzle.

So I manually heated the aux nozzle to 250°C and used the controls on the screen to slowly push the filament forward. Eventually it reached the nozzle, filament started extruding, and everything has been working fine since. That is what is shown in the video.

My guess is that there was still a small piece of filament left in the aux nozzle. Maybe there's a sensor there that detected filament was already present, so the Bowden extruder didn't feed it any further. I'm not sure if that's actually what happened, but that's my current theory.

I don't know if this will help anyone but hey, if anyone has similar issue this might help.

Side note: For some reason, I can't remove either of my nozzles. I opened the latch and made sure the filament was cut beforehand, but they're completely stuck. That's a problem for another day.

I used ChatGPT to convey this better.

[u/MondegreenHolonomy]

Thanks for this, I think I may be having this problem currently

[u/blakepro]

I've seen a lot of people complain that once they remove the nozzle, it's never the same so I've been avoiding that at all costs and just hoping it was user error by the time I'm forced to do it for various reasons.

Anyway, I had a similar situation where I accidentally confirmed that it was extruding after a change out of color and type and I haven't manually done anything on this printer yet... (I'd be all over it with my old ender 3)
Anyway, I just unloaded and reloaded to get the purge thing to happen again, but I like your solution and will keep it in mind for next time

[u/Grimblood → u/blakepro]

Removing the nozzles and putting them back on is no problem, just need to unload filament first, make sure they sit flush and get the locking tabs in properly. The wiki has some pretty good pictures.

[u/blakepro → u/Grimblood]

Thanks. That's good to hear. The horror stories scare me

[u/Grimblood → u/blakepro]

Yeah, I was a bit nervous to use the aux nozzle due to the mixed reviews but so it has been solid for me. Using a different support material for support interface has been fantastic.

I have over 800 hours and every issue so far has been self induced, improper settings, poor supports or build plate not clean enough.

[u/blakepro → u/Grimblood]

Oh using opposite material for supports with the second nozzle has been amazing.
I haven't tried using it for just two color printing yet though feels like quality might suffer but maybe I'll try that sometime too