Custom Nozzle Scrubber

[billbr]

I'm not normally a journey logger person, but was inspired by others to expose my blundering journey.

This all started when I was watching a very old video by CNC Kitchen (Stephan's early work) showing how he built custom nozzle socks. My son calls them nozzle coozies but that is a different story. I have been fighting ooze and nozzle cleaning since 2015 when I was printing with a Lulzbot TAZ5. Every solution I tried has sorta worked, but not to my satisfaction. Woven fiber, brass brushes, steel brushes, silicon cooking brushes cut down, I tried them all.  So I was watching Stephan and BANG! Into my head popped this idea of using RTV silicone with an embedded 3d-printed stiffener. So I was off researching RTVs, molding, and mechanized scrubbing things.

I tend to participate in a couple of youtube chats and help a few makers in my community get started and do crazy things with 3D printers, lasers, milling, woodworking, and the like. So my retirement from enterprise software development allows a full schedule of youtube, printer building, and general assistance. So I began to make a little progress.

Here is the nozzle pad I've come up with for a first pass. The blue section is actually included at the time of moiding to allow for it to become the "backbone" of the scrubber. The "feet" are bigger at the bottom in order to hold the silicone to be held strongly to the base. The hole in the center is to purge through to a purge bucket. It is shaped so one can sit the nozzle down on the scrubber, purge, and then rise and wipe the nozzle. So I designed a mold and did my first attempt at molding...  Not so great. The mold leaked 90% of the silicone out, but worked from the standpoint of not sticking. The result was not usable, but was making forward progress. 

So I learned that my mold was really insufficient but the results were promising. As soon as I worked out the mold issues, my plan was to work through different patterns of scrubbers to determine the most effective scrubbing surface as well as find flaws in my design of the base. Then something different happened...

My wife fell and broke her hip. So she is home from the hospital now and doing well. She clonks around the house with her (very much hated) walker. It is up to me to cook, clean, do groceries and laundry, plus drive her to numerous doctor appointments. So this journey will continue albeit at a much slower place.

Feel free to make any comments (good or bad) and suggestions.  

[Flyrockets]

Love the idea, will be building a trident soon and looking at different solutions for scrubbers this seems like a good idea!