A quick guide to recovering from a blob of death on the 5M

I had the same thing happen on my Adventurer 4 last spring after a print failed halfway through and blobbed up around the nozzle. Took me two evenings to sort out but the heat trick is exactly right. I found letting it sit at PLA temps for a good five minutes made the plastic almost crumble off instead of smearing everywhere. One thing I did differently was pull the whole extruder assembly off the printer before doing the cleanup. Sat it on the kitchen table with a towel under it and it was so much easier to see what was plastic and what was actually part of the printer. The wires were short enough that I could still leave it connected, just had to be careful not to tug them.

My sock had a split too, same as you described. Never even looked at it before that, and it was like five bucks for a pack of spares that I now keep in the drawer with the spare nozzles. Replaced it before ever printing again. For the cold pull I just used regular PLA since I didn't have any of the nylon people recommed, and it still came out with a decent shaped tip. Ran a little single wall cube afterwards while standing there watching it, and it was fine. That printer is still going strong now.

One more thing I'd add from cleaning up a similar blob on my own machine last year, which is to check the little PTFE tube inside the hotend once you've got the chunk off, because if the plastic cooked long enough it can crush or deform the end of that tube and you'll chase wierd extrusion problems for weeks before you think to look there. I also snap a couple of photos with my phone before pulling anything apart, since those wire positions are easy to second-guess when reassembling at midnight. Took the guesswork out completly.

One spot nobody's covered yet is the threads on the heater cartridge and the nozzle itself. If the blob cooked long enough, plastic wicks up into those threads and you'll strip somethig trying to force the nozzle out cold. I heat it up, hold the block with a wrench, and break the nozzle loose while it's still hot. Done this maybe a dozen times on various machines and that's the step that saves the threads every time. Also grab the nozzle out while hot and run a brass brush over the block before it cools, takes thirty seconds and saves scrubbing later.