Note on new spools for 3D printer

[Simeón Cogswell]

Hey everyone, I just wanted to share an experience I had last night in order to save anyone else from a headache.

I went by the space yesterday to print a couple of things and decided to try out a new color that hadn't been opened yet. So I loaded up the spool as per instructions, left it to print and went to work on some other things. 

I came back when it was about 80% to find the printer just going through the motions and no more plastic being extruded. After some fiddling I discovered that new spools of filament are wound way too tight for the extruder to pull directly off of, as in it's not a strong enough pull to spin the spool. 

So if you use a new color just be careful and loosen a bunch of filament on the spool before letting it print.

[Zak Smolen]

I noticed that as well. I tried using the existing color on the spool for something and found it wasn't printing. When I took it out to change to a different color/material I saw a ground out groove in the filament. It looks like the filament was stuck for some reason (possibly from being wound too tight) and instead of pulling it into the extruder head it just ground out a section of the filament. I assume this could also happen if the wrong profile is used and the extruder head isn't hot enough so be wary of that.

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[Steve Altemeier]

This is good info - thanks!  I added it to our wiki (I'll bet no one knew we had a wiki - it's a secret!) so please feel free to edit my comments to reflect your experiences more accurately if desired.  The wiki is at wiki.ashevillemakers.org, so please feel free to add usage tips for various pieces of equipment going forward.  Thanks!

[Zak Smolen]

last week I saw issues once with the filament not returning correctly after cleaning. Usually it retracts the filamanet, wipes the tip of the extruder, and then lowers the filament again when it starts the print. This time it didn't lower correctly. Fixing it just involved canceling my print, gently pushing the filament down, and then having it extrude a little until the flow seemed regular. After that, it seemed to be fine when it raised and lowered the filament.

In all honesty, it is probably good practice to manually extrude a little as a test before printing, even if there is existing filament from a previous print already loaded.

[Avi Silverman]

Good info. As an aside, I went ahead and added a link to the wiki on the main menu of the website.