I have been printing now for getting on for 10 years, starting with a Printrbot…
Over the years I have collected a lot of rolls of filament and some are now really old. Some have got brittle over the years, but they still print perfectly.
On my Prusa, I was used to the odd break of filament learned ways to fix it. Broken filament was easy to get it out… Or better still push it through, so i never had an issue dealing with this…
I feared the X1 and/or AMS might be a problem with this filament, and today, I did my first multi colour print and had a failure… A small amount of filament snapped off and I had to dismantle the extruder to get it out.
It was a fairly trivial task, but not something i want to do often… On my Prusa, I would normally be able to heat the hot end and force this broken bit through manually by just pushing a new bit behind it… But of course, the X1 won’t do this as its all automatic… Are there any tips for handling this? Any way to ram the broken bit through? Or am I going to have to stop using the reels of brittle filament that I have accumulated?
I know that people are going to say don’t use the filament… But I have 10s of rolls which all print fine and I would rather not get rid of them. I am now forced to go back to my Prusa to use these old filaments, but would rather not.
Am I the only one? Does anyone have any thoughts?