For the first time I used a refill filament. I open the old reel, put on the new refill. Struggled getting the the plastic reel back together until I realized there is a notch the needed aligning. Got it together and placed in the AMS. Started a print, trouble started almost right away. The refill reel had a bunch of filament on the side of the reel and it jammed and would not feed. I had to pull hard to get the filament to feed smoothly so it would not jam. Eventually I got the filament to feed from the top and it seem to start working. A little while later I found the AMS was jammed up again. This time the reel had come apart and the filament was all knotted up…
So I cut the filament and tried to get the filament back on the spool, to no avail. I also thought it would see its out of filament and would automatically switch to the other filament, it did not. I ended up just cutting off the knot and tried to the filament back on the reel and so it would come off properly. I found out there is a catch on the reel when you put it back together that needs to snap. Evidently I had not engaged the snap, which is why it fell apart in the first place I guess.
So I put the reel back in the AMS and hit retry. The reel would not load, the reel kept going backwards. I would push the filament in to the opening hit retry the reel would go backwards and pull the filament out. I eventually gave up, and power-cycled the printer and cancelled the print.
I had the exact same filament in the AMS, it would be nice if on the screen I could just tell it to switch to the other reel. Since I had cut the original filament hoping it would just switch to the other reel, it did not.
Second, the winding on the refill reel seem to have been suspect, since a bunch of it seem to have come off the side and not the top. I will need to pay more attention to this in the future. The included photo shows the reel after it came apart. Also, there seems to be a bit of a gap between the refill filament and the reel where the filament will fall into potentially and cause problems. Anyway, I am going to start the job up again, wish me luck….
