Ive had a couple of rolls of filament recently which have driven me nuts. Every few minutes id have to go and restart a print due to tangled filament on the spool. Whats more frustrating is that with one of the PLA filaments every time the print stops there’s a huge layer mark visible which makes the print weaker and so it breaks apart
My question is.. is there any way I can possibly avoid this? Loosening up X amount of filament aread of time or something? I always Make sure the filaments are stored with he end tucked away (as much as I can)
Tangled filament isn’t normal, and the reviews don’t mention it is a problem this manufacturer has.
You either got a roll that had a tangle,or you looped the filament under itself when loading.
As for your complaint about brittleness and issues when restarting a print after stopping to untangle, this filament is well known to have brittleness issues.
Untagle your filament and you won’t have any more tangles.
When you say ‘untangle’ do you mean take some of the spool and re-spool it? Im a little unsure as whether having a few loops of loose filament on the spool is less prone to tangling than a more tightly wound one
Tangled filament literally means the loop that’s currently being fed passes THROUGH another loop.
The only way this can happen is if at some point the loose end was passed through another loop of filament. It either happened at the factory, or when you were handling it.
You can’t get a tangled roll just from a few loops on the spool being loose or manually wound. I promise.
The tangles im talking about appear to be when the filament gets trapped within another piece, so I just have to yank it out all the time, if it was passed through another loop would it not mean I would have to take the filament out of the boden and unloop it like that? (sorry if im misunderstanding -not always great at getting my head around things like this )
I’m not saying it doesn’t happen… but I’ve been FDM printing since around 2010 and in all that time I’ve never had a filament come out of a bag tangled up. I know a few other 3D printers and best I can recall, none of them have ever had the problem, either.
For someone to have repeated experiences with tangled filament, I think that indicates they’re making a mistake (without realizing) with how they’re loading the filament and the reason it ends up tangled is “operator error”.
If it was the filament that was at fault, everyone who is buying the same stuff should be having the same frustrating experience.
So you’re saying it was loosely coiled at the factory and the loops are causing each other to jam - not a case of being tangled, but rather being poorly coiled.
Ok, that’s another thing entirely. I’ve seen that before - usually when using a fresh refill roll when I use it in a spool I printed that’s a bit too flexible - the AMS usually has enough power to pull it free, but I’ve had to help it out a few times in the past.
Tangles are overhand knots, tied around the spool. The factory is unlikely to be the source of this issue. The spooling machine simply spins the spool; tucking the end of the filament under another winding is beyond its capabilities.
The most likely tangle cause is letting go of the filament end during loading, allowing the end to curl under adjacent loose wraps. The printer can pull off some filament because the outer wraps tend to be loose after loading, and the location of the knot can often move around the spool. Eventually, the knot tightens, and the extruder cannot pull any more filament.
Remove the spool completely, and preferably get someone else to help you find the point where the filament passes under a winding. One of you holds the spool, providing some resistance to the spin as the other pulls filament off the spool. When it jams, look closely to see where the loose end is passing under another winding. Pull it out from under and then pull out some more filament until you are sure there are no more knots. Re-wrap and reload.
Spools can definitely be wrapped too tight. When spooled, the filament is drawn tight and gets pulled in and jammed between two adjacent turns of the filament from the previous “row”, and then it sticks when unspooling. I’ve seen this problem happen a few times over the years. When it does happen, I unroll and reroll a few meters of filament and it’s usually enough to fix it.
NOW this makes sense, you’re just relying on the extruder to draw in filament. Manually loosening filament prior to print is the simple answer, but an AMS HT would do wonders for you.
It’s just been released today, but the TPU assist module MAY turn out to be a viable option as well, but nobody has had a chance to test it out for non-TPU filaments yet. Mine’s supposed to arrive early next week.
All good - check into Mellow 3D, they have various filament feeders, they may have one that works for the A1 and could help feed filament to the extruder.
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