I’m running a P1S with no AMS - filament holder on the back as standard.
What do you do with a tangled spool? I put a fresh spool on this morning when My filament ran out at the second layer. Then I got a filament ran out notification about 2 hours later. This seemed strange. I noticed there were only about a half dozen layers on the print, so when I changed the filament it was just printing in mid-air. I restart the print, and again about 3 hours later I get a filament ran out notification. I go check it out to see my print is only about 4mm thick. - and there should have been 200 layers done by then. There is another tangle/knot on the spool.
I’m not willing to keep using this spool on this longer print. What should I do with it? keep it for short prints? Does Bambu refund for faulty spools?
Not saying you had anything to do with the tangled spool but whenever the tail is out of a clip to hold it, I’m either holding onto the tail or have it stuck through a rim hole. But it’s real easy to have filament spool off in a cascade and maybe that happened at the factory and it got respooled with the tangles?
Anyway, check MakerWorld for filament respoolers. You just hand crank them but some may use a drill, some have gears, and there’s at least one with a back and forth feed to evenly load a spool. I’ve almost printed one a few times but haven’t yet so can’t give any recommendations, but maybe others will.
At some point, the end of the filament passed under another loose wrap or two, and it basically formed a loose overhand knot around the spool. Usually, it will be on the outermost layers of the spool and you can just follow the filament back until you see where it goes under another wrap. Pull it out from under and re-wrap. Sometimes a vise or helper to hold the end while you unroll the filament makes it easier to find where it crosses under another wrap.
I make it a point to never let go of the end of the filament when handling the spool because that is when tangles happen.
It was a fresh refill, I had just put it on the spool. Otherwise, yeah, I alway have it in a rim hole. I’m not impressed that these recent refills don’t have the little piece of tape on the free end.
This was a refill yes, but I think it unlikely to be user error. There is a chance maybe for the very first tangle, if I didn’t pick up the free end and load it in properly, but this happened a second time on the same spool. The free end didn’t have the little piece of tape on it that it normally has, and it took me a moment to find it on the spool.
Yeah, I unwrapped it a little ways, and undid it where it was wrapped under another layer, then rewrapped, so I was surprised when it tangled a second time. I had trouble finding the end to start with on this roll, it wasn’t as evenly wrapped, so I had to let it go for a second, it could have happened then, but it seemed to reel off evenly. I might need to build myself a re-spooler.
A respooler won’t help with tangled filament (it will tangle in the respooler as well). When you have a tangled spool, the end of the filament will be under another filament loop, like this:
To untangle, move the end so that is no longer under the loop. Kinda difficult to explain in text, here is a video explaining it:
Another way to do this (if the tangles are not obvious) is to start printing with the filament and at some point the printer will stop, because of tangled filament, then you cut the filament, let it print until it runs out and in the meantime you can remove the (now obvious) tangle from the spool, then just insert it back into the AMS.
I only had it one time with cheap no name AliExpress filament, where the spool was tangled from the factory. This is very rare and only happened to me once, the other times I am pretty sure that it was my fault, because I let go of the filament end at some point.
For me it may be symantics but I don’t consider a cross over to be a tangle. I agree that would be as easy to fix as you describe.
Tangle, to me now, implies a mess. Similar to when a spool slips while trying to put on the second side of a spool and the coil goes everywhere. Ask me about that, it’s funny if you’re not me. The only option is to respool. Again, ask me how I know. My suggestion to respool was, well, a smartass answer because I felt it wasn’t what I would call a tangle. It is the wrong answer for a cross over.
Anyway, you’re answer may very well be the best approach. Certainly what I do when I have a cross over.
I’ve found that the width of the refills are slightly narrower than the spool, which allows the spool to lock together without binding down on the filament. This allows a bit of gap for the leading end of the filament to fall down between the side of the refill and the side of the spool as it’s paying out. If it gets pulled down the side it will cause a snag that throws an error, then the AMS retracts the filament from the printer. When you come along to see what’s wrong, the spool looks fine because it was rerolled by the AMS and so the problem is hidden. Try unwinding the spool a few turns to see if there’s a loop of filament tucked down along the side of the spool. If that’s the case, I have had success loosening the refill and spreading the loops out across the core of the spool by hand. Eliminating the gaps between the refill and spool wall was the key. In this case, rewinding the spool will also fix the problem as winding on the spool will spread the loops across the core of the spool without leaving any gaps against the sides.
