I took advantage of a recent offer to stock up on filament for my Ender 3 Neo. I purchased six 1Kg spools of Sunlu PLA+ Matte in grey and white colors. I loaded one of the white spools into the printer and did a small test print – no problems, looks good, everything seemed fine.

So I decided to fire up a longer print, 8+ hours of an ocarina I downloaded from Printables and sliced using Cura Ultimaker. However, I have yet to have a successful print. Three different times, the filament has gotten bound up on the spool, so much so that the feed mechanism just gives up and the print stops. I’ve cancelled two of these prints after 2-3 hours when the filament got stuck on the spool.

Has anyone else seen this? Is there a fix, short of pulling it all off the spool? I’ve never had to, but can you even respool the filament without causing more problems? I can’t babysit the printer for 8-10 hours, and would like to kick off some overnight jobs again one day…

  • Square Singer@feddit.deEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Pulling it all off will destroy your PLA. When it gets bent, it will soon after get brittle like spaghetti.

    Filament can actually ot get tangled unless someone let go of the end. The way it was rolled on means that it can only roll off cleanly, unless you (or someone in the factory) let go of the end. The end is always supposed to be in your hand, in the printer or attached to the spool.

    This also means the tangle is most probably ot far on the spool. So to fix it, pull the filament tight and hold it with you hands (maybe get someone to help you) so that all the windings are completely stationary. Then roll the filament off until it gets stuck. Pull it through the tangle, and either print the rolled-off part directly or cut it off.

    • displaced_city_mouse@midwest.socialOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      OK, so no to pulling it all off.

      I’ll give this a try, but let’s say I put the filament in the printer cleanly – the filament won’t be tight for long as it gets pulled into the printer, so what’s to keep it from jamming itself up again?

      UPDATE: I really need to learn to try things before I start complaining they won’t work.

      I followed your advice – as I was tightening up the windings, it became clear that the lead winding was under the next one. I know I wasn’t the most careful when I initially loaded it, so you’re diagnosis was probably correct.

      So I pulled the tangle out, cut off the damaged section of PLA, and more carefully reloaded the filament this time. It seems better now – the filament is feeding better now. Time will tell – I’ll post an update when this print either completes or fails.

      • Square Singer@feddit.deEnglish
        21·
        1 year ago

        Happy, that it worked!

        Watch out, could be that you ave a second tangle, though it’s unlikely.

        Regarding being tangled from the factory: No matter how messy the winding, if it was rolled on without any tangles (and you can’t roll it on with tangles), it can also roll off without tangles.

        So the only way it can get tangled is due to a loose ending. Sure, they could have let the ending slip in the factory, but that would be a terrible fail for a factory. That usually doesn’t happen.