Does irregularly wound filament bother you?

Have you experienced this – when 3d printing, the spool cannot rotate freely on the holder? sometimes you have to pull the spool by hands to make sure the extruder gets smooth feed?

We wondered if it’s because the filament is tightly wound or because it's not wound neatly. If every spool is reeled neatly layer by layer, would it be less likely to loop or get tangled while 3d printing?

Anyone has any thoughts on this? Please share with us.

When I first started out (3 years ago) I had a roll that was tangled on the spool and it pulled the spool up off the spool holder and jammed my printer. It was poorly spooled up and over itself. Have never had that problem since changing suppliers. The worst problem I had was a spool where the filament wanted to be straight and when I un hooked the end for the first time it went wild and uncoiled off the spool (you ever take a tape measure apart and have the spring get loose? Same thing). Took me an hour to get it back on the spool and I then heated it up in a small oven for a little while and it stopped it.

Hi tmorris9,

Thanks for your share. What you have experienced is a good example to show how poorly wound spool can ruin our 3d printing.

So we think improvement on filament coiling may help people get smooth printing without extra effort, do you agree?

I had my share of those, some times I had to transfer from one spool to an empty one to fix the mess, I tried different vendors until I found out the one that does it right and I stick to him, at the end I get double benefits: a great quality product and a nice loyalty discount.

I'm cheap and tend to buy cheap filament (provided it's not full of impurities). I like the Toner Plastics filament from Micro Center, but I have had some issues with it being too tightly wound and not unspooling smoothly. For shorter prints, I loosen up several coils worth of filament on the spool, but I have gotten burned forgetting to do this periodically for longer prints. I've found this is mostly a problem with the first 1/4 kg or so. After that, the spool seems to behave better. Does this match anyone else's experience?

Well the improvement has already been made. I have not had another problem like this in nearly 3 years and a good 30 rolls or more.

It seems that if one finds a good supplier, unspooling will not be a problem. So it's the manufacturer's job to make sure that the spool is well wound.

I have not had a single issue with badly wound filament to date. None of the stuff I bought was wound nicely. It criss crossed and went all over. I buy cheap stuff. The geared extruder has no problem pulling it out. It gets tighter sometimes, and looser other times. However overall its feeding just fine.

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Modicum V1 sold on e-bay user jaguarking11

Well, good to hear that you never have a filament feeding issue. Is there any tips for 3D printing to get that result?

There are two things I do. I have bearings on my spool holder with a wing nut to adjust tension for one thing. The second thing is that I use a buffer space between the extruder and filament. That buffer space has a guide/cleaner in it. Never had a tangle that way. I adjust tension on the bearings before printing. It's not good for the rollers scate bearings but they have not failed yet.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/17/2014 10:56PM by jaguarking11.

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Modicum V1 sold on e-bay user jaguarking11

Well, that's a good way for improvement although not everyone can make such ajustment for their own 3d printers.