zc98

I forgot to mention I had a lot of trouble with the spooler. You have to loosen the clutch until it just barely spins and spools the filament. Otherwise it stretches the filament making it too small. If you hold the spool the motor should keep spinning or the clutch is too tight. They have a user manual and troubleshooting guide on the web site now, they are worth looking at because they explain a lot about using the ProtoCycler.

I finally got my ProtoCycler working. Support is responding to me but sometimes it takes a week and once in a while they miss an email but reply if I resend it. I have to use fresh pellets and they have to be 4043D pellets. If I try recycled plastic or a different kind of pellets I can't get good filament. Also I took my nozzle off and somehow lost my filter. Without the filter in the nozzle my diameter was all over the place. Also it takes around 20 minutes of running to clear out the plastic in the extruder if you are trying to get back to fresh 4043D pellets. And I dry the pellets at 45C for at least 4 hours. So for me I have to have a good backing plate and filter in the nozzle and use dried 4043D pellets with colorant added. Then I can use the automatic PLA setting to make filament. I haven't tried making ABS filament yet, I just spent the last two months just figuring out how to get PLA to work. My filament diameter varies between 1.70 and 1.80 ( with a couple of higher and lower readings displayed every once in a while on the display). I can use the filament I make to print on my CR-10 and MakerGear M2 and it works OK. It is not the best filament I've ever had but it works. I have gotten 3D850 PLA pellets to work in manual mode but it is really hard to get the extrusion started and parts printed with this filament are really light and a little more brittle. The ProtoCycler is kind of hard to use as far as my experience goes, I was looking for people who got it working when I found this post. I have not found any posts using Google except this one, my guess is not many people use a ProtoCycler or maybe they just gave up.