Why did the filament break?

[iraholston 0]

I have a new UM2 just out of the box. The provided silver filament seemed brittle where it attached to the spool, but I just broke it off and proceed to try to start the setup. The filament jammed in the tube but after reading these posts I was able to pull it out. Just had my first successful print after figuring out the build plate settings! Thanks!

[drayson 75]

Guys,

I usually store my spare filaments and also all the samples I got in a lock&lock container with a big bag (0,5kg) of Silica gel.

Nevertheless I found the snapping issue also on this "correctly" stored filaments right in the container e.g. at natural, white or yellow PLA samples from Colorfabb (app. 1 year old).

From my point of view it looks that the part of the filament which got in touch with the silica bag got tried out and got brittle too... What do you think about it?

[gr5 2,167]

Did you read above where it was figured out that it only gets brittle where it is straightened? Try taking a meter of filament and straighten half of it on a table with tape and wait 8 hours. Does the curled part stay flexible and the straight part become brittle?

[drayson 75]

Did you read above where it was figured out that it only gets brittle where it is straightened?  Try taking a meter of filament and straighten half of it on a table with tape and wait 8 hours.  Does the curled part stay flexible and the straight part become brittle?

 

Already tried something similar, but not for 8 hours - it just breaks on the same spot (360°) of the spool so I guess that´s where the silica was... strange...

[gr5 2,167]

This is a different issue than the Ultimaker filament issue but is just as interesting. I'll mention in the future not to let the silica pack touch the filament.