Filament binds in the spool

[glondon 0]

The filament often binds up in the spool. When this happens on large prints (i am not watching it), the filament breaks which leads to no filament feeding which leads to overheating and charring in the nozzle which leads to frustration. Does anyone have this problem with advice?

[gr5 962]

Is it ultimaker filament? There was a bad batch mostly last summer that gets brittle after a while (3 to 12 months - not sure). If you bend your filament 90 degrees with your fingers and it breaks then you should probably send it back. Or throw it out.

Anyway - "binding" I assume is actually where you have one loop underneath another. This happens to everyone and is very annoying and is easily avoided. The best thing to do is to remove the filament from the printer, maybe have someone hold the end and keep it tight and start to unwind until you see where it goes under another loop. Give it slack and pull the filament out from under the one on top. then repeat the test and make sure there are at least 5 meters/yards of filament that aren't tangled.

Once a spool is "certified" as not tangled try to never let it get tangled again. For a while I would never let go of the tip of the filament. when storing I would put the tip through a side hole or I would use rubber bands to keep the tip from getting under the rest or other techniques. But now I pretty much don't worry about it - if I have a large print I unspool at least 2 yards/meters first to make sure there are no tangles.

When the filament comes from the factory there is never a tangle - it's just when we open it up in the first few seconds and any other time the filament is not inserted into the printer - that's when it's very easy to get it tangled.

[lelapinblanc 0]

Greetings!  I love my Ultimate 2+!  I am new at this so I will let the experts make the decision.  Pretty much every print I've made has failed 2 or 3 times with tangled filament.  I am using the first spool that came with the unit.  I read a post that there was a batch of birttle filament, that can be tested by bending the filament in a 90 degree angle and see if it breaks. I'm having that happen as demoed in a video.  I also showed one of my prints that requires 24 hours, that took several attempts to get to complete due to binding.  I also read how to avoid binding, but frankly, I don't get it. The filament goes loose for 5 or 6 turns on the spool when you let it go, and this is the apparent cause of the tangles later on.

If Ultimaker decides that I have brittle filament from the video I would like to know how to return it and get non brittle filament.