CPE+ filament slipping off the spool

johannes192 · July 27, 2021

Hello,

I'm using CPE+ a lot and the results are really great. However, with fresh spools it happens quite often that the filament slips off the spool and entangles somewhere.

That happend on a UM3 and on a UMS3. I'm using the ultimaker CPE+ filament. And with PLA or other materials I never observed this issue.

Does anybody have experience with this behavior and knows how to avoid it?

Thanks in advance!

Johannes

geert_2 · July 27, 2021

There do exist several clamps and guiding systems to prevent that. Some are mounted on the printers, some on the spoolholders, and some slide on the edges of the spools.

Long ago I made a slider for my colorFabb spools, after I also had this problem. In fact, I had two problems: originally, some filaments were wound way too stiff on the spool, so it required way too much force to unwind it, it acted like a strong spring resisting unwinding. I had to manually unwind and straighten some filament first. But then it tended to fall off the spool sideways. This slider only worked on spools with a smooth edge that allowed sliding, obviously. So it did not work on older Ultimaker spools, as they had spokes blocking the sliding. I haven't tried it on newer spools.

I would suggest you have a look on Thingiverse and similar sites (I don't know which search terms). Or you can borrow my concept (see picture below), or any other, and adapt it to your requirements. Make sure it slides very smoothly, otherwise if it would get stuck, it would cause failed prints by itself.

I also use this clamp to store spools, and prevent the filament from unwinding or getting tangled up under itself while in storage. In storage I use it with these thumbscrews, and the filament should go through the little hole, to be clamped. For sliding around the edge while printing, obviously no screws should be used, and the filament should not go through the hole. So this is a multi-use thing. Feel free to adapt it to your spools, and test thoroughly: stay with the printer during the first couple of testruns.