Unspooling filament chaos mid-print

[joatrash 1]

Well, I wanted to get started printing in my preferred color right away so I got some Faberdashery filament, not knowing about it being sold off the spool. (They really should be more clear about that on their website..)

After going through minor hell (and swearing a lot) spooling it onto the UM2 spool I was worried that it wouldn't stay, since the FD filament arrives in a much "wider" ring that is not tensioned for the smaller UM spool.

Of course... mid-print the filament went "SPROINGGGG!" and is now spilled chaotically on the floor. Luckily, the current print will finish ok but I may have to take it out and respool/rethread or it might get knotted up.

I did some searching for spooling issues but haven't found anything... what do y'all usually do to alleviate this issue?

 

[owen 19]

I use this http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:28440

Though not as compact it is quite reliable and is never hard to pull on like a new heavy spool

Also unspooled filament doesn't have the tight radius towards the end

You can also buy a lazy suzanne if you don't have a hard drive

 

[IRobertI 521]

Dump it on the floor is what I do. For a very long print (as in a print that takes lots of filament) I go and check it every couple of hours to make sure things look ok and give the pile a twist or two to alleviate tension.

Others like to put it in a bowl on a "lazy susan" so that it can spin on its own.

And finally there's lots and lots of spool holders on thingiverse that you could print out. Personally I haven't bothered yet since I feel it's a "waste" of a lot of material as they tend to be fairly large.

 

[illuminarti 18]

I certainly don't recommend wrapping the Faberdashery filament onto a spool. Especially since all the indications are that the current spool arrangements for the UM2 are one of the contributors to under-performance on throughput. I find the much larger radius of curvature to be a great help in getting good print results, and in making the filament easier to manage.

I place an 18" circle of foam board on top of a cheap plastic kitchen cupboard turntable (lazy susan), on the floor behind the printer, and lay the coil on that. Several meters of plastic can then hang in loose loops behind the printer, for it to pull in - several hours of printing at normal speeds. The plastic will usually uncoil itself quite smoothly and as Robert says you can give it a helping hand when needed every few hours.

(P.S. It makes an annoyingly good cat toy, as well).

 

[joatrash 1]

I've got it horizontal now- still on the spool which is held in place by a vertical axle. So now if it does unspool it will not tangle as easily.

 

[yellowshark 153]

Ditto for me, the same as Robert and Illuminarti. I tend to buy 40 or 50m lengths from Faberdashery and the only other thing I do on first use is to recoil the filament in the same size loops as Fab to just make sure there are no tangles.

I have now got to the point where I prefer to use these "loose" loops from the floor rather that the spools, as they act consistently all the way through unlike spools, which can be problematic once you get to the last third or so of the filament

 

[thirty6 3]

I was having a load of trouble with it till I bought a cake decorators turn table, which lets it unroll every time the tension builds up from laying it flat, now regularly do 24 hr prints with no problems.

[michaelvk 5]

I arrived at work this morning to find a nice and tightly wound up spool of filament on one end, a 1/4 finished print on the other and a ground up bit in the middle.. Needless to say I was a bit miffed. This is in my opinion the only serious flaw in the standard UM2 setup. I'll be taking these tips to heart, as well as trimming the material to the appropriate length, plus 80cm, for any print I can't stick around long enough to babysit.

On the plus side, I think the few hours(?) of stress free turning may have actually done the filament feed some good.