How do you guys swap filament?

[approx 0]

How do you guys swap filament from the printer - just wondering ?

I spend a lot of time changing filament and adjusting the tension screw after a change etc. I thought it would be ok to just snip the filament from the cold end of the extruder and manually insert the new filament and rotate the extruder gear, until the new filament is in the bowden tube....The new filament would push the old one for the first few minutes of print..this is where the problems happen.. The new one always strips when it tries to push the new one mid way through (I then increase/decrease the tension screw which makes matters worse)..

so, I have begun to take a different approach now - if I want to swap filament - I heat the nozzle to about 150 degrees, pull the entire filament out manually..then insert the new one...and adjust the tension screw - this works fine most of the time (except when I heat the nozzle too much - which causes the bowden to sometimes get plugged when I pull the filament)....

[thedudevt 0]

I don't do it often... but I heat to 160, unlatch and swing out the extruder tensioner, pull out the filament, push the new filament into the bowden by hand until it stops, close the extruder tensioner and re-latch. set the temp to your normal extruding temp (180) and feed the filament be turning the gear , or using printerface, until it resists. Extrude till you seen clean new color, print.

I don't touch the thumb screw. I've also added a jam nut to the thumb screw tightened against the tensioner block to keep it in place once I've found a good setting.

Since there's no spring on the stock tensioner, this totally won't work with filaments of different diameters...

Kyle

[owen 19]

At 200 degrees I push the old one by hand or through control panel in RepG so that it is extruding.

Then I immediately pull it out by hand. It seems to reduce any blob on it this way.

Then push the new one as far as I can by hand and reclamp the lamp.

Then extrude a bit if I want to get rid of all the old before I start to print.

I don't adjust the screw at all.

[Daid 306]

I don't do it often... but I heat to 160, unlatch and swing out the extruder tensioner, pull out the filament, push the new filament into the bowden by hand until it stops, close the extruder tensioner and re-latch. set the temp to your normal extruding temp (180) and feed the filament be turning the gear , or using printerface, until it resists. Extrude till you seen clean new color, print.

I do the same, note that it works best if you do not wait when it reaches 160C, as it just needs to be hot enough to get the filament out, not to get a melted plug.

And instead of extruding till you see the new color, I print a 50% scale companion cube. Which prints in 12 minutes and flushes out the old color. I got like 12 of them already. For a better dual color mini companion cube I insert 5cm of the old color into the tube before your new color. So it gets a 50/50 color.

[approx 0]

I have never printed the companion cube... so maybe i'll print one next time i need to swap filament..