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somemore stupid questions

Discussion in 'General Questions' started by Steven Barber, Mar 3, 2016.

  1. Steven Barber

    Steven Barber New Member

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    Hi again I have been using my printer for a couple of weeks and it works good. I am almost out of the pla filament and I have a big replacement spool. my questions are: 1.how do I replace the old filament with the
    new spool? 2. would it be useful to run some cleaning filament through my printer and how would I do that?
    any suggestions would be appreciated
     
  2. GAmbrosio

    GAmbrosio Active Member

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    eSun, via Amazon sells "cleaning filament," they recommend using it when swapping- especially between two different types of media, PLA and ABS, etc. It gets the contaminants out of the extruder/nozzle.

    To replace, just pull the old one out, carefully, as you don't want it to partially break and feed the new one in. If you are storing the old, seal it from moisture.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
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  3. Jamesam591

    Jamesam591 New Member

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    why not just cut it and let the old filament run out and than start a new one
     
  4. woferry

    woferry Member

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    The problem is that the old filament won't "run out". As soon as it's past the end of the hobbed-bolt what's left (like 2-3" of filament) will just sit there, as there won't be anything to push the stack down towards the hotend's nozzle anymore. This is about the worst thing you could do, since you'll probably be taking the hotend out of the carriage to get to the chunk of filament that's left inside, as that remaining piece will basically make it impossible to feed any new filament in until it's removed (unless you get incredibly lucky and can line up one piece of 1.75mm wide stuff with another piece of 1.75mm wide stuff in an opening that is much larger than that, and do this basically blind as well :).

    So you really want to pull the filament out while there's still something you can grab on to, not after the only part left is buried deep inside the extruder assembly.
     
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  5. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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