Hi all,

My FFCP works wonders, really ! Except when it fails, and 90% of the time it’s because of the filament apparently.

The spool would have a loop that would loosely go atop the loop currently pulled by the extruder, which tighten the whole thing, and if Im unlucky, the loose loop would tighten so as to trap the loop pulled by the extruder. Then of course, the printer would pull hard on the filament not coming and the filament would break between the extruder and the spool.

I thought that I was jut bad at storing my spools, so thinking that they are correctly rolled up when they’re brand new, I tried using a brand new spool, but the problem persists.

I also tried seeing if the amount of retraction I use caused problems. I use a setting of 3mm, which does not seems very big to me. Still, disabling it doesn’t help, the problem persist.

I’m running out of ideas.What would you do ?

You say you are careful storing your filament and yet it sounds like your problem is entangled filament. You should never let loose the end of the filament because as soon as you do that, you can’t be sure that it is still untangled. Please watch the linked video on how to disentangle a spool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE9LchCtKL4

There is a bracket that you can print that repositions the tubes on the back out from the back about 2 inches. Do you have this? If not you definitely need it. Also, I hange my filament on a rod atop The printers and seem to have better luck with that, all 4 of my flashforges now have that, very convient.

1 Like

You describe a very strange problem.

I have had a spool getting into a knot a couple of times, but not in a way you describe it.

Are all these spools from the same manufacturer?

How loose is your spool of filament on the spindle? Can it rotate freely as in that it will rotate more than once if the extruder pulls slightly on it?

That’s the only reason I can think of that the filament would get itself in a knot.

Stop running your filament through the black tubes on the back. Its never really been a great way to do it. Just run your filament directly from the spool into the top of the extruder, without the black tubes in the back. I removed my tubes.

Better yet, print out a spool holder that sits next to the printer and run filament into the printer. This is what I do on my printers.

I have the same problem sometimes after changing the spool. While not used, the filament on the spool can produce these loop which will kill your print by choking itself, if not removed before loading the filament in the extruder.

I am now unspooling and respooling quite a big amount of filament before loading it in the extruder for finding a possible loop. I can do this easily because I have mounted a horizontal spool holder tube above the printer: Rohr als Filamentrollenhalter an der Wand über dem Drucker – ichDruck3D