Tangled Filament, could headphones teach us how to solve this problem?

[Francesco_P]

How annoying could a Tangled Filament be?

A lot, as we all know… I don’t really get why any filament producer has come yet with a serious solution for this.
I was just thinking: could this problem be solved with the same solution that was introduced in headphone design, that is haveing a flat wire rather than a circular one?

Could filament be extruded flat rather than rounded? and also would it be possible to adapt the nozzle to a new form factor?

lat’s talk about this…

[gabriela3d]

Tangle-free 3d printing! I’m sure there’re many out there looking forward to that @NickLievendag @NikolaiK @Fab_Lab @Philipbee @SIXEDGE @2052 - what do you think of the flat filament idea?

[Brian]

Hey @Francesco_P excelent question, I’ve wondered the same thing myself for a long time.

To my knowledge there are at least 3 interesting innovations I’ve seen on the filament side, please allow me to elaborate them briefly:

• Pallet Extrusion Printing, a new breed of 3D Printers where pellets are extruded directly in the machine, check out the Sculptify David printer and ColorFabb’s pellet selection
• The Fabbster 3D Printer uses injection molded strips of plastic that connect to each other, and a have a ribbed sides where two gears grip the strip to offer more control
• The third development is melting pieces of filament together prior to printing, I think we’ll see more of these upgrades and add-ons appear next to our beloved desktop printers. Here’s an early prototype and a user friendly desktop product made by Mosaic Manufacturing.

I’m very curious to hear other developments that might help preventing tangling as well as any best practices that printer owners have found.

[3Dscaleworks]

Filament should extrude in all direction on the x/y axis so designing a flat ectruder which is all directional should be a challenge!

[Francesco_P]

Thanks Brian,

awesome inputs.

• Yes pellets would be ideal, I am just wondering if the “extruder” in that case woul be able to guarantee a costant material flow trough the nozzle without allowing any air “gap” in the extrusion (wich I think could be very possible using pellets…)

• Fabbster solution is really close to what I was looking for! this demonstrate that it would be possible to produce a flat filament and then extrude it trough a regular nozzle.

• Yes I have seen Mosaic and I can’t wait to see it on the market! Although the tangled filament could also occour using this method…

  I have also seen many components on thingiverse that try to solve this problem but I have never relly tried one… has anybody any experience on this?

[Francesco_P]

Obviously the nozzle will be rounded at its end (otherwise it would print like a marker!)but It would allow a flat filmanet to get in from the extruder…

[2052]

An interesting idea in theory, but the practical execution would be a nightmare.

Using a flat headed filament would require entirely new hardware throughout all our machines to accept a new shape, and then we have to consider how the rectangular geometry affect flow dynamics in the nozzle when being printed. It will be slower and harder to convert etc etc etc

Really the issue of tangled filament comes down to buying cheap/crappy filament and not using the right contingencies to coutner this. The ultimaker 2 for example has a very very basic fix to tangled filement by adding an extra little arm the filament latches onto before feeding in to the bowden, this give the filament breathing room, and if there is a knot, this is then usuall avoided as a result.

alternatively, we should look at changing the shape of our reels from circular to eliptical/oblong, and the way the filament is fed onto the reels could learn a lot from how guitar pickups are made!

[Francesco_P]

Thanks for the input…

it’s true , a flat filament would require a complete new hardware…

I usually don’t buy cheap filament, I usually buy from Form Futura and Color Fabb and that happens also with those filament too sometimes… I really think that filament producer should make a bit of research on this…

I’ll try the the little arm… is it on thingiverse?

[2052]

you should have been provided one in the box! it goes in the bottom left corner of the machine on the back, it looks like a little black arm with 2 circular ridges

[Francesco_P]

ohhh that’s what it is for… I never mounted it…!

[ColorFabb]

Next year we’ll have an intern who will be challenged to design a custom spool for us. Tangling of filament might be solved or partly prevented with a clever design of the spool. So if there are bright minds around with great ideas let us know!

cheers,
Gijs

[Brian]

Hey Gijs, that’s pretty cool, I’m sure there are lots of designers in the community that would love to share their ideas or join ColorFabb on this mission.

[shwndea]

Having to produce huge volumes of pribts I have notices it is not just about bad filament or process. A lot of times I will go to the lead manufactur of filament and still have the problem. I see it as a problem of tension in the spool. As a result of the tension the spool, some portions will fold and wrap around itself when you attempt to give the space between spool and extruder head some slack. I have had to undo an entire spool to get the spools tension under control or it would clog up my pribts

[shwndea]

Excuse my mispelling for this first time

[shwndea]

Having to produce huge volumes of prints I have notices it is not just about bad filament or process. A lot of times I will go to the lead manufacture of filament and still have the problem. I see it as a problem of tension in the spool. As a result of the tension in the spool, some portions will fold and wrap around itself when you attempt to give the space between spool and extruder head some slack. I have had to undo an entire spool to get the spools tension under control or it would clog up my prints

[dinok]

There has been some change recently, ere you can see pictures of Reprapper’s newly coiled filament vs. previous coiled filament:

http://www.reprappertech.com/blog/Newly_coiled_filament/

[Francesco_P]

I want that!

[Francesco_P]

Are all the filaments on the store produced that way or is just one category…?