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?
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 1 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 1 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.
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
