Every time I finish printing, I’ve been unloading the spool. When I go back the next day, I snip the end flush and load filament. If I plan on using the same spool, do I have to do this, or can I just leave it loaded?
Also, I’ve just changed from the transparent to the black. When it tests for extrusion, the black seems to spit out over 1 metre of filament. This seems like a huge waste, is this normal?
Hello!
There is no “right” answer. For me, I will leave the spool in its stand and loaded all the time, unless I want to change colors. I also don’t flush. I simply set my printer to print a few lines around the object (called a skirt) first to get the old color out. This works perfect for me, but it might not work for you.
You can leave it there Sara. The other thing is waste unfortunately , but is extreem if you change form black to the lightest color . normally a 10/ 20 cm is enough.
Hey Sara, mind telling us what printer you’re using? 
I leave ours in as long as you are printing continuously day by day
what do you mean by tests for extrusion?
tst extrusion is gving the slicer software the command to extrude some mm!
Hi, only just realised I didn’t say! It’s a XZY junior
I have an XYZ junior an it automatically does a test extrusion when loading the filament.
The only problem I have with leaving the spool in the machine is that the filament will start to absorb water vapor. The print quality starts degrading after about 3 days depending on the humidity. If you have your spool inside an airtight box with a desiccant this isn’t a problem.
I keep some scrap lengths of filament of the various colors I use to manually push through the extruder/hot end to clear out the previous color. I don’t waste more than a half meter of filament when l manually clear and then run the spool load procedure. My printer is a Fabtotum with a 0.35mm nozzle for 1.75mm filament.
