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?
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.
