Anyone know a european source of straight 3mm filament, suitable for use in a 3Doodler? I’ve read that trying to straighten out spooled filament doesn’t work well, but the official price is ~$200/kg.
A source in the USA would make my wife happy too!
I have used spooled filament without issue.
Some vendors offer free or inexpensive samples that are perfect if you don’t want to buy 1kg.
I’ve used almost entirely spooled filament. If you feed it when thoroughly curled the flow rate can be a bit uneven.
I had once used a hot air gun ducted through metal conduit to straighten filament in the conduit. I had considered making a small machine to gently heat and straighten filament, but lost interest.
Faberdashery sells by the meter and it doesn’t come on a spool, it’s still a continuous piece of filament (not rods) but much more loose than a spool.
My spooled filament won’t straighten enough to fit down the pen. Maybe I’ll try the hair dryer trick. @Jeff_DeMaagd , what size conduit did you use? Something just over 3mm, with the air blowing on the outside, or a bigger pipe with the air directly on the filament?
It was probably 1/2" conduit, roughly 12mm, bluwing hot air through it. Maybe a concentric pipe might work well, 3mm ID or larger for the inner core. I didn’t spend much time with it as I lost interest.
Maybe an oven to heat them just hot enough to straighten and cool down, hang them from one end. That would mean 60˚C or so, which is pretty low temp for an oven. If you watch carefully, 80˚C might work for PLA.
How practical is it to assemble a hot end with a nozzle drilled out to the correct diameter to match the 3doodler filament? The spooled filament could be manually pushed into the hot end, causing a straightening effect from the spool. It has been suggested in other forums that the 3doodler people have tighter control on the filament stick diameter. If the nozzle was the correct diameter, wouldn’t it correct any minor variations in the spooled filament?
I expect it would be less difficult to construct something of this sort than it is to construct a filament extruder, as the spooled filament is nearly the correct size, rather than being pellets.
Considering the cost of the individual filament rods, there should be an economics benefit involved.