This is the 2nd roll I’ve got from Matter Hackers that’s had the filament tangled. Although I don’t believe this is their fault cause I’d assume it just came from MadeSolid like this?
The funny thing is the cheap Chinese filament I burn through for prototyping has never been mangled, and I usually am expecting to find something wrong with it.
It’s hard to see, but it criss crosses under/over a few times, but I’m hoping I just need to unwind only a few feet to fix.
i’ve never bought from matterhackers or madesolid but i can say i’ve never experienced this from my preferred vendor. if i did it would likely be enough to send me elsewhere…
their website seems to be down - is there something special about this filament?
I use PETG from MakerGeeks and it’s the best thing since sliced bread. I like to think it’s similar across vendors, but if you have issues with the filament you’ve got then I strongly suggest trying the “Maker PETG” filament over at MakerGeeks. I print with PETG nearly exclusively now - fantastic stuff!
I ordered a roll of Taulman PCTPE from E3d , i was puzzled when the filament jammed inside my Bowden tube (just when passing through it , not inside extruder or hotend )
As it turns out the filament is oval , not round , and its diameter varies from 1.62-1.93mm (yes,you read it right) no wonder why it jams!(see the pic)
The awesome guys at E3d refunded the complete order. I still wonder how the hell that filament managed to pass QC as the filament diameter is constantly measured when making it. The fault is from the side of Taulman.
hassle-free refunds are a sign of a good vendor though, so it’s nice to hear that E3D did right by you there. makergeeks is similar: there is a money back guarantee on every purchase. i actually made use of it once myself (no fault of theirs, i bought the flexible TPU filament and my long-bowden-tube setup couldn’t print it. i pinged them to see whether the guarantee might apply and they immediately refunded the purchase. i’ve been a single-vendor consumer ever since!)
Sorry you’re having an issue with the filament. Send an email to us with your order number at support@matterhackers.com and we’ll get you taken care of!
@MatterHackers , thanks for the follow-up but I was able to fix. Unwound first 10 feet or so to detangle and then unwound about another 30’ to confirm it’s good.
Just so everyone is aware… It is impossible for a spool to be factory tangled mid-spool. It is impossible because of how it is produced and loaded on the spool.
With that said, the factory can accidentally cross over the end while packaging, or you can tangle it yourself by crossing over the end while unpacking it. Or it can be badly coiled at the factory by the autowinder such that it can bind. But mid spool tangle from the factory… Not possible.
I used to maintain a copper wire manufacturing plant and this reminds me of the rewind or shipping lines for small orders. The large takeup spools from the extruders were usually good. Sometimes the traverse end points could be adjusted too far, takeup speed could be too insanely high, the pneumatic knife could have been slow to return and snag the next roll, relay contacts could be worn out and causing delays on the transfer, tension air pressure could be adjusted badly, …or it could be a manual rewind with an older machine by low labor employees. The spooler takeups were often most of the calls each night, often from fatigued operators and I would help them sometimes by running their lines for a few hours to improve their machines while they took a long break.
@Eclsnowman I’ve had a spool from Surreal that was tangled (the top line coming off was wound under about a dozen rotations, halfway through the reel). No idea how it happens, but people do ship improperly wound spools from time to time. The Surreal filament was fine, but that one experience was enough I’d never risk using them again.
@Jonathan_Challis I totally understand that filament spools can mis-feed. And it can be from bad coiling from the manufacturer, or as I mentioned letting the loose end get under a coil at the beginning. It will start to feed correctly for a while until it takes out the slack and can no longer slider under the other coils.
But it cannot be truly knotted mid spool from the manufacturer. That would assume an end was loose mid spool to create the knot. And if they are respooling off a larger spool, or spooling directly from the filament extrusion line there was never a loose end during the coiling process.
But much like a fishing reel, improper spooling tension or incorrect timing of the transversal head of the spool coiler will lead to coil layers not sitting flat. There will either be gaps between strands or the layer can be over stuffed causing them to over stack. Then the following layer will start with that uneven layer and compound… etc. This can lead to one coil wanting to slide between two layers below it. Now in theory this should never lead to a bind. But as you have experienced… it certainly can cause problems.
In my case it wasn’t knotted, but wouldn’t feed, so it just pulled back, and wouldn’t feed to the extruder, which carried on trying to print for hours because the ‘out of filament’ sensor is above the reel, and hadn’t triggered. this wasn’t an issue of gaps, but 2/3rds of model not printed, and not a clean break (the last had pulled the printing head it seems) so I couldn’t just edit G-code to restart from that point.
@MatterHackers , thanks again for the support. I’ve bought multiple Titan Aeros and rolls in the past and will continue to do so. No reason to not be a happy customer.
