Spool of surprises.
During a printing parts of filament dropped on hotbed, when I looked into spool I saw this.
I try to get replacement from vendor.
1 out of 3 ordered spools had this, anyone had similar bad spools?
Maybe it is because of bad environment in warehouse (too cold)?
what dropped was chunk of the filament - as you see on picture there were many cut(broken) pieces. and about 10cm long filament dropped on bed while printing.
the spool never dropped (unless it was in transport, but I don’t expect to break like that on spool drop)
I bought it at makerfarm. They respond fast to my email and they will give me discount on next purchase of filament.
If the filament is extruded improperly (when it was first made), it can crystalize and become brittle instead of forming a proper copolymer. Kinda like you can harden many steels by heating and rapidly cooling them.
They might sell it that way on purpose. That is, not cut it on purpose but figure if the weight/mass of the filament is correct for what you purchased, that breaks aren’t a big deal (to the company) since at some point you’ll hit the end of a spool of filament and have to put a new spool on the machine.
I’d prefer one long continuous filament, but are breaks that big of a deal other than a minor annoyance? I haven’t gotten my printer yet so I don’t know first hand so excuse my ignorance.
Chunks of 10-20cm long aren’t by purpose.
I try to extract longer parts when I have a time, rest will be dumped to PLA recycle box.
@TDB_Gryffyn If a 10+ hour print fails because of bad filament, it’s a major annoyance.
A piece that fall off from spool (my spool is mounted on top of printer - prusa mendel model) would jam fan if it was on.
@Thomas_Sanladerer While PLA can crystallize and become less ductile, copolymer is not the proper term. You mean amorphous. Some plastics are semi-crystalline and some are completely amorphous such as ABS (which is actually a block copolymer). There are no plastics that are entirely crystalline. PLA is a semi-crystalline material. The degree of crystallinity in a semi-crystalline material is dependent on a few things, namely the rate of cooling when it is extruded, molded, etc.
Unless they didn’t use a water bath and cooled it very slowly it’s unlikely that over crystallization is the problem here. It’s more likely that the molecular weight of the raw material was too low, excessive colorants/additives were used, it was degraded while in the extruder barrel, or was exposed to low temperatures while stored.
This newsletter http://www.zeusinc.com/UserFiles/zeusinc/Documents/technical_newsletters/Zeus_Crystallinity.pdf does a pretty good job of explaining the basics of plastic microstructures and the effects they have on the material properties.
Why does nobody seem to put new filament onto another spool. It can be tangled or broken and you never know till its to late.
@Nigel_Dickinson I was thinking about that, much easier for printer feeder using same size of spool, etc.
Now printing: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:37653 
Anyone have some spool winder I should consider building?
I have that fillament too. Keeps breaking during a print. It is also on a small spool so it’s very tight wounded.
I would like to add a tube to let the extruder motor off the x cariage, but with this fillament i can’t push it through a straight tube… : (
nope PLA is made from Starch and as it Drys out PLA becomes like glass you can save it if you have a Fillabot but I would get your Money back if PLA is not Sealed when you get it with a Silica Pack in it Don’t Use it Send it back it will shatter in your extruder and plug the Head.Be careful using Clear it should be as Clear as Glass and Extrude in the same way if it is cloudy or sparkley get your money back or throw it out it is too old.
@Justin_Schubert how do you know its a starch batch. It could be sugar cane or tapioca based each on behaves differently. So please don’t generalise.