Update on the first real night of Filastruder use: so far, so good,

3D Printing
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Update on the first real night of Filastruder use: so far, so good, but I’m still in the “clean out” stage. According to the instructions from @Tim_Elmore1 , you need to extrude for about 6 hours to get all the junk (metal shavings) out of the chamber before you can print with the output.

What I’ve learned so far:

  1. a few pellets make a surprising amount of filament. The picture below is from about 1.5 - 2 hours of extruding.
  2. my plan to let the filament coil on the floor is not working. 3mm is too stiff given my current set up (i.e., position from floor, etc.) so I will have to do more experimenting.
  3. When I manually reposition the filament to address the coiling issue, I introduce bends and changes in filament diameter. You can see that the coil below looks bent out of shape in a few places, and that’s why.
  4. The diameter seems to be fairly consistent as long as I don’t touch anything. I’d get nice stretches of 3.13-3.15mm and then I’d move the filament on the floor and then I’d get a nice stretch of 3.05-3.07 (diameter change because of different tension on the filament). The in-between parts would be all over the place because I was unintentionally pulling & pushing on the filament as it came out of the nozzle.

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Let us know the experience once you use it to print.

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Nice. Do you use any cooling directly after the extrusion ? I`m still waiting for mine.

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Chris: Try moving the Filastruder up higher - maybe put it on a box or something. 3mm filament is much stiffer (stiffness scales with diameter^4) so you need to allow it further to fall. This will also reduce your average diameter. I’ve extruded some 3mm that is pin straight - no waves like you show there, but 95% of my work has been on 1.75mm as I do not own any 3mm printers. One of our beta testers has done 2kg+ at 3mm: http://www.soliforum.com/post/16820/#p16820 (post 1034)

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Try and let it coil in a 5 gallon bucket. I’ve seem some people have somewhat good results with this. The wall of the bucket helps encourage proper wrapping.

Also, IIRC if you extrude the filament at a slight angle downward you’ll reduce the filament going oval on you. But that requires a separate spooler setup.

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Why not just point it at 45 degrees or more.

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Thanks Tim, I’ll try that. Anthony, good idea, but it is too stiff for the 5 gallon bucket. I’d need something more like a jacuzzi!