Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

Hi all.

I have a print job that will take 1.8KG of filament.
I have 2 spools of PLA that I need to use.

How can I pause the printer and switch the spools in the easiest way?

I print from SD card and on the past I hit the pause button by mistake and the hot end started to move like crazy ( random moves )

how can I avoid it?

thanks

Don't pause it. Join both filament with a little heat.

Since you're going to have to be there when it runs out, when it gets near the end, I would remove what's left of the first spool from it's spool, and then feed the second spool in, butting them when they get to the EZstruder, and hope for the best. Or you could try connecting the spools, although it means unwinding most of the second spool, and then fusing them (Richrap has a nice fusing design somewhere on his blog), then winding it all up on the first spool.

Does the part absolutely have to be a single piece? If it could be broken up, that would be better, as it would mean that if something goes wrong, you haven't wasted nearly so much filament. You could bond it with a variety of methods, even add alignment pins and sockets, if you wanted, and avoid the trouble altogether. Although I wouldn't trust the weight estimate personally. Take the meters in a spool, versus the meters consumed. I've found the weight to be nuts sometimes (Printed 7 "220" gram objects from a 1KG ABS spool)

I had to do this recently, and although I missed part of one perimeter, I was able to get the new spool started into the extruder. It's difficult because there's not an "infeed ramp" or anything to guide the filament directly into the rollers, so I'd recommend getting on top of the machine with a flashlight to visually align it when you have to start the second roll.

Fusing the spools would be the best and most reliable way to go about it.

Run the print from Repetier Host and use its pause feature. You press the pause button, then can use RH's controls to move the print head around however you want. You can lift the head a bit, feed in the new filament, prime the nozzle, and when you're ready you just let RH keep going. It moves the head back to where it's supposed to be automatically and continues on.

Twice when this has happened to me I paused the print it before the filament ran out. I paused the print when it was printing infill and with that was able to easily remove the remaining filament since the hotend was at temperature and feed the new filament. There was some ooze from the nozzle and some from when I feed the new filament but wasn't a problem since it oozed into the infill spaces. Then I resumed printing without problems.

See these links: http://richrap.blogspot.com/2011/06/mul ... ament.html

http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,205562

https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/pl ... r&vid=dcae

Hi

Thank you all for the help.
I started to print a few hours ago. I will try to merge the filaments before the first spool ends.

about the pause option - this can be done only when printing from the computer?

duvdev wrote:Hi

Thank you all for the help.
I started to print a few hours ago. I will try to merge the filaments before the first spool ends.

about the pause option - this can be done only when printing from the computer?

That is how I paused. I was using MatterControl.

There is a pause in the sd card menu.

That is what i used last time. As the spool was completely finished i pulled the filament out a bit, 5 cm or so. Undid the bowden coupling under the extruder and cut the filament there anf removed the part still in the extruder.

Then i pushed the new filament through the extruder and in to the bowden tube and reconnected the bowden tube. A final manual twisting of the extruder motor and i resumed the print. Wasted about 11 cm of filament.

thank you all.

the first empty spool is out and a new one is in without pausing the printer.

what I did is I took out the almost empty spool ( 40 cm before the end ) and took the wheel away.
I took the new spool and plugged the hot knife to the wall outlet I took the end of the printing spool and the start of the spool the touched the hot knife one filament from each side when they got melt I dragged them until they met each other and fused together.

a bit of cleaning some leftovers and it is ok.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/IGWb2Sr.jpg?2[/img]

That also works.

I had used a soldering iron and the a little file to join and remove the bulge from filament.