Fracktal Printers support a wide variety of materials. This article will guide you through the procedure to change the filament.
To change the filament, we need to unload the existing filament first.
Note: While changing filament, always select the filament with the higher melting point in the filament change settings.
Ex: If you have used ABS and want to change to PLA, while unloading the previous spool and loading the new spool, select ABS as the material even though you are loading PLA.
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The rule of thumb is to select the material that has a higher melting point.
Reason: Sometimes the material from the previous filament with a higher melting point gets stuck inside and hinders the extrusion.
Ex: If ABS, you unload ABS filament, there will little bit of residue ABS which melts around 230 °C. When you install a new PLA spool and select the PLA option, the new spool will be loaded at 190 °C. In this case, the ABS particles stuck inside the nozzle will not melt and block the Nozzle. If you load the PLA selecting ABS, the Nozzle temperature will be around 250 °C, which will melt the ABS filament in the nozzle and will avoid blockage of the Nozzle.
Please follow the steps given below to change the filament.
1. Click on the Settings button
To load a new filament, first, from the main menu select the control option.
After you click on control, press the spool icon to get the filament change wizard.
The filament change wizard screen should look something like the image shown above.
Press on the filament change icon in the top right corner
That should bring up the filament change menu and should look something like the image shown below
Select the type of filament you want to change to. For example, you want to add PLA, select PLA from the filament select drop-down menu.
Note: This step is only for Dual Nozzle printers.
[Select the nozzle for which you want to change the
filament from the extruder.
Select the required nozzle by clicking on
the arrows or on the nozzle number.]
If there is a previously present filament, then press the unload icon. The UI is simple and will guide you through the steps to unload filament.
*If previously there was no material that was loaded, skip this step.
Once the filament is unloaded, press the load filament icon.
Press the extruder arm and insert the filament.
Note: 1. Do not press the extruded arm much; slight pressing to make way for filament is enough.
2. The filament will not be exactly straight, and sometimes will miss the filament hole while inserting. In such a slight rotation, the filament takes the filament near the hole.
When you press the load icon, the printer should start heating the extruder to facilitate the loading of the filament, and the window should look something like the image shown below.
Press
Once the extruder is heated according to the type of filament you have selected, another window should appear, which looks something like this.
After this window appears, press extrude to check if the filament is loaded properly, and if everything goes well, you can see fine extrusions from the extruder.
When finished, press done. And there you have it, a successfully changed filament!
The fine extrusions that come out should look somewhat like the image shown on the side
