3D printing, you want the fan on max for plastics like PLA. However, unlike 3D printing,
you ALWAYS want the fan on at least a little bit - even for plastics like ABS.
Never run
the unit without the cooling fan enabled.
10. Attach your puller wheel idler arm spring if you haven’t already. Set your pull speed slider
to ~30% of its range depending on material throughput. This will set the puller wheel to
spin at a constant speed that is easy to work with during setup.
11. Use tweezers or needle nose pliers to feed the plastic from the nozzle in between and
through the puller wheels. Be careful! - The nozzle is extremely hot at this point in the
startup sequence; follow safety guidelines to avoid personal injury or harm. Make sure
you have engaged the puller wheel idler wheel spring! See Figure 15 for reference.
12. If spooling is desired, follow the steps below. If not (because your filament isn’t usable),
skip this step. To begin spooling, reduce the filament speed and cooling as much as
possible (halving the auger, fan, and puller is a good starting point). Then follow steps 5
and 6 from the automatic instructions - feed the filament through the spreader, and
attach tightly to the spool. As soon as the filament has made one loop, send the
command “ss000000” to begin spooling, and re-increase the auger, puller, and fan
speeds back to their intended values.
13. Finally, enable diameter control. To do so, slide the diameter slider to the desired
filament size (measured in mm). Note that diameter control may fail irrecoverably if the
filament is too far away from the desired size, if the extrusion flow is too low (or too high),
or if any of the parameters are incorrectly set. It is always best to get the diameter as
close as possible to nominal before enabling diameter control!
As in Automatic operation, now is a good time to check how your diameter sensors are doing. In
particular, your nozzle sensor. Refer to section 4.3.2.
Note:
For best results, close the door to the UI to avoid any cross-wind affecting your filament
output - i.e. if a cross-wind cools the filament at the nozzle too quickly, the puller wheel won’t be
able to draw-down the filament to its desired final diameter.
14. And there we have it! You are now off to the races and creating your very own filament!
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Summary of Contents for ProtoCycler+
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Page 3: ...6 0 Congratulations 32 7 0 Appendix 33 2...
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