Stripped Filament

[Kunguru]

I had a long print going last night, and it was doing well. Then sometime in the early morning the filament became stripped, and it wasn't able to feed anymore. Now before I went to bed I slowed down the print to 80% because it can be somewhat loud in my apartment. Would slowing down the print cause the filament to strip? I know it's done it when I go to fast? How can I prevent this?

[gmay3]

Hello Kunguru and welcome to the forums!

When you say the filament was stripped, I'm interpreting that you mean that the hobbed bolt ground down a 'c' shape into the side of the filament. If I'm wrong please correct me.

I wouldn't expect that slowing the print down would cause this issue. Maybe if you had increased the speed I could see that this would be more likely.

Here's a few likely scenarios:

1. The filament spool got stuck or had some resistance and the hobbed bolt was pulling against your spool causing the stripping.
2. The extruder guidler tension loosened over time letting the hobbed bolt slip and cut into the filament.
3. The filament shape was slightly imperfect reducing tension of the guidler.

Something like this could help issue 1 assuming the filament wasn't tangled on the spool.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:326641

For issues 2 and 3 you can try increasing the tension on your extruder guidler by tightening the two screws. Also, I should mention that there seems to be a sweet spot between the guidler being too tight and too loose, both extremes causing filament grinding.

[AbuMaia]

I just recently suffered a problem with my MakerFarm clear ABS filament having periodic "blobs", or momentary over-thickness, near the end of the spool. Whenever one of these "blobs" got into the hotend, it would be too big to fit, and stop extruding, and get a "c" shape cut into the filament by the hobbed bolt. These spots where the filament was too big caused several prints to fail before I found them and "fixed" them by sanding them down with a bit of sandpaper. Check your filament closely and periodically during a print to see if you're getting any of these small size problems, so you can fix them before they jam your extruder.