Changing filament?

[terrypin]

I'm still on the low slopes of the learning curve with my two week old Ender 3 V2. My large reel of black PLA looks barely unchanged after my four prints. But I'm wondering how I would proceed when I want to try another colour? Say just to print a white lid for an otherwise black box? Is it a messy exercise, with cleaning and other fiddling involved?

[curious aardvark]

heat nozzle - remove old filament.
insert new filament
ta da !
New filament :-)

If you want to change filament mid-print. there is probably a pause print option on the printer control panel.

I've never done that.

I've occasionally poked new filament into the extruder directly behind a run out reel. That works pretty well.
Well as long as the print doesn't have a bunch of retractions.
Because while a new piece of filament can push the old bit along the tube, it can't pull it back for a retraction.

So there's that.

But just a filament changeover, takes about 5 minutes.

[printbus]

In addition to what CA said, you just extrude a bunch of filament into free air until the old color seems to have been flushed from the hot end.

[curious aardvark]

Oh yeah. there's pretty much always a little left to bleed into the new colour.

There shouldn't be - but there always is.

[terrypin]

Thanks both. Sounds easier than I’d expected. We’ll see...