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Changing filament?
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?
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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.
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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.
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Oh yeah. there's pretty much always a little left to bleed into the new colour.
There shouldn't be - but there always is.
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Thanks both. Sounds easier than I’d expected. We’ll see...