The black ones are okay. But it would be useful to see the filament in the tubes in case it breaks.
Which it did earlier and even though I was sittingn next to the printer I didn;t realise it was printing in mid air.
If the feed tube was transparent I'd probably have noticed.
Just seems like a good idea.
car screenwasher tubing?
I would just get some PTFE. It is translucent and should be able to see the filament inside. You want to avoid any tubing that has friction like vinyl since it can stress your steppers trying to pull filament up. I've had a tangle do something similar, the stepper drive gear just ate a chunk out of the filament and it sat there air printing for an hour or two. In that case the filament tube would always have material in it. There are also filament monitors that detect an out of filament situation and auto pause the print.
yeahbut I don't want to get complicated just fancied some see thru tubing.
ptfe. Right, I'll have a look.
I can see where the other poster is coming from, and he is right, we know that PTFE is OK because it is in the nozzle area, try this guy on Ebay, he is in Italy but I have found him to be both speedy & reliable
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PTFE-TUBO-...-/231336297634
hope this helps
actually found wedo3dprinting on ebay. 1 metre lengths for about £3.50 inc p&p
Going to check length and diameters first.
But should be fine :-)
Okay for the record.
6mm outer, 4mm interior
and 60cm, bloody would be wouldn't it, when it's sold in 1 metre lengths :-)
Ah but there's 7cm at the back that I can just connect to the ne tube.
So I'll try 50 cm lengths first :-)
In the US, we have Tygon tubing in the plumbing section of the hardware store.
I would use some PFA, It is a combo of PTFE and FEP and is more transparent than PTFE, and cheaper. Tygon would have too much friction that will stress the motor.
would these materials maintain the arc that is set into the black tubing?
Amazon has 2mm ID PTFE at a good price. They also have same tubing as a replacement part for some 3d printers
Tygon and silicon will not maintain the arc without some sort of piano wire support. PTFE and PFA will. PFA can be had in a more transparent state than PTFE and is cheaper.
what's pfa ?
And yeah lol, the ptfe tube arrived and it's not much more transparent than the black tubes. Oh well.
But it's plenty stiff enough so I've got apre tubing if I ever get round to a front mounted feed system.
FWIW, on my Replicator, I use an overhead spool and got rid of the tubes. No feed issues at all.
got a picture ?
Sounds like a good idea.
I'd like to change the filament from back where it'sa pita to reach to front - but on top would work also.
Quote:
Originally Posted by curious aardvark
http://3dprintboard.com/attachment.p...tid=5092&stc=1
Nothing really. I have an acrylic hood, so my spools just sit on rollers on top of the hood. While the hood is having no problems supporting the spools, I intend to add a PVC frame to hold the spools on a crossbar in roughly the same position. I hated having to access the back to fiddle with a spool. Here the filament just feeds through the natural top edge seam of the hood. Lots of different roller variations on Thingiverse. Yes, carriage motion is often dragging the filament off the spool, but I have seen no artifacts in the prints that I can attribute to this. Since this picture I'd added a jam/filament out detector, as shown in http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:616975 I also use a Dremel polishing wheel (the white fabric kind) as a dust wiper/oil applicator, just slipped on the filament before the extruder. I've also gotten rid of the extruder top plate, which is surprisingly heavy, but I need to replace it with something smaller to support the cable clamp.
I used the same teflon tubing that's in the exturders, to feed the filament. The only thing that worried me, was the clearance between the lid and where the tube comes out on my Dreamer. Happy to see it worked out :)