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  1. #1
    Technician
    Join Date
    Mar 2021
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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?

  2. #2
    Super Moderator curious aardvark's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2014
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    8,801
    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.

  3. #3
    Staff Engineer printbus's Avatar
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    May 2014
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    Highlands Ranch, Colorado USA
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    Add printbus on Thingiverse
    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.

  4. #4
    Super Moderator curious aardvark's Avatar
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    Jul 2014
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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.

  5. #5
    Technician
    Join Date
    Mar 2021
    Posts
    63
    Thanks both. Sounds easier than I’d expected. We’ll see...

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