Bad ABS spool?

I have a spool of purple ABS that I feel is not quite right. I have been using it with no problems until lately. I am about half way through the spool and it will no longer feed. All of my other colors are feeding just fine. I used a micrometer to measure the diameter of the filament and it is measuring anywhere from 3.0mm to 3.14mm. Is this enough to cause the filament to be jamming? Is there any remedy for this problem, or should I just 'chuck' the remaining half spool and eat the loss?

Milt

Depending on your hotend, it works or doesn't work. Some hotends allow a max of 3.15mm to be fed in, the filament also expands when it gets heated so you might have it jam prematurely from heat that travels up the hotend. I placed a cooling fan on the top of the hotend to cool it down and I haven't had any jams eversince.

I have a J hot end. Is there another style hot end that would allow for the extra diameter? I noticed that on the hotends website that he uses a 3mm piece of ptfe tubing for the insulator inside the hot end. For me, this means that anything larger than 3.00mm is going to have a hard time getting through. I probably need a new hot end. Suggestions welcome.

Milt

Genuine J-heads from hotends.com handle 3.14mm OK. I think the bore is 3.2 or 3.3mm.

---

[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

I print with filament that is 2.47 x 3.13.. ie. it is oval! Before anyone says "throw it away", it is some of the cheapest ABS I have found, but is actually not bad quality apart from dimension and prints quite well.

It does need a hotend with a generous sized 3.2 hole of course.