This is why we don't buy unspooled filament.

My cat had fun watching me try to unravel that mess. I think I'm ready to give up.

There is an art to dealing with those.... first I tie off the sections that are spooled or nicely wound together without tangles. That gives me the chance to see where things have crossed over, and I carefully pull those out.

Don't move fast. It's more like a chess game. The faster you move the worst it gets.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/2013 08:33PM by Yvan.

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Yvan

Singularity Machine

Yes, there is a trick to it. In my younger days, I had the experience of watching many bands set up. The famous ones seemed to have it down - they would grab one end of a 35 foot mic cable, and with a flick of the wrist send it unrolling effortlessly across the stage. There is an over end and an under end. Pick the right one, no problem. Pick the wrong one, mittens will be in his glory.

I get the gist of it as far as winding it onto a spool since I've done it with 3mm filament, but I'm using 1.75 now and it's a royal PITA. Since it's PLA, I might just cut it up and use it in sections and pause print/reload filament. If anything, it will give me practice pausing and reloading (it's better than just throwing it away).

Yvan: Your idea of sectioning off filament sounds good. I think I'll try that next time so I'm not (effectively) dealing with such a large amount of filament. I thought I had the whole thing untangled, but then I couldn't find the beginning and it went downhill from there!

I have a spool of ultimachine PLA which has knots in it
Also for some reason quite quickly after starting that spool the spot went into underlying layers in the spool, making it often so tight fit that i cannot pull it out by hand, sometimes snapping it.
As a result -> Huge failure rate due to spool tangles

I must admit -> Who ever spooled that had to be brilliant to find a way to spool it like that, with all the knots and coming from underlying layers etc.!
I've been trying to find another end thinking i must have somehow managed to start it from the wrong end, but nope, nothing

This thread reminds me of two instances. As a 10 year old my dad the electrician asked me to open a brand new 200 foot steel fish tape. All of a sudden it sprung open into a huge knot! It took me hours to untangle that sucker. Someone gave me a 1000 foot spool of 1/2" braided nylon rope that had one flange broken off and was in a ball. He didn't think it was worth the effort to untangle it. Surprisingly I had it done in about an hour. That was 15 years ago, I still have about 800 feet!