3D Printing Group

What do you mean by messy?

It means each line is not organized correctly, it needed to be smooth so it can pull on one and another. If it is messy like in this one, pulling on one line will actually pull it with the other lines,

See image for more information

The ones I have now are the ones like THIS one

This one is organized one by one, compare the white filament with the yellow one

Is it much different?

Unfortunately, there might be no other way but to unroll the whole cartridge and re-roll it again. This, however, will not ensure that the defect will disappear as you might end up once again crossing the filament between turns.

If the cartridge was recently acquired, I would recommend to get a refund or a new one from your supplier. Take into account this quality issues when selecting a manufacturer since this is the kind of defects that end up ruining a full night print.

Regards.

Yeah, that's what I thought was the ONLY thing to do

One way to still use your filament is to cut away pieces of it just long enough to finish your desired part. This ensures that no tangles are present during your printing job. Just make sure that the hanging filament does not obstruct the stroke of your axes at any given instant.

I have encountered the same issue and what I do for big jobs is loosen it by unwinding a few times per print so it does not tangle and jam/break in the middle of the run. I also let it be as is on small runs and I have not encounter any jam/break problems.

unwinding or you provide enough filament by hand during the print :)

I have to wonder why tensioner assemblies similar to what you see on MIG welders haven't been introduced to the 3d printing community.

I printed such support and it works to provide tangleling.

https://www.thingiverse.com/download:10377186

I can't really see what is it.

It looks like a lot of filament hanging on a pole,

How can that help?

The idea is to apply friction to keep a small amount of tension on the filament, stopping it from unspooling while not being so tight as to prevent pulling material for printing.

print and try!

As long as the filament isn't knotted it should be fine. If your printer is struggling to pull filament you may want to look at how the spool is being held. Make sure the spool is on bearings so it isn't fighting friction.

Multi-material setups like Mosaic's Palette and Prusa's MMU manage filament tension. We probably don't see it on most consumer/hobbyist printers since it adds complexity and items to the BOM. Since the Multi-material setups splice filament, I would imagine it would be more required since that interface is likely more fragile than solid filament off the spool.

Makes sense, but a simple, adjustable friction tensioner seems like it would be an ideal fix to prevent this sort of issue.

If the concern is that the machines don't have the oomph to pull material with it under tension, I'd honestly just find an old feeder assembly off a welder and Frankenstein it to spool out material when the print head is running.

I mean all the parts are already there, including a trigger for sending signal to start and stop. I'd suspect that something like that would also help reduce breakage since you can better control friction on the filament.

To be fair, I don't do much with 3d printers, I just saw the problem and my brain jumped to something I was pretty sure might be a reasonable solution and scalable/cheap.

I think if you're going to fix a messy 3D printer filament, first make sure it's stored properly - use dry, closed containers or vacuum-sealed bags of desiccant to keep moisture out. Keep the spool on a smoothly rotating stand, aligned with the pull of the extruder, and ensure that the filament path remains straight to prevent entanglement. If you notice any crossing paths or tangles, slowly loosen them and carefully rewind the filaments with your hands, making sure the ends avoid overlapping.