
The winding of filaments for 3D printing has always been a topic of concern among users of this technology. Although the appearance of "knots" in the filament is impossible, as has always been believed, it is true that poor quality winding can cause great discomfort when printing. .
The problem of winding in filaments for 3D printing
Uneven rolling can cause problems when printing in the following ways:
- By not organizing the filament correctly, the material in the spools tends to take up more space, which causes it to get closer to the edges of the spool. This can cause the filament to come off the spool during printing.
- The non-uniform distribution of the material causes there to be areas with more and less tension within the same coil. This means that the necessary force that the extruder has to use to unwind the filament is not the same at different points on the coil, which can lead to problems with the flow of plastic.
- This same variation in tension also causes the material to be subjected to different forces, causing areas where its mechanical properties may have been more altered > than others.
In conclusion, the more disordered the filament inside the spool is, the more unstable the printing process will be. In a process like 3D printing the more homogeneous we keep the input parameters to the system, the better quality of parts we will be able to obtain. p>
Improving the winding of our filaments
This is why at 3DFils we have spent years improving our rolling based on feedback from our customers. Still, there came a point where we didn't want to settle for an acceptable roll, we wanted to have a perfect one. After studying the different options available on the market, we realized that to achieve the coiling we wanted, the only way was to develop our own technology.
To achieve this, we have spent months developing prototypes of different winding machines until we found the final design. We cannot give much technical information about the machine, what we will tell you is that it has been designed with the objective in mind of maintaining a constant tension during the winding process. The arrangement of the filament is carried out in the same way. in such a way that overlapping is impossible.
In addition, this winder is linked to our quality control system and is capable of automatically detecting if the quality of the winding is not up to standard. In this way, the coil in question is discarded so that only perfectly wound units reach your hands.
It has not been an easy job, but as you can see in the images that we leave you below, it has been worth it.
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Our new winding technology is connected to our production line and adapts its parameters based on it. This way we can guarantee perfect winding on all our coils with a high degree of repeatability.
Availability of the new winding on our reels
This coiling is currently available in some of our products. The lime PLA filament, which is again available in our catalog, is one of them. The other filaments and colors will be produced little by little with this new technology. Currently, most of us already manufacture it with this coiling, but due to the large number of units in circulation we cannot guarantee that you will receive it. We hope it will be available in all our filaments by September of this year.
The best way to ensure units that have a perfect roll is to buy directly through our website. In our warehouses we always have the < strong>last units produced, while on other sites like Amazon they may be older units.