Anything I can do to prevent this?
Anything I can do to prevent this?
Basically title, the top mount broke so I screwed the mount to a bench. Only seems to be happening with this filament though as I've been running this setup for at least 6 months.
Filament is likely waterlogged. If so, then it needs to be dried using a filament dryer or oven.
Ovens aren't a great idea for drying filament, especially one that's being used for food
You can use the spools box to dry the filament using the printers heated bed: https://youtu.be/WC3jvuq-uq8
If one is going to try to use an oven anyway, I think it's important that it is a convection oven and that they use an external thermometer.
But I'd definitely never try to dry some kind of smelly filament, like ABS, in something that's used for food. PLA, PETG or nylon might be ok, though there's so small margins when trying to dehydrate PLA so I probably wouldn't stick that in an oven either way.
Like MehStrongBadMeh said. PLA especially gets brittle like this when it's drawn in too much water. Try sticking it in a filament dryer/dehydrator for 24 hours and see if that goes away.
Like others have said it's probably drawn in moisture and became brittle. I just wanted to also let you know that you should remove the spool and put it somewhere enclosed with desiccants (silica packets) when not in use for an extended period. I use gallon zip lock bags with 3 or 4 silica packets thrown in, it's just enough room to hold 1kg spool.
Thanks so much for the explanation. Basically, this filament sat at work for about 2 years, completely sealed in factory wrap. Decided I'd take it home and give it a shot and it just was crap from the get go. I'll look at ways to dry it out and see how it goes. Would you say leave it in the bag for about 2 days?
If loose/bulk gels interest anyone, there's plenty of designs for baskets that hold the gels- they usually are meant to fit in the center of spools.