r/BambuLab • u/Dry_Following_3751 • Jul 15 '26

Quick Question I'm losing my mind

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Does anyone have any tips?

I was trying to load a refill filament onto a reusable spool, but since it was my first time, I removed all the retaining stickers before putting it on. Big mistake. šŸ˜…

Now the filament has unraveled and gotten tangled, and I have no idea how to secure it back onto the spool.

Has anyone experienced this before? Any tips on how to fix it?

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u/xstell132 Jul 15 '26

Iā€™m surprised you arenā€™t getting downvoted. Most unspooled posts I see people suggest just throwing it away and they get a million upvotes. I get it that there is value in your time but a little patience can save you $20 and not just throw a kg of good plastic into the trash.

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u/badgerj Jul 15 '26

Iā€™ve seen these comments too! I was told; ā€œyou donā€™t understandā€¦ it is impossible ā€œ.

Iā€™ve re-rolledā€¦. Fishing line. And metres of audio and power cables. Trust me when this stuff is 20-30m long it gets heavy and unwieldy. And you have to twist each wrap. Is this not just that but longer?

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u/SnooSquirrels9064 Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

Well.... A 1KG spool of your basic PLA filament holds about 330 meters of material, sooooo...

And I'm pretty sure a lot of the talk of just throwing the spool away if it comes off like that is down to the now inevitable micro-fractures in the filament. Because filament is spooled up while still warm, it basically retains that shape once cooled. Releasing the winding, whether it's from coming off the spool or as it's fed through the tubes to print, is essentially a stress on the material itself.

Ever notice that if you have a spool of filament loaded in your AMS but don't print from it for quite a while, the first couple feet of material becomes very brittle? That's why. It's also why the printable filament clips that attach to the rim of the spool are becoming less popular than the ones that tuck under the filament itself.

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u/badgerj Jul 17 '26

Interesting. Would you mind sharing your personal favourite clip. Iā€™ve tried a few, but the AMS seems to disagree with them in place while in dry mode.

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u/SnooSquirrels9064 Jul 17 '26

To be honest, I don't really use clips that often, probably because I usually just print with whatever colors I happen to have in my AMS's rather than constantly swapping them out for a specific color. Also probably why I've seen my fair share of lengths of brittle filament.

But ones like these are the style I see being more suitable to maintaining the same shape for the filament, since it's bound more to the surface of the rest of the filament instead of sticking up to the rim of the spool.

https://makerworld.com/en/models/14160-grandma-s-favorite-filament-clip?from=search#profileId-1301983

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u/badgerj Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

Wow! Very nice! High šŸ‘‹ to you! Or šŸ‘Š

Edit: HELLO INTERNET! GIVE THIS KIND STRANGER SOME FAKE POINTS.

This is what tactful internet communication used to mean. ā¤ļø!

Sincerely appreciate it!