Hooray finally strudin!

Well, after some hair pulling I finally managed to get some filabot PLA to extrude to a point where it is consistent enough to print.

ABS no problems... but PLA I have obviously found what you all did the first time you tried it and that's the varying tensions and extrusion rates versus winder speeds and pulling too fast.

Unfortunately for me in AU,  with exchange rates and postage for $300 from here, it was cheaper to build my own winder. I had spare ramps,. motors etc so hey why not.

I found an old PC monitor stand, created a new base to fix everything to and then used some of the filawinder STL parts to add to my winder but minus several things like the removal of all bearings, I use plastigrease and collars around an 8mm rod, it spins very freely. The gears are from the filawinder but have been adjusted to fit my 3d fillies spools directly. The gear locks onto the spool as it is designed to snap fit into the hole, so this is not meant for generic spool use, I just have hundreds of the same empty spools so I design it to fit those.

I have everything working well now, I also built a small cooling box to act as a guide and cooler which seems to work very well. The motor speed is determined by a push button at the moment that changes its speed manually.

Now That I have built this winder I understand the concept behind the line laser and photoresistor array that you guys use to determine how slack the feed is, and how that is important to constantly regulate the speed of the winder - so that is my next step, but I have programmed / tested it, just need to build it now.

Without the laser guide I can manage to get about 20 metres of PLA out before  run into speed/timing issues so for me, Im just happy it works! but will be good to get the fine tuning right. I am just printing some hollow vases for now for quick tests but so far so good!