Whoops!

I was afraid of getting tangles because my filament spool was getting loose, so I decided to fix it by untangling the filament and carefully wrapping around the spool again. Sadly, I wasn't careful enough that I ended up with the mess above. Took me a whole hour (and an aching back) to get the mess sorted out.

I decided to 3D print myself a filament filter to filter out dust and body oils that I have introduced while wrapping the spool. Not sure if it would work but the idea is sound and I needed another thing to print.

I also finally got around to changing the printbed as the old one, seen below, was already a bit worn out.

The new one is cut from thick acrylic which is stronger and is more resistant to burns. It's also red and transparent which makes it stand out from the dull gray and metal motif that I had before. I found out early on that filament is harder to remove because of it's smooth surface so I bought a couple of glue sticks to put on the bed so they can be easier to remove.

I also cleaned up the wirings as things were getting tangled everywhere especially when I try to move stuff around. I've wrapped wires in heatshrink which I have a lot of. I'm glad that I'm finding more and more use for heatshrinks as I make more projects.

Finally, probably the best improvement that I have done so far was that I ditched the old spool holder that I had in favor of a hard drive bearing. There's nothing much to it aside from the spool resting on top of the plate but it works great. Now my extruder does not have to exert too much effort just to spin the thing.

I'll definitely make something to keep the spool in place. But right now it works so I'll leave it like this for now.

I've done a lot of improvements to the project over the past few days and I'm really happy how things are improving. I have more ideas that I plan to implement but that'll be for next time.

Up next: Pushing for a finer resolution