For all that I’ve done a lot of 3D printing this year, I know that I’ve burned through a lot less than 6.5kg of plastic filament. Working that out isn’t rocket science – I know I’ve purchased 6 1kg spools and one 500g one and I still have quite a lot left on most of them. One thing I haven’t done yet is to completely use a spool up but I am finally getting there, with probably less than 100g left of Sunlu Grass Green PLA.

One issue I’m finding is that this spool keeps on being pulled off the filament roller I normally print from. I don’t recall seeing anyone mention this as an issue but I wonder it relates the fact that the spool is now much lighter? It might not be an issue if I went back to using the spool holder built into my A1 mini printer but I switched away from that because I found that the vertical movement of the print head could cause the filament to jump off the spool, causing tangles. That is a problem the filament roller design (this one with these printed bearings) does seem to have fixed.

If my weight hypothesis is right, I probably either need an additional design element to the roller than prevents the loaded spool being pulled off or I need to increase its weight. As I’ve been looking for another project that can make use of my growing collection of plastic scraps as ballast, I’m leaning towards the latter although I might find a way to combine both concepts. One thing is fairly certain though – I’m unlikely to be trying to print it in grass green!