I have a dual extruder printer. I first printed with genuine Velleman material using extruder 1 and some other material with extruder 2. I had no problem at all except that extruder 2 tended to clog at the end of the spool material. Than I switched to a new material (no name) on extruder 2. First prints were good. Even a long 20 hour print. But than the nozzle was clogged after a few minutes of printing. So I disassembled the nozzle, removed any residues and started printing again. But after a few minutes clogged again. I repeated this a lot of times. Tried many of the tricks. (Burning the nozzle with a torch, cleaned the pinhole with a thin wire, carefully checked the size of the PTFE tube) Nothing really helped.
Than I disassembled the extruder without unloading the filament. I saw that the filament was thicker inside the nozzle. So it did not fit into the tube when trying to push it backwards. There were even huge traces of the extruder wheel on the filament which has squeezed it partly flat.
I examined the material further and found out that the diameter varies between 1.74 and 2.00mm !!!
You can really feel the varying resistance when you push it through the PTFE tube. The material seems to be softer than the Velleman material, too. So hard pressure may deform the material in an unwanted way. The original material has a diameter between 1.74 and 1.79.
What is your experience with varying filament sizes?
Will try another (original Velleman) as soon as possible again. I currently ran out of material.
What is the effect of softer material?
If you don’t want issues with your filament you’ll avoid noname filament. They have too much variation in their diameter (and it does block the filament if it’s thicker). The quality of the plastic is poor with impurities or air bubbles. Use known (or renowned) brands like Esun, ColorFab, Formfutura, Polymkr etc…
Yes filament size does matter. Bought original material from Velleman and all my problems are gone. 