MakerGear Forum

I have read all of the post I can find on printing with NinjaFlex. They talk about printing really slow. But how do you load the filament. I have managed to wrap the filament around my drive gear twice, requiring taking the housing off to get it out, but have yet to successfully get it to the nozzle. I have preheated the nozzle and feed the filament slow manually 1 mm at a time and it still ends up wrapping up in the drive gear. Does this filament require a larger nozzle, I'm still using the .35 on my M2 V6 rev E.
Anyone have any luck printing this material, how did you manage to load it?

I think that one works best if you drop it straight down.

A lot of people print something like one of the little roller stands for the filament, then try to place the spool of filament over the machine (on a shelf or something) and let gravity help with the feed.

They also use a special tube to feed it through that is more "slippery" than the one we have, so it doesn't bind as badly - and danged if I can remember what it's called now.

mlr53 wrote:I have managed to wrap the filament around my drive gear twice, requiring taking the housing off to get it out, but have yet to successfully get it to the nozzle

When this happens.... while the filament drive is off I just feed the filament past the gear into the hotend itself and then put the filament drive back on.

Thanks. I tried to load it thru the drive section while the hot end was removed, but the drive didn't function with the hot end removed. I hadn't thought of feeding it thru when I had the drive housing pulled.

What size nozzle has been used to successfully print with ninja flex? Does it take a bigger size than the .35?

The flex stuff does take some trial and error to get to run correctly but a .35 nozzle is fine.

This kind of got me thinking... Has anyone tried using a lubricant on the drive gear, or even the filament path? A lubricant might make the filament stick less, but it might also interfere with the print. My best guess as to a lubricant that would be fairly benign is silicone.
Another method might be to try freezing the TPU before inserting/extruding. That might keep it from flexing so much.

dont put a lubricant on it. the drive gear can barely grip ninjaflex as it is. the teeth dont bite into the ninjaflex like plastic filament so it just relies on friction of the teeth to drive it into the hot end. with a lubricant the gear is going to have a hard time with it. i have a .4 nozzle and have run dozens of spools of ninjaflex no issue. i have an m2 dedicated to just printing ninjaflex.