Load/unload materials

Composer A4 uses three spool: two of them are common 3D printing filament plastics, and the third one is Anisoprint Fiber.

To load or unload a material you need to press Maintenance > Materials and choose a material spool you want to operate with. Choose load or unload an follow the automatic procedure instructions.

For every material, an extruder must be heated before operation. You can preheat the extruders to speedup the proccess.

The load/unload procedure is split into three steps: on the first step a feeder captures filament and you confirm it through the menu. On the second, stepper motor works at high rate, pushing material to extruder. On the third step, filament is gently transferred to hotend on a lower speed, and you need to confirm the material comes out of the nozzle.

For composite fiber there is a 4th step – you need to remove the cut fiber out of the nozzle using tweezers.

In some cases you might want to just move a material in/out of an extruder. In this case use Movement option as described here.

Another trick is a manual unload of plastic filament. When extruder is heated enough to release the filament inside, just release the clamp of the feeder and pull the filament out.

Heating and cooling extruders

On the Main Screen, press the extruder you want to heat and set the desired temperature using the arrows as shown below. Press Set button to start the heating proccess.

Caution!

The extruders and other parts of the printhead can be extremely hot!

Usually, the value you choose is the work temperature of the loaded plastic.

The Auto button allows you to choose the last temperature used for this extruder. Press Set to start heating.

The Cool button sets the room temperature for this extruder.

Composite fiber channel cleaning

Residual dirt, fiber remnants and degraded plastic are slowly accumulated inside extruder during printing process. To clear the dirt, or remove small fiber pieces from an extruder do the following

  • Using the 2mm hex key from Tool Kit loosen the side screws of fan bracket. Remove the fan bracket carefully, fan bracket stays hang on wires.
  • Heat the composite extruder up to 200C° . Using the 9 mm socket wrench unscrew the composite nozzle from the composite extruder – turn it clockwise, do not use too much force to avoid damage of the composite nozzle
  • Check the сomposite nozzle, there should be no fiber pieces inside. If they are there, remove them with tweezers.
  • Heat composite extruder up to 250C°. Clean the guide tube in composite heater block with cleaning needle from tool kit or you can use any stiff steel wire with 0.8 diameter.

Caution!

Further only In the case of heavy clog.

  • Using the 2 mm hex key from tool kit loosen set screws and pull down the composite extruder.
  • Heat composite extruder up to 250C°. Hold it by pliers, and clean the guide tube in composite heater block by cleaning needle.
  • If some fiber remains at cutter sleeve or guide bush – clean it with tweezers.