Lack of filament on Prusament PLA Galaxy Silver spool  

Is it the bundled filament that you are referring to?

If there are not hexagon holes in the sides of the spool. It is probably filament PM.  A CZECH filament supplier

Regards Joan

Spool

It´s the 1st spool supplied with the printer and also has a Prusa´s ref number to check the parameters on the web. So who produced the spool doesn´t matter I guess (and I am unable to discover who produced it), because it is directly from Prusa. And finally it still had approx. 40-50 meters less filament than declared according to printer statistics.

Thanks P.

RE: Photos of the spool

I added some photos, that might help:

Re:

It is not only silver PLA, it´s named Galaxy silver which I found only to be a Prusament. You can check expected length for example in Prusa´s calculator for the sample spool, which says that 1023 g of PLA has 346 meters. So there´s more than 5 % discrepancy.

Thank you Joan, I will discuse it on the support chat.

A PRUSAMENT spool has hexagonal holes in the sides and the core is made of cardboard.  The one you picture looks like the prusa supplied (but not Prusa Manufactured)  roll that comes with the printer.  Your pictures even show the box as saying Basic Filament, a sure sign that it is NOT prusament.   That's usually sourced from PM (plasty Mladec).  Only the Prusament rolls work on the look up.

We see this confusion quite a lot here where people assume the initial roll of filament is Prusament when it isn't.  Also the profiles included in slicer for the 2 types are different as Prusament has different characteristics so make sure you select the correct profile for the filament.

Basically Prusa the company sells its own in house filament -Prusament and other outsourced filament.  

Color names don't tell who the manufacturer is. As shown on package box:
BASIC FILAMENT
Made for Prusa Research
-which is quite cheaper than PRUSAMENT.

Just trying to clarify things.

Re:

I talked to support. Indeed this spool is not Prusament (I supposed it because it is named as Galaxy silver color, which is available only as Prusament in the shop) and it is not available to buy from Prusa´s shop. But the producer is not the question. The question is that it should have around 330 meters  and printer says it had only 280 meters.  According to support chat they will check other spools they have and claimed that probably the printer is terrible in measuring the lenght of used filament.

P.S.: The spool is probably from polish company Spectrum, I found they use the same type of the spool and the insert.

what is the weight of your failed print? is it around 1kg?

regards Joan

Re:

It was approx. 200 grams and it stopped somewhere beyond 90 % of completion. Before start of printing I made an estimation with info from PrusaSlicer and from printer with result that there is enough filament for that and there should be also enough filament for another planned object. I have no other choice than to stop it after the spool was empty because I didn´t have another spool of PLA yet.

Don't rely on estimates.  Weigh the filament before starting (accounting for spool weight) to determine if it can be printed with the remaining. 

If you don't know the spool weight from manufacturer data then assume a plastic spool is 250g.  That is pretty close for most of the common cheap spools from the ones I've weighed when empty (240-250g from my experience).   If you assume 250g then its worse case.

How many things did you print before you tried your large thing?

Something not adding up - so, are you saying you made your very first print with your new printer a very large item that would have required nearly a whole spool?  How many things did you print before you tried your large print?  I would not rely on the extruder motor turn count to be a good estimate of how many meters of filament were on a spool.  (e.g. run it out your driveway if you want to check a new spool for fully getting what you paid for) - you should consider those metrics in the control panel as "directional" - e.g. used a bunch.

Re:

I didn´t say it was the 1st object I tried to print and I also didn´t say it required almost whole spool. I tried some test objects (Benchy, Treefrog, etc.) to see how good it can print. I just relied on info from printer and partially on misinterpreted (assuming that Galaxy silver color should be Prusament, because only Galaxy silver in the shop is Prusament) info from web calculator. Both printer and calculator info give the same amount of filament left, so there was no reason to disbelieve it.

Posted by: @dan-rogers

Something not adding up - so, are you saying you made your very first print with your new printer a very large item that would have required nearly a whole spool?  How many things did you print before you tried your large print?  I would not rely on the extruder motor turn count to be a good estimate of how many meters of filament were on a spool.  (e.g. run it out your driveway if you want to check a new spool for fully getting what you paid for) - you should consider those metrics in the control panel as "directional" - e.g. used a bunch.

Well, it was my 1st spool printed out. Next time, I will weight them before first use.

Posted by: @neophyl

Don't rely on estimates.  Weigh the filament before starting (accounting for spool weight) to determine if it can be printed with the remaining. 

If you don't know the spool weight from manufacturer data then assume a plastic spool is 250g.  That is pretty close for most of the common cheap spools from the ones I've weighed when empty (240-250g from my experience).   If you assume 250g then its worse case.

spool weight

according to the Prusa "spool info calculator" the weight of the Prusament spool (with the cardboard core) is 205 grams. 

I once measured it on my own with a precise scale and my own result was 193 gram.

Prusa slicer shows you the necessary amount of filament in meters and gram,
so you can simply judge by weight if you have enough filament available.

Can't figure out what you are hoping would have happened differently.

Lots of what you didn't say - and that makes figuring out whether you are asking a question, looking for help, or looking for a way to always have an extra roll available if you are about to run out of filament for a large print.  I would not attempt a large print if I didn't have enough to make sure it can be finished.  While you tried to use the "turns of the extruder" approximation in the control panel, it was a good lesson.  The printer don't know how much filament is in your current spool.  It doesn't even know if you changed the spool or used it before.  Only you can do the math.

Dan, there's actually a new field in the filament profiles for spool weight now where you can enter the weight and it will tell you if its enough when sliced.  Personally I wouldn't use it as I can do basic math myself and its still all based on numbers you have to enter. 

However if you plug in the wrong numbers, for example say you were assuming you had Prusament and the spool weighed 205g and you had a total weight of xx g for the spool then if the spool itself weighed 50g more then you would assume from the figures that you had a lot more filament left as the calculation would be out 45g.  I think its a gimick feature but it was requested and I suppose if the software is moving more towards a print farm and it all integrating we will see more and more of this type of stuff.

Still cant beat a set of digital kitchen scales and basic education though.

Re

Is there problem with web calculator, printer´s logger, spool manufacturing or am I missing some info?

To Dan:

Well, you obviously didn´t read the whole thread, because there are already answers to my questions. The answer is that probably the printer is measuring incorrectly (by some fault or design error, because if you are measuring on centimeter scale and the reliability is on dozens of meter scale, there is something terribly wrong).

The topic is not about spare spools but about wrong estimation based on two independent sources with the same bad info (printer and web calculator give the same amount of left filament).

Posted by: @dan-rogers

Lots of what you didn't say - and that makes figuring out whether you are asking a question, looking for help, or looking for a way to always have an extra roll available if you are about to run out of filament for a large print.  I would not attempt a large print if I didn't have enough to make sure it can be finished.  While you tried to use the "turns of the extruder" approximation in the control panel, it was a good lesson.  The printer don't know how much filament is in your current spool.  It doesn't even know if you changed the spool or used it before.  Only you can do the math.