Loading filament

After bed leveling it is time to further prepare the Ultimaker Original for the first print by loading filament.

Preparing

Before loading the filament, the filament spool itself has to be placed on the spool holder. Make sure to put it with the filament in clockwise direction, so that the filament can enter the material feeder from the bottom.

Next, heat up the nozzle with the UltiController by navigating to Prepare > Preheat > PLA. Wait a minute while the print head is heating up. This way we ensure that the filament is being melted when it goes through the nozzle.

Insert the filament

Before being able to insert the filament, the material feeder has to be opened first. In order to do this you have to loosen the pressure from the material feeder by turning the lever vertically and pulling it all the way up. Next, you can  open up the material feeder by pulling out the black plastic part.

Now you can take the end of the filament and guide it through the material feeder. Push it all the way along the bowden tube until the filament has reached the print head and can't move any further.

Put the black plastic part of the material feeder back in place and “squeeze” it so you can move down the lever and turn it horizontally to secure it. This way you will put tension on the material feeder. In order to check the extrusion you can manually turn the extruder wheel so it will push the filament and through the nozzle. When doing this, make sure that the nozzle is heated.