Worn out extruder gear?

[pyronaught]

I've done what you guys are talking about but have lost too many prints by not being there when it runs out. I run these things day and night and sometimes it's hard to tell if there is enough to get through the night. Even when you are in the room it just wastes a lot of time having to keep an eye on the printer when it starts getting close. I've lost a lot of prints by the new feed not taking too, where it just jams in the funnel on the other side of the gear. I've redesigned the filament drive to have a wider funnel to reduce that problem, but haven't done much mid-job spool changes mainly due to the not being there at the right time problem.

I spent one weekend working on a a filament splicer but didn't finish it. I got as far as making two spool mounts with different diameter inserts to handle different spool diameters, and then a crank handle for manually winding one spool onto another. I still need to make a quick release filament clamp on a linear slide for doing the splice and that would finish it. I've just got too many other projects going on to get the time to finish it. The whole carbon fiber mold gig exploded into a major thing and I'm spending 70 hours a week designing molds, printing molds, improving the process and transferring the process to other companies that will be doing mass production. Funny how one M2 rebooted my entire career into a totally different direction