Anyone design a decent filament monitor?

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Vandal968
Posts: 217
Joined: Mon Jul 13, 2015 4:30 am

Anyone design a decent filament monitor?

Post by Vandal968 » Fri Aug 05, 2016 8:07 pm

I'm using up a crummy old spool of white PLA (keeps cracking on the spool). I find myself going to the printer every ten minutes to see if it's time to swap to the next spool before it runs out, but of-course the last 1% of a spool lasts forever when you WANT it to run out. It made me wonder if anyone had come up with a decent filament monitor yet. Pausing the machine would be ideal, but just beeping would be good too since I'm usually in the neighborhood while printing.

cheers,
c

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kartcrg
Posts: 93
Joined: Tue Jul 14, 2015 10:30 pm

Re: Anyone design a decent filament monitor?

Post by kartcrg » Fri Aug 05, 2016 10:06 pm

No solution here but I'm always blown away by the seemly infinite last 1%. It's such an odd annoyance.

Vandal968
Posts: 217
Joined: Mon Jul 13, 2015 4:30 am

Re: Anyone design a decent filament monitor?

Post by Vandal968 » Fri Aug 05, 2016 10:28 pm

Took 1 hr and 5mins for the final layer on spool. Need to write that down somewhere.....

c

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zemlin
Posts: 467
Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2016 9:32 pm
Location: Indianapolis, Indiana

Re: Anyone design a decent filament monitor?

Post by zemlin » Sat Aug 20, 2016 4:17 pm

I was thinking about running filament through electrical contacts that feed a simple peizo beeper. When end of the filament slips out of the contacts, the beeper would sound. Haven't worked on the actual design at all though.

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