Prevent Failed Prints With A Filament Speed Sensor
If you have used a 3D printer for any length of time, you’ve probably experienced a failed print caused by a clogged nozzle. If you’re not around to stop the print and the nozzle stays hot and full of filament for hours, the clog gets even worse. [Florian] set out to solve this issue with an encoder that measures filament speed, which acts as an early warning system for nozzle clogs.
[Florian] designed a small assembly with a wheel and encoder that measures filament movement. The filament passes under the encoder wheel before it’s fed into the 3D printer. The encoder is hooked up to an Arduino which measures the Gray code pulses as the encoder rotates, and the encoder count is streamed over the serial port to a computer.
When the filament slows down or stops due to a nozzle clog, the Python script plays a notification sound to let you know that you should check your nozzle and that your print might fail. Once [Florian] works out some of the kinks in his setup, it would be awesome if the script could stop the print when the nozzle fails. Have any other ideas on how to detect print failures? Let us know in the comments.
Filed under: 3d Printer hacks
