IR Sensor Always Active (Always Reads 1)
I just bought my first Prusa i3 and I love it. I’ve been use it for about two weeks now and it is mind numbingly reliable in every aspect compared to the printers I’ve used in the past. Today, however, I noticed an issue with the auto loading of filament and the IR sensor.
Below you’ll find a semi detailed explanation of everything that I’ve tried and the results of each action but the short of it is that the lever that the filament is pushing against seems to always be in the path of the IR sensor.
To start, the issue I’m facing is that if I enable the “Auto Load Filament” option under settings, and then proceed to put filament into the extruder, nothing happens. So far, I’ve removed the filament sensor and blew it down with compressed air. Nothing. Then I unplugged the sensor from the Einsy board and plugged it back in verifying that the connector was in the lower set of pins as per the instructions and that the red wire was facing towards right hand side. Nothing.
Basic troubleshooting aside, this is where I think I found the issue. I checked the IR sensor status under the Support section and it read 1. When I removed the filament, it continued to read 1. So I removed the filament sensor from the extruder body entirely and that’s when it began to read 0. So I placed a piece of filament in the path of the sensor and it read 1. I did that a few times to verify that it was functioning properly and it was.
Going forward, I took a look at the lever from above with the top sensor cover removed and I tried inserting and removing the filament to see if the lever was moving and it seems to be moving as expected. I removed the filament entirely and just placed the sensor down into its slot and the status read 1 again. That said, it looks as if either the part of the lever that is “read” by the sensor is too long or I have something in my extruder body preventing the lever from be pushed all the way in when the filament is not present. Before I begin tearing apart my extruder assembly, does anyone have any recommendations for me once I get it apart? Should I print a new lever or perhaps tighten/loosen something?
I appreciate any and all help!
Best Answer by Kasim Ahmic:
I managed to solve it!
It appears that the sensor sits too low in the extruder body so in order to fix it, I stuck a PTFE washer that was about 0.8 mm (~ 0.031 in) thick underneath where the sensor screws down. this jacked it up just enough to allow for the sensor to function properly. Afterwards, I went to the instructions page to suggest the same and I should've probably looked there first, because as it turns out, I wasn't the only one that had this issue 😛
RE: IR Sensor Always Active (Always Reads 1)
I managed to solve it!
It appears that the sensor sits too low in the extruder body so in order to fix it, I stuck a PTFE washer that was about 0.8 mm (~ 0.031 in) thick underneath where the sensor screws down. this jacked it up just enough to allow for the sensor to function properly. Afterwards, I went to the instructions page to suggest the same and I should've probably looked there first, because as it turns out, I wasn't the only one that had this issue 😛