Senior Design Project: improving 3D printer to prevent failures and recycle filament
As part of my senior design project, I am working on a team of 8 students to improve the Prusa i3 mk3s/mk3 printers so that we can reduce the amount of failures that occur and significantly reduce our plastic waste. We currently have 3 subteams that focus on the breakdown of the failed parts into reusable pieces (1), creating a system to sense when the filament isn't moving through the nozzle(2), and creating a system to sense when the extruder is clogged or has issues that inevitably cause the print to fail(3). In order to better serve the people who would be benefitting from this improvement (hobbyists and colleges/universities), I would like any input/ feedback that you think would be helpful for us in our design process and how the improvements we plan to make will affect you or others who use the Prusa i3 mk3s/mk3 printers. All questions, comments and concerns are welcome!
RE: Senior Design Project: improving 3D printer to prevent failures and recycle filament
Hi,
The project sounds interesting. Feel free to post any progress here.
Without any design ideas you plan to implement it's hard to answer your questions. Prusa's initial MK3 filament sensor was already (technically) capable to sense the motion and react to jams. But the firmware was running behind.
Having this feature would benefit all people. But as usual it depends on Costs/Reliability/Integration ...
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RE: Senior Design Project: improving 3D printer to prevent failures and recycle filament
@nikolai-r
Hello!
We are focusing on making this process more accurate and reliable. In terms of costs, we want to make sure that what we create can be open sourced and more easily accessible to the general public. If there is something you'd like to see specifically implemented, definitely let me know!
RE: Senior Design Project: improving 3D printer to prevent failures and recycle filament
One area where reliability could use some review is the interrupt handling, especially around the filament sensor and power panic code. Specifically, look at how IRQ flags are being used and cleared.
RE: Senior Design Project: improving 3D printer to prevent failures and recycle filament
Prusa's initial MK3 filament sensor was already (technically) capable to sense the motion and react to jams. But the firmware was running behind.
Well, with MMU attached the IR sensor can't do any more movement sensing. It has problems with some types of filament anyway. So I'd like to replace it with a proper mechanical filament sensor (wheel plus magnet plus magnetometer).