A better Filament Sensor: Filament Diameter Sensor - ajdust flowrate on the fly for uneven filaments
Sorry if the title is clickbaity, nothing to see here besides an idea and projects from others that could be baked into a neat feature that the Prusa printers could get in the Future.
Perhaps this could be a feature for a Original Prusa MK4, if there ever is one.
Hardware for this already exists, all open source, just need a few guys from Prusa Research to wire up their own version of this and bake it into the printer. (Make it a paid upgrade and people will throw money in your face)
FDM printing has hit a wall in terms of quality and features, and a lot of manufacturers add gimmicks to spice up this year's 3D Printer (Webcam and swappable printheads for the Ultimaker, or Filament or Electricity Runout Sensors for the Prusa)
Won't get any better here until someone figures out a Mosaic Style palette baked into a FDM machine, then FDM could finally evolve into RGB printing that could rival the color of the Stratasys Objets.
Until that's happening work is done to extras, like improving the waste situation by making spool-less spools (like DasFilament has filament refills for print your own spools now), or making your own filament from scrap or water bottles. aka Filastruder or FelFil Evo.
On the make your own Filament front things are looking rather sober, with the machines working but producing rather wonky filament diameters or require complicated setups with auto spooling that still generate filament diameters that produces under/over extruded lines in the prints.
Also many filament spool manufacturers do not seem to quality control their filaments often, i've had rolls that go +/- 0.15 from 1.60 to 1.89 even from the best manufacturers, like DasFilament or Hatchbox.
So why not up the MK3 Filament Sensor to it's next level and make a filament diameter sensor and hook that up to the printer?
Some already had this idea wayyy before me, like flipper from thingiverse does. And he even has the whole thing finished from top to bottom.
Filament diameter sensor V3 - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:454584
Sensor connector board - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2701624
Optional Display - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2600781
His design could be baked into the printer itself, with a upgraded Sensor measuring the filament diameter above the hotend, and the Sensor could be hooked up like the current one via data/clock to the printer board. A xx cm delay could be set (length of the hotend to the melt zone) and up/lower the extrusion multiplier on the fly for the filament string in that area.
This version of the filament sensor could also be used for auto loading or runout detection.
Re: A better Filament Sensor: Filament Diameter Sensor - ajdust flowrate on the fly for uneven filaments
Far as colors, M3D has a color mixing extruder for like $160? i think..... pre-order. no clue if it works (seems so...) it's CMYK..... at least it has a video, images etc.... and appears to work.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/m3d/the-quadfusion-print-head-making-color-3d-printing
The E3D tool changer has huge implications... more so than maybe realized. i mean you could add one of those quad fusion color mixers to a head, have another for support and another for a camera that also inspects first layer (or nozzle build up) and other things between tool changes... also post processing... maybe a head that has ink and can print/spray on the surface.... all kinds of weirdness.... course you could do this on a normal printer but you would need to combine all that into one tool head.
Prusa isn't the only one doing things, just in the popular "group"... there are thousands of people making printers... most are tiny and unknown... some are engineers... and you can get machines pretty darn good for less.
Also, i would scrap the stall guard in the chips and put something like tropical labs encoders on them.... they'll work 100% no false positives and even if you push it in any direction... and add much more torque to the motors with closed loop feedback.
Re: A better Filament Sensor: Filament Diameter Sensor - ajdust flowrate on the fly for uneven filaments
Interesting. Yeah, this would be a nice addition!
RE: A better Filament Sensor: Filament Diameter Sensor - ajdust flowrate on the fly for uneven filaments
Well, as you started discussion on improvements, what about a second nozzle with different diameter to improve speed and details within one print, could be loaded with identical or different color ...
RE: A better Filament Sensor: Filament Diameter Sensor - ajdust flowrate on the fly for uneven filaments
@the-cox
I like the second nozzle different size idea.