Stop Printing Air with a Filament Sensor

If you have had a 3D printer for awhile, you know the heartbreak of coming in to check on an 8-hour print only to find that in hour 7 you ran out of filament (or the filament broke) and your printer has been dutifully moving around for no reason. [Chuck Hellebuyck] knows and he decided to make a filament sensor he found on Thingiverse.

Finding a part on Thingiverse and printing it probably doesn’t warrant much attention. But if you watch the video, below, it is a good example of how things from Thingiverse don’t always meet your needs. The microswitch [Chuck] had was bigger than the design used. So he loaded the STL file into TinkerCAD and fixed it. He shows you exactly how he did it. That’s a useful skill because you never know when you’ll need to modify some part you’ve found on the Internet.

The idea is simple. The filament’s absence triggers a buzzer that lets you know you have just a few minutes to switch out the filament. A simple device, but it could save you a lot of headache down the road. You can also connect it to your printer’s stop input for filament if it is so equipped.

Of course, the fundamental idea is nothing new; [Donald] made a very similar one earlier this year. Then, too, a better sensor will let you do more than just know it is missing.

Filed under: 3d Printer hacks

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