Can it detect birds nesting and other errors and shutdown?
Setting up a scale for my reel so running out isn't an issue.
Twisted filament that can't feed is an occasional issue.
Is USB vs SD card an issue?
My current workflow is
Solidworks prt to stl.
Matterhakers to position,copy, and slice.
Export to SD card
Sneaker-net to printer
Print
OctoPrint would get rid of the sneakers.
Remote monitoring doesn't do anything for me. Just want to print and forget (i.e. go to bed)
Just sucks waking up and finding a birds nest or some other issue.
Any other advantages?
I've seen this a lot over the last few years. Sometimes a filament manufacturer will "hot spool" the filament in such a way that it wants to stick to itself on the roll. Often the back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth movement of the extruder assembly will unroll the spool in such a way that it gets loose then tight then loose, leading to crossing of the filament on the spool.
I've thought a lot about all this and written about it. Part of the problem is the shape of the filament roll itself which leads to cross-threading. There was a time when I'd re-spool my filament in an attempt to avoid this. My latest filament holder project though minimizes this by moving the spools high and out from the printer. It's then more like the take-up on a sewing machine, in other words.
Alternately for you, there are times when you can mount that SD card within Raspbian so that you can access it directly. I use usbmount on my image so that I can access the SD card direction on my Smoothieware board, for instance.
I've gotten some bad filament from makergeeks that won't come of the reel cleanly. Sucks to come back to a print that has failed solely from reel issues. Literally the resistance of unreeling the filament overcomes the extruder drive.
The question on SD cards is using an SD card allow a more reliable print at a higher speed?
Will check out "Spaghetti Detective plugin" thanks
I've seen this a lot over the last few years. Sometimes a filament manufacturer will "hot spool" the filament in such a way that it wants to stick to itself on the roll. Often the back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth movement of the extruder assembly will unroll the spool in such a way that it gets loose then tight then loose, leading to crossing of the filament on the spool.
That can be detected with a wheel encoder which will verify feed-rate and also double as a run out sensor.
There are a handful of plugins but I'm not sure if they support a wheel encoder. It's certainly possible and likely fairly easy to write though. But I'd wager you don't have that feature right now so if anything OctoPrint makes it possible.
Same goes for failed print detection. Do you have that now? OctoPrint makes it possible.
The Crap from MG I'm using now was actually free. Placed an order and was jerked around so long I did a charge back on my CC. They ended up finally shipping the order after I did the charge back and told me to keep it. I should have just thrown it in the trash the filament was so bad.
most printer boards do support it. I tested on smoothieware and duet2ethernet but I'm sure there's marlin and klippert support too, you just need a free input pin
the "retract too much" so that filament go over the spool and fall over it on the side is the real issue here. The only real solution I found for this is on ultimaker filament box where they actually have motor on the spool holder so they reverse the spool to tighten it. I use 2kg spools and this is almost never an issue, the amount of retraction you would have to do is just too much to be a real threat
the issue I do have is with master spool
the way master spool "fill" is coiled when you refil the master spool and close it the filament can be stuck between side of the master spool and rest of the filament and it takes a lot of force to release it. BMG does it properly but if your spool is not held forcefully but is for e.g. rolling on those 4 bearing thingy it will ride from the bearings and not uncoil, and when your spool is a meter above the printer on the shelf that's ~2kg of plastic falling one meter on your printer breaking everything in it's path don't ask me how I know
Too bad we don't have an old-school clutch system like they had on the Teletypewriter's drive shaft. You could adjust the back-rotation a little as required. This is my printer right now, some four hours into a print.
