3D Printer Filament Detector

Inspiration

Both of us own 3D printers and have problems with prints failing due to issues such as running out of filament or power loss during the print.

What it does

Our device is able to detect when the filament is running very low (about 2" left from the >1000ft spool) and then it pauses the print and sends us a text message letting us know that we need to replace the filament. This way we can print without having to check the amount of filament left every time and also we can use almost the entire spool of filament instead of having to replace it with tens of feet left because that much won't last the entire print.

How we built it

We started by building the circuit to detect the filament going into the extruder on a breadboard, then we made it on a perfboard and designed a case for it that guided the filament through the optointerruptor's optical center and 3D printed that case. Finally we assembled the 3D printed part and the perfboard together with a 3D printer and started to work on the code and testing to make sure it did actually pause the print and the print could be resumed properly.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into problems with getting the Raspberry Pi 4 to connect to a display and boot up properly, and additionally we ran into problems with one of the cables inside our 3D printer breaking during transportation to the Hackathon. Also a lot of the things we did were new to us which made the project more challenging, but also more fun too.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud that we were able to make a product that works and were able to learn a lot during the experience.

What we learned

We learned how to code better and additionally got practice using some electrical components that we don't get to use much in school. Also we figured out how to use the Twilio API to send SMS messages.

What's next for 3D Printer Filament Detector

We had a few features that we would have liked to implement, but ultimately did not have the time to get working. These include the following list:

• GUI interface on touch screen that replaces the printer's built-in display
• Ability to print from the same SD card as the Pi's OS instead of having two separate SD cards
• Ability to start prints over the Internet
• Saving the current position of a print so if power is lost the printer can resume
• Adding support for starting another print before the current one has stopped (manually switching the bed out for another)
• Automatic print removal (aka shove the extruder into the printed part and hope it pops off the glass but doesn't break)

Built With

• 3dprinting
• c
• cmake
• gcode
• libcurl
• linux
• raspberry-pi
• sms
• solidworks
• twilio
• wiringpi