One of my problem areas is the extruder needing more filament. And therefore it must over come the friction of a spool holder. Have any of you thought about creating a spool drive that works together with the extruder gearing.

So say for instance the spool isn't located on the 3d printer and it attached to a different place. A stepper motor is tied to the extruder motor, with the correct gear ratios of course. So in theory when the extruder motor pulls 3mm of filament the spool motor will release 3mm of filament and vise versa.

It seems as though it would take a massive amount of load off of the x carriage (Makerfarm i3v). Which would assist in maintaining consistency in print quality.

I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks and the only thing I can think of that would cause an issue is the parallel connection to the extruder stepper and the spool stepper.

Thanks,

Nathan.