Add a filament monitor to detect filament feeding problems before prints are ruined

[toybuilder]

Running out of filament and losing your long print job is a waste of time and filament. Filament anxiety is not fun, and manually tracking filament usage is a hassle.

ToyBuilder Labs sells the Tunell 3D Printing Filament Monitor which adds more sophisticated sensing to a wide variety of printers. Besides detecting running out of filament, the Tunell monitor also detects other filament feeding problems such as the filament getting stuck on the spool, jams cause by nozzle clogs or out-of-tolerance filament, and filament breakage.
When the monitor detects a problem, it sends a signal to the printer to pause the print job so that you can fix the problem. For large and long running prints, or for manufacturing and production environments, this is a crucial feature!

The Tunell monitor is designed to connect directly to the MakerBot Replicator and other clones such as the FlashForge Creator series, and the Wanhao Duplicator 4 series. Other printers work well with the Tunell monitor -- we have had customers using it with Ultimaker's and with various RepRap printers.
The Tunell monitor can be found at ToyBuilder Labs.
http://www.toybuilderlabs.com

[curious aardvark]

as I'm mostly not in the workshop when things are printing - will this phone me up and tell it there's a problem ?

[Ward]

as I'm mostly not in the workshop when things are printing - will this phone me up and tell it there's a problem ?

Probably not...BUT.....it does say it will pause the print. That might help, no?

[toybuilder]

as I'm mostly not in the workshop when things are printing - will this phone me up and tell it there's a problem ?

It will not. But you could certainly hook it up to an autodialer to do that. (http://www.diycontrols.com/p-6547-au...r-avd-45c.aspx, for example. Note, we haven't tried this ourselves, but based on documentation, it should work!)

If you have a printer that supports signal-initiated pausing, it would pause the print job until you come back to fix the filament feeding problem.

[toybuilder]

BTW, here are some videos from Aaron Tunell, the original creator of the Tunell monitor. We have a collaboration with Aaron and are now selling an upgraded version (Version 4) now.

Filament running out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWRNVMoyRus
Filament getting stuck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItIOlt-Mq-k
Dual-monitoring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw9-eVxrqn

[toybuilder]

For folks interested in using this with a Marlin-based printer, I've uploaded a video of the Tunell Filament Monitor working with the Fusion3 F306 which runs Marlin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IJ5EZDe62Q