Filament monitor for FlashForge printers

I had just posted about our Tunell filament monitor on the 3D printer parts forum, but I wanted to bring it especially to the attention of the group here -- the Tunell monitor was desgined specifically to connect easily to the FlashForge Creator (and other machines that have the 4-pin endstop cable Mightyboards and running Sailfish firmware). For those of you doing long-running prints or need production reliability, this device can pay for itself very quickly by detecting out-of-filament and other filament feeding problems, and pausing the printer. More details are on the Tunell monitor page at ToyBuilder Labs.

Thanks.

I'm new to 3D printing and like this upgrade.

But I'm wondering, if the print gets paused.....say for 4 or 5 hours....can you just restart a paused print with no problem?

Short answer is it's fine.

The more nuanced answer: because pausing the print may allows the part and the printer (heated bed, nozzle) to cool down significantly, there's a chance your part will shrink or warp enough that when the print is resumed, you could end up with seam lines and/or gaps at the point where the stop and restart happened. The extent depends on the amount of cooling and the material. In some cases, people use temperature-sensitive bed material that results in the print popping off the print bed when cool. If that's the case, long period of cooling can still result in a failed print, but at least you won't be running your printer continuously without fresh filament.

thanks. That helps

With my setup, pausing the printer for more than 20-30 min would kill the print anyway, and for 90 bucks (dual extruder) there is very little ROI versus a simple end of spool sensor connected to a MySensor.org sensor to send notifications. The price has to come way down for it to work for my setup.

Its worth mentioning that your print may loosen from the build platform when it cools.

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Originally Posted by Sebastian Finke

Its worth mentioning that your print may loosen from the build platform when it cools.

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Yes. I did point that out earlier - for build plates that tend to release upon cooling, if you have cool-on-pause enabled, it will cause the print to come off. If you use heated pause, the part won't come off, but you may still have shrinking of parts, enough to show a seam line.

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Originally Posted by ServiceXp

With my setup, pausing the printer for more than 20-30 min would kill the print anyway, and for 90 bucks (dual extruder) there is very little ROI versus a simple end of spool sensor connected to a MySensor.org sensor to send notifications. The price has to come way down for it to work for my setup.

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Well, the Tunell monitor is intended for uses where more sophisticated monitoring is desired -- clogged nozzle, knotted up spools, filament diamter way over or under size causing feeding problems, filament that broke inside the feed tube, etc. UPDATE: And, of course, when the filament has run out.

For anyone that wants a simple out-of-filament detection, you could just wire a microswitch to the printer -- that would be the least expensive way to go.

You mean to tell me these 3D printers won't detect when the spool runs out ?

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Originally Posted by Ward

You mean to tell me these things won't detect when the spool runs out ?

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That's the most common use case for the Tunell monitor -- to detect when the filament has run out -- but it also is able to detect other filament feeding problems. Sorry for the confusion!

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-eVxrqn8