Qidi x-max / x-plus filament runout sensor

[Dave Vogel]

I've had the power go out while printing on my X-Plus, and was able to resume the print without a problem. Deliberately cutting the power seems rather drastic. A simpler approach is just to feed new filament into the extruder as the old filament runs out. I've done it. It's easy and it works.

I don't know if I would call it "drastic" but it allows me to use the end of spools, without the fear of having to trash a nearly complete part that needs to be delivered the next day. My printers all run 20 plus hours per day (hopefully it continues) and I don't want to have an employee (or myself) training the filament at 2:00 or 3:00 AM. I try to make sure there is enough material present to run the project but sometimes I'm wrong in my calculations. Having it shut down at 95% with the ability to restart it is preferable to having to reprint the entire piece part from the beginning. I'm probably not alone in this thinking or there wouldn't be numerous filament sensors made by many different companies. The demand must be fairly high as the prices a between 3$ and $20 for a production made unit. I'm not saying I use the switch instead of my brain, but it's nice to have that "spare tire" in the trunk if I'm running and "get a flat". Again, I am a production user, printing Acetal, CF Nylon, CF PC, and TPU's, (I've even printed 6061 Aluminum and 316 Stainless steel filaments), so some of my filaments are pricey, plus I'm making parts for customers, I'm not a hobbyist. If the few dollars worth of filament doesn't matter, or if time doesn't matter, then the item is unnecessary for you.

P.S. I tried the "filament welders" to fuse multiple spools together and they sort of work some of the time. Fusing filament is like trying fix a broken pot metal part, about the time its prefect it all melts!

I don't mean to invalidate yours or anyone else's statements, but there are people who need this feature. Many other printers include it automatically. I bypassed them because, in my opinion, Qidi makes an extremely robust unit and the proof of that is I've been running the early trial models 24/7 for over a year now. I just routinely clean and lubricate everything. They've been an awesome investment.

Dave

[tron]

I updated an existing OctoPrint filament sensor plug-in to support QiDi X-Plus and X-Max. The updated plug-in will pause the printer and cool down the extruder to wait for you replace the filament.

https://github.com/tronfu/Filament_sensor_simplified

I’m using this plugin with a raspberrypi running OctoPrint connected to the UART on the QiDi X-Plus’s motherboard. The filament sensor that I’m using is a TriangleLab Filament Runout Sensor: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DHD8WHF...p_mob_ap_share

You should be able to use other filament sensors as long as they can be connected to the GPIO pins on a raspberrypi.

[David7200]

I have a new X-Plus3. It has a filament runout sensor. It didn't stop my printer. Is there something I need to do to enable it or is this a problem with my printer. I've got a note in to tech support but haven't heard back yet.

[Bikeracer2020]

I have a Qidi XC-F pro and you can turn the filament sensor off or on in the settings screen, assume yours will have something similar.