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waltmoorhouse / FilamentBox

OpenSource 3D printer filament dehydrator / weight sensor with OctoPrint integration.
https://github.com/waltmoorhouse/OctoPrint-Filamentstorage
51 stars 6 forks source link

Feature request: adding motor drivers #6

Open maukcc opened 4 years ago

maukcc commented 4 years ago

We would like to see stepper motor drivers outputs. So you would have an arduino input that gets triggered, and then the motor drives xx millimeter of filament towards the extruder. At this moment we have done this directly, without an arduino, so as long as the input is triggered, the motor runs. But this has no acceleration, so flexible filaments tend not to like it.

XRyu commented 4 years ago

just curious, so, you want to make the FilamentBox essentially an MMU?

maukcc commented 4 years ago

MMU ??

JeremyProffitt commented 4 years ago

@maukcc google MMU my friend. This method has been used, typically with sliding PTFE and a magnet on one end of the slide, and a hall effect sensor on the other, then when the two meet, the arduino is triggered to pay out filament using the stepper, it's an okay idea, Palette used it in their original and plus design, but was troublesome. I'm curious why you think the stepper on a filament box is required, with any of the dual geared extrudes (bondtech, etc), you can almost life a printer with the force it can put on filament.

@XRyu yeah, can't make the FilamentBox an MMU, unless the steppers were connected to the control board of the print, but I bet you knew that ;) Besides, the MMU requires 2 steppers.

maukcc commented 4 years ago

Ahh Multi Material Unit, I knew it wasn't any of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMU :) But no, we have 4 separate ptfe tubes going to 4 extruders. Works like a charm except for the acceleration bit. The thing is, that we have about 2meters of ptfe tube between our filament bay and the extruder, and we solely want to use our direct drive extruder motor to push the filament through the nozzle. Supplying the extrudermotor with filament would be the task of the drive unit in the filament bay. Its job is to start moving our 2.3Kg rolls and pushing the filament through the tube. Especially flex filaments will benefit from this as they get stretched in the ptfe tube when they are being pulled, and so they need to be pushed.

more info on our machines: hybridamsystems.com