Make your own inline filament diameter sensor (under $5)!

[@MadeWithLayers]

Oh, one thing I guess I should mention: The sensor has a FAULT output (same as the LED), which is programmed to turn on when it detects errors like the filament being outside of the expected diameter range. So with that output, it can be directly used as a filament runout sensor as well, even without firmware support for the InFiDEL's measuring output!

[@MadeWithLayers]

And yes, the pins and grub screw I used in the build were temporary stand-ins as the proper parts hadn't arrived yet 😅

[@francistaylor1822]

Oh good timing, I have issues with my filament sensors and was looking at a replacement. Pity I only have some of the parts on hand, no dowels - order time. Btw your youimagine design link doesnt work!

[@ZeroPointAlpha]

Or potentially a sensor that detects unexpected sudden bulges in filament diameter, as well. Prevent clogs before they happen...

[@t.josephnkansah-mahaney7961]

This is great! Thanks for putting this out in the wild, Tom. Have you/are there plans to cover integration with the firmware on the printer controllers?

[@saschaschneider6355]

Ha! I was about to ask if there was a way to use it for that. Guess I'll put that thing in my DIY queue now. Might be a nice testing ground for my PineCil as well. Thanks for making this design available, very much appreciated

[@marsgizmo]

Thanks so much for your effort Tom 🙌 as always, it’s highly appreciate it! It’s a lot of work behind all iterations and I love how it came out :)

[@ktimo100]

I would love to see the filament maker in action!

[@3dloon430]

Yes, seems odd.

[@t.josephnkansah-mahaney7961]

I am surprised he still has it! LOL.

[@Crits-Crafts]

Would be fun

[@tobiash5369]

Very interesting, please show it to us.

[@ominguti6345]

I second that :-) even if it didn't work that well it is interesting. I would like to make my own filament extruder one day and hearing about potential issues with one is very valuable.

[@GamesPlayer1337]

11:50 THIS is the reason i love you. Seriously dude, thank you for everything. Best 3d printing channel together with cnc kitchen as being the more analytic half. Great job as always!

[@dakotapahel-short3192]

THANK YOU! This is a nice step forward. I'm excited to see the open source community run with it!

[@ameliabuns4058]

i wish you actually tested this on a printer with cheap filament. I wanna know if it makes a different

[@alf3071]

if the filament is too thick it will get stuck in your extruder tube leading to failed print or maybe worse

[@thenewchannel1329]

​@@alf3071 Yes, this is a really good application example. You could use very cheap filament with this sensor and the sensor tells the machine when the filament is too thick and stops automatically. Furthermore, this sensor would serve as a filament runout sensor. Thus it would be a multifunction filament monitoring sensor.

[@britzwickit]

great project thomas! and yes, ofc i want a video on your filament extruder!

[@brandonhowes5364]

I hope to see both firmware support and preassembled modules become available, it would be nice to have and make inconsistent filaments more useable, thanks for the design Tom!

[@MMuraseofSandvich]

I'm sitting here _thinking_ of CADding up stuff like furniture I need to revamp my living space (because my time is mostly taken up by my day job that I actually need to pay them bills and sleeping/gaming to recover from said day job), and Tom here is actually making his ideas happen. Good times.

[@Austinfromcorncountry]

This type of community driven innovation is exactly what makes the 3D printing community so great.

[@maxdarkdog5051]

what i like about you is that you care about us printers. but all work deserve money, i hope if some 3d printer manufacturer takes you idea and design that you'll get paid!

[@kylerandall9141]

Well, here's another data piece that Stefan can start including in his filament strength tests. "Was the filament over/under sized during the printing of each test part?" I love the tinkering/constant improvement in this hobby. Thanks for giving us another tool in our toolbox!

[@MisterKaen]

You always keep it classy Tom. Be proud you are one of the best channels out here. I learned a lot from you.

[@clu83]

you get a like for that pained abbreviation, love it!

[@PCBurn]

Thanks for iterating it useful and releasing the design. It's one of those things that I've never gotten around to building from scratch.

[@kylek29]

I'd love for you to consider redoing the filament maker in a updated 2021 video, using the knowledge you've gained since building it, the things you'd change, the tricks to make it cheaper. Kinda like you went over with the Infidel sensor.

[@spikekent]

Awesome work as always Tom, a very interesting project. Also very apreciative that you open source your work.

[@TheBPJo]

This is a great idea and project! Some (hopefully helpful) critisism: If I'm not missing something, your sensor only provides the intended information under the assumption that the filament is perfectly round. It measures the diameter at a specific point, but not if the diameter is consistent. So actually you can not transform this into information about adaptation of the flow factor. You mentioned that better quality filaments are usually not oval - but imo they also should have a consistent diameter. I think this is idea has potentially higher impact for cheaper filament and to be able to compensate tolerances better.

[@minitorpgmail]

I love that you are just sharing this! Thanks and great job Thomas!

[@overclockist]

Thank you for this, Amazing work toward the betterment of printing and the open source community. Hats off to you!

[@souravghosh7903]

Thanks Thomas, for such a wonderful gift.

[@janbarthelmes1700]

I am impressed. Can you tell us something about the accuracy of the measurement?

[@AbandonRule]

I love the debugging and the programming that you kinda skimmed over. Great work

[@saddle1940]

Thanks for the design. Could the design be changed tp read the movement of the filament as well as the diameter. I was looking around for something that could be used to notice the nozzle is clogged and filament is skipping in the extruder. I could imagine using a mouse centre wheel quadrature encoder attached to one of the bearings to do that job.

[@Olof123]

Klipper already has support for a filament width sensor that changes the extrusion multiplier.

[@knoopx]

and you need no electronics at all, just two hall sensors (to cancel noise)

[@Chris_Grossman]

Excellent engineering! This answered all of the questions I had about the sensor from the diameter measurement video. I would like to see your take on an extruder.

[@MihaiAndreiStanimir]

Awesome! You made it really compact. Looking forward to have it supported in Marlin. Would be nice to have measurements on 2 axes even though the filament is usually pretty round. I tried designing something similar but your idea and implementation are 1000X better than mine haha. Congrats!

[@techdiyer5290]

Measure it from one axis, and check for a jam with the other axis. Then the wheels make an "X" and its still compact

Tom, this is amazing! I aim to know enough to integrate this on a machine of mine one day. Your university project and other DIY solutions like the PETbot are inspiring and would be great to pair with homebrew filament production/recycling!

[@tituscassiusseverus6303]

Need to see filament extruder working, it looks like it took more filament to make it than it ever produced 😁. Fantastic work on sensor, will be pottering around with the idea this weekend, thanks for all your hard work.

[@billclark5943]

Agreed, evolving your design with a 3d printer is awesome. I just went through 5 revisions on a new CF/PEKK extruder design and I'm finally happy

[@mattedsmith]

Great video and love that you're making this all free. Definite thumbs up for the cut away too!

[@Gengh13]

This is awesome, as always thanks for your contributions to the 3d printing community. I hope now the duet guys will show a little interest in this feature, in the past they weren't interested when I requested it.

[@danielsmullen3223]

I think this is a great design and has a lot of potential. I am tempted to create a pull request for your code to introduce a feature which not only interpolates the calibration values based on the known diameters of the tools, but also through using a statistical test with repeated measures to ensure the calibrations are providing both accurate and also repeatable measurements. I believe the Prusa firmware does this with the PINDA probe, which uses precisely the same theory of operation as this sensor. You might notice that it takes several repeated measures on each calibration point on the bed. Averaging these measures can help improve the accuracy of calibration values during a calibration cycle, but if it also incorporates a statistical test to ensure that the values are within the expected range for this sensor then anomalous values can be prevented from affecting the recalibration (and can also be used as a self-diagnostic in case the sensor is no longer within acceptable calibration). If the LED is programmable based on the PCB design, that would be very useful for giving feedback to the user about what is happening if things go wrong during this procedure.

[@danielsmullen3223]

Tom, you didn't put your firmware or PCB design files in any kind of version control. Would you be able to put them on github perhaps?

[@MadeWithLayers]

Never used github before - but feel free to upload the firmware and I'll be happy to link to it as the recommend firmware choice!

[@danielsmullen3223]

@@MadeWithLayers I created a new public repository on GitHub which is tracking everything you released. This can also version control EAGLE files since they're in a plaintext file format. I updated some of the filenames and folder structures to adhere to more common naming conventions, hopefully it will make the repository easier for people to navigate. Since this is public people will be able to fork it, make changes, and propose changes that can be reviewed and incorporated back into the original with pull requests. You can find a link here: github.com/drspangle/infidel-sensor/ Edit: I realized that you specified CC0 for the license on this, so I've updated the repo accordingly. I'd been trying to get in touch with you, but there's no emergency about it.

[@MadeWithLayers]

Aaaad.. done! Thanks for uploading!

[@a_student0]

This is a great contribution. Thank you Tom 💚🙏

[@alha3869]

In order for the extruder to compensate the thickness difference of the filament it must know the distance between the sensor and the extruder or? I assume this feeds live data from the point where the bearings touches the filament, but it will take some time before that point of the filament is consumed.

[@FrodorMov]

Cool! So, I can imagine that when measuring the diameter you'd want some sort of filament speed correlation as well. It could make sense to integrate a speed measurement in this thing too, perhaps also a magnet that rotates with the bearing, measuring its rotation and thereby the filament velocity ? Could then also be used to close the loop between extruder motor signals and actual filament extrusion. Imo a closed loop extruder motor isn't enough because the filament can still skip. Well, here the bearing would have to not skip over the filament too. Edit: thinking about it, it seems more likely to me that underextrusion due to the way the extruder drives filament, is a more significant factor than the filament diameter.

[@MadeWithLayers]

Of course there are tons of features that could be added - for now, I just wanted something that does this one function well.

[@FrodorMov]

@@MadeWithLayers I understand. My point was (see edit) that if you're going to use this to prevent over/underextrusion, I think the filament speed is more significant and should be looked into first. But that's just my idea though.

[@blueberry1c2]

So... When you're pushing old filament out of the module, are you _purging the infidel?_

[@CyberOne]

This is a good design and your ideal of using a V-slot bearing is a good idea as well. Just to build on the idea a bit, using the V-Slot bearing on the moving arm of the sensor and then using a wheel with a bit more grip on the other wheel with a slotted disk and a photo interrupter would allow for the speed of movement or distance moved through to be measured. This combined with the filament diameter could then not only detect the diameter of the filament but also filament out (can already do this :-) ) but also if the filament jambs of breaks past the sensor. Just a thought. :-) Keep up the good work Ray

[@antronk]

This is awesome! Let's see it in action! Also, I'd love you to show us your old filament extruder.

[@leonhma]

Only Thing left is to Put an encoder in one of the bearings to detect Filament movement / jams

[@brendanloconnell]

You would be better with a second magnet attached to one of the bearings (disc magnet with a central bore), and a second hall sensor. Lower cost than an encoder.

[@leonhma]

Just a really small encoder would be easy to integrate and basically plug and play

[@danvalnicek]

Why we can't just assume that the filament is not perfect and that if the filament moves the diameter changes?

[@brendanloconnell]

@@danvalnicek , that is a really good point, assuming the precision is good enough (which it probably is).

[@light-master]

@@danvalnicek What about a series of quick short retracts that cause the filament to move back and forth along only a short distance. Its not unreasonable that a 5mm span of filament might have variations in diameter that are smaller than the measuring capabilities of this, thus unless you used a large distance or time window for detecting motion, you might get false positives within that same 5mm length of filament during the repeated retractions. If you used larger distance or time windows to account for this, then you'd end up in a situation where a legitimate jam or break would take too long to be detected, making recovering from it difficult, if not impossible. Either a modification to this to specifically detect motion, or a secondary external sensor designed for this sole purpose would be a better option.

[@motomech83]

totally solved the problem of at home filament making so if its used in the extrusion and the print process pulling through an oversize nozzle seems to be the most effective but only see the laser sensors on expensive extruders

[@ggaub]

YES! PLEASE do more videos about your extrusion system. We need more leaders to follow for our own extruders! :)

[@101rotarypower]

Exactly the kind of things I like to see, Thank You Tom! I hope this inspires more development.

[@saysphilippe]

Very cool! It gives me some ideas to even shrink the device but using a sop23 hall effect sensor on the actual board. Btw: I highly recommend you to look at the «new» Attiny series like 202, 402, 1604/1614 and upwards, based on your memory needs, and functionality. They are cheap and easy to program(only one pin - UPDI) I just love them!

[@KellyBC]

This is a very cool idea! Thanks for putting in the effort to get this out in the wild.

[@Qwuille]

Should do a video of Klippers filamenr hall effect support. It is even cheaper and because of the differential setup, it reads the magnet more accurate. Worth a try! Love your videos!

[@ktimo100]

Doesn't the drill bit calibration affect the magnetic field?

[@francistaylor1822]

It's on the other end of the lever, so I doubt any detectable effect.

[@ktimo100]

@@francistaylor1822 Ah you are right, I forgot about that.

[@BogdanKecman]

This is great, I would not expect HAL to be that precise but your prev video on the subject cleared the suspicions. Now think about 1Wire protocol, 1Wire can run on long cables nicely, it is pretty stable and is for e.g. used for hvac, fire and similar sensor installations... I2C is terrible on cables especially around noise generators like the extruder motor... look just how many issues with prusa laser sensor board that's on i2c and how for e.g. same sensor from duet that grabs the i2c from sensor with attiny on board next to sensor and sends data to mb via 1wire type signal works without any issues (ignoring issues that sensor can't work with some filaments)

[@jakuborsak8090]

Hi, thank a lot your description and ideas.. but i need little hepl with the SMT control board (populated)--- where can i buy it? or i must make it by myself?

[@justanotherfan695]

It seems that we have ran into the same problem

[@jeffwitz8556]

With such a great invention and video I couldn't stay unsubscribed any longer. Thanks !

[@victorreppeto7050]

I am trying to diy a filament extruder called the petpull2. I would like to advance the design a bit with this diameter sensor. Thank you sooooo much for this contribution!!!!

[@patrickknight8907]

I would love to see more on filament extrusion. Great video, thanks for sharing

[@miksu103]

That printed cutaway is sick!

[@mathieupellieux9468]

Elegant and smart design :) I wonder how it behave with the marks done by a dual gear extruder. Material is being scattered between crests and vales on both opposite sides of the filament while the amount of material is the same.

[@rominousss]

Yes it would be great to have a video on a filament extruder up-to-date!

[@brokenshoe1775]

Yes please cover the filament extruder maker thing I've been dying to soon if there's a doable homebrew way to recycle my pla

[@rodsnyder6020]

If I havent overlooked anything then Prusa could implement this in their MK3 chimney design. They only need another magnet and replace the optical sensor with the hall effect sensor. Then the extruder gears become the sensor itself. Their tension should be enough to compensate for debris messing up the reading.

[@interficiam]

Could you show some prints with and without the sensor on a printer? To see what difference it makes. Thanks.

[@riksteen4933]

Nice video Will this also work with the filament extruder to controller the speed of the winding roller to control the diameter thank you

[@plaetzchen86]

Great work! How do you make sure that the drills for calibration don't interfere with the Hall-effect sensor? Couldn't the metal lead to magnetic flux?

[@RobiBue]

Hallo Thomas, I understand the filament is assumed to be round and not oval as you mentioned at the beginning of the video, so the diameter of the filament is only “measured” on one “side”, let’s say the x-achse (z being through the length of the filament), so the y-axis is not measured, which could actually then carry the off-diameter... Wouldn’t a 60° arrangement help to improve eccentricity problems? Of course that would require more work than already needed, yet only checking on one side basically ignores the other sides (60 or 90° offset) just my thought Grüsse aus USA 😉

[@sparrowthenerd]

can you please talk about that filament maker? I'm super curious

[@electronicsandewastescrapp7384]

the best way for an end user to tell is the appearance of your model. Once you already have the roll, you're going to use it anyway. It's better that reviewers have these sensors and review lots of brands to let us know which is best. I've been using tecbears and SIMAX3d which is cheap and good tolerance on amazon. SIMAX3d being the best I've gotten on amazon and bought recently for $16 per roll to my door next day. I may actually pay for some prusament now that you've provided real scientific proof that its truly the best of the best in the previous video.

[@gizmobowen]

Instead of using the separate board, I wonder if it could just be added as an input to a Raspberry Pi running Octoprint? Then if there was a plug-in you could use the information that way? Thanks for presenting this Thomas.

[@MadeWithLayers]

The RasPi does not have analog input, but I could absolutely see the I2C interact wired up directly to the RasPi instead of the printer's mainboard.

[@iAmTheSquidThing]

Combining this and vibration correction has the potential to produce some seriously clean prints.

[@boardinrider]

now if you can measure the rotation of the wheel x thickness you can have a precise volume as well as a filament jam/ run out sensor

[@akshaygs292]

Future iterations probably would be to measure 2 or 3 diameter measurements, and if that works out people can make a very own average quality extruder and filament and stil get good quality prints making filament cost and selection phenomenally cheaper. Great work, thanks for sharing!!

[@Kekht]

Cool project. Thank you for sharing it with community. I hope Marlin and other firmwares will get support of it.

[@leomakessomething]

I would Love to see a Video for Setup on the Prusa I3 mk3s+

[@Masterpj555]

i love it but the only thing that may need to be done is a timing offset for the filament signal. When you feed filament in the tube someone could feed all the way through... put a line on filament with a sharpie and then back up the filament.. if that measured length in mm can be inserted the offset for accurate timing vs multiplier could be calculated! :)

[@james_snook]

Totally would love to see you go over your filament extruder

[@DerPapierfliegernarr]

DIY filament (recycling)? Yes please! Sign me up!

[@BeefIngot]

I wonder if this can't also be used to detect jams through a lack of changing values

[@ucirello]

It would be super to see the filament maker working!

[@emufasar1789]

You should put a rotary encoder on the idler bearing like the btt smart filament sensor does so that it can detect filament jams aswell as measure diameter. Would be the best all in one filament sensor and would cost very little.

[@marcnadeau2367]

what about adding a filament cleaner ahead of the InFIDEL to prevent any false readings? Could be a simple wiper made out of a sponge.

[@kippie80]

Thank you! Note my problems are order of magnitude higher, that it a tenstion measurement device for binding or missing filament.

[@henricoderre]

Fantastic job. I love the InFIDEL sensor. Is this your design? Before you mentioned using it with an extruder I'd assumed that that's what you were building it for. Used with the extruder, the Attiny's filament diameter could be input by a microcontroller. Based on this input, the microcontroller could then either speed up or slow down the flow of filament being extruded. Simple. Brilliant!

[@mathewbrunza2813]

Now the qidi q1 pro has a haul effect senor. Thanks for the video!

[@JohnOCFII]

I enjoyed seeing the process, as well as a very nice looking sensor and housing!

[@johnny5634]

Hi Tom! Can the tiny85 code be used directly on an arduino if I substitute the analog pins of the tiny85 with the analog pins on the ardino uno?

[@CronosTheBearded]

Thanks, this just gave me the idea how to make a belt tension sensor to sync the tension on the 2 corexy belts!

[@stevecummins324]

Relaxation oscillator from constant current device charging a variable capacitor, a programable unijunction transistor, trigger voltage set by constant current across resistor.. Frequency of on/off discharge pulses linear wrt to capacitance change. Arduino library to read frequency etc Capacitor can be DIYed from two semicircular conductive plates. One fixed... Other free to move as arm rotates.

[@PattysLab]

I've been thinking about this for a very long time but the hall effect sensor did not click to me to use as the heart of the sensor. Also really clever to use interpolation and drillbits for the calibration!

[@andreasdittrich3922]

Great presentation, again Thomas! Great instrument for diameter measurement while extruding. A simple no-filament sensor with mechanical end stop switch would do its job for printing, cost less efforts in engineering, and parts, but would be less smart and versatile. I' curious, what comes next...

[@jensschroder8214]

The ESP8266 has the noisiest analog input I know. In addition, you can only measure up to 1 volt. To start the ESP8266, the pins must be pulled to plus or minus in the correct order so that it starts at all. For the ESP I have to recommend an external AD converter. I would recommend an Atmega328 (Uno, pro mini, pro micro), Attiny85 or similar. The 8 bit computers have a better ADC than the ESP series.

[@JBGecko13yt]

Great explanation! I found your content because I am researching a way to feed filament with a button push but once the filament reaches the destination and encounters resistance I want to be notified. think, I have filament, somewhere not next to the machine but I need to easily swap filaments for single color prints. but doing this manually (pushing the filament home) is not cool. :)

[@guillaumejaouen3429]

Awsome work :) , I start ordering components and pcb to build 10 units. I just need to add an encoder wheel and some electronic to this design to allow the sensor detecting clogged nozzle too. As 'im priniting at 233mm/s on a little slinging bed printer I can't add weight to the printing head and will use ptfe tube to link it to the extruder with a known distance.

[@ZakLeek]

This is a very cool device Tom! I really like the use of the hall-effect sensor and magnet, very clever. I will probably make one at some point but I don't think I really need one. I'd love to see a video about your filament extruder, it looks really interesting and I was thinking about designing one to make custom filaments. I don't the name but I recently saw a device that cuts filaments and joins them together so they look almost like multi-core cable, maybe try building one of those. Thanks for the brilliant video! 💙💛🧡

[@jappiemoto]

Please cover that filament line that’s awesome

[@jacquesblom2312]

My main reason for wanting this is that I make my own filament from PET bottle. It's not 100% good consistency and sometimes a short length will become oval as it does not shrink down properly, thereby causing jams. If I can detect that early enough I should have very little failed prints from then on.

[@tictax319]

That is what i call very good engineering. Like your attitude to make it open source and avalible for companies. Cant wait to try that out and see if it is usable with Marlin. My 32 bit Board sould be able to handle it right ? Just build a Runout sensor wich will be obsolete soon, ups xD And yes please make a Video on the Filament line. I would love to see that. Good work! Every Video is a pleasure to watch :)

[@MadScienceWorkshoppe]

Yes, anything that can read analog. Just be sure not to give it 5v if it can only handle 3v3.

[@MVFreeenergy]

Hi Great product but on major flaw that nobody had though about it cause event filament is breaking inside filament loader it will no longer to be able to detect it! Cause it primary function is only detect missing filament! It's need filament movement detector like consumption it will be done by adding a roller that will detect if roller is stopping! With that feature you could say 100% bullet proof on both case

[@martyngriffin5943]

Where do I find the info on printing the case and making the sensor. I plan on using it on my ender 3 max with marlin. Nicely done.

[@someguy2741]

I was just called that on site the other day. How conveniently personal :p

[@RomanoPRODUCTION]

Oops! Never again ☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️

[@crussty3d]

I really like this Tom! How hard would it be to add in a small OLED/LCD to give real-time readouts on the unit itself?

[@MadeWithLayers]

With a different MCU, it should be trivial. ATTiny is out of pins unfortunately 😉

[@ColBol7]

@@MadeWithLayers I2C is a bus so an I2C display shouldn't need any more pins.

[@mikemike7001]

@@MadeWithLayers One could use an ATtiny84 to get more I/O pins at little if any additional cost. Neither the ATtiny85 or ATtiny84 likely has enough memory to support driving a display, I2C or otherwise. Would be interesting to explore.

[@ColBol7]

@@mikemike7001 Driving an I2C display with an ATTiny85 can be done but as you suggest memory is the biggest issue. If any one is interested in an example Search for attiny85 interactive name tag.

[@mikemike7001]

@@ColBol7 Thanks. The name tag code looks like something I could use for other projects as well.

[@MiguelRodrigues0]

I'm building a new toolhead for my printer. And after seeing this, I think this would be an awesome mod to be integrated into the voron afterburner.

[@Dalenthas]

Thank you so much for leaving the "vun volt" flub in, it made me laugh.

[@michaels3003]

Sadly, most people have never heard of Alessandro Volta

[@Datadog-1]

Definitely want to see more on the filament maker

[@mr-gadget]

I am watching already quite a while your projects and thought it is now time to leave a sub 👍 Great content, interesting to watch and listen. Greetings from Bavaria 😉