3d Printer Filament Scale

Welcome to my Filament Scale project. I have had this mounted to my Taz5 for over a year

and have been quite happy with its operation and accuracy. There will be some error because of the pulling of the filament but it gives me a good idea of how much filament I have before starting a project. I've included a wall mount or it could be used as an adapter for a different printer.

The parts were printed out of ABS at 25 percent fill. Nothing special but you need to be able to print accurately to receive the 608zz bearings with no problems. The support arm rotates on the bearings to contact the 3kg load cell mounted vertically.

The electronics would be the hardest part and you need to have a little experience to get that done. It uses a ESP32 Dev board displaying on a Nextion NX3224T028-011 display. Power comes from the micro usb cable plugged into your computer or from an adapter. You need to follow Andreas Spiess #170 youtube video to get Arduino to compile the code properly. I've included the source code for the ESP32 and the display. The HMI file for the display uses no special graphics so it should work with any T version display. I guess this is an advanced project so if you don't understand what I'm referring to then this probably isn't a good project for you at this time.

I hope someone would run with this and add the HX711 load cell sensor to the Octoprint project and add this scale. Hope to do that when time permits, I currently don't use Octoprint so I only assume it's possible to do so, heck maybe it does.

It operates like any digital scale. You tare or zero it out with an empty spool to show you the remaining filament. The first time you run it you will need to go hit the CAL button and adjust the gain to read correctly with a known weight applied.

Sorry for not a more detailed build but I've got more projects to attend to.

Cheers

Kisssys

Category: 3D Printer Accessories