Remaining Material on Roll

[NovaStarGX 1]

Hi All

where would I find the amount of material left on a roll???

If the UMS5 has NFC, surely this information would be available??

Several prints, some failures .. others finished. Now I want to start a job which requires 13m of material but there's no way of knowing how much material is on the roll.

 

Thematerial has not been removed since it was installed...

[Smithy 1,144]

This function does not exist, even though it would often be practical. You can only do the math yourself, but if a print is aborted, the printer will not count the material used up to that point. So the result will not be very accurate.

[Mari 36]

... I weigh the roll with filament and subtract the weight of an empty roll...

[Carla_Birch 116]

58 minutes ago, Smithy said:

This function does not exist, even though it would often be practical. You can only do the math yourself, but if a print is aborted, the printer will not count the material used up to that point. So the result will not be very accurate.

 

I'm by far no tech but maybe in the years ahead they might make a printer thats got a built in scales linked to the spool holder that lets you put a spool on and knock of the weight of the spool itself in the settings, so its always giving a true weight of filament left. would need some type of pressure pad in both half's of the spool holder so it could read the weight of each spool.

[CarloK 203]

10 hours ago, Smithy said:

... but if a print is aborted, the printer will not count the material used up to that point. So the result will not be very accurate.

That's not true, the used material quantity is updated quiet often in the NFC chip. You might loose a few cm of filament but that's within accepted margins.

 

One of the main reasons we never implemented this feature is because we don't know how accurate the filament length is to start with. On the S5 you have the filament sensor which will pause your print at the end of the roll so you can switch to a new roll.

[Smithy 1,144]

31 minutes ago, CarloK said:

That's not true, the used material quantity is updated quiet often in the NFC chip. You might loose a few cm of filament but that's within accepted margins.

 

You never stop learning, I didn't know that. Thanks CarloK for clarifying.

[NovaStarGX 1]

11 hours ago, CarloK said:

the used material quantity is updated quiet often in the NFC chip. You might loose a few cm of filament but that's within accepted margins

CarloK

Thanks for your input;

It would be good to implement as an experimental feature either on Cura or on the screen. I could live with a tolerance of +-1m

But at least you have an approximate idea (without taking the roll off and weighing it) of how much material you have to play with.

I mean, why use NFC without using it to the full potential??

Information is already there probably down to the milligram of material. it tells right there on Cura job will take so many meters / grams of material.

On one roll I've completed, aborted, and had failures of various jobs. So would be really nice to know if I can get close to finishing the next job over night or not.

Pretty hard to guestimate remaining amount on roll ....

Without sounding rude or anything, people are charged a big ticket price for this printer. So I guess it wouldn't hurt to include some creature comfort features like this. That way at least you're kinda getting your money's worth.

My Form2 which is slightly cheaper has that feature and lets you know that you "MAY" not have enough resin to complete this job (it also pauses on material depletion) . Then its up to me weather I choose to continue or replace the resin before I start the job...

Again, it might cost you a little in coding but will make a hell of a difference to a already good printer.

Food for thought, Ultimaker 🙂

 

Edited February 23, 2020 by NovaStarGX

[jeffroe 3]

Is there a way to read the amount of material remaining on the spool without being in front of the printer (reading from the screen)?  We are working from home, and I often send print jobs to our machines (we have 6 of them scattered around the building), and it would be helpful to be able to see how much is left via the web interface to the printer.  I just haven't found a place in the web interface to see this (or can it be seen in Cura when connected?)...

[CarloK 203]

It is available in the web api of the printer but I don't think we show it in any remote tool like Cura or Digital Factory.

 

Surf to the web page of your printer and you will find an online document about the printer's remote access functions.

When you are on the same network as your printer you can enter the next line in your browser and it will show you a value which is the remaining length or -1 when unknown. 

 

Example:

http://192.168.1.168/api/v1/printer/heads/0/extruders/0/active_material/length_remaining

Replace the 192.168.1.168 by the ip address of your printer

Change the '0' after extruders to a '1' for the second extruder.

[jeffroe 3]

1 hour ago, CarloK said:

It is available in the web api of the printer but I don't think we show it in any remote tool like Cura or Digital Factory.

 

Surf to the web page of your printer and you will find an online document about the printer's remote access functions.

When you are on the same network as your printer you can enter the next line in your browser and it will show you a value which is the remaining length or -1 when unknown. 

 

Example:

http://192.168.1.168/api/v1/printer/heads/0/extruders/0/active_material/length_remaining

Replace the 192.168.1.168 by the ip address of your printer

Change the '0' after extruders to a '1' for the second extruder.

Awesome - that helped a LOT.  This gives me more incentive to use the Ultimaker materials 😉

 

So if the value reported with the above technique is:

52339.68949070241

 

Is that value in mm?  (So it would be 52.33 meters)?  Do you have an idea of how many meters of material are on a new spool (either PLA or the breakaway)?  Just looking for an idea of what a full roll worth would be.

[CarloK 203]

The returned length is in mm, so just over 52m in your example.

Take the number with a grain of salt. The feature is in a prototype state and wasn't developed further since the flow sensor proved to work so well. The value is an indication but I would count with a 30% margin if you want to be sure.

 

Here a link with info on material lengths for new spools: https://support.colorfabb.com/hc/en-150/articles/360002291617-What-is-the-length-of-filament-on-your-spools-