Simplify3D User Forum

Hello,

Would it be possible to add length of filament being used for both print heads on dual nozzle printers?

That would be a very useful addition.

Hello PMA and pcman, hope you are doing well.

First, I'm not an employee of the company. I have the same problem that I may have a solution to.

My Dremel spools new have 0.5kg (500g) of filament. The piece I currently am printing out says in the Preview Mode Build Statistics the plastic weight is 260.08g supposedly leaving me with 239.92g.

Once it's done, I have a digital scale that I am going to put the piece on. The plan is to put a piece of masking tape on the spool with the amount of grams left.

When I'm finished with this little experiment I'm going to post here again to let you know how it went. I'll be able to tell you what the difference is between what the software says the weight is going to be and what the actual weight is from the scale.

Let's hope this method works because I had a 12.5 hour print run out of filament last night. Had my alarm set to wake me up after a few hours, but had one two many beers and slept through it. Darn alcohol...

-Bryan

So hello again and happy Friday.

The large print I did showed in Simplify3D that it would take 265.49 grams of filament. The weight on the digital scale (and I know it's accurate) said it weighed 236 grams which included the supports.

With the 0.5kg spool, I would have 264 grams left. So, there is a discrepancy, but I think this may help some of us out with raw metrics.

I have plenty other prints I will be doing and I will record the same data. I'll post again in a week or so as I get more readings. This was using PLA in case I didn't mention it before.

Hope this was helpful.

Regards,
Bry

Keep in mind that your filament diameter will definitely affect this. So make sure that the value you have on the Other tab perfectly matches the true filament diameter of your spool. Unfortunately, I have also seen many spools where the diameter can easily vary by 5% across the entire spool, so that will cause some error in the final weight too.

Remember the predictions from simplify3D assume that your printer is extruding exactly correct (ie perfect esteps). If you are slightly over or under extruding this error will grow over time even though the print may look and measure just fine.