Closed Loop Control for 3D Printers

[DanWake]

I just saw this on Hackaday and it reminded me of a certain project involving a hacked up mouse:

hackaday.com/2015/01/20/closed-loop-control-for-3d-printers/

[bvandiepenbos]

interesting

[BeeAmaker]

What would really make this viable is if the software could make it go back to recover the skips thus saving the print. Maybe that is their intentions but the article doesn't say anything about that. That could save your 20 hour print from Fluffy jumping onto the print table.You can see in the video that when he pulls the Y axis forward the X and Z keep right on printing, so the print is still FooBar. The software needs to detect that action and Halt the print until it is returned to where it should be.

[jimustanguitar]

The way that the printers 'spool' GCode, I'm not sure how easily this could be implemented. Don't the machines complete each line of code before 'thinking' again or listening for new instructions? Perhaps this isn't as much of an issue as I'm imagining it to be though. A curve with 16 segments would be 16 separate lines of code, right?

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see where this goes. A lot of people are excited about it and will be working with it. Seeing it evolve from passive error checking to actually being an active and dynamic part of how DIY machines move will be cool.