Filament Sensor... Yes or No?
Hello everyone,,
I ordered my Mini the day it was announced to compliment my MK3. The price was appealing until you included the shipping and options.. I couldn't not have the Smooth and Textured bed, so to keep the cost down I decided against the Filament sensor.
My rationale was because its something I don't really use on my Mk3.. I generally don't get jams and in 10s of Kilometers of Filament, I don't recal ever having a jam where the filament sensor helped.. I do use it for automatic loading and I do think I will miss that, but I am not sure its worth the extra cost.
It has dawned on me that I am paying £300+ on a printer, so why not an extra £20 or so on a sensor and this is a valid point, and I may add it to my order before it ships.. But I just wonder if anyone has any thoughts on this subject???
RE: Filament Sensor... Yes or No?
I do a lot of bi-colour prints with my mk3 (non-MMU), so I find it invaluable. As you say, its only an extra £20 or so, so its a no-brainer.
Texy
RE: Filament Sensor... Yes or No?
Personally, I don't understand why the sensor isn't included. It's only $20 more. Why not just sell the printer for, say, $379 fully-loaded? It just doesn't really make sense to me why it's an upgrade. If you are using the same color, being able to use up a whole spool instead of worrying if there's enough left on the spool is pretty important.
RE: Filament Sensor... Yes or No?
I plan on ordering mine with the sensor. I suspect it's an option because this is Prusa's first foray into less-expensive printers and you know there would be complaints about "unnecessary costs".
RE: Filament Sensor... Yes or No?
I have the Mini with sensor. From my experience it doesn't help with filament jams - the filament needs to stop feeding through the line at the point of the sensor to trigger it, and the one jam I've had just stopped the feed from advancing.
What it does detect is spools that run out of filament, and it works pretty flawlessly for that, also from experience.
If I didn't have the sensor, I would be more cautious and I think I would rarely have a failed print for running dry. But for me, the value of the sensor is in the peace of mind knowing that I can just fire up a print with less than enough filament on the current spool, and have it pause automatically and wait for me to load the next spool. It is also a bit of a timesaver in that regard.