Filament Holder W/Scale

thingiverse

Filament holder with integrated scale provides a live readout of remaining filament weight directly in Octoprint. # Setup You need an HX711 breakout board and a compatible load cell to get started. You can find these bundled together on Ebay or Aliexpress for less than $10. Any load cell rated for more than 1kg and less than 50kg will work; I used a 5kg load cell with solid results. The load cell I used has tapped screw holes for M5 screws on one side and M4 screws on the other, but it doesn't matter which direction you connect the load cell. To attach the bracket to the printer frame, I used M3 screws with t-nuts. For instructions on wiring up the load cell, check out this tutorial: https://tutorials-raspberrypi.com/digital-raspberry-pi-scale-weight-sensor-hx711/. You'll also need this Octoprint plugin: https://github.com/dieki-n/Octoprint-Filament-Scale. The plugin assumes you connected the data pin to GPIO20 and the clock pin to GPIO21. # Accuracy Accuracy is limited by the inexpensive load cell, but even more so by the forces exerted on the spool as the extruder pulls on the filament, changing the reading. Nonetheless, I've found it to be accurate within +/- 40g in my experiments, which is more than good enough.