Filament Usage Meter

thingiverse

With this tool you can measure the filament used in meters and I wanted to know if I could come up with something to measure the filament used and note the meters I used for certain spools I use. After a long search, I found a fishing line depth gauge and ordered one, designing a housing for it along the way. You can use your 4mm outer diameter filament tube without needing to drill a hole; there is no need for drilling due to a small drag from the tool but it's not that much of an issue. If your printer doesn't print accurately, just drill the holes - the inner holes are 2mm. There's no need for supports when printing this tool, so print in the same orientation as I put it in the STL file. If you already have extruder skipping problems, this probably won't work for you, but if you want to try it out go with a small print just to test. You'll need an O-ring (put it on the wheel like I did) and a fishing line depth gauge. The gauge can be found here: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/pesca-1-pcs-fishing-line-depth-gauge-counter-fishing-tool-tackle-fishing-line/32732008218.html There's also a digital version of this gauge, but I'm not sure if it has the same dimensions. I'll probably order one in the future to test it out, but for now here it is: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/999-9M-Fishing-Line-Counter-Digital-Display-Fishing-Line-Depth-Finder-Pesca-Fishing-Tools/32419148952.html EDIT: After a comment from jwass I realized I made a mistake putting a big O-Ring in the middle of the wheel, which was making the gauge measure wrong. I fixed that and used an O-Ring again but this time it's smaller and will glide the filament through together with the wheel. But the first version is 34 times downloaded already, and I didn't expect this to be downloaded that much in one day - my apologies for those 34 downloaders who might have found out too late. I wish I could put the v2 sooner but when I tried to print it started acting up, and on one part of the bed it's printing higher than usual. I was busy fixing it for four hours but there's still some problem with that side of the bed - I think I bent the X rod while removing the filament because it got stuck. Check out the video to see how accurate it is now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brVCErCoEOQ I also made a version for my printer (Anycubic 4Max) and you can find it here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2874239 I didn't put any extra holes to mount since the mounting point will be different for each printer. I love to hear some feedback if anyone tries this tool out!