Spool tangle and out of filament Anet A8 stock board

thingiverse

The idea for my project was to prevent problems when I encounter a spool tangle by triggering the out of filament cycle as soon as I have a spool tangle. Here's how it works: I mounted a limit switch on each side of the spool cradle. The rod that holds the spool keeps the switches open when the rod moves up into the spool cradle, and either one of the switches triggers the change filament cycle to activate. I also printed hubs for the spool with ball bearings and a mount to hold a clip preventing the rod from rotating. "The cradle is secured to the board that my printer is mounted on" (I removed the hold downs, it works better without them). Most filament spools have the end sticking out near the hub, so I glued the end to the spool and this will also work as a filament run out sensor. Or better yet, set up a filament runout sensor and wire it in parallel with the tangle setup. With the help of others there, I found one pin available on the LCD (Pin4A or Pin 3) that is Pin 27 on the stock Anet a8 board using Marlin. I soldered wires directly to the pin 27 (pin3 -4A) and the 5-volt pin on the LCD (I should have soldered the red wire to the 5-volt but it doesn't matter). I tried it to ground, using (false), but that didn't work with help, so I found out I had to use the 5-volt and (true) in the firmware. I've uploaded a picture of the back of my LCD. As for the firmware, both the filament change and the out of filament must be active; there's plenty of information available on how to do that, but I won't go into details. I've uploaded a picture of the changes needed in the out of filament micro in the Marlin firmware. It's in configuration h, starting at about line 826 in Marlin 1.1.8; search for FILAMENT_RUNOUT_SENSOR. I want to thank all of the people here who helped with my project and especially "truglodite"; I couldn't have done it without everyone's help. Please comment, good or bad – I'm interested in reading your comments and seeing your makes.