Orbiter Filament Sensor guide - A smart, automated way to improve your 3D printer

Most of the stuff I print is very small, so runout is rarely an issue. What does cause semi-frequent print failures on my machine is the filament crossing over itself on the spool and tying itself into a knot. For some reason filament movement sensors seem to be much harder to source and much more expensive, which is really annoying.

Meh not really all that smart. What I want is a geared optical extrusion wheel sensor that acts like a reverse extruder to count how much filament is going through it. With a large over-drive I think the error tolerance can be dramatically reduced and it can input accurate reverse e-steps to compare it with the extruder's output. In theory it should work with all extrusion problems like jams, clogs, underextrusion as well as over-extrusion.

This is all well and good, but I run into so many random rolls that have a sharp enough bend that the filament wont pull off the spool when at the end and the extruder stops and just grinds the filament down. No normal (pre the extruder) sensor will fix this.

Was looking to upgrade my Ender 3 Pro even more with the Triangle Lab DDE v2 kit incl. this sensor solution. Not even in doubt anymore :D

OR you simply weight your spools and see before starting a print if it will complete given the estimation of used filament in the slicer.

congratulations your videos are always well detailed and thank you very much for what you do
you are a guru of 3d printing

I never knew about this! I just installed Rome to my ratrig. This would make such a better inline sensor!

At the moment i am installing the orbiter v2.0 on my ender 5 pro with a skr mini e3v3 board running klipper. I also have the filament sensor but i need to figure out what pins to start using. As i think to see in your video you run it on 5 volts, if so is that working fine? Learned a lot from your videos so keep on going.

Great video! I'd love to see a video where you modify this orbital filament sensor with a Revo Hemera!

Tremendous! Thank you!

Speaking of smart tech, has there been any updates to the closed-loop stepper motor video you did? Lot's of unanswered questions in the comments, I'd love to know if you stuck with them or not?

Nice Video, as most of the time ;)
I will upgrade my Ender 6 with a 1.5 Orbiter inc. the sensor.
X/Y will be upgraded to linear rails as well + BL Touch and Neopixel ... Stock Creatlity Board and Screen

I've had so many problems with runout sensors in the past that I had just given up on them. And I'm not willing to switch out for an orbiter yet, but I think I'll be seeing if I can replicate a lot of this in other ways. Thanks!

so on mine when it does the autoload on a orbiter 1.5 it grabs it but then it jams right after the gears because it never goes into the filament path below the gears. not sure what to do to fix this.. any ideas?

Is it possible to interface this wonderful device to a Raspberry Pi running Octoprint?, if this doesn't work with Marlin, I don't see a reason why we couldn't develop a driver to interface to a Pi, or even a Pico.

Can't wait to see both hall-effect filament width (supported by Klipper already) and the encoder features to be a part of these "smart" filament sensors. Unfortunately most of these "filament runout" only do the one thing, detect when the filament has run out. But it does not help when there is a jam in the extruder, or when the extruder is not extruding as fast as expected (skipping steps), or when the filament diameter keeps changing. All of these features are already supported by Klipper, but unfortunately there is no available sensor that includes all three in one.

I have a question for you I'm looking to increasing the speed in PrusaSlicer for my 3MKS+ it's hard to find just the right setting. I'm using Bondtech LGX for Prusa MK3S - With Magnum.

If you have any time can you PLEASE help me. Maybe a video on speed on a prusa?

Keep up the good work.

I’m just printing a mount for my new btt smart filament sensor

Duet filament sensor is better.

From memory, Marlin supports hardware buttons and customizing the G-code after a detection event, so you can basically do all that with Marlin as well.
Checked: Marlin 2.1.2 indeed can do this. You can configure hardware buttons to run G-codes (a sequence at that), and the filament runout script can be changed from just an M600 filament change, to something else.
At most it will not make a distinction between load and unload on the button.

This is a cool setup, but I don't think you should've included the word "smart" in the video title, since "smart" has a specific meaning for these sensors and the one you are reviewing is not "smart". It's a simple (but useful) filament-presence sensor in a compact form factor. An actual "smart" filament sensor measures the feed speed of the filament so it can also detect filament jams. I recently added one to my printer and so far I've never needed the runout detection, but I have had so many prints saved by the jam detection (mostly due to accidental excessive flow rates, or spool issues/tangles). That said, the load & unload buttons are a nice feature.

So when the filament runs out, does the printer finish the current layer? Or does it stop at the next instruction and later return to that point? I ask wondering if you need some distance between the sensor and the extruder to buffer the completion of the layer.

Just received mine this week and was suprise how little information there is, happy to found your video, installation helped a lot. Currently using so I can use a multi material set up where the sensor helps automatically pull/push other filament from two other orbiter on a ratrig. Hope this will work

Prusa's filament run out sensor is at the end of a Bowden tube, so inserting through that sensor is no different than inserting the filament without a sensor.

Nice but...anyway to add this to the EBB36 CAN BUS? looking at adding a 5v>3.3v regulator to the sensor, to find one small enough to fit is the question
Awesome content as always

I've got no gripes with my "traditional runout sensor" per se. It does a job and don't find it particularly fiddly to work with.
There is a thing that does cause trouble in relation to the sensor though: It's a mendel style printer with a direct extruder and the higher the printhead gets, the bigger the difference in filament length between printhead in the middle of the x-axis and printhead on one end of the x-axis. Long moves on the x-axis therefor will move filament back and forth through the sensor and back on to the spool, causing bad spooling and filament tangles. Of course the problem only becomes really bad, when the print has been going on for a while, causing late failures of prints. Super annoying.

I plan on installing a bowden tube to assure filament length between spool and printhead doesn't change anymore. Yes loading and unloading will be more work, but I just really hate failed prints. As an alternative, maybe one could install one way bearings gripping the filament, so it can only move towards the printhead, but not back.

Nice video, Cheers, Robert!

Idea for a new video: Ender 3 with Marlin 2.1.2. Do the new input shaping following their instructions and test print file. I tried it, but I my print looked exactly the same from the bottom on the top.

Thanks for share your experience on LDO Obiter Sensor!

Can you do a video on how to setup marlin input shaping

Amusing violence in this one Michael. Pretty slick widget, may have to do a respin for my sherpa mini, I won't buy the kit, Ill do the board from scratch. Reterminateing cables I'd just terminated..if I had a nickel.....

That EVA carriage .looks interesting. I may use it for my dbot. Does it / the rat rig have a limit switch on it for the x axis ? I can't see one on the designs ?

Hello I still been watching all your videos and I just wanted to ask you if you could make a new video on how to use the new version of kiri moto for cnc machining like you did years ago on your mpcnc low rider cnc machine you built I have made my own cnc machine and it uses a mks gen l v1.0 motherboard and marlin firmware like the cnc machine you built so I just need to know how to use the new version of kiri moto to make my machine cut out pcbs and wood 🪵 and if you do make a new video on kiri moto I will definitely watch it and like the video for you 😀 thank you for reading my comment.

Pretty cool.
Reminds me of the MMU ERCF. Similar but different.

Great video and good info.

Are there smart sensor monitor functions for the 10S Pro??? I think we have room for more serious sensor inputs but no idea what is available in kits like this. Thank you for your videos.

With 20$ you can get a Klicky/quickdraw probe + another switch as a normal filament runout sensor.

So basically to me this is completely useless. I think that the 3D printing scene is sometimes prone to overcomplicate things that should be easy and, most importantly, to create needings supposed to address problems that actually do not exists.

I have both the BTT smartFilament runout and the orbiter 2.0 sensor. I like the BTT because it detected jams many times in my case but because it's mounted to the frame, around 50cm of filament will be wasted. On the other hand, the orbiter will save more filament but it won't detect jams "clog". As much as I like the convenience the orbiter sensor is offering on load/unload, i would rather have jams detected on long prints.

I’m a lazy bum. Can anyone tell me if Klipper supports jam detection now? I haven’t looked into it for a while.

My biggest 3D printing peeve is not running out of filament, it’s having filament in the pathway, but it just not extruding as expected.

I want to fit something like the BTT smart sensor, but last I heard, that one was not compatible with Klipper.

The Tip streamline comment is great, I have trouble with the Prusa MMU und a code change like this can change everything

I've been thinking about an extruder mounted sensor for a while but I have too many other things on the go to do anything about it

if there is ever a 2-step product (unbox, plug in) then I'll probably buy it

I've got prusa mini style oiptical sensors on my Anycubic Mega X, which really needs it, and even on the little Voron 0.1, I switched the mini to an internal bondtech filament sensor

I run a Prusa Mini+. I installed the Bondtech extruder which also moved the stock filament sensor into the extruder housing. Works like a champ, is way better than the stock extruder and no more filament sensor hanging off of the end of the Bowden tube. Highly recommended for all Mini users.

how much is it?

I want something like this for the sprite hotend.

What I want is something with a filament counter, so I can calibrate e-steps easier. There are couple diy projects, but would like an off the shelf add-on.

Thanks, this was really cool