Since I’ve moved things around in my enclosure, and my filaments are located in the chamber above, I want to let the filament feed straight down into the direct drive. But the filament sensor is way on the right which won’t work. So my choices are reposition the sensor to on top of the servo and have it feed right into the extruder OR I buy an OTC filament sensor like the BTT one and mount it on the frame above. Any thoughts?
Mine are now mounted witha good distance between it and the extruder. Whe its time to change filament I just pull it out while the nozzles hot and feed the new one back all the way in by hand then purge from the controls to get it going again. There was no space between the sensor and extruder before and it took longer to sort out because if a filament ran out there was nothing to grab and no way the extruder could feed a new filament in by itself. I used to unscrew the bowden coupler (I left it finger tight) to free the end of the old filament.
1 Like
I agree with @Glenn - Put the detector away from the hot end/extruder so you have some material to work with if there is a break or an unexpected run out.
1 Like
Those are very helpful tips! Thanks! Maybe I’ll mount it on the frame regardless. But then the question becomes is there any value in getting the BTT sensor or just repurposing the one that came on the printer (CR10s Pro V2)?
The btt sensor is an odd duck. I put it aside for now mainly because I broke the bracket I was using but mostly because it false signals too often which stops the print. If the print stops and I’m not there then Its usually ruined. I didnt dedicate the time Into figuring out of it could be fixed.
Good enough for me. I’ll just find a mount for the stock one and use that since it works just fine.
Get the BTT sensor with the internal rotary switch that will detect if the filament has stopped moving through the sensor.
@Glenn - My comission’s still 30%, right? 
1 Like
I used to strongly see the runout sensors as cheap insurance, but have found them to usually result in more pain than theyre worth as i have only had 1 scenario where it was sorta useful. If i think its going to runout soon i either keep an eye on it, or just swap for a fresh roll and save the short roll for small quick projects.
Agreed. The only time I found them to be useful was with broken filament.
I should point out that the Zortrax Inventure printer has them - BUT they aren’t checked at all by their firmware during printing (only during filament loading). Found that out the hard way along with that they had no way of figuring out how to get the firmware to check it while things were running.
1 Like
Fair ball. I figure if I’ve already got it I might as well use it. I’m just going to print a mounting bracket for the stock housing that comes with the CR10s Pro V2 and stick it on the frame under my filament feed hole. Easy peasy. The only annoying part will be figuring out where to run the wires so they are out of the way but that’ll be a small detail.
1 Like
Run the wires in the v-slot with a printed cover overtop. You may have to extend the wires (likley) but thats no biggie.
1 Like
easy peasy!
Or print these 
1 Like
lol well just be ready for the issues. I think it has an encoder and something was going on in the firmware that caused false positives I think it might have been retractions that caused it
Retractions should not be an issue here - each rotary encoder used by Zortrax has two sensors a few degrees apart so direction can be determined.
I would expect the BTT sensor to use the same kind of rotary encoder and can detect (and filter out) retractions.
I’m just printing a bracket to reposition the existing sensor assembly on top of the frame so it feeds directly to the extruder below. It has a bearing so the whole thing can swivel as the extruder travels on the gantry. Should work great. I just need to extend the wiring and put on a couple of jst connectors. I’ll do a full update in my enclosure thread.