Z switch idea?

Would it be possible to create a low volt circuit between the nozzle and an aluminum bed itself? Not FSR, but basically a setup where your nozzle closing the loop by contacting your bed is treated as a NO switch?

Yes, it's been done before. Problem is the nozzle needs to be clean for it to work properly.

Any idea how to do it?

nvm got it working. Easier than I expected!

Pretty unreliable, the nozzle always gets covered with filament. And you are limited to print directly on the aluminum bed.

Yup, couldn't use it every day mostly because printing on clean aluminum is annoying, the nozzle thing didn't seem to come up. The reason I was interested though was more to compare it's accuracy with my other z probe during delta calibration and if terrible to use the difference to measure effector tilt

Not a bad idea, how does it compare?

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

My delta build is currently in um... Alpha. Was battling effector tilt while battling calibration/bed leveling issues, ended up ordering new horizontals that aren't here yet so I can't say for sure how it lines up to the DC42 IR magic, I did manage to probe the aluminum bed accurately and repeatably and generate a height map that seemed pretty solid. When I get it put back together for real I'd be interested to see how they compare with eachother. Interestingly I had no problems probing and 0 missed probe points. I literally took an old endstop wire, stripped the ends and attached one to my aluminum bed with a binder clip, and the other I wrapped around the top of the e3d v6 at the top (under the groove mount). As long as the nozzle is up to temperature it'd cut thru molten plastic and contact the bed eventually. I just got it up to heat, retracted a few mm, wiped the tip and toyed with it for an hour or so without a missed probe point. The only thing dissuading me from using this in reality is just having to print on a raw aluminum bed without any coatings.

I do like nozzle based probing it is advantageous for a lot of reasons especially on deltas, there is just currently no elegant way to do it.

I had a printer with fsr's and they were a bit of a fiddle. I wonder if a Piezo disc built into a hot end clamp might be worth trying. It's got to be more elegant than having 3 of them under the bed.

Maybe there is a way to produce something at the nozzle like ultrasonic, rf or high frequency high voltage to achieve the same effect as you have with direct current, with less conductive bed coatings.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

Maybe one of the popular bed coatings like printbite could be made conductive?

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

I've deff seen people wedge the fsr against the hotend somehow and use that. I get excellent repeatability with dcs IR probe, it just needs to be offset which makes effector tilt problematic. To me the ideal setup would be 3 of them mounted in a triangle around the nozzle, probing till all 3 register then averaging the results. Peru pretty sure you'd get height at the nozzle but haven't thought it thru yet.