Automated Pressure Advance Using a Bed-Leveling Sensor

Per Hackaday, one of FDM three-D printing's trickier parameters — pressure advance, or K-value — could soon calibrate itself. When a printer changes speed, the filament acts like a spring under the extruder's force, creating a delay that leads to over- or under-extrusion. To compensate, you adjust the flow rate ahead of the speed change. Current tools like the Bambu Lab X1 use Lidar scanners to measure the ideal K-value. But Stefan of CNC Kitchen wondered: could simpler sensors already built into most printers do the same job? Using open-source printers with load cells in their extruders — like the Snapmaker U1 and some Prusa models — he measured how extrusion rates affect the sensors and created a calibration tool for stock Prusa firmware. Similar open-source projects already exist, suggesting that auto-calibration could become standard, letting printers fine-tune this crucial parameter on their own.

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