APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATIC LOADING AND UNLOADING OF FILAMENT IN 3D PRINTER

摘要

The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for automatically monitoring a transmission of a filament of a three-dimensional (3D) printer. The 3D printer has a filament existence checking sensor in a front end of a feeder, and includes an encoder wheel and an encoder sensor for measuring a transfer distance and a transfer speed of the filament in the feeder. The method comprises: a first step of checking a filament existence detection sensor state, a filament existence flag state, and a filament removal command availability, and determining whether a filament insertion process or a filament removal process is necessary; a second step of measuring encoder data when the filament insertion process starts, checking the transfer distance and the speed of the filament, heating a heater nozzle, driving a motor, melting a filament, and pushing the same outside a nozzle; and a third step of measuring encoder data when the filament removal process starts, checking the transfer distance and the speed of the filament, heating the heater nozzle, driving the motor, melting the filament, and pushing the same to the front end of a feeder. Accordingly, as a user just performs a simple operation of pushing the filament to an inlet in order to insert the filament into the heater nozzle, the method provides an effect of removing an inconvenience of giving an additional key control or computer command, waiting until the heater nozzle is heated, or using both hands, and an effect of removing a difficulty of estimating the amount of pushing the filament to the heater nozzle.