A growing trend is to mount a borescope “inspection camera” near a 3D printer’s nozzle to provide a unique up-close view of the action. Some argue that this perspective can provide valuable insight if you’re trying to fine tune your machine, but whether or not there’s a practical application for these sort of nozzle cams, certainly everyone can agree it makes for a pretty cool video.
[Caelestis Cosplay] recently decided to outfit his Prusa i3 MK3S+ with such a camera, and was kind enough to share the process in a write-up. The first step was to find a community-developed fan duct, which he then modified to hold the 7 mm camera module. Since the duct blows right on the printer’s nozzle, it provides an ideal vantage point.
The camera module included a few tiny SMD LEDs around the lens, but [Caelestis Cosplay] added holes to the fan duct to fit a pair of 3 mm white LEDs to really light things up. While modifying the printed parts took some effort, he says the hardest part of the whole build was salvaging a 5X lens from a handheld magnifier and filing it down so it would fit neatly over the camera. But judging by the sharp and bright demo video he’s provided, we’d say the extra effort was certainly worth it.
After covering how the camera rig was put together, [Caelestis Cosplay] then goes over how it was integrated into OctoPrint, including how the external LEDs are switched on and off. He’s running OctoPrint on a Raspberry Pi, though as we’ve covered recently, a small form factor desktop computer could just as easily run the show.
I love it. Feels like playing TRON in the arcade
Same, couldn’t quite place why it felt so familiar until I saw your comment! But yeah, it totally does, gave me a weird deja vu when I saw it! Thanks you solving it!
Imagine tjst with mmu so you got different colored lines 😁
This is awesome. I think it can definitely provide value, especially for the use-case of rapid spaghetti detection. Maybe even provide a useful data point for auto leveling.
What a great expression. For use when the Flying Spaghetti Monster is about!
Or 3d print a map and stick a small picture of a vehicle on the nozzle and convert the printer in a 3d simulation.
Or perhaps better… maybe it even can print DOOM.
For those who have no idea what i’m mumbling about, i’m referring to the tank simulator article of a few weeks ago.
This is great! Thanks, I’ll show these videos whenever I teach 3d printing from now on.
I have a request too. Would you make a video showing common problems like under/over extrusion, lack of bed adhesion, elephant’s foot, and artifacts from extreme settings, such as printing with a too high a layer height for nozzle width?
It would be such a treat for the whole community to see all the problems we have dealt with filmed up close.
I use a similar setup and stream all my prints for monitoring, so most of my restarts and failures are also public lol
Can you share the link for the stream?
Just kidding I scrolled down and saw your other comment 🤦
I’ve been doing this for a couple years and tbh it’s awesome. Easy to set babystep height, super easy to monitor quality on the fly and generally fun to watch. Used a very long ribbon cable and a pi cam, swapped the camera unit for a model with closer focus, two 3mm LEDs power off the 12v cooling fan pins.
https://youtu.be/h9A-lFDjm3I?t=2822