KS STRUdittle - Autospooling enhances diameter tolerance. True?

i think the winder is too close to extruder, filament doesn't have time to cool...

I know that Filastruder with ABs has already an excellent tolerance. Sufficient.
But I read that several auto-spooling projects are blooming, offering potentially the spooling convenient feature and now the better tolerance feature, too.

If you are happy with +/- 0.03mm tolerances, would you be unhappy with +/- 0.02/0.01mm ?!

Better is never bad!

Am I the only one watching that video thinking that guy was the poster child for every frat guy ever?
That and 3 point lighting is extremely important.

+100... as presentation is everything these days

I may have said it wrong in the attempt to be funny but presentation is important. The guy presenting looks like he is intentionally pushing out his chest and speaking in a low gravely voice. Next the lighting fails to show the product and the audio is not only grainy but is all over the place with levels. Sadly during the day I'm a sales engineer and the quality of a presentation is linked with the quality of a product.

That being said I'm not impressed with the extruder being mostly printed parts including the drive gears and the tube assembly is extremely short which means the heat looks like it can migrates into the printed parts and soften them on long runs. I'm also not impressed with the spooler due to it being the simplest design possible with some serious complexities. The stand for the spool looks extremely weak. They would get more strength out of laser cut legs. Next using a servo with an outside gear makes for a more complicated setup than is needed. The tension sensor looks to be a switch activated bar that turns the servo on or off. If they wanted to stick with the switch activated setup they could move to a standard DC motor and just engage a rubber roller against the edge of the spool like the lymann extruder setup and just put a regulator inline with the switch. I personally think a sensor bar runs the chance of flattening out filament so I would avoid that all together and go with a setup like ianjohnson has been working on using photo sensors. They also need to revisit the power supply to accommodate international customers. I know America is awesome and all but don't forget the rest of the world. My last unfavorable note is that there is to many exposed power connectors and they should consider modifying the enclosure to cover all the terminals.

Now that I've said all these bad things let me say a few good things.
1. I'm happy to see someone finally using a coil looper which is a common thing but hasn't been very popular on home based extruders.   
2. While not necessary it is nice to see good electrical practice of an external relay to power the heater. Considering how little duty cycle the heater is they could get away with a mechanical relay but an SSR is a nice touch.
3. The base plate looks well designed with a lot of internal support.

Indeed, I moderate myself, but the presentation style could be more engaging.

This guy has a MakerGear M2 printer, the same I own, (modded), and the printing quality could be really much much better.

I printed a large conic funnel with my M2, connecting to a DVD tubular box (in the 120mm diameter).
The conic upper shape is progressively morphed into the rectangular hopper inlet, to avoid to trap pellet, and to optimize pellets pressure.

With so many projects now, I think a positive vision is to combine the best of each design.
Like water cooling and autospooling added to Filastruder.
And why not a T-slot chassis.

Presentation skills are not obvious.
Sometimes, KS pledgers can be fooled by a very good one, and can miss a nice project by rejecting the lack of presentation quality.

Hello all! I'd like to make some comments and answer questions from the discussion above. To start...

drandolph:
1) The tube assembly is quite short -- that's one of the things that allows the STRUdittle to be small.  However, I can assure you I tested the unit with a variety of lengths, starting out long and decreasing. I measured the temperature on the plastic side, and have run the unit for time spans > 24 hrs, multiple times. No damage...no plastic creep. I even went so far as to purposely damage one of the bases, cutting out some chunks with a dremel and let it run. I then cranked the heat up way above extrusion temperature. It still held on like a champ. The bases are incredibly solid and overbuilt to last.
2) It specifies in the Kickstarter that the autospooler is in "beta" phase. In other words ... we're using them for testing, and will beef them up add some aesthetics before shipment. It also specifies on there that it's not a tension unit -- it uses a beam-breaking IR circuit to sense when there starts to become slack in the filament coming out.
3) We believe simple is better .... just remember the old engineering slogan "KISS".
4) We also specified in the Kickstarter that while the main unit is mostly complete, we were still working out wire routing and aesthetics. Please remember that Kickstarter design is for *prototypes*, and not finished products off the shelf.
5) Regarding the video: Yes, yes, yes... we know it needs improvement. Working on re-filming -- limited time to answer all replies on Kickstarter, replies on forums, continue shifting to production ready, run more tests that people are asking about and still have time for that day job! I personally felt the product was more important than the second half of the video (complete with disclaimer!), but maybe people want more show.
Lastly...no, I have never been in a frat, and yes, that is my normal voice and posture

HiTempPrinter: You're correct, the makergear M2 puts out much better prints. I had a problem when putting out some of the parts that went on display, which turned out to be a loose setscrew on the y-axis. Took me a while to diagnose; I thought it was a software problem at first. It's putting out much cleaner prints now.

gr1f1th: We've worked on answering quite a few emails and comments. We passed our initial goal after just 10 hrs, so we haven't had time to make a comment in regard to that yet (day jobs!). However, everyone who has emailed with a question has gotten response(s).

RavensCrest: We have been experimenting with placement of the autospooler from the extruder, and there are optimal distances which we'll publish with documentation. The filament actually does have plenty of time to cool.

All in all, here's the takeaway I hope I can give:

-The STRUdittle has been in the works for quite some time, with significant modifications with each iterations. We've experimented with many concepts, and are finding out what works best. We're trying to offer a small package and a *very* reasonable price, and have a limited window to get it out on the market. It's been tested and has shown to be reliable. We're working at taking on everything at once, but please remember this is a start-up operation; limited resources so we have to allocate them carefully.

I welcome further comments/suggestions, please keep them coming

Oh come on!! I do not know anything about video production lighting or dubstops.

But I have a Kickstarter project coming up, you want the project or for me to take the next six months learning how to do video productions?

Ralph

At least make sure there is plenty of light, we can hear what you are saying, and for the love of god don't shoot in portrait mode.  Also turn off any cooling or heating you have, the fans are much louder than you think.  Look up some basic tutorials on video production, you don't have to go too crazy with it.  Just a simple 3 point lighting setup with clip on work lights will make a big difference in how it looks.