Smart Filament Sensor Mount for Creality K1

Introduction:

While chatting in the Devil Design Discord it was brought up how the K1 didn't have a filament sensor that detected jams, so I happened to mention that I had a BigTreeTech (BTT) Smart Filament Sensor V.1 and could probably adapt it to work on the K1.

Parts Needed

1. You will need the BTT Smart Filament Sensor v1
2. A few M3x5 socket head screws (you might have a few laying around if you have other printers)
3. SFS_K1_Mount.stl
4. You'll need root access to the K1 for this mod to modify the printer.cfg

What Pins are what?

First thing needed was determining if the pins on the Creality board were the same as the Smart Filament Sensor (SFS). Since the SFS is made by BTT and is pretty much made to work with BTT boards (SKR Series, etc.). So after determining what the pins were on one of my SKR 2 boards I had. I looked at the board layout for the K1 Which I've attached in the pictures They are the same as the BTT board.

I've attached pictures with the pins laid out and how to plug the SFS plug to the board. Not gonna lie, I was lazy and just removed the white connector from the K1 board and plug the SFS plug right to the pins as I didn't have extra connectors to crimp new ones and at the time I didn't know where my soldering iron was.

Changes for the printer.cfg file

5/9/2024 Update: I figured out why i had to go all the way to 25 for detection length. Before I installed this mod I switched my extruder over to the Cyclops extruder with out knowing that my LDO stepper was going bad and was not extruding correctly. So I switched back to the stock v2 extruder (which still runs good) and was able to go back down to 7mm for detection length.

2/5/2024 Update: I've upped the detection length to 25 as I was still getting some false positives while doing some prints.

I've attached a screenshot of the changes need for the printer.cfg file. I went with a 14mm detection length as I was using the default 7 and was getting false/positives with too many retractions in a print (articulated dragons are known for lots of retractions)

This will need to be added:

[filament_motion_sensor my_sensor]
detection_length: 7.0
#  The minimum length of filament pulled through the sensor to trigger
#  a state change on the switch_pin
#  Default is 7 mm.
extruder: extruder
#  The name of the extruder section this sensor is associated with.
#  This parameter must be provided.
switch_pin: !PC15
pause_on_runout: true
runout_gcode:
  {% if printer.extruder.can_extrude|lower == 'true' %}
      G91
      G0 E30 F600
      G90
  {% endif %}
#insert_gcode:
#event_delay:
#pause_delay:
#  See the "filament_switch_sensor" section for a description of the
#  above parameters.

This will need to be commented out or removed:

[filament_switch_sensor my_sensor]
pause_on_runout: True
switch_pin: !PC15
runout_gcode:
  {% if printer.extruder.can_extrude|lower == 'true' %}
       G91
       G0 E30 F600
       G90
  {% endif %}

Conclusion:

After installing this mod I've tested it by pulling the filament from the extruder while doing a simple cube and if everything is connected right, it will pause your print and go to its park position when it doesn't detect filament movement. So far the mod is working great for me and I hope this mod will inspire some new mods. I know one of the mods that was mentioned in the Discord chat was getting Spoolman to work with the K1.