Re-Arm, any experiences?

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

DjDemonD — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 13:41:37 -0400

I posted about the LV8729 drivers in the steppers & stuff forum, I'm not sure there is a fast decay option, I think they're mixed decay only.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

nebbian — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 21:06:57 -0400

That bed level looks spot on, nice work :)-D

Yeah you've got to be careful when printing at the edges don't you. I cancelled one print with the head midway between two towers, and as it was homing, the bolt heads on the effector caught on the crossed wires that brace one face. Luckily I'd turned the current way down so the motors skipped and it didn't cause any damage.

It's the first time I've done a spiral like this, I think it's a good test to check the effector plane over the entire bed.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

DjDemonD — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 18:24:26 -0400

No strictly re-arm related but here is a spiral I tried earlier, on the kossel XL/Duetwifi.
[attachment 92851 IMG_6023Large.JPG]

Full res version [1drv.ms]

Oddly Prusa Slic3r wouldnt slice it at all.
Regular slic3r 1.2.9 managed but oddly put retracts in it in places.

This was absolute maximum size I can print, I removed the bed clamps to prevent a crash midway through and even then the rods were practically rubbing on the belts at the edges.
Black would have been a better choice.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

nebbian — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 09:36:40 -0400

Thanks mate, it's been a LOOONG time coming, let me tell you.

Mesh bed levelling FTW. After a good calibration, of course.

File is available here:
[www.thingiverse.com]

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

DjDemonD — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 09:30:34 -0400

That is an amazing print mate. You needed to print that on something that you could remove and stick it into a frame :)

Will you share your stl (I am just being lazy), I fancy making one of those.

A RRF port to re-arm would be really good, but having briefly discussed it with David there is a memory issue, i.e. not enough available on re-arm.

I will look into fast decay on the stepper drivers.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

nebbian — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 09:20:27 -0400

Trust me, it's not segments. You're also not running into any speed limits if you're at 1/32, even with 400 step motors.

The limit for my machine is about 160 mm/s carriage speed, that's at ~640 steps/mm (1/64 ustepping, 400 step motors), and all three motors moving at once. Smoothie automatically limits the top speed based on that 100 khz frequency. Your machine, being a corexy, will have a higher top speed than mine just based on geometry. Yours would be more like 350 mm/s if you're using 400 step motors, and a totally insane 700 mm/s if using 200 step motors.

It's possible that you're seeing single motor step issues, due to your drivers not being in fast decay. I've done LOTS of tests on this. Can you mod your drivers to go into fast decay?

I agree with the gcode being hard to read. Separate macros would be great. I'm going to see how hard it would be to port RRF to the RE-Arm.

I just printed this spiral... to say that I'm pleased wouldn't begin to touch it. I'm a very picky person, and I can't really fault it. Amazing that I can get the software dialled in this well after only a week of having this board installed.

[attachment 92839 thumb_IMG_6702_1024.jpg]

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

DjDemonD — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 07:50:38 -0400

Its quite hard to read the gcode in the format they use there, with no spaces and underscores separating the commands, this is for me another area where RRF wins, macros which are easy to edit, read, adjust, comment out if you're trying various settings. And the flexibility to call them with gcode.

I know smoothie has functionality like this, and at this point I'm a basic user of smoothie but an intermediate user of RRF, but to be fair its just easier to get to grips with.

Plus unless its an issue in my new LV8729 drivers I swear my corexy is segmenting long straight lines as there are slight pauses as it prints outer perimeters, only at a modest 60mm/s, running 1/32 stepping.

Is it possible to push the re-arm total steps/sec from 100,000 higher? Anyone tried it? If the duet is capable of 380khz for one motor or 180khz for three moving simultaneously the processor on the re-arm should be able to do more than 100khz total.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

nebbian — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 07:36:39 -0400

My "Gosh" was aimed at the unsafe defaults! Totally agreed with you here.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

DjDemonD — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 04:52:18 -0400

Yeah, yeah okay... in my defence though the default pause behaviour on RRF is to retract and go relative then move the head up and away from the print. It was obviously a wrong assumption of mine to presume that smoothie had the same (relatively safe and universal) default gcodes for pause, I should have checked them.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

nebbian — Sun, 09 Apr 2017 21:23:31 -0400

Yeah I guess it will do that on a Cartesian without the ability to go to negative coordinates! Gosh.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

DjDemonD — Sun, 09 Apr 2017 15:28:28 -0400

Okay yeah that works thanks, great work. I updated the pins table I am sharing.

Look at the gcode in the smoothie example and adjust it. It crashed my head at the first attempt to pause but once I'd adjusted the gcode it worked okay.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

DjDemonD — Sat, 08 Apr 2017 23:54:44 -0400

Seems they both do this then since you can create a macro in RRF and run it from web interface or paneldue or by sending M98macro.g. I guess I need to dive a bit deeper into smoothieware.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

nebbian — Sat, 08 Apr 2017 23:37:46 -0400

you can add as much gcode as you like to the pause and resume functions, check the doc link.

A really nice feature of smoothie is the ability to add custom menu entries that run custom gcode, not sure if rrf can do this.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

DjDemonD — Sat, 08 Apr 2017 11:22:53 -0400

Yes this is why I like RRF it runs a pause.g macro so you can move relatively away from the print to avoid ooze, turn heaters on/off, anything else as you want and then resume.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

nebbian — Sat, 08 Apr 2017 10:45:51 -0400

Yep. Pressing the kill button on the LCD pauses the print, turns the heaters off, moves the head up and away from the print, and it's up to you as to what you do next.

Pressing the button again to resume, heats everything back up, and starts printing again where it stopped. It seems to work.

It's a bit different to Repetier in that Repetier would keep the heaters going. Still seems useful though.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

DjDemonD — Sat, 08 Apr 2017 10:33:33 -0400

Sounds great presuming we can move the head away from print, change filaments etc... when paused and then resume? It's mapped to the kill switch on Lcd?

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

nebbian — Sat, 08 Apr 2017 10:29:10 -0400

Quote
DjDemonD
Pause would be handy keep us posted.

Tested working config is as follows:

switch.pause.enable							true                     # Enable this module
switch.pause.input_pin						1.22!^                    # Pin where pause button is connected
switch.pause.output_on_command				suspend                  # Suspend command
switch.pause.output_off_command				resume                   # Resume command
switch.pause.input_pin_behavior				toggle                   # This pin toggles between it's on and off states each time it is pressed and released

As documented here:
[smoothieware.org]

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

DjDemonD — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 09:24:36 -0400

Pause would be handy keep us posted.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

nebbian — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 08:19:17 -0400

It's a lot more accessible. You can configure it to do a few different things as well, like pause, reset, or halt, at least that's what the documentation suggests.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

DjDemonD — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 04:39:45 -0400

Does the kill switch (as I rarely use it) do anything that the reset switch on the re-arm doesn't do, or is it a case of its just more accessible on the LCD?

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

nebbian — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 04:03:24 -0400

Thanks for that DJD, much appreciated. I started digging but didn't get far enough to verify what pin it actually was on the Re-Arm.

I've got pin 1.22 set in my config:

panel.button_pause_pin                       1.22!^             # kill/pause set one of these for the auxilliary button on viki2

but pressing it doesn't seem to do anything to the controller.

Maybe I need to make a switch in the config instead.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

DjDemonD — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 03:44:25 -0400

Okay from what I can deduce from the diagrams on the other thread in controllers, its pin 41 on arduino and therefore 1.22 on re-arm. Whether that means its actually wired to the kill button on the LCD is unknown.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

nebbian — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 02:05:58 -0400

It VERKS!!!

Just printed my first part on the Re-Arm. Good to have that printer up and running again.

I'm still yet to figure out the auto bed sense before each print though. Working on it.

Has anyone figured out how to get the kill button working on the LCD panel? Or even what pin it maps to on the Re-Arm?

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

drmaestro — Thu, 30 Mar 2017 17:48:45 -0400

Quote
Traveler0612
Would this extender cable be of any use?

[www.amazon.com]

It sure would, and seems to be a very nice solution, if it works of course. Some comments on Amazon mention about not working on certain ports or having an ustable microsd side connection.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

Traveler0612 — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 21:35:55 -0400

Would this extender cable be of any use?

[www.amazon.com]

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

drmaestro — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 17:36:58 -0400

Quote
sungod3k
Just read the panel section in smoothie documentation and voila the lines disappear as soon as you take out the displays sd card. Also the menu feels more responsive now. I also had some weird crashes/skipped steps during SD prints, so onboard SD card from it is from now on.

The onboard SD card is harder to reach for me and also a bit more risky, as it is possible for me to dislocate a cable while trying to take the card out. I wonder why the LCD and SD card support is not as good as Marlin's. Also, it is a micro-sdcard, so I have to put it in an adapter each time I want to write to it on the PC (minor inconvenience)

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

sungod3k — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 12:41:01 -0400

Just read the panel section in smoothie documentation and voila the lines disappear as soon as you take out the displays sd card. Also the menu feels more responsive now. I also had some weird crashes/skipped steps during SD prints, so onboard SD card from it is from now on.

Also the firmware version appears on the display on startup, which is always good to know.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

o_lampe — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 02:48:56 -0400

Quote

I was looking forward to some sparks and lipo battery fun.

Quite disapointing, because I haven't seen a spark or smoke. ;)
Just heard a little crack, but that could have been the connector engaging.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

DjDemonD — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 03:58:36 -0400

Quote
nebbian
As I suspected:

[attachment 92424 IMG_6676.jpg]

Didn't take long to unsolder, hit the traces with a dremel, and solder some new jumper pins in.

[attachment 92425 IMG_6677.jpg]

It's definitely a trap for young players though. And just... annoying.

Yeah its such an odd mistake to make, its obviously not deliberate or why would they bother soldering the jumpers on?

I was looking forward to some sparks and lipo battery fun.

Re: Re-Arm, any experiences?

dc42 — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 02:59:06 -0400

Quote
drmaestro
I'll do that, however wire transfer is generally expensive (the last time I checked, it required around 30 USD as a transfer fee).

There are companies such as Transfermate and Transferwise that do international money transfers with lower fees than banks. You might like to check if one of these companies offers a service in Turkey.