techzone monolithic with sprinter

hello all,

i wanted to poll the community to see how many are using sprinter on their monolithic boards? i have been getting good prints from their standard firmware but i heard a rumor that sprinter may work better. before i make that change and start the calibration all over again, i wanted to hear about it from people who have the set up. Thank you



Morrist

What is Sprinter ?

@CassArt

the current "official-ish" firmware

https://github.com/kliment/Sprinter

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2011 06:42PM by Pawl.

Thanks Pawl,
I will have a look at the web link ;-)

Check out the wiki: http://reprap.org/wiki/Sprinter_on_gen3

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-Nudel
Blog with RepRap Comic

Thanks nudel, i have seen the wiki i am just curious on how many in the community do/ have done this already, and if the changes brought greater rewards.



Morrist

Hi Morrist,
Just one question guys, Why do all this fiddling around when i find the monolithic just fine the way it is with
the seperate tip board and heated bed board. What are the advantages ?

Ah, my apologies, I didn't read your post properly.

Well, I don't know exactly what fw is running on monolithic, but on my old sells with gen3 remix I run a year old fived without accelration, so that one is pretty limited and very slow.

On my prusa with sanguinololu I use sprinter, and I must say I like it very much. It's easier to understand and calibrate, it's smaller and have more features than older firmwares I have used. Also I have had next to no need for calibration, but that might very well be mostly to mechanical superiority.

Another thing I see beneficial is ease of future updates, even though you might not see the big change in quality right now. If you start to use the "official" sprinter you can easily update it from the newest github and get the latest features as soon as they are ready. Also, the longer you wait, the bigger and more difficult the change will be, relatively speaking. The firmware from a supplier is always lagging (more or less extremely) behind because they value stability over new features.

I'd say take control over your own firmware, and experiment! If it fails to work or something, just load the old firmware again, and you're back where you started.

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-Nudel
Blog with RepRap Comic

nudel, it seems like very sound advice, i will attempt to rebuild the hot end and adjust the board for the new firmware. i will repost with how it turns out. and cass, acceleration currently does not work well on the board, and ive heard of higher print speeds for sprinter. also, sprinter does use microstepping and im 90% the 5d doesnt, so if i understand it correctly, the accuarcy will be better and i will have smoother prints with the new firmware

Glad to help The microstepping is limited by the hardware, not software. Just make sure you follow the instructions on the wiki about setup for your board, and you should be good to go without much calibration at all.

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-Nudel
Blog with RepRap Comic

Nudel Wrote:
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> Check out the wiki:
> [reprap.org]

I'd like to try another solution : porting the heater management daughter board code from stock monotronics firmware (a modified FiveD I guess) to sprinter - or other firmwares.

This would avoid the need for hardware modifications.

I just don't have enough time on my hands currently

@Deuxvis

Teacup does just that, and it works for me. Temps are off and I haven't worked much on it, but it's probably a wrong thermistor table somewhere.

I'd rather use my EC for a robot project or something though, feels like a bit of a waste of an entire arduino to do so little work.

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-Nudel
Blog with RepRap Comic

i am going to make the switch in the next few days, just had a round of midterms at school. Is there a specific thermistor i need to use, and do i need to change the length of nichrome wire on the hot end, or is there a place in the firmware to adjust resitivity?




Morrist

You can use any thermistor (within our needed specs) as long as you have the right temptable for it.

No need to change the heater wire if it worked before, the heater is still 12v.

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-Nudel
Blog with RepRap Comic

is there a specific one that you could recommend? i will order one as soon as i know for sure it could work. thanks again


morrist

If you use one of the thermistors that's already included in the Sprinter or Marlin firmware, then this would save you from having to keep editing the thermistor tables everytime you decide to load the latest release. Also, it's easier if you use the same one for the bed also.

i think i found one,
[reprap.org]

so i could use any from the list, such as
// 7 is 100k Honeywell thermistor 135-104LAG-J01


Morrist

any ideas on the thermistor at all?

Has anyone got microstepping working with sprinter?

Steve

microstepping is "turned on" by setting jumpers on your hardware stepper driver boards - Pololus or Stepsticks etc.
The Driver-board/Stepper motor combination then "looks like" it needs more steps per revolution.

The only effect on your firmware - Sprinter or any other, is that you must change the "steps per mm" calibration.

If for example you have a 200 step per rev stepper motor, with a standard mendell X/Y pulley, this would be approx 5 steps/mm

If you set 1/8 micro-stepping, then it would takes 5 x 8 = 40 steps to be sent to the Pololu or Stepstick etc for each required mm.

Sprinter doesn't know anything about it other than you will have changed the steps-per-mm value.

I was really hoping that the monolithic electronics would have a pin which pulled these pins high/low in software and that maybe it wasnt set in spinter. It was wishful thinking.

I finally downloaded PCB artist and looked at the PCB (as the PDFs from Techzone dont work and they don't have schematic) So the driver is set to half step in hardware on the board and that is its max. At the moment I am getting about 11steps/mm is this sufficent or is this another upgrade I need to may to my techzone kit to make it able to produce decent quality prints.

Sorry for the stupid question I really should have looked further into it first but as I had to setup a VM just to use the PCB artist software it was quite an endevour. I hope this answers this question for anyone in the future.

Steve

I have recently got sprinter working well on my machine, and was starting to wonder as well where to start , to get microstepping setup.

The stepper drivers that are used on the monotronics I got from techzone can only do half stepping.
If I can read the circuit scheme, I believe this is enabled.

This explains why it's so more noisy than my friends prusas.

so if i get different steppers, than using the electronics i could use the microstepping?

No, the steppers are ok, the electronic board is the part to change if you want to do micro stepping.

Any recent design electronic should allow you micro stepping (RAMPS, Gen7, Sanguinololu, list not extensive).

hi I am wanting to change my monolithic electronics over to sprinter can anyone give me a link to the files I will need I am having issues trying to download from github Im hoping there is a mirror else ware or if someone could email them to me.

bump
still looking for the firmware almost finished the new hotend with thermistor should finish tonight

i sent you an email a while ago, did you ever get an email from me?

hope this helps
ps. there is two folders, one has a file to make your firmware, one of them is the firmware im using( same but with tweaks calibrated to my machine)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2012 10:55AM by morrist.

thanks no I never received the mail ! question when I upload the firmware what board do I choose the howto I found just says sanguino but when I added the sanguino files to arduino I ended up with 3 sanguino options 644p, 1284p 8Mhz and 1284p 16Mhz