Fully Constrained

Hi Guys,

I am having trouble getting my reprap fully constrained.

I am using Ramps V1.4 board with Arduino Mega 2560, Version 2.1 opto endstop kits from Makerbot and and running Sprinter.
I am using an ASUS power supply and it only gives me the option of 18 amps at 12 volts.
I have 2 positive wires going from the power supply to the Ramps board. 1 to the 5A section and 1 to the 11A section
As well as 2 negative wires. 1 to each sections ground
Is 18A too much for the steppers? They seem to work fine until I tried the fully constrained business.

Everything works fine until I connect the second X, Y, or Z, end stops.
As soon as I do this and plug my laptop in to try it out, my laptop won't even connect to the Arduino.

I have my my config.h file set as below:

const bool X_ENDSTOP_INVERT = true;
const bool Y_ENDSTOP_INVERT = true;
const bool Z_ENDSTOP_INVERT = true;

I get a red light on the Ramps board though so I am wondering what the LED colors mean? I am pretty sure red means bad.

Are there any others beside green and red and will they indicate what my problem is if there are?
Do I have to change the wires around on the pins for the second set of endstops or do I do it in the config file somewhere?

I am so close to having this finally working and it would be nice to have it fully constrained.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Solved,

Turns out it was the OptoEndstop itself.
There was a pin poking through to the cork mount and it was grounding to the machine.

Still not sure about the lights though.
Mine it still red even though everything works.

Depends which LED is lit up. There are 3 red and one green on that board and it might just mean it is getting power. Red LEDs are very common on electronics. You won't normally see LEDs that change colors, especially surface mount.

[reprap.org]

Thanks Grog,

Do you happen to know anything about feed rates?

I tried printing with PLA last night but my extruder just plugged right up.
I am using Wades geared extruder and the hobbed bolt from Eckertech.

Using pronterface and Sprinter but I am not sure wher to set my nozzel size and feed rate.

Any good tutorials you could point me to?

windcatcher Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks Grog,
>
> Do you happen to know anything about feed rates?
>
> I tried printing with PLA last night but my
> extruder just plugged right up.
> I am using Wades geared extruder and the hobbed
> bolt from Eckertech.
>
> Using pronterface and Sprinter but I am not sure
> wher to set my nozzel size and feed rate.
>
> Any good tutorials you could point me to?


Just use Slic3r. Trust me!

slic3r.org

Since I'm still learning the printer setup I haven't looked at changing to Slic3r yet.

In the Pronterface window I set the feedrate to 100mm/s and the hotend could keep up no problem. When I tried changing the Pronterface settings it didn't seem to change anything. I needed to change the SFact settings and re-slice the item. To re-slice, click load file and choose the STL so it goes through and regenerates a new gcode file using the new settings.

I found the default settings in SFact/Skeinforge were way off for my setup. I have a Prusa Mendel with Wade's extruder with hobbed bolt setup for 3mm filament. Gen6 Electronics w/ Sprinter firmware.

When trying to calibrate the amount of filament it was feeding I measured the filament and tested extruding a certain length it measured right.
But when I tried printing something it was chewing up the filament so it would start slipping because of the shreds inside the extruder. So when I thought I needed to increase the rate it fed filament and tried to adjust the Z steps I was making it worse. I needed to adjust the feed and flow in Skeinforge (on the Speed tab) to both be the same, 25 for me, to get started.

The nozzle size depends on what the actual nozzle size of your hotend is. Mine happens to be 0.5mm.