Questions about Delta (Firmware) printers.

Hello everyone, I recently bought a Micromake D1 (Delta) printer. It is quite inexpensive and almost looks like a finished product. However there are certain things that are quite confusing to me. It came with automatic bed leveling (Z-probing?) but I don't really think it works that well or at all. Micromake ships their printer with their custom built Cura which let's me do the bed leveling. I am having several issues with this printer right now and I would be very grateful if someone could shed some light here.

1. I can't use any other slicer other than their version of Cura. Even the official Cura does not work well. I am suspecting that the coordinates are different in the fw?. When I slice something in other slicers and bring it to MM's Cura, nothing shows up. When I try to print, the printer goes haywire. How can I fix this? I am posting screenshots for a better understanding, please refer to Coordinates_Issues.png.

2. The printer comes with Repetier fw in a hex file which I can't edit. When I contacted MM and asked for their fw package so that I can edit with Arduino IDE, they emailed me one. However, that is not exactly the same fw as the hex file, with that I can't do the bed leveling. I tried using the Repetier fw configurator by copying from the older fw, it didn't really work. Can someone please look into my Configuration.h file and tell me what am I missing? I could access the installed fw's settings through cura, I will post a screenshot if that helps (Firmware_Config.png).

3. After doing the "bed leveling", I get decent prints if I print small objects. However, if I use a bit more space on the bed, I get the "concave" effect. I am guessing that is a thing with the Delta printers. How can I solve that? MM suggested that I go to the Parameter settings (MM_Debug_XYZ_LSwitches.png) and tweak the XYZ limit switch settings. That somewhat changes things but it is far away from perfect (Uneven_Test_Print.jpg).

4. Is there a simple way to manually level the bed for delta printers? I mean in the software, I know for sure that the hardware side is all good. I tried to use the Mattercontrol's bed leveling but I think due to coordinate issue it gets confused. The result I get is that if I do the 3 point level, the hotend (also the z-probe) probes at the same place every time, instead of probing 3 different places. Same goes with 7/13 point leveling.

You'll get more help if you post in the delta forum:
[forums.reprap.org]

but quickly:

1) Ensure that you've told your slicer that it's a circular bed, and the centre is at 0,0.
2) Firmware config looks good. What sort of probe do you have? Is it triggering properly when it gets close to the bed? Are you running a G32 after homing, in your Start GCode in your slicer?
3) You will need to adjust your Delta Radius (called "Horizontal Radius" in Repetier). This is tedious but you must do it to get rid of the bowl shaped print surface.
4) In the EEPROM settings, set:
Z probe X1: -69
Z probe Y1: -40
Z probe X2: 69
Z probe Y2: -40
Z probe X3: 0
Z probe Y3: 80

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/05/2016 12:55AM by nebbian.

Hi,
See this thread for information about calibrating Delta printers

Thanks a lot Nebbian! Changing the center in Mattercontrol to 0 allowed me to use the bed leveling feature. No I am not running any G32 (I don't know how to use it) in my Gcode. However, I am using Mattrcontrol's manual bed leveling feature. I am not sure whether it is actually working or not, I say this because I used the XYZ plate test. It was a bit better than the one in the photo but still not perfect.

Quote
frankvdh
Hi,
See this thread for information about calibrating Delta printers

Thanks! Will definitely check that out.