G3D stepper drivers availability UK?

Was after some of these but the seller links are no good for me. The Gadgets3D site a) doesn't work properly (checkout gives a json error if you specify a different delivery address) and b) charges 25 euros delivery! The others are meh.

Probably available on eBay

a) tell them, likely they don't read this forum

b) use the delivery address as invoice address

c) TMC2100 based Pololus got very good reviews recently: [www.watterott.com]

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

I'll let them know, it's probably the nice thing to do

Cheers guys, I'll try the SilentStepStick from Wetterott as well. Might be a better alternative actually as I questioned the sanity of having a second dial just to have to turn it always to 0 :/

Quote
Traumflug
a) tell them, likely they don't read this forum

b) use the delivery address as invoice address

c) TMC2100 based Pololus got very good reviews recently: [www.watterott.com]

That was easy. bucket o chips ordered

Quote
Traumflug

c) TMC2100 based Pololus got very good reviews recently: [www.watterott.com]

They arrived and they're flat packed. Do I just solder the connecting strips on, or do the three holes at the front need anything? Also, in the third picture, it seems to be upside down in the board... Is that right? How do you cool the thing?

Look at the video ("Tom's Update") linked from the Github page

Quote
plankton
Look at the video ("Tom's Update") linked from the Github page

Hehe, Tom's just talking. Afraid to put it in his machine?

---

http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

Well it helps a bit. Interestingly they're designed to operate upside down which actually makes perfect sense. What I didn't understand was how to apply what he says in the first video to what how the drivers look in the second video.

So in simple terms, what do I need to connect to implement Tom's preferred stepping mode? Url set to where he discusses it on the first video.

Keep it real simple. I don't even know if the jumper wire would go on the top or the bottom (or if the top is the bottom now they go in upside down!).

okie dokie, so here's the page for the chip itself. See, I'm learning It has some useful information and I think I should be able to map their BOB board to the Watterot ones?

OMG, quick everyone drop everything and go buy these things!

Two awful videos, my phone didn't do a good job:

Noisy

not noisy

It doesn't do it justice though. My Y axis was screaming before, now it is silent.

So, some weirdness though.

First, they go in back to front AND upside down. Here is the one I soldered up next to the old driver. As you can see (or not) it is in the default silent configuration, not the mode that Tom recommended).

Second, when I plugged it in, the Y axis is now reversed, so I just changed that in Marlin and it seems ok. Just doing a print to see if everything is mirrored or not, looks ok.



Yay for silence!

Curious, so they are a 'drop in' replacement?

---

http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

Quote
Ohmarinus
Curious, so they are a 'drop in' replacement?

Yes and no.

Yes, but I had to configure Marlin to invert the axis that was being driven. So far I've only done Z and Y, both had to be inverted (no idea why I thought just one would, but there you go).

Second, it doesn't honour the microstep setting on the RAMPS. So my Z axis used to be set to 8X microsteps, but this is ignored by the board and it just did 16 anyway. Again, I just changed the Marlin config with the correct steps per mm.

You can configure the stepping, but you need to do it with the cfg pins and bits of wire. You can configure various other settings like that, but I'm just taking the default which is 16X steps interpolated to 256 in QuietChop (IIRC) mode. In which case it's slot in compatible.

On the video the Tom guy had removed the three pins connected to CFG. I haven't done that, so theoretically I could get weird behavior if those pins are doing anything. I should probably check. So far, they're not though.

One final thing. They all arrived tuned to the maximum voltage which needed to be trimmed down a lot. There was actually a bit of whine at the maximum voltage, which I interpretted as screams :/

Sounds very interesting... I am using 16x microstepping on my current config on all my three machines.

I can also just reverse the plugs on the ramps (instead of reversing in firmware).

First of all, I will wait till you have more experience with the drivers. They sound very very silent in your 2nd video !

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/2015 06:31PM by Ohmarinus.

---

http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

It hasn't been all plain sailing so far. But it's a bit of a learning process.

There are three cfg pins, which technically should all be open. Initially I left the pins connected, so they just plugged into the ramps on the assumption that if they're not used, then all's good. Read on for where they got cut and the bother this caused.

I've switched the axes over one at a time. Makes like easier.

So Y was first as that was noisy. Simple swap in no problems.

Z was next, this was also fine, except the microstepping is configured differently and I had 8 microsteps, so I had to put that to 16 in firmware. No biggie.

X was not so straight forward. Plugging in and it moved the X axis at 4 times the speed it should which suggests cfg 1 or 2 (there's a chart in the datasheet, I forget exactly) was for some reason hot. So I cut off the three cfg pins and it worked fine. Yay

Then I fried the Y axis. Took a while to figure out, I had put the heatsink on and it was shorting some pins. Only indiciation there was a problem was a weird uber high pitch whine from the motor sometimes. After I fixed the pins it stopped working so I binned it.

Next I thought I'd remove the cfg pins from the Y and Z. This was a mistake. Y actually works fine. Z stopped going down. I.e. I could make it go up, but down would actually lock up the motor until reboot. I replaced that one with another with the cfg pins on. No idea what was happening there. Could of been faulty.

Only other thing I noticed, I had the Y voltage a bit low at one point and while it drove smoothly, it started moving with a jolt. Just added some extra juice and it was fine.

So, still some things to figure out, but with brute force I've got them all worked.

I also replaced the two 40mm fans on my ramps with one 60mm. Less air flow, but enough and it doesn't vibrate or make any noise. Finally removed the dedicated fan I had on the Y axis motor. It's not needed any more. So it's all sooo quite now. It's scary quiet I don't know it's printing sometimes

Thanks for your update, I feel like it's working the same as with my G3D drivers still. I know the feeling that you wonder if the printer is still going. Sometimes I sit on the couch, about 4 meters away and have to look back sometimes to see if there's movement because I don't really hear much

---

http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

I know right??!?!?!?! It's amazing!! The only question I have is why did it me so long to find out?? Are quiet drivers a new invention, or is it just affordable ones are new?

Either way it changes the whole game on its head. The only things I've got left to shut up are the fan on the E3D hot end I'm using at the moment. I'm not sure if it's the fan or the mounting or both. If anyone is using a V6 E3D, glue some strips of felt inside the fan mount for a much improved experience. It's still not perfect though.

And my power supply is one of those LED light ones. It's silence until it needs to turn on its fan, but when on it's quite noisy, so might investigate an enclosure or perhaps a different PSU.

I really should stop bogging around on this printer and finish the other one :/

Haha, well the G3D drivers are around for some time now. I bought mine approx. around 1.5 years ago!

Right now for PSU I have a Hitachi 400 something hooked up to my printer, I drilled a big hole in the casing and placed an 80mm fan on it, just blows inside to cool it down. The thing is that I have hooked it up with long wires so the PSU is placed under my table, I don't hear it, see it, don't feel it etc. The only sound is from the two 60mm fans blowing on the Ramps and the 40mm fan blowing on the hotend insulator.

On my laser cutter I have the same kind of PSU as you do, a led rail PSU, works well, and I know what you mean with that it turns on all of a sudden. The first time I got scared like 'What the hell is that sound!!!' so I opened up the machine quickly only to find out it was the internal fan blowing on the PSU. I think that with a small 30mm or 25mm fan you might be able to provide enough airflow through the PSU to cool it down permanently and not trigger the internal fan that makes way more noise. You can also try to replace the PSU's internal fan with a quieter one, they don't put anything good in there and some cooling fan producers have really silent fans, with the only downside: pricing.

---

http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

That's a cool idea actually. I've got a few options. I've got a 120mm fan that was going on a CPU cooler just kicking around, so I can probably do something with that, and I've actually got a new ATX power supply which is supposed to be for the printer I'm building at the moment, but as I need to figure out how to get electricity out of it, I might try it at least on the old printer.

Hi

I'm expecting my TMC 2100 drivers this week and will be very grateful for any other tips or even a guide on installing them please?

Paul

I'm not the best person to ask as I don't really know what I'm doing, so I can give you all the advice I've gleaned.

They arrive flat, i.e. with the strips of pins waiting to be soldered. Soldering them on isn't tricky. I have a spare Ramps board so I pushed the pins in there, sat the board on top and soldered away.

Remember the chip faces DOWNWARD.

When you put it in the ramps (or what ever you're using) they go in the opposite way to "normal" drivers. Basically before you plug them in, compare where gnd pin is.

In the videos the guy cuts off the pins for CFG1,2,3. I've done that on half of them, but for some reason it stuffed up one. I don't have any idea why. I probably should of experiemented to find out why.

Either way, initially I just plugged them and "generally" they worked.

I'm going to experiment with changing the mode from the default (which is silentstep) to a slightly different mode. The silent step mode has some expectations about how long the motor will be at rest before receiving a signal, which I have no idea if it does, Also the guy in the videos recommends this mode.

The connection is litterally just soldering a wire from the CFG1 pin to the GND pin which are both clearly labelled.

So far, that's the full extent of my knowledge :/

Thanks