Re-Arm, any experiences?

My partner does, but having looked into it, it won't save you money as postage to you from me would be £30.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

Quote
DjDemonD
Its hard not to conclude here (even though my re-arm is working and print quality is good) that given some of the struggles people seem to be having:
1) if you are on a tight budget go with decent Ramps/Mega and possibly Repetier firmware for improved performance over marlin, Using some of the newer stepper driver chips and potentially 0.9 deg motors will improve your print quality.
2) If you are not on a tight budget get a Duet board, where none of these issues are present, print quality is amazing and the support and community involvement is second to none, right now users get to vote on new features being added to the firmware.

I think the main issue with the Re-arm board at the moment is lack of good documentation. With Marlin/Repetier there are hundreds of tutorials out there with advice on how to go about setting up everything. With Re-Arm right now, you have to stitch together snippets from lots of various places. The Smoothie documentation is really good, but it's focussed on Smoothie boards. From what I've seen, the RepRap firmware is also very heavily focussed on Duet boards. I guess the makers of the firmware want to sell more of their hardware. Understandable, I guess.

I installed my Re-Arm board into the guts of my Mini today, with a new RAMPS board as well (the old one was 18 months old, I felt it was time for a new one). After noticing that the movement was slow, it turns out that the jumpers on my RAMPS board are permanently connected via the board itself. I've heard about this issue before, but hadn't seen it myself. Now the question, do I unsolder the jumper pins and get in there with a sharp knife, use my old RAMPS board, or go the exciting route and attack it with a LiPo battery ?

Lipo battery, or send it back if it's new those jumpers aren't meant to be connected. I've got one with this fault and quite fancy trying the Lipo method.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

As I suspected:



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



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

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.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2017 03:01AM by dc42.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

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.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2017 03:58AM by DjDemonD.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

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.

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.

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)

Would this extender cable be of any use?

[www.amazon.com]

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.

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?

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.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/31/2017 03:45AM by DjDemonD.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

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.

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?

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

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.

Pause would be handy keep us posted.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

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]

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?

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

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.

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.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/08/2017 12:44PM by DjDemonD.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

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.

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.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

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.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

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

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.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

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

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.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2017 07:51AM by DjDemonD.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

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.

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.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2017 09:30AM by DjDemonD.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions