Orca 042 Build Assistance Needed

Hey All,

The usual scenario here: ordered an Orca in February; took delivery in May; struggling with the assembly.

Thanks to various forums I have been able to get it about 80% assembled, but have an issue that I emailed Camiel about, but he did not address it.

Here it is: the "1074-Driven-Z-Nut-Trap" will not sit flush against aluminum if the nut is installed as illustrated in the guide.

I have attached a pic of the problem.

If I rotate the nut such that the "flattened" side faces outward it fits perfectly; however that changes the centerline of the rod (by about .8mm on each side). This will throw off the intended alignment I imagine.

Did others have this problem?

Should I use washers to stand off the Trap so that when tightened down it doesn't threaten to bend the aluminum?

Is my Trap simply built wrong?

Thanks for any suggestions in advance.

Special thanks to lutjanus for all the helpful pics regarding the extruder posted in another thread.

BTW - I "attached" the pic I took - how do folks "insert" them directly in the message?

I had the same prob with my 042. There was some plastic debris in the housing. I used a small screwdriver to make it fit. You also need some 'convincing' force to press the nut into the housing.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2012 04:27AM by lutjanus.

Thanks for the info - I will try to "convince" the parts to get along well with each other.

2nd question: once it was completely assembled what did you first run to test movement of the X, Y, Z motors?

Things like alignment, first tests, etc. are not covered in Camiel's docs (among other things).

Sorry to bug you - you've been a great help.

I put everything together first. Just a raw alignment (moves everything smooth?). Then x,y,z in centre positions. Ousted pronterface to test everything. First small steps for every axis, then home (with the hand on the master power switch. I also updated the firmware of the controller on the printer, because my board was prepared for v040 which needs different values for the z-axis and the extruder. Everything worked just right from the beginning. I'm totally happy with this kit!

Thanks. I have more or less coaxed the nut into trap. There was still 0.3mm protruding, but that seemed to not affect the aluminum once tightened down.

I've proceeded to fitting the Y-Z frame into the main - I still have not tightened the 4 linear bearings for the 2 smooth rods - I imagine once in place it's safe to tighten.

The base of the Z-axis threaded rods seem somewhat "simple" - Is it really just the pully beneath and the ring above holding the rod? In other versions I've seen there's washers, locking nuts, etc. as well as a guide hole at the top - which appears to be removed in this design. I guess the "pro" to that would be less chance of binding.

Getting close ... can't wait to fire it up.

Yeah, Z-Axis is somewhat reduced to minimum , but it works. If I move the platform downwards, it makes some screeching noise but works, I already tried do minimize the torsion by unfasten / fasten the housing with the z-axis nuts, but the noise stays the same...

If you upload the firmware to the gen6 deluxe board (download from mendel-parts.com), then you have to change the values for the z-axis an the extruder to this:

#define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT {32.05, 32.05, 960, 136.5} // default steps per unit x, y, z, e

The only (small) mistake I have is that the temperature for PLA has to be set up to 245°C. So there must be some mistake, either in my setup with the thermal resistor or the marlin software V1.0.0.RC1...

OK .. back at it after a few busy days.

It is now basically 98% built and I have a few more questions.

I've attached another photo - in it you can see my three questions.

1) Which wires from the heater / thermistor lines go to which pins of the 4-pin header?

2) What is the white tubing in the bag used for?

3) What are the ten or so small metal tube pieces used for? I'm guessing something to do with the extruder's hot-end, but I've not seen them mentioned in any other discussions.

And now the *bonus* question: 2x fans, 1x 2-pin header on the board (next to the heat/thermistor connector for the hot end), no matching connector to mate with the 2-pin header. So ..... wing it? Wire them up in parallel and fashion some kind of connection for the board?

Gotta luv Camiel's excellent customer service / support. Been a ^$#%(&^*@%^# month since there was an update to the build page.

Don't know what I'd do without the support here.

Thanks

1)Here

2) That looks like PTFE tube, but I have no idea what its used for on Orca. The shop image of the V9 kit appears to show a plastic tube over the top of the hot end, but nobody refers to it. MP really should finish the documentation for this thing, I know documentation is a soul-destroying job but its been months and its still not finished.

3) Bootlace ferrules, used for crimping wires together when you can't use solder due to high operating temperature. I don't see why you need them for Orca, since the hot end comes pre-wired.

Bonus) Since the orca manual doesn't cover this, I'm going by the pictures on the store and some guesswork. The larger of the two fans goes on the Gen6 to cool the stepper drivers, the other cools the top of the hot end. Neither need to be controlled by firmware, so connect them to 12V power. A fan pointed at the print itself would need to be controlled and would have to go to the header on the board.

Thanks for the reply Andrew,

1) Your answer was regarding the Gen 6 hotend connections - I have a Gen 6 Deluxe and I was asking about the heatbed wiring (the yellow and small grey wires in the pic). I'll attach a new pic showing the Gen 6 Deluxe connector. I recall reading somewhere (though I cannot find the thread now) that one pair connects to the inner set and the other to the outer - of course which is which is the question.

2) Yes - this must be PTFE (now that I've looked that up from your description). And yes - I cannot see why any length of it might be used in the 042 Orca - once the filament comes into the top of the extruder it does not appear to need any further guidance before getting to the brass tube of the hotend.

3) Ahhhhhh - ferrules - I haven't even heard that word in decades, but similar wire-ending devices are still used over here in some electronics devices even today. Alas - if I wanted to use them (seems the power supply wires might be candidates) I would need to go out and purchase an appropriate crimper. Guess I'll just be inserting the wires directly - shouldn't be an issue.

Bonus) KK - connecting them together to a 12V sounds appropriate - which leads to yet another question:

Power Supplies: There are 2 provided - a 70W and a 120W - I can see from photos online (provided by Chri) that the 70W connects to the upper LHS header and the 120W to the lower - but - since they are voltage selectable (12-24 on the 70W, and 15-24 on the 120W) what actual voltages do I set them for?

Thanks for your time and input Andrew and anyone else who might have info.

Harbi

Looking at pictures, the heater goes on the left two pins, the thermistor goes on the right two.

As for voltages, most repraps run happily on 12V supplies, so stick with that to begin with. If you need more heater power on either the bed or the hot end, you can increase the voltage. The motors will perform better at high speed with an increased voltage, but 12V should be adequate.

I connected the both fans in parallel on the header, the pin in the outer corner is plus. It works, but I haven't tested any fan controling. That's what it's looking like:

Electronics Assembly


The tube is used as a guidance help for the filament on the spool holder to the extruder. Here's a pic of mine:

Filament Guide

The connection to the V10 extruder is not implemented yet. So I built some holder out of two piled up M5 brass nuts soldered on a pcb which is connected with the original extruder screws.

Filament Guide on Extruder

Finally I modified the spool holder which is not adequate for higher printing speeds. I'm now using a M6 x 70 screw with two bearings on it. See it here:

Improved Filament Holder

The Voltage settings are: 70W power supply for Printer on 12 Volts, 120W power supply for Heatbed on 15Volts for 60°C (PLA printing).

Hope that helps a bit ;-)

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/2012 04:17PM by lutjanus.

OK - thanks once again - it's hooked up.

I put the 70W at 12V as the main power for the board + fans and the 120W at 15V (it's lowest voltage setting) as the printbed power.

As soon as I figure out how to mount the fan for the main PCB I should be in business.

Thanks
Harbi

And ... built !

Powered it up - the fans turn and the little green light came on. Upon hooking to the computer it recognized something and installed 2 things successfully and 1 thing it had no driver for. FTDI was one thing that installed and USB Com3 was the other.

So now I need a little hand-holding through getting the firmware (Marlin I believe) properly installed.

I want to get it all going with Pronterface to start with, but Repetier looks really good so hopefully I can migrate to that.

Sorry to be asking for so much help - it's my first rodeo and up til now the bull had been winning.

Thanks,
Harbi

That's for what this place is for!
Have fun with your orca!
Lutjanus.

Gen6 (Deluxe) does not have Fan controlling, its always running on 12V

You can set the 120W PSU to 20Volt, this will speed up the heating process

are you printing ABS oder PLA ?

mfg Chri

p.s. if you have some specific orca questions you can ask us at the irc- channel #reprap.de

WOW - fast responses guys!

Thx Lutjanus for the pics - confirmed a lot that has been told to me - the PTFE tube provided in my kit is not nearly as long as the one you have shown in your pic though. I like your PCB extruder mount.

OK - so the pressing issue now is:

1) I need a step-by-step guide to loading the firmware / first test / calibration.

As I mentioned above my system can talk to the Gen6 Deluxe board (i.e. see it), but there seems to be a driver needed.

I *tried* loading Arduino (downloaded the latest version as well), but trying to compile the newest Marlin firmware failed.

It would be nice if Camiel at least placed a *NEW* directory for everything the 042 needs instead of having to hunt and peck through OLD and OUTDATED software/firmware and guides. But this seems par for the course - guess, try, shout out to the forums (STILL cannot use the one on his site).

I'm have 55 Kg of both PLA and ABS sitting here (got a great deal ordering directly from a Chinese manufacturer) so I will be experimenting with both (I hear use blue painters tape for the PLA and Kapton when using ABS). And now I see Polycarbonate filament out there (higher melting temp).

Thanks again in advance for any firmware/software guidance your guys can provide.

Harbi

If the Gen6 is already found as Com-Port device you don`t need another driver.

If you downloaded Adruino0023 you need to copy the "Sangunio" addon into the "hardware" Subfolder and then change the Board within the Software to "Sanguino w/ ATmega 664p" (can be found in camiel`s big zip).
Also set the right com-Port.

Now you should be able to Upload the Firmware. (there are serval guides already available, maybe someone else could post the link)

55kg is alot of stuff O.O

Printing PLA with the Orca as is, is no problem, but if you want to print ABS you have to change certan things as camiel is printing the parts out of PLA which don`t resist the heatbed set to over 100 degree. !
You have to change the Printed parts, isolate the Printbed, and change the Extruder (i`m uploading a new version of my universal Extruder soon )

mfg Chri

OK - using Arduino 23.

I have loaded the 1.0.0 RC1 Marlin.pde file (and modified the DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT line as per lutj).

COM3 is selected - it's the one that appeared when the device was attached.

There is no"Sanguino w/ ATmega 664p" choice so I simply selected Sanguino.

When I go to Upload I get the following errors:

In file included from cardreader.cpp:1:
/Marlin.h:47:21: error: WString.h: No such file or directory
In file included from /Marlin.h:38,
from cardreader.cpp:1:
MarlinSerial.h:115: error: expected ',' or '...' before '&' token
MarlinSerial.h:115: error: ISO C++ forbids declaration of 'String' with no type
MarlinSerial.h:134: error: expected ',' or '...' before '&' token
MarlinSerial.h:134: error: ISO C++ forbids declaration of 'String' with no type
/MarlinSerial.h: In member function 'void MarlinSerial::print(int)':
MarlinSerial.h:117: error: 's' was not declared in this scope

Missing something?

Just for the hell of it I tried it with Arduino 1.0.1 - exactly the same result.

Harbi

Quick note - found the info on that error - fixed it by replacing the sanguino directory with the one from the new Marlin dir.

Now getting the sync errors.

Progress ... heh

Try as I may I cannot get past the sync error (exp 014, rcvd 051).

Do I have to set my COM3 port to a specific baud for the upload? The default is 9600.

Tried the reset/release after compile - about 10 times.

Uninstalled/reinstalled the FTDI driver a few times. It screwed up and refused to give me a COM3 at one point. Only way to get it back was to use the driver from the Adruino 1.0.1 package. Currently using the latest version 2.8.24.0

Oddly I get the exact error if I select COM1 (which is not actually connected to anything as far as I can tell).


Just to be clear - I have not been able to select "Sanguino w/ ATmega 664p" as a board type. Though I see that in a folder somewhere when I run Arduino I only see "Sanguino" - no other selection.

Tried Arduino versions 018. 022, 023, 101 ... last shot at 101 gave me the lcddisplay errors.

Suggestions?

Harbi

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/22/2012 01:11AM by Harbi.

Set it to the comport of the printer (com3 seems to be a "default" port, it should be the other port shown)
Adruino has no baud rate to set ?

Printrun needs to set to 250000 baud.

mfg Chri

Here's a screenshot of my firmware uploading issue.

When I first plugged in the printer onto the system 2 COM ports were created - COM1 with the normal Microsoft driver and COM3 which required me to load a device driver (FTDI). Recently I changed COM3 to COM7 to see if that would make any difference - it didn't.

I have tried several versions of the FTDI driver - the one showing currently was included in the Arduino 0023 drivers folder provided to me bu Chri. I have used everything from the old one installed by the executable in Camiel's files all the way of to the latest one from the source website.

In all cases when the compile finishes I see some very brief pulsing of LED3 on my board and 20 secs later the sync error.

In reading descriptions of people using other Arduino boards like the Uno they talk about checking Device Manager to see where 'Arduino Uno" appears in the COM Port listing - in fact I've seen a screenshot of just that. In my case all I ever see is "USB Serial Port (COMX)". This leads me to believe that while my comp/cable/usb interface on the board/FTDI chip are all fine either the Atmel chip is dead or there is no bootloader installed.

Thoughts?

Hmm, at this state i would try a second Pc, either the current PC (or OS) is the problem, or the board could really be faulty

Do you have any other "reprap" guy near you where you can test the the board or your PC on it ?

mfg Chri

Put together a new computer using an older Intel board w/e6300 CPU.

Installed WinXP Pro 32bit this time.

Got everything up to date and then tried Arduino - with *exactly* the same results.

So I put together a parallel port programmer and connected it to the board. Used Arduino to try to install the bootloader - it looked like all was going well until the verify stage - which reported an error. Tried a few more times, but no luck.

This has been exhausting - thx to all that have helped out in this thread.

Now I'll have to send the board back to Camiel to confirm its functionality and await its return. Can't believe this all started in February with my order and it's the end of June and this is where I am.

Harbi

Well - it's all now working.

The board had no bootloader.

I was finally able to get the parallel port ISP programmer to work (killed the parallel port polling in XP).

Bootloader in -> Marlin firmware in -> Pronterface test -> everything homed perfectly and then I did a dry-run print and it worked flawlessly.

Now for levelling, calibrating etc.

Thanks to eveyone who helped out again - nearly there to 1st print.

Harbi.

Congratulations! please post which temp works for your extruder v10. I have to use 230°C.

Quote

"Congratulations! please post which temp works for your extruder v10. I have to use 230°C"

Me too for PLA :-( I broke the driven wheel on my printer a little bit trying to print at an indicated 190-200°C

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/27/2012 10:30AM by cranberry.

I only can recommend every Orca owner to change the Extruder to a wade with a high quality bolt. like [geeksbase.com] or [reprap-fab.org] )
With this upgrade the printer is running like hell

I tried alot of wades out but i came to the only solution to build my own derivate for the Orca: [www.thingiverse.com]
The metal plate on the picture of the wade is only necessary when the carriage is also changed.

With this nice piece of hardware i even can print ABS down to 210°C.
I already made this mod to three printers yet and they work really well now

mfg Chri

I won't have accurate temp readings until my infrared thermometer gets here (recently ordered).

I will relay what temps I end up using in the short term though.

Harbi

Hi Gang,

Well I managed to get it printing!!

After some coarse and then some fine adjustments it printed the "small testblock" object from Mendel-Parts and did it with about 90% accuracy - I was impressed for a first go.

I had used the 1m of PLA supplied with the kit and the print ate about 2/3rds of it.

So then I switched to my purchased PLA and got odd results.

The set of guitar picks I printed had a very hard start - missing chunks of the outer rim and first layer, but then settled down and printed the rest, but overall it was a much poorer job - like a 70% score.

The following test was an utter failure - it didn't seem to want to extrude at all - well not when it was supposed to anyway.

I've done some further checking and find that when I test extrude 10mm the gear moves and the PLA is brought in (can easily see it move), but nothing comes out .... for a bit ... then when the gear just about stops turning some melted PLA oozes out and then if I clear that with a blade a thin stream follows and lasts for a little while and then finally stops.

Repeating the extrusion over and over simply delivers blobs of plastic and nothing really decernable as a proper line.

I'm using 230 degrees for this (same as for the original PLA). I still cannot confirm if this is the true temperature of the hotend as my thermal gun has yet to arrive.

Is this what is referred to as a "head clog" (thought I'd left that term a long time ago when I stopped using inkjet printers).

If it is a clog of sorts why would it not sort itself out after a lot of manual extrusion? Is there something else I can do?

One thing I still do not fully understand is the 4x spring-screw sets adjusting the tension/pressure on the filament through the extruder. Would tightening these have any effect?

Regards, Harbi