Ebay SINTRON Kossel Mini full kit

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o_lampe
@nebbian
Definitely time to measure the power supply output voltage. In the end, they sent you a 15V PSU with the kit

That would also explain the arduino problems. The 5V regulator is overheating...
-Olaf

Errr no I'm using a 20 amp power supply instead of the 10 amp supply they provided. Mine measures 13.8 volts, 13.5 when under heavy load with all heaters on full.

13.8V vs 12V won't cause a linear regulator to overheat, especially at the low power levels we're talking about. The regulator blew because I shorted the 5V line with a trimpot cover that came loose and shorted out some components on the stepper driver board.


Now that I've lowered the power of the heated bed, everything is working just fine and dandy


Come on you guys, hurry up and finish your builds! I'm keen to compare notes!

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nebbian
Errr no I'm using a 20 amp power supply instead of the 10 amp supply they provided. Mine measures 13.8 volts, 13.5 when under heavy load with all heaters on full.

13.8V vs 12V won't cause a linear regulator to overheat, especially at the low power levels we're talking about. The regulator blew because I shorted the 5V line with a trimpot cover that came loose and shorted out some components on the stepper driver board.

With an 12864 LCD attached, the 5V regulator on the Arduino is already on the verge of overheating with a 12V supply, and 13.8V will probably push it over the edge. Without an LCD or anything else apart from the RAMPS drawing power from the 5V rail, I found the regulator is OK at 15V. But I gave up using Arduino/RAMPS a long time ago.

I suggest you adjust the pot on your PSU to reduce the voltage to nearer 12V. This will also fix your over-powered heated bed.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2015 03:26AM 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].

How does a 8bitter work on a delta with a 12864 dot matrix display? I thought, that would be impossible?
I´m running a 2004 character based LCD and I´m on the edge of CPU power. ( I see seams in curves, indicating CPU hiccups )
-Olaf

Quote
o_lampe
How does a 8bitter work on a delta with a 12864 dot matrix display? I thought, that would be impossible?

I believe the answer to that is: very badly if you are using Marlin (and not as badly if you are using Repetier). But that doesn't seem to stop some kit manufacturers shipping 12864 displays and RAMPS with their delta kits, or offering them as add-ons

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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
o_lampe
How does a 8bitter work on a delta with a 12864 dot matrix display? I thought, that would be impossible?

Yeah it doesn't. I don't know anywhere in this thread that people are claiming to use that display, either. I think that dc42 is mistaken. I also think he might also have missed the part where I replaced the 5V regulator with a higher powered one.

Quote
nebbian

Quote
o_lampe
How does a 8bitter work on a delta with a 12864 dot matrix display? I thought, that would be impossible?

Yeah it doesn't. I don't know anywhere in this thread that people are claiming to use that display, either. I think that dc42 is mistaken. I also think he might also have missed the part where I replaced the 5V regulator with a higher powered one.

I think that the reason DC42 mentioned it is because there is the Folger 20x20 Kossel thread and there are plenty of post's in there about the 12864 display being supplied and then guy's wondering why the performance suck's.

Doug.

Effectors: Sorry to bring this back up (one page ago).

I doubt I'll bother going to Sintron, nice enough service but not worth the effort.

Has anyone been able to modify the effector (maybe cut parts out of the edges?) to fit these metal connectors?

I'm thinking of chopping some parts out (Will post up my idea in an image). Would this work or is it just worthless to try?
(I've ordered Traxxis).


Ugly and rough example attached.

Probably wont bother pursuing this idea, but annoys me that I paid for something which doesnt work, I'd rather fix a piece and use these metal parts oneday.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2015 09:07PM by kingoddball.

Kingoddball,

It's worthless to try imo. The rod ends bump into each other in the default position, so you'd have to move their positions in a bit to stop that happening... which would then stop your rods being parallel, so you'd have to move the carriage ends in by the same amount. Not to mention that the holes in the ends are 4mm, and only 3mm screws are provided. If you did get it to fit then when your traxxas ends arrived you'd have chewed up your effector and carriages for no good reason.

I'd just wait, painful though that is (for both of us!)

Hope this helps.


Last night I did quite a few single wall cylinders to tune the extrusion rate, and I was amazed at how smooth and precise they were. This is still with my extremely wobbly carriage bearings. The inter layer adhesion was perfect, I'm sure that they would be watertight. No visible segments either, although there is a very slight moire-style rippling on the surface which I think is to do with the 16 microsteps per full step in the drivers.
I also tried various bed temperatures, and different bed surfaces. The winner was still glue stick on aluminium at 40 degrees.

Thanks mate,
I'll keep waiting.
I ordered my parts from ebay (traxxis) USA which is taking for ages - I ended up ordered yesterday from the PerthRC store you linked.

I'm stuck with an assembled frame, not much else i can do.
But I have redesigned a carriage to accept the 12mm radius magnets, really good piece - strong and so far reliable.

Once I have it working, I'll upgrade it to magnets.

Hi everyone,

This is my first 3d printer which I got a couple of weeks ago and been slowly putting it together (nearly there, just got the heat bed and electronics left).
Been having the same issues everyone here as with a lot of the parts not really fitting together properly.

I'm using all the original parts still (I had to grind the metal rod ends so they don't bind - it doesn't look too nice, but it moves smoothly with no binding now).

I was wondering with the z-probe, given how compressed the spring they supplied has to be for it to trigger the switch, how do you retract the probe after calibration? Do you have to manually loosen the spring?

Thanks,

Heya squall,

To retract the probe you install a bolt near the heat bed on the Z-side of the X-Z extrusion, which allows the effector to run over there and press the probe into the bolt. You can see it in the photo below. This retracts the probe. I didn't have to loosen the spring at all, but it was a bit fiddly to move the screw that holds the spring until I got the right tension.

Been getting some reasonably good prints out of mine now that it's calibrated, here it is halfway through making this LCD cover:



Unfortunately I didn't measure the size of the gap between the extrusions, on our deltas they are tighter together than this LCD bracket is designed for. So it doesn't really fit. I might have to get out the dremel again (easier than waiting another 4 hours for an adjusted one to print!)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/12/2015 11:44PM by nebbian.

@nebbian
I´m surprised you´re getting good prints with this hotend fan attachment.

When I tried it without shielding the hotend against the fan, nozzle temp took forever to reach it´s goal.
I cut a piece of cardboard to slip between heaterblock and heatsink and taped it under the fan.
Now I get to the temps much faster and rock stable, too
-Olaf

Thanks for the info nebbian. It's great that your one is printing nicely now.

I've spent hours on this z-probe and in the end the microswitch metal thing broke off from all the testing.
Hoping that manual calibration is not too hard.

With the heat bed, I've soldered the wires on, but was wondering if it is safe to tape the wires (with klapton) onto to the red side of the heat bed, or will the plastic tubing melt once the heat bed is on? (similarly for the white plastic tubing around the thermistor wire).

If the insulation of the heater wire is not of "high temp" material like silicone, you will see it melt anyway. The heat will creep through the copper strands into the cable and melt it from inside.

OTOS, the white tubing of the thermistor is made of PTFE and is high temp capable.
-Olaf

@Olaf, my hotend gets to temperature pretty smartly, and seems well under control. I haven't measured it, but it would be under a minute. Temps are within 2 degrees each way when printing. Maybe you have a lower power heating element?

@squall, tbh I don't use the auto calibration thing at all, even though it works. I was having problems with it due to having the wrong steps per mm set, so stopped using it, and haven't re-enabled it since calibrating my machine properly. I also used good quality silicone wire to connect the heatbed. I would only use the stuff in the kit if not going above 50 degrees on the heatbed.

It sounds like you're getting close to printing, please post some photos if you do get your machine to melt some plastic! It would be great to see another Sintron printing to compare notes with

@Nebbian - The printer seems to be printing great!
My unit is together now - all axis, motors and extruder.

Have not wired it up or tried to move any parts but together!

@ All: I have finished up the 12mm magnet carriage I was working on.
There's a pic of printed unit setup.

[www.thingiverse.com]

The carriage above will connect to current Sintron parts (any 2020 extrusion and carriage).

Kingoddball,

It's fantastic that yours is together, the hard part is done now. Just throw some wiring at it and get printing! I guess you're ahead of the curve if you've already got some experience printing.

Also, that carriage looks great! Do your carriages trigger the end stops properly? I seriously envy your 3D drawing skills. Are you using Autodesk 123? I've been trying to design a simple corner spacer so that I can fit a 30 amp power supply and RAMPS board underneath the whole shebang... but I suck at 3D design. It's taken me an hour just to get a wedge shaped piece with the same dimensions as a corner unit, and that's with the Kossel corner model to start with! Cripes. Hopefully it gets easier.


I'm also battling some ooze issues, after that LCD panel was finished it looked like it was home to a very determined spider. I also need a parts cooling fan arrangement. You should have seen me when I realised that there were some 90 degree overhangs in it... I had about a minute to race out to the workshop and organise a couple of paint scrapers with painters tape on them, and held them underneath the nozzle as it laid down the first few overhang layers. It would have been very funny to watch.

Definitely will post some photos/vids if I get it working
Are overhangs the bits which require support structures to be printed?

My power supply blew up when I was testing it (I must of accidentally shorted it with the multimeter, luckily I hadn't connected it to the electronics yet). Just saw some sparks/explosion towards the back of the power supply. I took it apart and that's where the mosfet's were. The power supply was kinda dangerous anyway with the live AC wires connected on the outside of the box.

I had an old PC power supply (18 Amps) which I hooked up to test out just the motors and movement.
Are we supposed to connect the power supply to both the 5A and 11A markings on the RAMP board? The pdf instructions only show the 5A.

The software was confusing for a beginner as they don't explain what each is used for. The software Sintron provided also didn't include the arduino drivers which you have to get from arduino as part of their IDE.
I also had compile errors with the marlin firmware (qr_solve.cpp missing time.h) but it didn't look like it used anything from time.h so I just commented that out and it worked.

It's scary seeing the motors hit the endstops pretty fast. I have a feeling those endstops switches are going to break after a while if it keeps doing that...

Looks like I've got a lot of reading to do before I can start calibrating

Quote
squall

I had an old PC power supply (18 Amps) which I hooked up to test out just the motors and movement.
Are we supposed to connect the power supply to both the 5A and 11A markings on the RAMP board? The pdf instructions only show the 5A.

Yep I just connected the two power supply inputs together in parallel. Seems to work fine. The 11 amp supply is for the heatbed only, I think. The 5 amp does the control board and motors.


Here's a corner piece that I modelled up and printed. The output is pretty reasonable, I think. I might have to lower the temperature of the hotend a bit perhaps. Other ideas are welcome.

@ Nebbian - That print looks good. Like you said, a few blobs from heat. Are you using PLA?
0.3mm layer? The layers look big and loose (surely they are not, just looks).

What is the PSU they supplied?
Would you have a pic?

I'm still building mine as you know - I'm up to the PSU. Not sure what size I need thinking 240w/20A.
I have built >12 printers. When I see a design I like I generally try build it.

I use a few different pieces of software for design but I used tinkercad for the carriage.
I didnt even think about the end-stop, but should be fine because (from what I see) the carriage/wheels will push the button, but when I get to that part I will update as needed.

If you can show me the endstop and how the carriage hits it I can redeisgn if needed? Would be great if you could (Im using diff end stops).

Quick pics of printer.

Is anyone using BuildTak for the case? Its brilliantly sticky!
I use this on my UP Mini and sticks better than the perf board.

Your kossel is looking pretty good kingoddball. Did you print the parts yourself?

BuildTak sounds great, I might have a look at getting some for my printer.

An update on my build progress. I got some microswitches which were easier to press and now the zprobe works perfectly every time. I don't even have to compress the spring much for it to work. Pretty cool to see it doing the calibration.

But my extruder doesn't work
I think the RAMPS board is frying the stepper driver. Has anyone had that happen before?

- I connect the extruder motor to the Z-axis connector and it turns, so the motor is fine

- I connect a working stepper driver to the extruder slot on the RAMPS and the motor doesn't turn.
- I connect the same stepper driver back to the Z-axis slot and the z-axis motor no longer turns.

- I tried this twice and both drivers stopped working

Squall, that's really annoying. Have you tried the other stepper driver position on the board? There are two spots that you can attach a stepper driver to. Perhaps you got the driver 'off by one' when putting the pins in?

Kingoddball, I'm using 0.3mm layers, PLA. The blobs only happen on curves, not straight lines. I'm pretty sure it's the firmware pausing the head briefly (I heard it happen yesterday), possibly due to updating the LCD. Yay for 8-bit processors running at their limit.

In other news I got sick of having wires everywhere so built a pedestal for my printer. This has the 30 amp power supply inside, along with the RAMPS board. Still some work to do to get it fully operational but it's close. The base is 12mm plywood, with printed corners.
Also got a PEI build plate arriving this week, I'm sick of painters tape and/or glue stick.

@ Neb: Yeah, the head pausing is (from what I saw/read around) from the 8bit [arduino] controller being too slow for the kossel and read-ahead. Something like that.

Very slow - Which is why I skipped that and opted for the 32bit-100/120mhz controller.
It cost me $100 delivered for the AZSMZ + LCD (Smoothieware compatible).


That drop down/raiser is great! I like it alot! I think I may have to borrow 'inspiration' from that so I can hide my PSU and controller.
how have you connected that to the red corners?
Any redesign or just sitting on top?

Side note: I'm adding WIFI so I can print without USB.

Using a wifi SD card and going to try the ESP8266 + LCD board.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/2015 08:49PM by kingoddball.

Thanks King,

I think you're on the right track with going to the 32 bit controllers. I certainly noticed a difference when going from 8 bit to 32 bit flight controllers for my radio controlled quadcopters.

The base is bolted to the printer, by tapping the hole part of the extrusion with an M6 tap. Bolts go from the plywood, through the spacer, and screw into the vertical extrusions. Somehow I managed to measure everything up correctly and it went together first time without any F'ups! Amazing. Miracles can happen.

Thanks mate,
I like the design - would you be able to upload the STL's you created/using?
I would like to mimic the design if you don't mind. I'd like it all in one and the PSU i'm using (same as your's 30A) is too big.
I was always planning on using a small 10A LCD PSU but wanted a heatbed.

Just to keep it looking pretty I found this: [www.thingiverse.com]

It's a cable tidy for the 2020 kossel.

Sure thing,

Here it is.


The holes are 8mm diameter to give you a bit of wiggle room with a 6mm bolt. Use whatever you have lying around the shed to build the sides. I used plastic gutter mesh for two sides, and a piece of steel L-angle for the last side (with a cable gland for the 240 volt cable).

My kit arrived. Looks like its fully complete, which means including the rods and rod ends, for which i got a refund because i didnt want those and because i bought traxxas ends and carbon fiber rods.
I just noticed there are no instructions or a link to where i can download those. Anyone with some pointers? otherwise i have to mail them again...

I'm a little disappointed with the quality of the printed parts. overhanging parts are really roughly printed, often drooping. I will have to do a lot of dremel/drilling before anything will fit in those.
The heatbed looks kind of awesome though. I expected a cheap heatbed with a seperate thin slate of alu. seeing that its one solid piece really made me happy.

Miamicraft posted the links on page 2 of this thread.

Here's the PDF:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2w56ruepec5hgxo/Kossel mini instrution by sintron technology_v2.pdf
password : Sintron_Technology

I had to buy a dremel and dremel some of the parts myself as well to get them to fit nicely.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/16/2015 06:49PM by squall.

Just received mine. The packing was a bit different (there was no dedicated carton-box for electronics), but from the first look nothing was damaged.




But my hot-end differs from pictures on 1^st page.


And I see a possible problem with my hot-end - I can't turn the heat-sink closer to the heater part (you can see big gap with free threads on pictures). It looks like the heat-sink has not enough threads inside.
Can it be used "as is", or I must make heat-sink closer to the heater?

BTW. My version of hot-end is all metal.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2015 06:38AM by GrAndAG.