Diamond on RAMPS

My printer has been rebuilt to RAMPS some time ago, after a burn-out of my Gen6.

My question is whether I can go to Diamond head on Ramps ? Or do I need to rebuild it again to other hardware ? Wich one ?
I think Ramps only support 2 extruders, not 3? Or can that be 'fixed'?

Can I start using the diamond with only 2 extruders in mean time ? Or does the filament drop out the 3rd not connected feeder ?

Thomas

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www.3daybreaker.blogspot.com

Orca V4.4 rebuild to Ramps with Mk8 and E3D, as well as a Rostock Delta Mini and an OLO in backorder :-)

You could start with two extruders, but have to insert and secure filament in the third heatsink. Otherwise the molten filament got pushed up the empty channel.

Recently I've read about a driver addon board to add a 6th stepper, but I'm not sure about the firmware support.

I got me a RUMBA board from robotdigg to replace the Ramps for the exact same reason you've posted, but it hasn't arrived yet.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/2017 06:44AM by o_lampe.

Don't try printing without 3 filaments. It will fill the unused hole or tube with plastics. and it a right PITA to clean up!

You can add a 3rd extruder motor to ramps very easily.

Get or make yourself a A4988 board. (Something like [www.thingiverse.com] or [www.thingiverse.com] would do)
Wire the step, direction, enable and gnd pins to the ramps
Update your pins.h with details of where you plugged it in and recompile your firmware.

Last I looked repeiter firmware had better support mixing extruders than marlin.

Quote
Dust

You can add a 3rd extruder motor to ramps very easily.

Get or make yourself a A4988 board. (Something like [www.thingiverse.com] or [www.thingiverse.com] would do)
Wire the step, direction, enable and gnd pins to the ramps .

Where to the ramps ?

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www.3daybreaker.blogspot.com

Orca V4.4 rebuild to Ramps with Mk8 and E3D, as well as a Rostock Delta Mini and an OLO in backorder :-)

anywhere you want!

You then just tell the firmware where where you put it.

I used free pins on Aux-2 There are 8 unused Digital lines, you only need 3 and a Gnd.

As in: an unused endstop ?

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www.3daybreaker.blogspot.com

Orca V4.4 rebuild to Ramps with Mk8 and E3D, as well as a Rostock Delta Mini and an OLO in backorder :-)

Quote
Dust
anywhere you want!

You then just tell the firmware where where you put it.

I used free pins on Aux-2 There are 8 unused Digital lines, you only need 3 and a Gnd.

Is that really that simple?

I always thought the planner would need specific pins to synchronize the steps-output?

In my recollection, a generic stepper board uses a lot of pins .. ?

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www.3daybreaker.blogspot.com

Orca V4.4 rebuild to Ramps with Mk8 and E3D, as well as a Rostock Delta Mini and an OLO in backorder :-)

Yes its really that simple, 3 control lines and a gnd

"I always thought the planner would need specific pins to synchronize the steps-output?" in a perfect world you want the step pin on the same port as the other step pins so they can all be activated with one 8 bit io write. In reality It doesnt matter

NB E0 step pin is on D26 (PA4) and E1 step pin is on D36 (PC1) Ie they are already on different ports.


there are additional wires... the board will also need 5v and 12v. And the board has 4 stepper motors wire also.
You could add software microstepping adding 3 more pins... but its not worth wasting the IO pins

Replace:

It's pricey and shipping is not cheap but you could use this.

[www.reprap.me]

Dust:

Are you using a Diamond? If so Repetier or Marlin?

thanks

kd6hq:

I have a real 1.75 diamond head from the kickstatrter
I have used both Repetier and Marliin

I have not gotten it to work reliably (leaks and constant blockages, most seem to be bowden tube not fully in diamond head type issues)
Marlin doesn’t support concurrent extrusions, just multiple tools, so one colour at a time.

Repetier supports mixing, but seems to hate pronterface (at least for me, lots of serial transmission errors, when same hardware and setting on marlin works without issues) Repetier host work.. but seem to be buggy as.. This could be due to me running it on Linux, when its a .net application!

Dust

Thanks.

I've had my share of blockages with just a single extruder due to the Bowden setup so I fully understand about not having the tube fully inserted.
Although I will say once it starts working properly it will continue for quite a while. Usually until something works it way loose.
Then throw firmware/software problems on top of that I can see where one might hesitate to use the Diamond, especially at the price you pay.

Thanks for the information.

I only have a cloned diamond to play with, but the heatbarriers throats were so tight, I had to cut off some PTFE to make them fit. Also had to make sure the end is cut straight and inserted with pressure. Therefor I unscrewed the pneumatic coupling a turn, pushed the tube in and tightened the coupling.

Quote
Dust
kd6hq:

I have a real 1.75 diamond head from the kickstatrter
I have used both Repetier and Marliin

I have not gotten it to work reliably (leaks and constant blockages, most seem to be bowden tube not fully in diamond head type issues)
Marlin doesn’t support concurrent extrusions, just multiple tools, so one colour at a time.

Repetier supports mixing, but seems to hate pronterface (at least for me, lots of serial transmission errors, when same hardware and setting on marlin works without issues) Repetier host work.. but seem to be buggy as.. This could be due to me running it on Linux, when its a .net application!

Apparently the trick to avoiding blockages in a Diamond hot end is to retract all 3 filaments the full retraction amount whatever mix ratio you are using, or even if you are only using be filament. See the Extruder Retraction section at [blog.think3dprint3d.com].

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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].

dc42 - thanks for the link

I have not really thought about it but it does make since. What would make more since would be to just the retract the one's you were using.
The firmware is not far enough along to be able to do that, yet. So retracting all 3 is probably the best way. I'm not quite ready to start printing,
I'm still finalizing the bed, that should be done soon. It should be interesting.

Dust:

You mentioned that you have tried both Marlin and Repetier, which version of Marlin did you try?

I started looking a Repeiter firmware today because from what I have been reading, it appears to handle color changing better.
Especially if you are using Repetier-Host. It makes since to me that software and firmware from the same vendor would work well together
or at least I would hope it would.

I used there "auto generator" for the Configuration.h file and was very disappointed because of the lack of procedural documentation in the file.
So the I found and downloaded the files from Github. So this is going to take a while to go thru. Mostly because of the differently named variables.

Quote
kd6hq
Replace:

It's pricey and shipping is not cheap but you could use this.

[www.reprap.me]

Dust:

Are you using a Diamond? If so Repetier or Marlin?

thanks

By the looks of it, I can do this 3 times ? So add 3 extruders by this method up to a total of 5 ? And still keep using the RAMPS as the controllers ?
I think on Ebay these are cheaper....

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www.3daybreaker.blogspot.com

Orca V4.4 rebuild to Ramps with Mk8 and E3D, as well as a Rostock Delta Mini and an OLO in backorder :-)

I did a quick search on e-bay the unit is the same cost but the shipping is a lot cheaper to California any way.

I've never added one to a RAMPS board so I don't know how many you can add. The web page (reprap.me)
show one unit that can add 3 at once so I suspect that 's all the RAMPS 1.4 board has room for.
You may need to modify your "pins_RAMPS.h" file. To add the additional pins for the new stepper drivers.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/30/2017 01:18PM by kd6hq.

Different ways of adding drivers to RAMPS: [reprap.org]

Hi all
I do not have a diamond or even a clone but I made a copy, the first one failed to heat up to temp even with a 40 watt heater so the next one I made I modified to accept two heaters that fixed the heat problem then the blocking started I fixed that by unscrewing the 6 mm SS threaded connectors and drilled a clearance hole through the cooling fins to allow the bowden tube to pass through I then formed threads on the end of the PTFE bowden tube with a wingnut, this worked better than a standard die, and screwed that ten mm directly into the nozzle. So far running at 240 degrees I have not had a blockage and the cooling fins stay cool right down to the bottom

so we get pictures ?

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www.3daybreaker.blogspot.com

Orca V4.4 rebuild to Ramps with Mk8 and E3D, as well as a Rostock Delta Mini and an OLO in backorder :-)