My Tantillus Printing!

After getting the printer fully assembled and playing with the extruder system to no end I finally have the machine working very reliably. Most of the troubles I encountered were due to the fact that I am using a sanguinololu board that won't quite support SD and LCD so much of the calibration was done differently.

Here's a quick video of the machine printing some upgrades for itself. Its currently going to reprint all the plastic parts for itself as it produces parts that put my thingomatic and mendel to shame .

[youtu.be]

Once I got tired of printing calibration cubes and pyramids I gave the "Zombie Hunter" bust a try (file hosted on thingiverse). Turned out very well considering it was one of the first actual prints! Used the stock settings but lowered my temps down to about 175 as the hot end I'm using has a bit larger melt chamber then the J-Head.



Thanks to both Sublime and all the users on this board, I think I have read every thread over the last few months and it has been a wealth of indispensable information.

Congrats on your build!

I'm using an azteeg x1, which is basically a sanguinololu board and have SD, LCD and encoder working. The sanguinololu doesn't have lots of extra ports, so I hooked up the LCD via i2c that only uses two wires for communication. The board (github) is pretty simple, costs $3 in parts and you can etch it on a single layer copper clad. The driver chip is also available in DIP package, so you could potentially make it without a PCB.

The sdramps uses the ISP connector, so it doesn't use extra pins. I connected the encoder directly, two pins for that.

This leaves plenty of extra pins leftover.

If you look a couple of posts down, there is an updated marlin firmware that's not official, but has the i2c lcd library.

I was skeptical about the sd card/lcd printing first, ran the printer from a host software like you. Ever since I hooked up the sd card and lcd, never even connected pronterface. No dropped connections, no messed up prints, just works...

Thanks!

I was actually looking at your firmware last week. Did you manage to cram that all into a 644p chip or did you upgrade to get the extra memory?

I was debating on using a raspberry pi to let it function more as a network printer, but I might have to give your firmware a try first. I have been playing with the stock firmware seeing where I can trim fat to fit memory space, but other then killing PID there isn't much I can easily lop off...might have to just break down and spend the few dollars .

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/29/2013 06:33PM by FreeRider.

If you want to use sd and lcd, you need the 1284p. It won't fit into the 644p. It's only a couple $ for the 1284p, it should be a simple and worthy update.

Printing from sd is really nice because you don't have to rely on the flaky ftdi serial over usb connection. It would be beneficial even in a network setup.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2013 03:01PM by lajos.

Congrats on your build!

Looks good.

If you are up to it I think others would appreciate a thread about how to tune without the LCD.

Nice to see you got a makergear hotend to work in Tantillus. I assume you lose some of the build height? From what I know about that hotend you may need to have the temp way lower then 175 (try as low as 150) (may need to lower min extrusion temperature in the firmware). It uses nichrome wrapped around the barrel with the thermistor on the outside of it so it reads the temperature much further from the barrel then the J-head. The high extrusion force required by the J-head is one of the things that reduces ooze and strings with the bowden. I am not sure if you will be able to get rid of it 100% with the makergear hotend requiring so much less force.

I never thought the LCD and SD was required until I had it and now I think it is a must.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2013 04:41PM by Sublime.

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FFF Settings Calculator	Gcode post processors	Geometric Object Deposition Tool Blog
Tantillus.org	Mini Printable Lathe	How NOT to install a Pololu driver

Thanks all!

Lajos, I will defiantly order myself the upgraded IC and give your firmware a shot...I like the ic2 idea much better then tying up a billion pins for simple communication.

Sublime,
I'll get another video up on how I went about tweeking the extrusion speeds with pronterface alone...although I'm sure anyone reading my first thread would see you described it quite well. You are right about the temps tho. I kind of figured that may be the reason you went with the J-head as the makergear has a ton of ooze if you use the higher temps. I'm not sure why I cannot get the j-head to work well, I ran it from 150 all the way up to 240 with and without cooling to no avail...I'll tackle it again in the future I am sure but right now the makergear hotend is so much nicer to my extruder drive .