Willera's SmartrapCore Build

Hi Guys!

So i have been following most of the smartrapcore projects on here, I thought i would post progress of my own!

So a little timeline of my build progress so far.........















However I am having a few issues.

When setting up the electronics I cant seem to get the x y motors to move properly. z works but it doesnt seem to sense the inductive endstop and will continue to ram into the head or the bottom of the bracket.

I know the motors work as i have used the Test firmware from reprap and everything runs well.

I uploaded the firmware from the smartfriendz smartcore github website onto the arduino, using repetier host software to control it straight from my PC.

Thermistor, hotend, fan, Induction sensor(the light comes on when the bed is manually moved up) all work fine with the software so far.

X and Y endstops all light up when triggered, using the M119 (As shown on the smartfriendz video tutorial) command senses that they have been triggered. So all good so far.

This is where the problems start. When i get the bed close enough to the induction sensor the light comes on, but running M119 shows that the endstop is not triggered.

The Z motors work using manual control to go up and down, however seems to move 1cm when i press the +/- 1 control button (is this right?)
The X and Y motors when set at home by the endstop location, do not respond when i press the manual move button, they just make a beeping noise followed by no movement.
I have tried reuploading the firmware to the board to no avail, and swapping the motor connections round manually on the Ramps board.

I am getting the stage now when im getting worried about the pins breaking on the ramps board due to me removing them and changing there position aha. I need some help i think. If someone could reply on exactly what they did (possibly with pictures) on setting this up to work, or sees where i am going wrong as i have followed the smartfriendz youtube tutorial but dont get to the same point he does when he starts moving the head.

Thanks in advance!

Ok For me I had to have the X Motor on the Left Y on the right. You did make sure COREXY is enabled right?

If you manually push the head to the center and move +x 5mm what happens?

Are your steps correct for your pulley's? I have 20t pulley's with 1/16th step motors and I need to be at 80 steps if your z is using same pulley it should be 80 all around

16t pulleys should be set at 100

For the sensor You might need to swap the logic around, as I did with mine. Does m119 show triggered when its not lit up?

We will get you figured out, welcome to the Core club, all these builds is making me very happy inside!

Quote
djinn5150
Ok For me I had to have the X Motor on the Left Y on the right. You did make sure COREXY is enabled right?

If you manually push the head to the center and move +x 5mm what happens?

Are your steps correct for your pulley's? I have 20t pulley's with 1/16th step motors and I need to be at 80 steps if your z is using same pulley it should be 80 all around

16t pulleys should be set at 100

For the sensor You might need to swap the logic around, as I did with mine. Does m119 show triggered when its not lit up?

We will get you figured out, welcome to the Core club, all these builds is making me very happy inside!

yeah corexy is enabled.

No matter where the head is on the axis when the move left, right, up, down is pressed on the control button in repetier the motors just hum. I can feel them working and humming when i put my finger on the pulley, but no movement. My boss (also a big repraper) has just suggested that the motors are trying to go opposite ways hence the head isn't moving because its being pulled in opposite directions. Will give it a go tonight when im back from work.

yes you have the same as me and in the firmware all are at 80.

As with the sensor, i have a feeling that it actually did do that the first time round, however i have swapped the leads round and it now says open for all. again will try when im back. Just to double check, your sensor the blue and black wires are plugged into the z endstop pins, and the brown + 12V wire i have got mine wired into the power cable?

Yeah it feels so good to be part of this active community, cannot wait to be printing!

Have you tried disconnecting one stepper and see if the other stepper moves?
Have you adjusted your drivers?

Quote
madmike8
Have you tried disconnecting one stepper and see if the other stepper moves?
Have you adjusted your drivers?

I will try that when I get back!

And with adjusting the drivers do you mean that little screw on the stepper drivers? I think I read that they change the current?, but no I haven't changed them...did you change yours?

It does adjust the current, but the easiest way to set them is measure voltage...

Yep, I set mine... and you should too...

Link to Pololu 4988 drivers with reference on how to setting current

Quote
madmike8
It does adjust the current, but the easiest way to set them is measure voltage...

Yep, I set mine... and you should too...

Link to Pololu 4988 drivers with reference on how to setting current

Okay ive set the drivers now between 0.48 and 0.5V.

I'm concentrating on the x and y movement for now, I swapped the wires round on the x motor, and I have had some joy. The control buttons still don't work, bit now if I control it using Gcode I can get it to move slightly, however it seems as though its doing it at random, some times it works sometimes it doesn't.

Also I noticed on the smartfriendz video, in the log at the start, he gets two 'ok's whether on mine I get the M105 extruder log every second.

Do you guys rekon it's a firmware problem I've got or is it repetiter?

If they just hum a few things come to mind...1 current 2 accelleration/jerk or 3 both On my DRV8825's I had to drop things down to .25v on vref to get good results, I am using 1/16th stepping on the axis and 1/8 on the extruders, motors pulling in opposing forces would just cause it to move in another direction, they need to do this by design so most likely your current settings or accel is the issue.

For the sensor, 1 if you are feeding it a full 12v you need to have a voltage divider on it, but I wired my following this link...here if your wiring colors differ make adjustments as neccesary. But basically I have my signal wire(black for me) going to the outermost pin on my Min Z endstop, ground goes to middle and I am actually able to run 5v on my sensor so I go right to power on the z-min endstop. I have pullups enabled in the firmware and have reversed the endstop logic for the Z, when not near the bed or any metal surface I am able to run a m119 and it will show "open" when light lights up it reports as closed. Don't let it get the best of you, youll get it figured out. Definatley want to hear your feelings on the belt driven z, I am considering making a change, I just don't like the idea of the bed falling if power fails, but now that I no longer use glass as a build plate it may not be that big of an issue.

Also to give you an idea of how fast this thing can boogie...I have my x/y jerk at 25, accel at 3000mms max feed rate at 500mms and I have ran travel tests at 25000mm'm with no skipped steps. on the X/Y 100mms print speeds are not an issue if you don't care about print quality, my infill runs at 120 right now without problems.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2015 03:29PM by djinn5150.

Quote
djinn5150
If they just hum a few things come to mind...1 current 2 accelleration/jerk or 3 both On my DRV8825's I had to drop things down to .25v on vref to get good results, I am using 1/16th stepping on the axis and 1/8 on the extruders, motors pulling in opposing forces would just cause it to move in another direction, they need to do this by design so most likely your current settings or accel is the issue.

For the sensor, 1 if you are feeding it a full 12v you need to have a voltage divider on it, but I wired my following this link...here if your wiring colors differ make adjustments as neccesary. But basically I have my signal wire(black for me) going to the outermost pin on my Min Z endstop, ground goes to middle and I am actually able to run 5v on my sensor so I go right to power on the z-min endstop. I have pullups enabled in the firmware and have reversed the endstop logic for the Z, when not near the bed or any metal surface I am able to run a m119 and it will show "open" when light lights up it reports as closed. Don't let it get the best of you, youll get it figured out. Definatley want to hear your feelings on the belt driven z, I am considering making a change, I just don't like the idea of the bed falling if power fails, but now that I no longer use glass as a build plate it may not be that big of an issue.

Also to give you an idea of how fast this thing can boogie...I have my x/y jerk at 25, accel at 3000mms max feed rate at 500mms and I have ran travel tests at 25000mm'm with no skipped steps. on the X/Y 100mms print speeds are not an issue if you don't care about print quality, my infill runs at 120 right now without problems.

Okay I will try and change the voltage down see if that works, the motors were getting pretty hot without me doing much.

As for the firmware and the ramps board, could you send me a copy of your firmware and a photo of your wired board for me to have a look at?

I have not tried this yet on mine but I read you can lower the 12V to the RAMPS endstop pins by using:

1. Two restistors as seen in Tom's video [www.youtube.com]
2. A Radio Shack 7805 voltage regulator. [forums.reprap.org]

I plan on using the regulator. If you are in to r/c stuff, like me, you should be able to use a dedicated 5V UBEC as well.

Here is a video I made on adjusting the stepper drivers using a formula I found on the Polulu forums. Starts at about 9:45 into the video.
[www.youtube.com]

Jose

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2015 06:56PM by rcjoseb.

Quote
willera


Okay I will try and change the voltage down see if that works, the motors were getting pretty hot without me doing much.

As for the firmware and the ramps board, could you send me a copy of your firmware and a photo of your wired board for me to have a look at?

Well I can upload my firmware to my smartcore fork in the morning, but a picture of my ramps wiring is going to be less then helpfull, 1 its a mess, 2 its most likely different from your setup at least in some fashion. If they are getting hot you definately have too much current running to them follow the link mike posted and try from there, too much current can cause what you are describing as well, once we get your motors to respond troubleshooting should be pretty easy from there.

Jose, are you talking about the 7805 to power the sensor? It could work if the sensor will respond to 5v, as Serge was explaining to me, some work well some not so much with the same model sensor even, its kind of a crap shoot if it is gonna run on 5v, they are designed for 6-36v after all. I got lucky with mine, I fully expected to have to build the divider with the 2 resistors but got lucky, I still might as I am curious if sensitivity has been effected by under voltage,

djinn5150, not to power the sensor but to reduce the 12V to 5V on the signal pin that goes from the sensor to the RAMPS. The sensor I purchased runs 6V - 12V.

Okay so does anyone know why my motors move 10 times the amount they should do? Moving 1mm moves a cm at least, all the steps per mm are at 80. Also when pressed the motors hum like they are moving but with no motors.
Also when homing all the motors do wait 15s then hum and nothing else. All the videos I've seen the head moves towards the endstops

Can u run an m501 and post the results?

Okay the problem is definitely just firmware related, can you send your firmware please?

Output of M501


Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/2015 05:53PM by willera.

Marlin

There you go, do not try to heat anything with this, you will have to modify configuration file to match motherboards, i have fwretract enabled so keep that in mind if you want to move forward with it, you will also need to change the number of extruders and disable the heated bed if you don't have one otherwise you will error out with min temps Better change steps on the Z axis too I am running a lead screw so my steps are 2560 not 80 that is just a crash waiting to happen, also did you try motion after running the 501? Sometimes weird numbers get loaded into eeprom on initial firmware load, that might be problem too, 501 loads factory(firmware) values then you can change those how you need to...but if you didn't run a M500 afterwords it wont save them...

Okay, after 6 hours staring at this thing with my mate we have finally figured it out!!!!!!!!!! The problem was that my ramps board didn't have the jumpers underneith the stepper motor drivers! It now homes people!!! I have never been happier to see a steppper motor rotate!!!!!

Thanks for all the help! My current was wrong also so i changed that. Kept thinking it was the firmware as I could use other firmware like a delta, bur realised it wasn't steppstepping. So happy and I can now goto bed a happy man.

Also just found the bag full of jumpers....major face palm

yeah that will do it, get them installed and tested yet?

LOL, it happens...

Okay! Been calibrating all day, think I've got to a decent place, need to change the head design as my hot end is a little wonky, and just realised my z is a little loose.

Doing a yoda tho now

Congrats!

YAY, let us know what you think of the belt driven Z thinking about converting.

Yeah it's printing pretty good. Yeah z axis isn't great, when doing the bed homing it wobbles on the top abit, needs to be firmer. And I definitely need a fan on the part, some of yodas ears arears great.

What ideas do you guys have for the redesign?

Finished yoda, one ears abit funny bit otherwise good! happy

I like the threaded z I designed so far its been consistant, plus it don't fall on a power outage. For the fan I just bolted a hinged shroud up to a plate i bolted on the back side of the head, works pretty well. Yoda turned out pretty nice

so for the threaded rod design you just bought some m8 threaded rod? then printing off that modified z axis mounts?

ah thats a nice design for the fan, ill print one off and try it.

yeah loving it! what have you guys made with your cores yet? just mods or any projects going?

Don't use the modified z in the jscad it's broken use mine in youmagine, I can get a link in a bit or just search me as designer. But I've done mostly mods, and some fun things for my kid. Soon I'll be working on some parts for my dads diy bandsaw project. Big thing I'm working on ATM is cable chain and mounts for this thing.

Ah nice. Yeah a cable chain for this would be good, how ahow you planning on doing it? Mine kind of snags on stuff, need to get one of those plastic cable tidy things on there

Current thoughts are running it sideways from the left back corner, most likely the back bearing mount(thinking on a pin with a m4 both through it to replace the m8 bolt, with an end link attached that will allow it to swivel, then another custom endlink to mount to the head somehow, just not sure yet, printing chain now So i can try and visualize ith with the chain in hand then I will model something up