Folger Tech 2020 i3 Printer Kit (Official Thread)

FT finally got back to me with a tracking number, so their back in my good books. Now it's another waiting game *sigh*

@dan Hi I just bought my printer and it was delivered Friday 9/4 . I completed the build today. Now my issue is that when I sent the z to go up it goes down and visa versa. The next problem is when I send the printer to print something it pushes the printing plate all the way to the front. Can you enlighten me on how to calibrate ???

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The world is like a cupcake. Just take it and run!

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canny
@dan Hi I just bought my printer and it was delivered Friday 9/4 . I completed the build today. Now my issue is that when I sent the z to go up it goes down and visa versa. The next problem is when I send the printer to print something it pushes the printing plate all the way to the front. Can you enlighten me on how to calibrate ???

You can reverse the direction that a axis moves by reversing the way that it is plugged in on the ramps, or by reversing the direction in firmware ( #define INVERT_*_DIR (true <-> false). Before starting a print, see if all of the axis are moving in the right direction, and that the printer is homing properly. Btw, is the printer moving the bed to the front, and then stopping at the endstops, or is it trying to move farther than the endstop allow?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2015 02:19AM by Mach.

Another thing that I notice when I look at the fit of the bearings into the X carriage is that the length of the opening is much shorter than the length of the bearing. No amount of pushing will get them in there! Back to the Dremel! I also found that the spacing between the two holes in the X carriage used to mount the hot end are too close together. My 40 years of plastics processing experience tells me that not enough shrinkage compensation was built into the .stl files. I assume ABS was used for these parts. I'm used to working with HDPE with shrinkage rates around 4%. While ABS is only about 3/4%, it can still be significant on close tolerance items. Thankfully, PLA reportedly has almost no shrinkage so making replacement parts out of it would be helpful. At this point the need to route out or drill out parts slightly is still just an annoyance and not a game changer as far as buying the kit is concerned. I still have no reservations about that. This is just an observation and suggestion to Folger Tech, if they still monitor this forum.


Just found this very good analysis of shrinkage> [forums.reprap.org]

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2015 10:15AM by tjnamtiw.

Is anyone else seeing issues with the crimp connections in the harnesses? I had one wire in the endstop harness that was crimped onto an unstripped wire, how it occassionally made contact is a mystery to me.

I'm also seeing an issue on the thermistors, but I don't have any more crimps, I may just solder those connections to the board. I can't get any further on the xaxis issue, because now my printer resets because it says it's not getting any info from a thermistor, but not which one.I tested both thermistors ( extruder and bed) with an ohmmeter and both are at about 70K ohm at room temp. Unless anyone knows a clever bypass for the thermistors, so I can get this thing homed, then I can fix those and maybe print something.

UPDATE... got thermistors working, also seem to have the printer working to where it will zero itself. Let's see if what worked today will work tomorrow though. Going to get my plate glass and try printing tomorrow.

Thanks

Dave

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2015 10:52PM by Davewerld.

Help....Extruder stopped working.

Hey guys, i just got my printer together and running yesterday, made a half dozen prints and now the Extruder isn't working!?!?

I think it happened in the middle of a print. I had walked away from the printer and returned when it was done, the top two layers were missing filament, I assumed the roll got snagged and it simply quit feeding. When I tried to print again, the Extruder motor won't feed the filament. I tried to move in manual mode no luck. I swapped the driver with the X driver all is well with X (it's not the driver). I plugged the X cable into the Extruder motor and it turned when i gave it an X move (it's not the motor). I have an LCD controller, it will not move the filament either.

Not sure if this is something in the printer settings, firmware or something on the board...any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Sonny

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sonnylowe
Help....Extruder stopped working.

Hey guys, i just got my printer together and running yesterday, made a half dozen prints and now the Extruder isn't working!?!?

I think it happened in the middle of a print. I had walked away from the printer and returned when it was done, the top two layers were missing filament, I assumed the roll got snagged and it simply quit feeding. When I tried to print again, the Extruder motor won't feed the filament. I tried to move in manual mode no luck. I swapped the driver with the X driver all is well with X (it's not the driver). I plugged the X cable into the Extruder motor and it turned when i gave it an X move (it's not the motor). I have an LCD controller, it will not move the filament either.

Not sure if this is something in the printer settings, firmware or something on the board...any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Sonny

Is it that the extruder motor is not moving, or that the filament is not being pushed through the hotend? If it is that the extruder is not moving, and you tried to move the extruder when the hotend was not heated up. If you try to move the extruder motor while the hotend is not hot, the motor will not move due to a safety feature (prevent dangerous extrude).

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2015 09:56PM by Mach.

Quote
sonnylowe
Help....Extruder stopped working.

Hey guys, i just got my printer together and running yesterday, made a half dozen prints and now the Extruder isn't working!?!?

I think it happened in the middle of a print. I had walked away from the printer and returned when it was done, the top two layers were missing filament, I assumed the roll got snagged and it simply quit feeding. When I tried to print again, the Extruder motor won't feed the filament. I tried to move in manual mode no luck. I swapped the driver with the X driver all is well with X (it's not the driver). I plugged the X cable into the Extruder motor and it turned when i gave it an X move (it's not the motor). I have an LCD controller, it will not move the filament either.

Not sure if this is something in the printer settings, firmware or something on the board...any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Sonny

Maybe a clogged nozzle or heatbreak? I have 2 of these printers and second one is constantly clogging due to heat creep. Switching to a new extruder within the week.

Just got mine put together and I was setting the voltages on the stepper drivers and I touched the 2 bottom left pins the light flashed on the board and now windows doesn't see the Arduino. How bad am I screwed? I haven't even gotten to print yet lol.

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built350camaro
Just got mine put together and I was setting the voltages on the stepper drivers and I touched the 2 bottom left pins the light flashed on the board and now windows doesn't see the Arduino. How bad am I screwed? I haven't even gotten to print yet lol.

This is why the kit includes a ceramic screwdriver. You probably fried the Arduino board.

I was checking voltage, have to use the metal ends of the dvom to do that.

A little timelapse of printing Yoda...

[www.youtube.com]

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built350camaro
I was checking voltage, have to use the metal ends of the dvom to do that.

The best way to check voltages would be to put the red lead from the multimeter on the pot, and the ground lead onto the screw for the terminal that goes to the ground terminal on your power supply. This makes it harder to short things on the stepper. As for your arduino, I think when you short your steppers like that it fries the voltage regulator, so you most definitely will have to replace it. Your stepper driver will also most likely be fried, but FT should have given you a spare.

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Mach

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sonnylowe
Help....Extruder stopped working.

Hey guys, i just got my printer together and running yesterday, made a half dozen prints and now the Extruder isn't working!?!?

I think it happened in the middle of a print. I had walked away from the printer and returned when it was done, the top two layers were missing filament, I assumed the roll got snagged and it simply quit feeding. When I tried to print again, the Extruder motor won't feed the filament. I tried to move in manual mode no luck. I swapped the driver with the X driver all is well with X (it's not the driver). I plugged the X cable into the Extruder motor and it turned when i gave it an X move (it's not the motor). I have an LCD controller, it will not move the filament either.

Not sure if this is something in the printer settings, firmware or something on the board...any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Sonny

Is it that the extruder motor is not moving, or that the filament is not being pushed through the hotend? If it is that the extruder is not moving, and you tried to move the extruder when the hotend was not heated up. If you try to move the extruder motor while the hotend is not hot, the motor will not move due to a safety feature (prevent dangerous extrude).

Thanks for the response. The motor wasn't moving the filament, and the hotend was hot. However, I deleted and them reloaded all of my printer config files and it's working again...at least for now ;-)

[/quote]

Thanks for the response. The motor wasn't moving the filament, and the hotend was hot. However, I deleted and them reloaded all of my printer config files and it's working again...at least for now ;-)[/quote]

Sweet, glad it's working

Is there any way to check the mega board? It still powers on when I hook the usb to it or power on the printer but windows 10 doesn't see it anymore. I have tried different usb slots, different usb cables.

When I plug it in the ON led lights up green and the PWM lights up orange

Built350Camaro,

What version of Arduino are you using? Older versions wouldn't recognize the board and you would have to point the device to the driver. If you are on a newer version of Arduino, this is unlikely to be your issue though.

The Arduino mega board alone will power up from USB. You can remove it from your stack and use it as an Arduino board. See if your PC recognizes it without the stack, maybe you fried the stepper driver and now something has a short on the stepper driver that is affecting your Arduino. You can even test all the digital pins for example by using the blink sketch stored in the IDE. Solder a 1k or similar resistor to an LED and plug the resistor into the pin you want to test and the negative lead of the LED into ground. Change to the pin in question on blink and download it, you should get a blinking LED on any digital output that works.

I've reconstructed the Folgertech provided manual in a github repository. My hope is that by making it easily edited others will contribute fixes/clarifications/improvements.

https://github.com/cyberkni/FolgertechManuals/tree/master/2020i3

I plan to integrate my own notes in to this document as soon as I get my printer completely functional.

I am using Arduino 1.6.5. Unstacking the board didn't change anything. Strange thing is I just hooked it all back up and I can control everything with the LCD screen that I got with the kit but windows just doesn't see the mega board so I cant do anything on the pc. I cant test anything on the mega board because I cant get windows to see that I have it plugged in. I am so confused.

Hi built350camaro,

If you can control everything with the LCD screen but can't see the mega board even when it's alone, it seems like you may have a com problem. They do have a polyswitch resettable polyfuse on the board, that's supposed to protect the USB. Maybe it failed. Here's the schematic for it [www.arduino.cc]

and the layout is here. [forum.arduino.cc] the fuse is that little thing right below the USB connector.

Probably the best move is to get another Mega board, then debug this later at your convenience.

Are you talking about the gold thing under the usb cable? how is it resettable?

It is supposed to reset itself when the short (overcurrent ) is removed, however sometimes they can't reset for whatever reason. I have seen failures on them because they were wave soldered instead of hand soldering for example.

Here's more details on them [www.bourns.com]

You could see if there is voltage present on both sides of the fuse to test it, but I think that you might be a little reticent to do that since setting the voltage on the stepper is where this all started. Of course if the board is not really working, it might be worth checking. If it's bad, digikey carries them.

Ok what kind of voltage should I see on both sides of that? I am getting .2 of a volt if I go from one side to the other. I was getting zero so I removed it from the board and jumped the pads with a piece of wire (board already doesn't work so what it is going to hurt)

If it's off the board, measure the resistance and it should match the MF-MSMF050 spec which is between .15 and 1 ohm. When you jumped the pads did the board start working?

Didn't change anything. oh well I guess i will print without the pc until the replacement shows up.

Looks like something might be wrong with my print bed motor. It is cogging instead of moving the bed. It is almost like it keeps flipping the axis direction.
It was doing this before that is why I was messing with the voltage. If I move the bed 10mm it just bounces back and forth.

I swapped drivers and that didn't change anything so I swapped axis around and if I move it away from that driver it works fine. Looks like I got a bad ramps board to begin with because it was doing the crazy movement from when I turned it on before I adjusted anything

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Davewerld
Is anyone else seeing issues with the crimp connections in the harnesses? I had one wire in the endstop harness that was crimped onto an unstripped wire, how it occassionally made contact is a mystery to me.

I'm also seeing an issue on the thermistors, but I don't have any more crimps, I may just solder those connections to the board. I can't get any further on the xaxis issue, because now my printer resets because it says it's not getting any info from a thermistor, but not which one.I tested both thermistors ( extruder and bed) with an ohmmeter and both are at about 70K ohm at room temp. Unless anyone knows a clever bypass for the thermistors, so I can get this thing homed, then I can fix those and maybe print something.

UPDATE... got thermistors working, also seem to have the printer working to where it will zero itself. Let's see if what worked today will work tomorrow though. Going to get my plate glass and try printing tomorrow.

Thanks

Dave

I have the mechanical end done on mine and waiting for the electronics to come from FT. The wonderful USPS played basketball, evidently, with my package and broke it open. They stuffed everything back in and half-arse taped it back in EXCEPT the electronics package. FT was gracious enough to send me another electronics packet. I think using the flat rate USPS box is a big mistake because of how fragile the box is.

As for your question on the thermistor crimps, while waiting, I looked at the plug on the end of the hotend thermistor and the crimps came right out in my hand. They weren't pushed all the way in and didn't snap into place. They go part way in and then I had to push the exposed silver part down to get it the rest of the way in. You might check that on your ends. That's the ONLY end I have to check right now.

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built350camaro
Ok what kind of voltage should I see on both sides of that? I am getting .2 of a volt if I go from one side to the other. I was getting zero so I removed it from the board and jumped the pads with a piece of wire (board already doesn't work so what it is going to hurt)

if a fuse isn't blown and it's in the circuit, you should see ZERO volts across it. If it's blown, you should see circuit voltage across it.

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tjnamtiw

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Davewerld
Is anyone else seeing issues with the crimp connections in the harnesses? I had one wire in the endstop harness that was crimped onto an unstripped wire, how it occassionally made contact is a mystery to me.

I'm also seeing an issue on the thermistors, but I don't have any more crimps, I may just solder those connections to the board. I can't get any further on the xaxis issue, because now my printer resets because it says it's not getting any info from a thermistor, but not which one.I tested both thermistors ( extruder and bed) with an ohmmeter and both are at about 70K ohm at room temp. Unless anyone knows a clever bypass for the thermistors, so I can get this thing homed, then I can fix those and maybe print something.

UPDATE... got thermistors working, also seem to have the printer working to where it will zero itself. Let's see if what worked today will work tomorrow though. Going to get my plate glass and try printing tomorrow.

Thanks

Dave

I have the mechanical end done on mine and waiting for the electronics to come from FT. The wonderful USPS played basketball, evidently, with my package and broke it open. They stuffed everything back in and half-arse taped it back in EXCEPT the electronics package. FT was gracious enough to send me another electronics packet. I think using the flat rate USPS box is a big mistake because of how fragile the box is.

As for your question on the thermistor crimps, while waiting, I looked at the plug on the end of the hotend thermistor and the crimps came right out in my hand. They weren't pushed all the way in and didn't snap into place. They go part way in and then I had to push the exposed silver part down to get it the rest of the way in. You might check that on your ends. That's the ONLY end I have to check right now.

In my case it wasn't a bad crimp or not pushed in, it wasn't stripped on the end so the insulation was, well, insulating the connection.