Folger Tech 2020 i3 Printer Kit (Official Thread)

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JoeH
Unshockable, try switching the Home X end stop in Repetier to max instead of min... it's under Printer Settings --> Printer Shape. It was late last night when I got it working, and I forgot I did that. If I change it to min, which is default, the printer behaves exactly as in your video.

My next issue is the Y axis keeps "skipping" after about 10 minutes of printing. I think the driver is getting too hot and going into thermal shutdown for a split second.
What voltages do you guys have set on your drivers (adjusting pot to ground)?
Mine are set to:
X:0.517 V
Y:0.647 V
Z:0.677 V
E:0.667 V

X is set lower because it keeps getting very hot.But the rest of the motors don't.

I'm going to add a fan to blow across the drivers and see if that helps any.

I don't think any of mine are that high. I was having issues with the extruder getting really hot, even with the driver turned down as far as I could. The voltage on that was less than 0.30v. I just received a larger stepper motor to see if I can lower the heat and keep everything running smoothly. Most of the voltage recommended in the config guide are below .40v. If you have to crank the voltage to get everything moving smoothly, you may have over-tightened the belts and/or have binding elsewhere. The Y-axis skipping after printing for a bit is the thermal protection built into the stepper driver.

All of my motors, extruder excluded, run nice and cool. Even after hours of printing.

The manual for the previous model (the acrylic one) gave:
X, Z and E: 0.350V
Y: 0.550V
As I mentioned before, my Y motors may be more powerful than the spec says, and if you have the same one (5.3 rather than 4.8 kg/cm) it might need a little more than this.

I'm having some issues where I find the extruder will start clicking... I think this is because my hotend is becoming clogged somehow causing it to need a large amount of pressure to extrude. Any ideas?.

Adding a fan to blow accross the drivers fixed the thermal shutdown issue. I'll try to lower the voltages and see if that works. I'll probably still keep the fan since it can't hurt

I've been printing for about a week now (almost went through a 1kg of abs) couple days ago the x axis started shifting during printing. After examining the x carriage a little I noticed that the belt clamp/holder thing started to wrap... Are the printed parts made out of abs or pla?

A follow up to an earlier post: if you want to see what I mean by the RAMPS board being horrible, look at this picture: [2.bp.blogspot.com].

The replacement I bought is much nicer (and has color coded pins for the limit switches, to reducing the chance of plugging them in the wrong way).

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animoose
A follow up to an earlier post: if you want to see what I mean by the RAMPS board being horrible, look at this picture: [2.bp.blogspot.com].

We've switched vendors and our new ones are also color coded. We are pretty happy with them, I don't know what happened with our previous vendor but the soldering was starting to get pretty sloppy towards the end it seems.

Hmm. Should I pull mine apart and check it?

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Dan_FolgerTech

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animoose
A follow up to an earlier post: if you want to see what I mean by the RAMPS board being horrible, look at this picture: [2.bp.blogspot.com].

We've switched vendors and our new ones are also color coded. We are pretty happy with them, I don't know what happened with our previous vendor but the soldering was starting to get pretty sloppy towards the end it seems.

MIne looked pretty bad aswell. It seems whoever made it made no effort to clean up random lines of solder on the pcb.

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JoeH
Unshockable, try switching the Home X end stop in Repetier to max instead of min... it's under Printer Settings --> Printer Shape. It was late last night when I got it working, and I forgot I did that. If I change it to min, which is default, the printer behaves exactly as in your video.

That gets the travel working, although I am still seeing the bounce on homing.

Hi Dan or anyone,
Is there an estimate for when the 200x200x300 mm will be available?

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Unshockable

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JoeH
Unshockable, try switching the Home X end stop in Repetier to max instead of min... it's under Printer Settings --> Printer Shape. It was late last night when I got it working, and I forgot I did that. If I change it to min, which is default, the printer behaves exactly as in your video.

That gets the travel working, although I am still seeing the bounce on homing.

You got a spare limit switch with the kit, right? Might be worth swapping it out. Sounds like strange behavior to me.

Or hit home then click the switch with your finger to see if you get the same "bounce" ?

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JoeH
Adding a fan to blow accross the drivers fixed the thermal shutdown issue. I'll try to lower the voltages and see if that works. I'll probably still keep the fan since it can't hurt

Did you print a mount for it? I saw a couple that might work well that I'm going to print tonight.

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markts

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Unshockable

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JoeH
Unshockable, try switching the Home X end stop in Repetier to max instead of min... it's under Printer Settings --> Printer Shape. It was late last night when I got it working, and I forgot I did that. If I change it to min, which is default, the printer behaves exactly as in your video.

That gets the travel working, although I am still seeing the bounce on homing.

You got a spare limit switch with the kit, right? Might be worth swapping it out. Sounds like strange behavior to me.

Or hit home then click the switch with your finger to see if you get the same "bounce" ?

Replacing the limit switch has no effect. Manually triggering the switch halfway through the home travel creates the bounce mid-run. If I hold it, it stops at the apex of the bounce. If I press and release quickly, it travels towards the limit switch for about 10 units at a much slower speed.

While I'm here, I should ask what you recommend for the printing surface. Should I get a piece of glass cut, or would a thinner wall tile work fine?

Thanks again!

---

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Unshockable Engineering
www.unshockable.ca

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Unshockable

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markts

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Unshockable

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JoeH
Unshockable, try switching the Home X end stop in Repetier to max instead of min... it's under Printer Settings --> Printer Shape. It was late last night when I got it working, and I forgot I did that. If I change it to min, which is default, the printer behaves exactly as in your video.

That gets the travel working, although I am still seeing the bounce on homing.

You got a spare limit switch with the kit, right? Might be worth swapping it out. Sounds like strange behavior to me.

Or hit home then click the switch with your finger to see if you get the same "bounce" ?

Replacing the limit switch has no effect. Manually triggering the switch halfway through the home travel creates the bounce mid-run. If I hold it, it stops at the apex of the bounce. If I press and release quickly, it travels towards the limit switch for about 10 units at a much slower speed.

I see another thread that talks about this. [forums.reprap.org]

Check these in configuration_adv.h?

//homing hits the endstop, then retracts by this distance, before it tries to slowly bump again:
#define X_HOME_RETRACT_MM 5
#define Y_HOME_RETRACT_MM 5
#define Z_HOME_RETRACT_MM 2

What apparently fixed it was this in configuration.h (mine is essentially the same):

#define ENDSTOPPULLUPS // Comment this out (using // at the start of the line) to disable the endstop pullup resistors

//#ifndef ENDSTOPPULLUPS
  // fine Enstop settings: Individual Pullups. will be ignord if ENDSTOPPULLUPS is defined
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_XMAX
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_YMAX
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_ZMAX
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_XMIN
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_YMIN
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_ZMIN
//#endif

//#ifdef ENDSTOPPULLUPS
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_XMAX
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_YMAX
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_ZMAX
  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_XMIN
  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_YMIN
  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_ZMIN
//#endif

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markts

Check these in configuration_adv.h?

//homing hits the endstop, then retracts by this distance, before it tries to slowly bump again:
#define X_HOME_RETRACT_MM 5
#define Y_HOME_RETRACT_MM 5
#define Z_HOME_RETRACT_MM 2

Mine's at 5 / 5 / 3. I don't see a place where that constant is used anywhere else in the code.

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markts

What apparently fixed it was this in configuration.h (mine is essentially the same):

#define ENDSTOPPULLUPS // Comment this out (using // at the start of the line) to disable the endstop pullup resistors

//#ifndef ENDSTOPPULLUPS
  // fine Enstop settings: Individual Pullups. will be ignord if ENDSTOPPULLUPS is defined
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_XMAX
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_YMAX
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_ZMAX
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_XMIN
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_YMIN
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_ZMIN
//#endif

//#ifdef ENDSTOPPULLUPS
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_XMAX
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_YMAX
//  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_ZMAX
  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_XMIN
  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_YMIN
  #define ENDSTOPPULLUP_ZMIN
//#endif

That seems peculiar. Commenting out the ifndef block shouldn't actually do anything since the condition was just set in line 201 with #define ENDSTOPPULLUPS

---

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Unshockable Engineering
www.unshockable.ca

Yeah, I know (which is why I said mine was essentially that). When I ported my configuration file to the newer version of marlin I had to uncomment the right ones is all.

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markts
Yeah, I know (which is why I said mine was essentially that). When I ported my configuration file to the newer version of marlin I had to uncomment the right ones is all.

What's the correct set to have active?

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markts

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stanger2k

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markts
And for those that purchased the LCD display, don't bother trying to make it work with the version of Marlin on the Google drive. I fought with it for days then sucked it up and downloaded the latest version of Marlin. Had to go through all the pain of fixing the configuration.h file again, including direction/end stops, etc, but the display came right up.

Then the printer firmware immediately "rolled over" via kill(). I had to hunt down and disable the "kill" button in the code since my LCD panel doesn't have it populated and apparently it was triggering it. Now the display works.

Can you share your Marlin code?

Sure - what do you need?

I downloaded the latest Marlin code and made changes in configuration.h for the printer itself, then pins.h for the display. I made the change below:

#if defined(REPRAP_DISCOUNT_SMART_CONTROLLER) || defined(G3D_PANEL)
    #define KILL_PIN           -1  <---- I don't remember what this was set to, but I changed it to -1 to turn off the pin
  #else
    #define KILL_PIN           -1
  #endif

I was looking to see if you could upload a copy of the Marlin code to save me the time of merging the settings from dropbox with the newest code of Marlin.

Howdy folks, just put in my order for the 2020 i3 today and eager for it's arrival. Going to be looking through this thread top to bottom until it arrives. Currently I'm waiting on some bolts to get my Makibox A6HT back in action; I got it tuned to as good as I think it can run and am hoping the i3 will give better stability and results which shouldn't be too big a stretch given the Makibox design limitations. The well known and documented extruder failure/wheel spoke snapping is the holdup..or actually trying to find M3 bolts in small town Alberta for the FroZEN upgrade is the real culprit.

I look forward to being able to use more of the print bed and the i3 appears to be a pretty popular model these days

So, I lowered the voltages on X, Z and E to 0.350V and Y to 0.550V (or close to that) as animoose posted earlier. No more skipping, but I am keeping the fan

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Unshockable

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JoeH
Unshockable, try switching the Home X end stop in Repetier to max instead of min... it's under Printer Settings --> Printer Shape. It was late last night when I got it working, and I forgot I did that. If I change it to min, which is default, the printer behaves exactly as in your video.

That gets the travel working, although I am still seeing the bounce on homing.

Is the double bounce bad? I assumed that's how it was supposed to work! Besides, you shouldn't hit that when you're printing, only homing.

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markts

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JoeH
Adding a fan to blow accross the drivers fixed the thermal shutdown issue. I'll try to lower the voltages and see if that works. I'll probably still keep the fan since it can't hurt

Did you print a mount for it? I saw a couple that might work well that I'm going to print tonight.

I actually printed 2 x MOAB - Ramps_fan_80mm and an 80mm fan guard. Works great

My X motor is running hot though. While printing the 2nd fan bracket, I checked it and I could keep my finger on it for about 2 or 3 seconds. I may try lowering the voltage more to see of that helps, but I'm skeptical. I'm also tempted to put a heat sink and fan on the back... I have one off of an old motherboard chipset that fits perfectly.

I'm wonder if all I need is a bigger motor!

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Unshockable

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markts
Yeah, I know (which is why I said mine was essentially that). When I ported my configuration file to the newer version of marlin I had to uncomment the right ones is all.

What's the correct set to have active?

The ones that are left uncommented above are the ones that are working for me.

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stanger2k

I was looking to see if you could upload a copy of the Marlin code to save me the time of merging the settings from dropbox with the newest code of Marlin.

I can, but I suspect the configuration of mine is not going to be the same as yours. I've zipped up the folder - now I need to find a place to make it accessible.

Maybe I am reading this wrong but according to the tuning guide - the A4988's should be set to .280v? I have mine all set to .280v and all seem fine - except the stepper motor on the X axis gets very hot. The drivers, however, stay cool. Thoughts???

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2015 11:44AM by plrmaker7.

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plrmaker7
Maybe I am reading this wrong but according to the tuning guide - the A4988's should be set to .280v? I have mine all set to .280v and all seem fine - except the stepper motor on the X axis gets very hot. The drivers, however, stay cool. Thoughts???

I could be totally wrong, and feel free to correct me, but here's what I came up with...
I looked at the tuning guide, and the motor specs again (assuming the motors FogerTechs sells are the ones in the kit)... The X, Z, and E motors are rated at .4A, and the Y motor at 1.5A. Following the calulation in the guide, vRef for X,Z, and E should be around 0.160V (0.4*8*0.05). And Y should be 0.600V (1.5*8*0.05). But, the Z is running 2 motors, so you'd have to double the voltage to 0.320V, and effectively the current to drive both motors.

I think I'm going to try that tonight and see if it helps the X motor heating issue any.

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JoeH

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plrmaker7
Maybe I am reading this wrong but according to the tuning guide - the A4988's should be set to .280v? I have mine all set to .280v and all seem fine - except the stepper motor on the X axis gets very hot. The drivers, however, stay cool. Thoughts???

I could be totally wrong, and feel free to correct me, but here's what I came up with...
I looked at the tuning guide, and the motor specs again (assuming the motors FogerTechs sells are the ones in the kit)... The X, Z, and E motors are rated at .4A, and the Y motor at 1.5A. Following the calulation in the guide, vRef for X,Z, and E should be around 0.160V (0.4*8*0.05). And Y should be 0.600V (1.5*8*0.05). But, the Z is running 2 motors, so you'd have to double the voltage to 0.320V, and effectively the current to drive both motors.

I think I'm going to try that tonight and see if it helps the X motor heating issue any.

Can you post a pointer to this tuning guide?

I suspect you're mistaken in terms of doubling the voltage because you have two motors (though I may also be wrong). You want the same voltage to each motor and I have to believe they are wired in parallel, not series. True the current would be twice a single motor, but that would be at original 0.160v. I think doubling the voltage is only going to make things hotter.

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markts

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JoeH

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plrmaker7
Maybe I am reading this wrong but according to the tuning guide - the A4988's should be set to .280v? I have mine all set to .280v and all seem fine - except the stepper motor on the X axis gets very hot. The drivers, however, stay cool. Thoughts???

I could be totally wrong, and feel free to correct me, but here's what I came up with...
I looked at the tuning guide, and the motor specs again (assuming the motors FogerTechs sells are the ones in the kit)... The X, Z, and E motors are rated at .4A, and the Y motor at 1.5A. Following the calulation in the guide, vRef for X,Z, and E should be around 0.160V (0.4*8*0.05). And Y should be 0.600V (1.5*8*0.05). But, the Z is running 2 motors, so you'd have to double the voltage to 0.320V, and effectively the current to drive both motors.

I think I'm going to try that tonight and see if it helps the X motor heating issue any.

Can you post a pointer to this tuning guide?

I suspect you're mistaken in terms of doubling the voltage because you have two motors (though I may also be wrong). You want the same voltage to each motor and I have to believe they are wired in parallel, not series. True the current would be twice a single motor, but that would be at original 0.160v. I think doubling the voltage is only going to make things hotter.

I also suspect that the 1.5A motor should be for the Extruder and not the Y Axis.

Can't comment on the way the Z motors are wired as I dont have one of these.

Doug

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dougal1957

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markts

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JoeH

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plrmaker7
Maybe I am reading this wrong but according to the tuning guide - the A4988's should be set to .280v? I have mine all set to .280v and all seem fine - except the stepper motor on the X axis gets very hot. The drivers, however, stay cool. Thoughts???

I could be totally wrong, and feel free to correct me, but here's what I came up with...
I looked at the tuning guide, and the motor specs again (assuming the motors FogerTechs sells are the ones in the kit)... The X, Z, and E motors are rated at .4A, and the Y motor at 1.5A. Following the calulation in the guide, vRef for X,Z, and E should be around 0.160V (0.4*8*0.05). And Y should be 0.600V (1.5*8*0.05). But, the Z is running 2 motors, so you'd have to double the voltage to 0.320V, and effectively the current to drive both motors.

I think I'm going to try that tonight and see if it helps the X motor heating issue any.

Can you post a pointer to this tuning guide?

I suspect you're mistaken in terms of doubling the voltage because you have two motors (though I may also be wrong). You want the same voltage to each motor and I have to believe they are wired in parallel, not series. True the current would be twice a single motor, but that would be at original 0.160v. I think doubling the voltage is only going to make things hotter.

I also suspect that the 1.5A motor should be for the Extruder and not the Y Axis.

Can't comment on the way the Z motors are wired as I dont have one of these.

Doug

Looks like one stepper driver for both Z motors - the signals (and power?) pass right through to each. (I should have known this, since I just built one!)

[reprap.org]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2015 03:49PM by markts.

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markts

Can you post a pointer to this tuning guide?

I suspect you're mistaken in terms of doubling the voltage because you have two motors (though I may also be wrong). You want the same voltage to each motor and I have to believe they are wired in parallel, not series. True the current would be twice a single motor, but that would be at original 0.160v. I think doubling the voltage is only going to make things hotter.

The guide doesn't talk about doubling the voltage for the Z motors. But from what I understand, the voltage that you set is not the voltage that drives the motors, but it corolates with the max current to the motor. The tuning doccument gives you the formula to calculate it. If you look at the motor specs, one said its rated at 12V and the other at 3V. I think the 3V is per coil? But regardless, I don't think these motors would run at 0.16V!
As far as the Z motors, they are running in parallel, so they run at the same voltage, but require twice the current coming into the circuit so each one can draw its required 0.4A... They are essensially set up as a current devider circuit. Another way to think about it is if 1 motot requires X watts to run, then 2 motors will require 2X watts to run off of the same wires. And Power = Volts * Amps, you're going to have to double something.Since the only thing we can adjust is the max current, then thats the one thats getting doubled. If the motors were in series, then this would not work since they would need twice the voltage (voltage devider circuit)
That's why I think the voltage (max current) needs to be doubled.

But then again, I'm not and electrical engineer, so I could be wrong!

Here is part of the doc that gives you the max current formulas:

Tuning motor current
A4988 and similar
Per the A4988 datasheet (http://www.pololu.com/file/download/a4988_DMOS_microstepping_driver_with_translator.pdf?file_id=0J450) , the calculation for the maximum trip current is:

I_TripMax= Vref/(8*Rs)

With Pololus, the sensing resistors are Rs=0.05 ohm, so a Vref of 0.4 should produce a maximum current of 0.4/(8*0.05)=1A.
Clockwise increases the current which will make the motor run hotter and counterclockwise reduces it which will cool it down (seeforum thread 159081).

As another example, aiming for 50% temperature rise on 1A rated steppers by using max 0.7A, so rearrange it as:

Vref = I_TripMax * 8 * Rs

or

Vref = 0.7A * 8 * 0.05 = 0.280V

With a measured Vref of 0.273V, I should expect 0.6825A, and I measured the current through one coil as 0.486A in fullstep mode,which should be 0.7071 of the full trip current, or I_TripMax= 0.486/0.7071= 0.687A, which seems close enough.

The Vrefsignal is accessible as the "VREF" pin on the carriers with voltage regulators, as the through-hole via on the carriers without, and also as the wiper on the trim pot itself on both carriers.

Note:for StepStick, the Rs=0.2 ohm, so you'd get 4 times the Vref at the same current.