I think that most people find out by trial and error. If the printer skips steps, chances are that the accleration is set too high, or the current for the steppers too low. If you get ripple patterns or shadows around sharp bends, the frame isn't stiff enough for the accleration, and you can either back down on the accleration or stiffen the frame. There is probably a more sceintific approach,by Ralf - Reprappers
I have got it working on my Prusa Mendel with Marlin firmware. The only real problem I had was that I needed to introduce a small delay in the probe routine, between positioning X and Y, and doing the actual probing. Without it, it false triggered, because of residual vibrations after moving the y-axis.by Ralf - General
You won't be missing piezo discs anytime soon.. I have added gerber and drill files. I have tested that I can open them with FlatCAM, though I had to modify the excellon_zeros parameter, as per instructions from this page: Edit: Also added the circuit diagramby Ralf - General
Yep.. "not working completely right." is a broad term.. But assuming that things is wired correctly, a possible cause of unwanted bahaviour could be the decay mode of the stepper drivers, there is a good writeup here: Also try searching this forum and google for "drv8825 decay mode", it might give you some pointers. I have drv8825 on one of my printers, which I have forced into fast dacay, iby Ralf - General
I tested putting a piezo disc in the z suspension, and it didn't seemed like a usable solution, even thoug I use trapezoidal leadscrews with almost no wobble, the "almost no wobble" was enough to false trigger on every revolution on the leadscrew. It's possible that one could overcome this issue via a better mechnical design, but for now I'll move on with the confirmed working solution, of incorby Ralf - General
If you want to estimate print time, before g-code generation, the relationship between total surface area and the volume of the part, might be worth taking into the formula also, as this would give an indication of the level og surface details, and holes in the part, i.e. a small part with a large surface (in relation to it's size), will have a lot of perimeters to print.by Ralf - Developers
Really interesting thread, and definitely something that will end up on my to-to list. I was thinking that it may be possible to simplify the mechanical implementation by moving the piezo sensors to the z-carrige suspension, I recall someone a coupple of years ago implemented ABL this way with microswitches. This sort of worked, but most of the weight of the z-carrige had to be transfered to thby Ralf - General
Sorry, haven't had the time to look deeper at it.. After a quick at the code, in Marlin_main.cpp it looks like the probed values is stored in eqnBVector[], I would just store and retrieve the values from this array, and then skip the actual moving around and probing stuff, but still let the code do all the calculation.by Ralf - General
That is indeed very nice.. What did you use as metal bands on the fretboard?by Ralf - General
To diagnose it, I got a hint from Nophead here on the forum, and when I put a dial indicator on, and it was obvious... Without a dial indicator, I guess adjusting the print head to a height where you have slight drag with a piece of paper, and the heat bed up to temperature, and then see if the drag is constant. If it changes every 10 seconds or so, depending on the setup, heat loss PSU etc.. theby Ralf - General
The most important factor that influence print quality, when it comes to the extruder, is the hobbed bolt. If the hobbing isn't consistent, or the diameter varies, it will affect the extrusion rate. So unless you have tweaked every other nitty gritty detail on the printer, and the hobbed bolt is of decent quality, going commercial on the extruder, probably won't make a huge difference. But beforby Ralf - General
0.48mm is a little on the low side, with 0.2mm layers and overhangs. As an example, if you have a 45 degree overhang, the perimeter will draft outward ~0.3mm for every 0.2mm the print gets taller, so less than half of perimeter width will be in contact with the previous layer. You can still keep 0.5mm as perimeter width, you just have to go a bit lower on the height.by Ralf - Printing
They will get you printing, but the speed will be probably limited because of the relative high resistance in the windings. The many of the popular motors for a reprap build has a winding resistance at around 3 ohm, those you describe is 30 ohm. The speed will be limited because higher resistance in the windings, means longer time to charge the windings, and build up the magnetic field, that maby Ralf - Reprappers
I don't think that should be too hard to do, read and write from the EEPROM happens in ConfigurationStore.cpp, you would just have to store the probing values, read them from the EEPROM, instead of actually probing the bed. You would still have to home Z, and you will have to make sure that Z is homed at the same XY location every time, but that location could be either stored in the EEPROM or jby Ralf - General
Yes the missing tooth gives you a zero position, it´s used extensively on cars for ignition timing. On cars you normally use a inductive sensor, as it's rugged and fast, but on a sewing machine, a photo sensor and a paintjob with a permanent marker whoud probably be just fine.by Ralf - General
Determining needle position should be relatively simple, using a toothed wheel with a missing tooth, attached to the wheel in the end of the sewing machine, this would give both speed an positional information to the controler. The controller could then start moving the fabric as the needle leaves the fabric, with a feedrate that ensures that the move is complete when the needle hits the fabric aby Ralf - General
It looks like a mechanical problem, the ripples comes from vibration which is triggered when the printer navigates a sharp corner. If the printer isn't vibrating, your belts is probably too loose.by Ralf - Printing
What he said, but for calibration I would start with layer heights around of 0.25mm to 0.33mm depening on nozzle size. And start with simple objects, like cubes and cylinders, for calibration prints. By printing simple objects the slicer will have less influence on the print, than if you have an organic shape with lots of overhangs, and nitty gritty details. When I was done printing thin walledby Ralf - Printing
We are talking about small differences in layer-to-layer height, but imagine 3 layers in a row at 0.8mm and then 3 layers at 0.12mm when the expected layer height was 0.10mm, that is a difference of a whole layer. On a complete rotation of the leadscrew, the height will match again, but when the screw rotates further it starts over, and the layers of the first half of rotation might be too small,by Ralf - Printing
The banding doesn'nt necessarily come from the X carrige being pushed around by the Z-leadscrews. No matter how loose you couple the motors to the leadscrews, if they are bent, they will enter the nuts at an angle, and this angle will change as the leadscrew rotates, this again means that your point of contact between the leadscrew and the nut changes with rotation of the leadscrew, and the endby Ralf - Printing
Something like this sould do it: G91 ; Set relative positioning G1 Z1 F1000 ; Raise Z 1 mm G90 Set absolute positioning G1 X1 F1000 ; Move X carrige out of the way Be sure to to test it..by Ralf - Reprappers
The box doesn't need to be 100% air tight, if you have a fan sucking air from the box through a filter, it will create a vacuum, keeping the fumes inside.by Ralf - Reprappers
A catastrope is a very broad definition. A picture will help greatly. But typically PLA prints fine at temperatures around 185-200 degrees, and for small prints and details, a fan cooling the print helps a lot.by Ralf - Printing
The wades extruder body should print ok without support, it will need some cleanup around the bearings. But as Opus said, the support function in Slic3r has been greatly improved, just make sure you have one of the newer versions, as support in 1.0.0 was broken, and it was almost impossible to remove it from the part.by Ralf - Printing
I have made a box with a carbon filter from a kitchen extractor hood, this has greatly reduce the smell, but it is not completely gone. Also I have less tendency to get a headace, after I boxed my printer. #1 would be venting into free air, but unfortunately this isn't always possible.by Ralf - Reprappers
I use high temperature silicone: for attaching both thermistor and heater cardrige.by Ralf - Safety & Best Practices
On linux it is fairly easy.. cat some.gcode | perl -ne 'print "N".++$a." $_" if /^/' | perl -pi -e "s/(Fd+).d+ /1 /" I don't know if any native Windows tools will do the job, but if you are on Windows it is possible to install Perl.by Ralf - General
Well that depends.. If the heater is insulated, a fan blowing on the whole hotend assembly will most likely do the job, and also cool the print, if the heater block isn't insulated, you will probably need to duct the air in some way. For a start you can try with just a big fan blowing on the whole printer, it might be enough to just create some circulation around the printer.by Ralf - Printing
If you don't want to go for trapezoidal rods, the best bet is probably the local hardware store, where you can touch, feel and see, before you buy. Trapezoidal rods are usually a higher standard, since they are typically used for linear motion, so a random supplier on eBay will probably be just fine, but they are also more pricy. Remember to get the nuts as well if you go down that route.by Ralf - Printing
I don't have a LCD, and M0 seem to have no effect when printing via the serial port. I normally use Slic3r, but tested the Pause at height plugin in Cura, but this also uses M0 so this wouldn't work either. I made it work with M226 Pxx, using one of my endstops as trigger to continue the print. But per default Marlin doesn't allow you to use a endstop for M226, so I had to hack the firmware a biby Ralf - Reprappers