I had a lot of leftover plastic blobbing and ends of supports in my orion mount. I 3D printed a custom sanding block in the shape of the E3D and used it to sand off the blobs. I don't know if I problem like that might keep the orion from being able to flex correctly or not, but maybe something to check. Here's my experience (showing the sanding block about half way down the page):by Claghorn - General
Success! I got the cable hooked up to the smoothieboard and configured it as a z probe, and it seems to work great. A G30 moves the bed up till it just barely taps the nozzle, then the bed moves back down. Time to adjust my Z offset and startup code and see if I can really print things with proper thickness first layers without lots of fiddly adjustments.by Claghorn - General
I've been doing some more reading, and I think I understand better what to do now. I need to configure G28 to NOT home Z (just X and Y), then use something like G30 Z0 to "home" Z with the orion configured as a zprobe (I can do this in the startup code).by Claghorn - Smoothie
I've currently got ordinary microswitches I use for the Z endstop and also a Z probe I can hook up when I want to level the bed. When I home Z, the smoothie seems to hit the Z switch, move a millimeter or so beyond it, and then move down and up a couple of times to "home in". When I use the other Z probe switch and G30, the Z movement stops the instant it ticks the switch, then reports the movemeby Claghorn - Smoothie
All this talk of noise has me worried. I have to run a few feet of cable through cable chains to reach my smoothieboard. Should I use some sort of shielded cable (maybe a shielded USB cable and cut the ends off). Any minimum wire gauge recommended?by Claghorn - General
Just trying to assemble my Orion, and apparently there is enough blobbing on the inside of the springy bottom part that grabs the heatsink groove mount that it won't close all the way, so the holes won't line up for screwing on the top parts. Any better solution than 3D printing a tiny custom sanding block just the shape of an E3D groove mount? Update: My silly sanding block did work, here's myby Claghorn - General
I've got a ton of parts I designed and printed for my DIY 3D printer (printed on my old printer, of course), I'd like to catalog them all with images, but it is a pain to load them one at a time into GUI tools and take screen shots. Anyone know of a command line tool that can generate a .jpg (or png, etc) from a .stl file (obviously it would need to know the angle of the view to produce)?by Claghorn - General
The PTFE can blow out of my extruder because the whole thing is 3D printed, no pneumatic connectors involved, just a 3D printed "collet" which grips the tube. It is definitely the weakest link at the moment, but I think I've solved my problem: I had some bad custom startup code I botched which was always moving the bed closer to the nozzle at the start of a print. No blowouts since I fixed that sby Claghorn - Mechanics
As I work on my newly built printer doing calibration and adjustment, sometimes I happen to print the first layer without any room between printbed and nozzle, and "pop" the bowden tube comes out of the top of the extruder to give the filament some place to go :-). Are there any clever techniques to notice filament not moving and automagically emergency stop the print? A loop in the filament patby Claghorn - Mechanics
Makes sense, thanks.by Claghorn - Smoothie
When I move the motors on the printer I'm building, the power supply fan comes on (presumably because it decides it needs cooling due to the current being drawn). It stays on even when the motors aren't moving. In the smoothie web interface, there is a "motors off" button. If I click it, the power supply fan stops spinning. Is this normal? Is there some state where the drivers are drawing power bby Claghorn - Smoothie
New SSR is working fine now, printbed heats up when I turn it on and cools off when I turn it off.by Claghorn - Controllers
I finally got back to this, and some strips from a can rolled around the screw thread worked great (sorry, it was a soda can, not a beer can :-).by Claghorn - Mechanics
Been getting the printer I'm building wired up. Hooked up the printbed heater through my DC SSR today. There is an LED on the SSR that comes on when I turn on the heater via software and goes off when I turn the heater off. Unfortunately the bed temperature keeps going up with it on or off. Sure seems to me like the SSR is toast, but just thought I'd get another opinion. Any recommendations for rby Claghorn - Controllers
I didn't notice till today that the acme screws I got from openbuilds are actually 7.8mm in diameter, not 8mm. I have 5mm to 8mm shaft adapters for turning these screws as the Z drive on the printer I'm building, but tightening the screw on the adapter won't grab the 7.8 mm shaft. The adapter I have is a clamping style that has a screw which draws the sides of a slit together. Is there another stby Claghorn - Mechanics
The smoothieboard can talk telnet on the network interface. The linux remserial program can bridge a network socket to a pty device. Anyone ever had any success getting cura to talk serial to a pty at one end of remserial with a smoothieboard at the other end? I suppose I'll try it myself once I get enough stuff working, but I wondered if anyone has already done this.by Claghorn - Smoothie
I'm gradually building a new 3d printer with a smoothieboard to control it, and I'm getting confused by how to wire up a PWM controlled cooling fan and what the switch module settings really mean. First, fans themselves are confusing me. There are 4 pin fans with one pin for a PWM control signal. Do I need one of those, if so, how the heck to I wire it up to the smoothie? Is that what the hardwarby Claghorn - Smoothie
I'm working on a way to get Marlin to use the nozzle on the print head as a bed level sensor by adding a force sensitive resistor to the carriage that gets "squeezed" when the nozzle touches the bed. I could certainly just hack the state machine in the interrupt routine in temperature.cpp, but I'm trying to figure out a good way to write the code that will integrate well with the existing sourceby Claghorn - Firmware - experimental, borrowed, and future