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Dang, that reminds me - 8.04 had a bug in the AVR compiler I think - some sketches wouldn't run for me when compiled on Ubuntu 8.04. I spent ages on that too.
What system did work for you?
Wade
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Wade
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Spaces.
If you send Gcodes without spaces between the parameters, the 5d firmware crashes.
Ie,
G1 X10 E10 works
G1X10E10 crashes
good to know.
EMT, I'm using the firmware from the Mendel directory on Subversion, from about 2 weeks ago. After recording some short moves, I can see that acceleration does work, but deceleration doesn't seem to be implemented yet. Still, it moves nicely at 300
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Wade
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Ah, I think the old versions you are trying won't compile on newer Arduino IDE's due to that "word" definition. To use one of the old versions, you're going to need to find an older version of the Arduino IDE, or redefine that "word" thing, as you did.
Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "communications manager", but when you use the Arduino IDE's serial monitor, it doesn't send CR/LF's when yo
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Wade
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They will work, but you'll have to manually reload your extruder all the time; you'll get quite tired of it, and it will cause problems with your build quality. I like to load up 50 to 100 m of filament at a time, if not an entire 2.5 kg roll.
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Wade
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General
Get a multimeter and measure the resistance between the wires on your stepper motor to confirm, but generally a 5 wire stepper motor is unipolar, and needs a unipolar driver. There's some details on the wikipedia stepper page on identifying unipolar steppers.
Wade
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Wade
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Mechanics
Is anyone else using this firmware? I've got a few issues with it.
I'm running a Darwin with a mix of Gen 3 electronics and Gen 2 stepper drivers, a Motherboard 1.2 and an Extruder Controller 2.2 with a stepper driven extruder.
My main issue is the step timing - I can rune G1E10F1000 fine, or G1X10F1000 fine, but if I run G1X10E10F1000 the speed drops right down to about 0.1 steps/s on the X,
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Wade
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From the ODS spreadsheet on
608-bearing.par Bearing 2
624-bearing.par Bearing 48
So 50 bearings in total. I'm going to need a few more 624's, as I only bought 40 thinking that was plenty!
Wade
Edit - that's for Mendel; I think Mendelssohn is Vik's variant with far fewer bearings.
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Wade
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Mechanics
Did your motherboard and extruder board come with bootloaders pre loaded? I needed to get an ISP programmer to load them; I hear you can use an Arduino in a pinch, but it's not simple.
Also, a few details would help - what firmware are you running, what host software, what OS, etc. I'm firing up a Darwin with Makerbot electronics right now, but I'm using the Mendel firmware, so my setup will b
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Wade
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Controllers
Ian, I think the parameter you are looking for is called "Base Layer Thickness over Layer Thickness" in the "Raft" dialog - this sets the speed reduction of the head feed rate for the base layer. The idea is that a slower head feedrate for a given plastic flow rate gives a bigger, thicker filament, which is better at absorbing irregularities in the build base. Setting it to 1 should speed up th
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Wade
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Skeinforge
That's something that's usually done with CAD software, as opposed to animation software. If you find a way to do it with a reasonably priced package, I'd love to hear about it.
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Wade
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Also, I just connected up a thermocouple board to the A6/A7 headers on the extruder controller 2.2 board. Be careful, the silkscreen on those headers isn't correct.
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Wade
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You have to edit the STL. A bit of a pain, but Blender does it nicely. Usually requires repositioning too.
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Wade
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I'm not involved in the design, but I did just buy a pile of 624 bearings. I'm quite stoked about them.
Some of the advantages I've found so far with them - they fit perfectly on a 4mm diameter bolt, so there's all sorts of different thing you can do with them - pinch wheels, axles for gear trains, pivot points, you name it. Lots of neat applications. Plus they are pretty cheap, I think mine
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Wade
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Mechanics
I wish I could get 1.2 in^3/hr and a 50% duty cycle over a few kilos of plastic; my current rate is about a quarter of that. I do hope to improve it though.
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Wade
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Reprappers
Have a look here - it's a bit non obvious, but under the Objects listing, there is a Cartesian Bot 1.06 zip file - in there are some .step files, including one that has the entire assembly.
Not sure if Rhino can deal with Step files, but I've loaded it successfully using the free versions of CoCreate and Alibre. The parts count prevents you from saving changes with the free versions though.
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Wade
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General
Here's the relevant code for thermocouple temperature getting:
int extruder::getTemperature()
{
return ( 5.0 * sampleTemperature() * 100.0) / 1024.0;
}
In the 5D code, if you comment out the thermistor line:
#define USE_THERMISTOR
in the ThermistorTable.h file, it'll default to the thermocouple code. No calibration requried; just hook your output from the TC board to the temperature pin de
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Wade
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Controllers
Just a guess, but people often change the pin layout in pin.h. I think the idea is that you can copy the updated files into your directory, without erasing your preferred pin.h file.
That said, if you can get that firmware to run, let me know - I've been trying for two days. It crashes whenever I send it an E code. But that could be because I'm trying to run a stepper driven extruder directly
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Wade
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Wow, I just had the same question - how do you run a stepper driven extruder?
I've printed out a stepper driven pinchwheel extruder as well, and can't get it to run either. The only firmware I've come across that seems to support a pinchwheel is Adrian's 5d code, which I've downloaded from his directory in Subversion, here:
I'm trying to run the stepper driver directly from a Sanguino, as I d
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Wade
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I'm using the Thermocouple Board 1.0; it just hooks into an analog input on my Arduino. Works great. I'm testing out a new heater on a pinchwheel extrder with the 5d firmware on a Sanguino now; temperature control is the only thing working so far. I should have the rest up and running shortly.
The software for the thermocouple is much simpler; most fIrmwares have it already, you just have t
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Wade
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Controllers
I do like thermocouples. Instead of a welded thermocouple, I just jam the K and T wires between the nozzle and barrel; this gives great temperature control with no PID loop, and is fairly failsafe - if the thermocouple starts coming loose, I get spurious temperature readings which trigger a heater shutdown.
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Wade
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Controllers
They're in Art of Illusion format, which keeps crashing on me, but here's the STL's I ended up using to print it.
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Wade
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Mechanics
Hah, yeah, location can be tricky. I'm in Canada as well, Vancouver. I ordered some pulleys from SDP-SI in the US. They cost about $10 each, and the shipping and customs was that much again. But they work.
Dai, an engineering student at UBC who's in China at the moment is shipping me some cheaper pulleys this week. They're all spoken for now, but if they work well, maybe we can order some m
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Wade
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Reprappers
One trick that worked well for me was to stretch the filament a bit. Work out the plastic flow rate that matches your nozzle size and head speed, then stretch it just a bit. I have a 0.6 mm nozzle, which extrudes roughly a 0.7 mm filament into free air due to die swell (check Nophead's blog for some info on that subject); I found I got best results when I set my head speed and extruder speed fo
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Wade
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yeah, I've printed an entire Darwin, and most of the parts have to be rotated in Blender to fit, but all of them. I always check the part orientation with Meshlab or Blender now.
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Wade
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Mechanics
I was using a cheap extension connector on my X axis power connection, and vibration seems to work the ground connection loose over time. Usually manifests as skipped steps in the X axis. I was able to track it down by wiggling all the connections during a print, and watching for errors.
Good luck!
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Wade
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Mechanics
I live in a pretty humid environment (Vancouver, BC), and haven't had any problems with it yet. I've mostly been running PLA out here, but I did run about 5 kg of ABS back in Toronto, without issues either.
What are the symptoms of wet plastic?
Wade
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Wade
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General
Another aspect of possible growth - right now, we've only really got one type of toolhead that's commonly used, the plastic extruder, There are many iterations on it, but they all basically do the same thing.
As we develop more complex toolheads that are reprappable, they can become something that a child machine prints out after it has been assembled. Ie, the child repraps are supplied with j
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Wade
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General
Probably, but if you have issues with your mechanics, having more current available is a big plus. I've been running my Darwin's Z axis at just over 1 amp for many months, as it's pretty stiff. X and Y get by with roughly 500 mA. They'd be great for the Mendel design, as it's only using nema17's or 14's. I think Vik has been messing with those drivers.
I don't think chaining the drivers give
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Wade
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Controllers
Hey Enrique, I've been printing with PLA quite a bit, and am refining my Skeinforge settings. Is there a place where we could dump copies of our Skeinforge preferences, with some simple annotations? (Edit - ah, I see there's a separate thread for that!)
So far PLA has been working quite well, but it does tend to ooze a lot more than ABS; activating Oozebane and Comb help, but also cause small
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Wade
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I use a variation of Zach's Gcode_Interpreter_Experimental on a gm3 with the magnetic encoder, but it's from last year, pretty out of date.
Here's my code attached, but it probably won't work for you. Just use the encoder sections as a guide.
The extruder I'm working on now uses a Nema17 stepper, but I may try and use the encoder to keep track of the actual filament feed rate.
Wade
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Wade
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