Show all posts by user

Re: LCD hotplugging - 2 years ago

I hacked together a test rig. I don't have a perfect way to diagnose what's happening, but what I did was establish a terminal session on my computer via USB. When I plug or unplug the TFT display (all 5 pins at once), it kills my terminal session on the computer, as if it's causing a reboot. I'm not sure if it's rebooting, or the serial stream is just being interrupted, or what, but it acts l

by PCLoadPLA - Firmware - Marlin

LCD hotplugging - 2 years ago

I am building a printer where there's really no good place to stick an LCD screen. I planned to have no LCD at all, and just use Marlin's "auto-print" feature, where you insert an SD card and reboot and it automatically prints. But I'm afraid to commit to that. I'm thinking about making a portable LCD "control pendant" that I could just plug into the printer if I needed to control something. I

by PCLoadPLA - Firmware - Marlin

Re: I Need Help Setting Z Offset - 2 years ago

There are too many potential causes to diagnose this remotely. Ender printers are not known for having flat or level beds. The surface might not be sticking to the filament...do you have a PEI plate? Are you using any glue stick or hairspray or anything? Your extruder could be inconsistent. Your temperatures could be wrong. Your leadscrews or belts could be slipping. It could be a lot of things

by PCLoadPLA - Firmware - Marlin

Re: Bed temperature offset and stabilization - 2 years ago

I confirmed the temperature with a bimetallic hot-plate thermometer as well...I trust it, but it responds very slowly so I had to use the IR gun to measure the stabilization. If the thermistor were in the aluminum, instead of the heater, the PID control should compensate for at least some of the offset and "lag" between the heater and the top of the aluminum. For now I will just add 90 seconds

by PCLoadPLA - Tech-Talk

Bed temperature offset and stabilization - 2 years ago

I have a 1/4" aluminum bed, with a magnetic sticker sheet and steel PEI sheet on top. The bed is heated by a 750W silicone heater driven by mains electricity. I have already run a PID autotune. When I set my bed to a setpoint of 70C, this is the temperature stabilization trend. Time = 0 represents when the printer beeps, indicating the bed is fully heated. The temperature is measured with an IR

by PCLoadPLA - Tech-Talk

Re: Trimming silicone heaters - 2 years ago

I used standard scissors to cut a mm or so off one of the edges, and I cut little notches out of the other side to clear the screws (they aren't just screw heads; they stick out). So far so good. I have to assume the heater wires are set back from the edge at least a couple mm. There is an xray photo on this forum somewhere that shows the wires inside the silicone and none of them went closer tha

by PCLoadPLA - Tech-Talk

Trimming silicone heaters - 2 years ago

I have a silicone heater that just barely doesn't fit on my bed. I want to trim about 2mm off one of the edges so it's not hanging off the edge. On the other hand I could cut a couple 3mm half-circles out of the other side, to clear some screws, then I could shift the whole thing over a couple mm. I'm not sure if either cutting a couple mm off the edge, or cutting a couple tiny notches off the

by PCLoadPLA - Tech-Talk

Re: BTT SKR 1.4 - Wanted to use Endstop switch on Z axis and sensor-less homing only on x and y axis - 2 years ago

I'm still tuning mine on the bench and trying to find settings that work reliably. I have uncommented the "improve homing reliability" option, and set the homing current to be about 1/2 the printing current. Still, I can't find a threshold value that works consistently. I home the printer a few times every day and I have yet to find a setting that doesn't either fail to home because the threshol

by PCLoadPLA - Firmware - Marlin

Re: BTT SKR 1.4 - Wanted to use Endstop switch on Z axis and sensor-less homing only on x and y axis - 2 years ago

I'm currently setting up a customer printer to do this with an SKR1.4 Turbo board and Marline 2.1.something. X and Y will use sensorless homing and the Z will use an endstop (optical breakbeam switch). So far I configured marlin with the USE_SENSORLESS_HOMING option on X and Y, and did not enable it for Z. I enabled the options USE_XMIN_PLUG, USE_ZMIN_PLUG, and USE_YMAX_PLUG (my Y axis will h

by PCLoadPLA - Firmware - Marlin

Re: Mounting steppers from "behind" - 2 years ago

The solution I ended up adopting is removing two diagonal screws and drilling out the threads. This allows 3mm all-threaded rod, easily available in long lengths, to go all the way through the stepper and mount it to the back. I found some resources online where people did something similar with all 4 screws, but applying thin, wicking-type loctite to the stepper motor joints before removing the

by PCLoadPLA - Tech-Talk

Re: VFA (vertical fine artefacts) - 2 years ago

I've had a long battle with VFAs and concluded that they are unavoidable on stepper-driven machines, at least in general. I print a lot of shiny PETG, and they normally show VFAs under the right light. The VFAs are distinct from ringing, and impossible to feel with your finger, which tells me they are practically insignificant, but still easy to see under the right light. I have tried differen

by PCLoadPLA - Printing

Mounting steppers from "behind" - 2 years ago

I have an application where I want to mount a stepper motor but it will be difficult to access the normal mounting screws on the "front" mounting face. When I look at normal stepper motors I noticed they have screws on the "back" as well, and even those screws are sometimes replaced by stand-offs to mount other things. Is it possible to drill out the front place of a stepper, and run screws all

by PCLoadPLA - Tech-Talk

Re: Grounding - 2 years ago

More about AC heatbed grounding: I'm running a dedicated 22ga grounding wire to be bonded to the metal heatbed. However the grounding wire only functions correctly if it the main AC conductors are fused. Otherwise, a short to the heatbed is just going to cause a short in the wires and heat them up until a wire melts and starts a fire. Crazy enough, the printer didn't have any fuse on the AC heat

by PCLoadPLA - Safety & Best Practices

Re: thermistor calibration - 2 years ago

Even if you do find a technique to calibrate thermistors or PT100 sensors, how are you planning to actually achieve the calibration in the printer? My heatbed is drastically incorrect, but works fine otherwise, and when I asked on the Marlin forums, apparently there's no way even to calibrate the thermistors, at least in Marlin firmware. This is crazy to me because in industry, any temperature s

by PCLoadPLA - General

Heatbed insulation benefits? - 2 years ago

I noticed my Sidewinder X1 printer has some foil and foam rubber insulation on the bottom of the heatbed. I'm going to replace the bed with a new one and a new silicone heater, and I wonder if the insulation is really important or necessary? Has anyone tested the difference in heat-up time or power draw with or without insulation? It seems to me the silicon heating pad by itself forms some level

by PCLoadPLA - General

Re: Homing axis with endstop already triggered - 2 years ago

I don't think I understand your configuration or your problem. Maybe a video or a drawing would explain it better.

by PCLoadPLA - Firmware - Marlin

Re: Homing axis with endstop already triggered - 2 years ago

If you start homing with the endstop triggered, I would expect the firmware to "back off" the axis until the endstop is not triggered and then resume homing. I think this is the normal behavior, but maybe there's a problem with the extreme trigger distance of your endstop...maybe it will only "back off" a certain amount and then fail. I think the endstop bump would fix this as well, the questio

by PCLoadPLA - Firmware - Marlin

Re: configuration.h for a fast CoreXY? - 2 years ago

Have you tried switching from 16 to 8 or lower microstepping? This might help troubleshoot if it's a stepping rate issue. Marlin also has an option for square-wave stepping which is supposed to be better for stepper drivers. And each type of stepper driver has minimum and optimum switching times that can be configured. Maybe try changing those or checking which one is recommended for your driver

by PCLoadPLA - Firmware - Marlin

Grounding - 2 years ago

Should a 3D printer have the ground lug of the AC power cord connected to the printer frame i.e. have the printer frame tied to building / earth ground? Should the "negative" wire coming from the 24V power supply, also be tied to the same "frame ground / earth", or left separate? What other points of the printer should be "grounded", for example should an aluminum moving heatbed that rolls on

by PCLoadPLA - Safety & Best Practices

Re: Opinion on 24AWG for hotend - 2 years ago

That is a very interesting cable bundle and gives me a lot to think about. Back to the thermistor circuits, I still wish the blasted mainboard companies would just publish electrical drawings, but it seems this is impossible to get. But I see that the thermistors are plugged into the main board with a 2-conductor plug. However, I only want to run 1 wire through my umbilical for each thermistor.

by PCLoadPLA - Safety & Best Practices

Re: Opinion on 24AWG for hotend - 2 years ago

I did some testing with the random DB37 cable I bought, presumably 28ga conductors, 6 feet long, and ran current through 6 adjacent conductors, which is how many I plan to use for my printer per the above. I got a lot of resistance at first, but noticed the heat was coming from the DB37-to-terminal-block adapters I was using....presumably the traces on the PCB are too thin. I replaced them with

by PCLoadPLA - Safety & Best Practices

Re: Non-integer steps per mm - 2 years ago

I would normally only set my steps per axis by matching actual axis movement. Normally I would agree not to use a print for this. However, in this case I'm actually using a print. I normally put a dial indicator on the axis, command a move, and check the dial indicator. In this case, I did that, and I can't see the discrepancy even with my dial indicator. Maybe it's a limitation of my dial indica

by PCLoadPLA - Firmware - Marlin

Non-integer steps per mm - 2 years ago

Does Marlin support non-integer steps per mm, and is there any warning against doing this? I calculated that I should change my X-axis from 80 steps per mm to 80.3 steps per mm. Only my X-axis needs correction; the same part printed 90 degrees consistently has X and Y relatively different, so I would like to at least match the X and Y axes to each other. However, is it a problem to set a decimal

by PCLoadPLA - Firmware - Marlin

Re: Can thermistor wires be connected to ground? - 2 years ago

You mean I need an extruder to make a 3D printer? Yes I guess DB25 is right out, but the point of minimizing wires is still valid.

by PCLoadPLA - Tech-Talk

Re: Can thermistor wires be connected to ground? - 2 years ago

Here is some research I have done so far, by looking at the SKR 1.4 board. It seems impossible to find actual electrical drawings of this board, but we can make some inferences from the board schematic. Based on this particular board, image here : : The thermister connectors have two pins which are labeled as "0.23" and "AGND". I assume the 0.23 is a microcontroller pin number, and AGND is "

by PCLoadPLA - Tech-Talk

Can thermistor wires be connected to ground? - 2 years ago

I'm designing a printer and it's not clear to me which connections can be attached to general GND or general 24V. This seems poorly documented, so I'm looking to find out if there are any conventions or experiences. The printer is going to have a single umbilical running to the control box and I want to minimize the number of wires, so I don't want to run for example 4 ground wires through my u

by PCLoadPLA - Tech-Talk

Opinion on 24AWG for hotend - 2 years ago

I have some 20-conductor, 24AWG cable I want to use as an umbilical. Problem is I don't know if a single 24AWG wire is enough for my hotend. The hotend may be up to 60W, although less in operation typically. And, the umbilical cable will be about 6-10 feet (2-3 meters) long. I find a lot of conflicting information on the current-carrying capacity of 24AWG wire...some figures as low as 0.6A/15

by PCLoadPLA - Safety & Best Practices

Re: Homing vs. end-stop sensors - 2 years ago

You said that right! But a flat and stable surface cannot always be achieved, and the larger the printer gets, the more true this becomes. For bedslinger printers, a heavy cast aluminum plate can be a disadvantage or even impossible, and there is still a variety of printer types where getting the entire bed flat to +/- 0.05 is not technically possible, so mesh bed leveling is definitely a valua

by PCLoadPLA - Tech-Talk

Re: Homing vs. end-stop sensors - 2 years ago

Now that I know the Z "endstop" is not monitored at all during printing, thus it's not doing anything to protect my bed or printer, I'm definitely leaning towards using a breakbeam homing sensor and placing it arbitrarily far from the bed (with a flag long enough to prevent the axis starting out past the sensor without triggering it). Then use the various software Z offsets to adjust the coordina

by PCLoadPLA - Tech-Talk

How do I change printer behavior when I cancel a print? - 2 years ago

On my stock printer (Sidewinder X1), when I pressed "cancel printing", it would pick up the tool head a little bit, park the nozzle, and move the bed to the back. I replaced my mainboard, LCD, and new Marlin firmware. When I choose "stop printing" from the LCD, now it just stops moving. It doesn't park the nozzle and I'm not even sure if it cools down the heaters. I'm trying to figure out whe

by PCLoadPLA - Firmware - Marlin