Crikey, Exxos. You've gone through hell and high water with this one plus above and beyond on the modding front. But it really does sound like it's trying to tell you something!
BW
Re: exxos blog - random goings on
Posted: 26 Sep 2021 12:28
by exxos
Badwolf wrote: 26 Sep 2021 12:15
Crikey, Exxos. You've gone through hell and high water with this one plus above and beyond on the modding front. But it really does sound like it's trying to tell you something!
Yeah this kinda chaos is what I had with the I3. But this flashforge printer seems to be failing on all fronts. It's difficult to work out where the fault actually is, as it seems to randomly change to a different fault each day. If changing the board doesn't show signs of improvement, I will just just have to give up with it. I just don't have unlimited time to spend on it :( I'm not one to admit defeat and I want to get the the bottom of why it's screwy. But its also pointless spending time trying to fix something which just doesn't want to be fixed :roll:
It's taken me two hours to work out that requires a SD card in there before it will even connect to a com port :roll:
Now I have it connected, every step motor drive is always at 24V. I click home in Pronterface, and the voltages never change on none of the motor outputs.
I cannot really make heads or tails of their website either. It seems to go into great depth about just about everything I do not need to know :roll:
Re: exxos blog - random goings on
Posted: 26 Sep 2021 22:10
by exxos
Okay I think I figured it out sort of.. It seems when you have all with no motors connected, It seems to disable all motors. Similarly, if I power up with motors connected, I can hear them buzzing and can even get them turn, but if I unplug it and plug it back in, I have to power cycle the 24V rail again :roll:
Re: exxos blog - random goings on
Posted: 26 Sep 2021 22:48
by stephen_usher
exxos wrote: 26 Sep 2021 21:19
I cannot really make heads or tails of their website either. It seems to go into great depth about just about everything I do not need to know :roll:
That sounds like 99% of all open source software help files (and YouTube videos).
Re: exxos blog - random goings on
Posted: 26 Sep 2021 23:10
by exxos
stephen_usher wrote: 26 Sep 2021 22:48
That sounds like 99% of all open source software help files (and YouTube videos).
I posted on their forum asking for help. It be either RTFM or no replies I bet. So may have to just get something like a duet 2 or something more common instead.
Re: exxos blog - random goings on
Posted: 26 Sep 2021 23:32
by Icky
Duets are good and you can configure your printer from scratch. Although some one converted a replicator to a duet which is similar to your flashforge so you can also check the config and settings in there. I converted my old CTC Replicator to duet using those configs.
Been playing around with my smoothie board.. Having some limited success so far..
First steps was to get a motor to turn.. Seems the default configuration is set at 1.5amps which causes the driver to overheat and shut down :roll: It seems I can only get up to 0.9A. I am assuming there is some typo with this and it means 0.9A per coil not in total. Even at 0.5A it is impossible to stall the motor even at high speed.
IMG_7025.JPG
Getting this board plugged in is a nightmare. The connectors on my printer do not fit the board. But thankfully the actual crimps do. So I just push them in the white housing as I cannot be bothered to change the crimps at this point.
Also annoying is the end stop switches are wired totally different than the board is expecting :roll:
IMG_7027.JPG
To the right of LEDs is a missing 5V regulator ( it was not missing earlier :lol: )
For some bizarre reason it decided to fail and short out the 5V. So the board was completely dead at this point :roll: However I followed the burning smoke to that regulator which is a bit of a oddball thing..
reg.JPG
IMG_7028.JPG
So after messing about with this all day..
It sounds like the sound effects from the original Doctor Who series in places :lol:
The whole thing was rather confusing to work out.. But thankfully I could set a lot of this stuff in a config file without having to recompile software or anything!
Mostly confusion over the! Which I mistakenly put at the start of the line rather than where it is shown below :roll: I wish they had commented the file better :roll:
I also had to change the min_endstops to max_endstops. It is pretty bizarre because this printer is just set up as the home position is on the maximum end stop. There is not actually a minimum one anyway.
## Endstops
# See http://smoothieware.org/endstops
endstops_enable true # The endstop module is enabled by default and can be disabled here
#corexy_homing false # Set to true if homing on a hbot or corexy
#alpha_min_endstop 1.24^! # X -- Pin to read min endstop, add a ! to invert if endstop is NO connected to ground
alpha_max_endstop 1.25^! # Pin to read max endstop, uncomment this and comment the above if using max endstops
alpha_homing_direction home_to_max # Or set to home_to_max and set alpha_max and uncomment the alpha_max_endstop
alpha_min 0 # This gets loaded as the current position after homing when home_to_min is set
alpha_max 200 # This gets loaded as the current position after homing when home_to_max is set
#beta_min_endstop 1.26^ # Pin to read min endstop, add a ! to invert if endstop is NO connected to ground
beta_max_endstop 1.27^! # Y -- Pin to read max endstop, uncomment this and comment the above if using max endstops
beta_homing_direction home_to_max # Or set to home_to_max and set alpha_max and uncomment the alpha_max_endstop
beta_min 0 # This gets loaded as the current position after homing when home_to_min is set
beta_max 200 # This gets loaded as the current position after homing when home_to_max is set
gamma_min_endstop 1.28^! # Pin to read min endstop, add a ! to invert if endstop is NO connected to ground
#gamma_max_endstop 1.29^! # Pin to read max endstop, uncomment this and comment the above if using max endstops
gamma_homing_direction home_to_min # Z -- Or set to home_to_max and set alpha_max and uncomment the alpha_max_endstop
gamma_min 0 # This gets loaded as the current position after homing when home_to_min is set
gamma_max 200 # This gets loaded as the current position after homing when home_to_max is set
Next is to work on the extruders. I'm only going to set up the right-hand one for now. I need to set up the motor direction and change the thermal probe.
Incidentally when I tried the dreamer this morning, the head temperature with jumping between 200c-320c intermittently. This was kind of the screwyness that the bed was doing last week. So I thought I am done with those boards and I will fit the Smoothie and give that a try. There is no way for me to connect up the LCD either :( but at this point I just want a minimalist setup to see if things improve or not.
Re: exxos blog - random goings on
Posted: 27 Sep 2021 22:49
by exxos
Sweet! bed heat auto tune!
PID
SIMPLE BANG-BANG HEATER CONTROL
It's not very refined
PID is important. Without PID, a simple way to control temperature would be :
If temperature too cold, turn heater on
If temperature too hot, turn heater off
But there is a big problem with that method. Due to temperature not travelling instantly in what you heat from the heater to the thermistor, when the thermistor reads a given temperature, the heater is already hotter than what the thermistor reads. And that overshooting is something we do not want. It means reaching temperatures that could be undesirable, and it means you will not be able to correctly stabilize the temperature.
The solution to this is PID. It uses some math, allowing us to correct those problems by turning the heater on and off in a smarter sequence.
The P, I and D factors are configured as follows :
temperature_control.hotend.p_factor 100
temperature_control.hotend.i_factor 0.1
temperature_control.hotend.d_factor 100
But the really tricky thing is to find the right values for these 3 factors : the default ones are most probably wrong for your setup. So unless you have been given those values with your hardware, or you are a PID grand-master, you will need some help :