Mhackney's Rostock Max

[Eaglezsoar]

I did some recent tests with the latest Slicer and Cura, the first issue I hit was that both generated GCode that exposed a bug in 0.83 of repetier, causing the prints to freeze about 2 hours in, so I pulled the latest repetier and tried again.
Generally I thought both were good and Slicer in particular generated better support with PLA than I've seen previously, it can get very slow though.
I'm still using KissSlicer for day to day stuff, but anyone of them is good at this point.

Do you have any plans to install the .91 version of Repetier or are you going to wait until it is a little more stable?

[Polygonhell]

I pulled the development version, not long before release, and I'm using that.
My general rule is I only change firmware if it provides something tangible over what I have.
I'll likely pull the released version at some point, but I'm not in a rush, upgrading always seems to be more painful than it ought to be.

[mhackney]

I will eventually. I need to re-aquaint myself with the machine before making any significant changes. I was making great prints when I wound down in May and I'm almost there now.

Of course, I just screwed around with wiring a fan with the RAMBo live and seem to have shorted extruder and fan "0" on the board. I am just installing my backup RAMBo now. Some people never learn...

[mhackney]

Well, this is a fine kettle of fish. I replaced my RAMBo with another revision 1.1b that I bought at about the same time as the original. After wiring AND THEN powering on, I uploaded it with exactly the same firmware that I was running (in fact, I had just uploaded it yesterday). Everything works except the LCD display is showing gobbled gook. If I disconnect the LCD and connect it to the bad board and simply hook up the USB cable, it powers up and the display is fine. I double, triple, quadruple checked the connectors and orientation and went back and forth 5 or 6 time between the original board and the one I just hooked up. Reset on the LCD results in the same gook.

I can run the machine without the display but wheres the fun in that? Should note, I have hand wired connectors for my display, got it before the adapters for the RAMBo were available. But I don't think that is the problem given the display always works with the old board and not the new.

The boards are slightly different although they are the same revision. I can't image that pin outs on the connector (EXT2 or SD/SPI) would be different? The new board has a header on the X10 pads to the right of the endstop connectors, the original board did not have this.

Any thoughts?

cheers,
Michael

[mhackney]

I should add, that the display seems to function properly except it is displaying garbage characters like ? left arrows, )s and a strange 4 lined block. I can scroll through the menus and - since I know where some of the commands are - it functions properly. I have checked and rechecked the connections and that just does not seem to be the issue.

Here's a photo:

[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s5/v13 ... 4235-3.jpg[/img]

[Polygonhell]

That's most likely an issue with the data pins on the LCD, might want to check you don't have a bent pin or something on the RAMBO end.

[mhackney]

I thought of that and did check the pins. I'll use a magnifying glass and scrutinize them, the eyes ain't what they used to be!

I did just re-upload the firmware and set EEPROM_MODE to a different value to force overwriting the EEPROM. Then I double checked it against a screenshot I made yesterday. Still a garbled display.

[Eaglezsoar]

Check your wire connections also. That certainly looks like a bad wire or a bad pin like Poly says.

[mhackney]

Agreed, that is the logical explanation. I am confident it isn't wiring since I have moved the connectors back and forth between the two boards at least 12 times and in all cases, the old board displays properly and the new does not. It might be a pin and I need to pull the board and check the connector - might be a cold solder joint. I'm in the middle of a print now though.

cheers,
Michael

[mhackney]

I reported a few days ago - when I first started up again with my RostockMax - that i was getting plugging when printing PLA. Turns out, after measuring temps, etc, that the hot end and fan on the cold end were working just fine. (I have notes from last year when I took measurements on the cooling effect of the fan). After a little investigation, I realized my EZStruder stepper current was too low. Look for this in Configuration.h (Repetier):

#define MOTOR_CURRENT {175,175,175,200,200}

The first 3 values are X, Y, Z steppers, respectively. Then extruder 1 and 2. I had extruders set to 175 also. Increasing the current to 200 gives the stepper enough umph to push the PLA and now I am printing PLA with an EZStruder like a champ. It's always the simple things.

Cheers,
Michael

[mhackney]

[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s10/v1 ... 5583-3.jpg[/img]

Ok, I had to remove the board and disconnect everything to take a look at the back. But, there it was - a little solder trace jumping across two pins. You can see it in the bottom row pins 5 to 6 from the left. It's a tiny, tiny little solder bridge but there it was. Once removed, the LCD works perfectly.

cheers,
Michael

[Eaglezsoar]

[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s10/v1 ... 5583-3.jpg[/img]

Ok, I had to remove the board and disconnect everything to take a look at the back. But, there it was - a little solder trace jumping across two pins. You can see it in the bottom row pins 5 to 6 from the left. It's a tiny, tiny little solder bridge but there it was. Once removed, the LCD works perfectly.

cheers,
Michael

Congrats on finding that. What are the odds? With the problems you have had today I think you must have Murphy riding on your shoulder! Good job!

[mhackney]

Getting ready to mount 3 EZStruders up top. I found this nice compact mount on Thingiverse. Printed the first one in Red ABS at 238°C, 30mm/min. .2mm layers, no fans, 85°C build plate on hairspray, sliced with KISSlicer:

[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s10/v1 ... 4433-3.jpg[/img]

[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s5/v11 ... 2433-3.jpg[/img]

Not perfect but a good utilitarian piece. I'm almost dialed back in. I have no idea what that tab is that shows up in the corner. It does not appear in the STL in KISS but shows up in the gcode, very odd?

Now the question, all three in red or one each in red, white and black? For grins, I'll slice the next one with Slic3r and see what happens.

Cheers,
Michael

[bubbasnow]

i want your alum build plate

[Eaglezsoar]

Getting ready to mount 3 EZStruders up top. I found this nice compact mount on Thingiverse. Printed the first one in Red ABS at 238°C, 30mm/min. .2mm layers, no fans, 85°C build plate on hairspray, sliced with KISSlicer:

[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s10/v1 ... 4433-3.jpg[/img]

[img]http://mhackney.zenfolio.com/img/s5/v11 ... 2433-3.jpg[/img]

Not perfect but a good utilitarian piece. I'm almost dialed back in. I have no idea what that tab is that shows up in the corner. It does not appear in the STL in KISS but shows up in the gcode, very odd?

Now the question, all three in red or one each in red, white and black? For grins, I'll slice the next one with Slic3r and see what happens.

Cheers,
Michael

Be patriotic and make them Red, White and Blue! (lot's of luck finding the right blue).

[mhackney]

I powered on this morning to print another EZStruder mount and heard an ever-so-slight "pop". I noticed that my heated bed was not warming up. I've been powering my Onyx with 24 volts since early this year and thought the worse. I pulled out the old volt meters and verified 24 volts coming from the power supply. However, when I checked the power connector terminals on the RAMBo (I always check every link when I'm debugging, you never know) I discovered no voltage at the connector! Odd! So I unplugged everything (at least I am learning!) and discovered that the ground wire on the 24V line had frayed and broken off. All that current running through 1 or a few strands of copper caused it to let go. Easy fix! I am thinking I might want to use ferrules on the wire ends going into screw connectors in the future. Probably not a bad idea!

cheers,
Michael

[Eaglezsoar]

I powered on this morning to print another EZStruder mount and heard an ever-so-slight "pop". I noticed that my heated bed was not warming up. I've been powering my Onyx with 24 volts since early this year and thought the worse. I pulled out the old volt meters and verified 24 volts coming from the power supply. However, when I checked the power connector terminals on the RAMBo (I always check every link when I'm debugging, you never know) I discovered no voltage at the connector! Odd! So I unplugged everything (at least I am learning!) and discovered that the ground wire on the 24V line had frayed and broken off. All that current running through 1 or a few strands of copper caused it to let go. Easy fix! I am thinking I might want to use ferrules on the wire ends going into screw connectors in the future. Probably not a bad idea!

cheers,
Michael

You have had a run of bad luck the last couple of days, it's got to change soon!

[mhackney]

It's expected when powering back up after a hiatus! I've actually got a lot accomplished too. More posts coming soon!

[mhackney]

I posted a photo of the red EZStruder mount I printed yesterday. It was sliced with KISSlicer. For grins, I thought I would configure Slic3r to mimic the KISSlicer settings and print a copy with it to see how it differs. It has been a disaster!

It was pretty straight forward to set the important settings. As you saw, the print from KISS looks pretty good. I've done 3 attempts today back-to-back. The first was with the Slic3r code. The print looks like crap with lots of blobs, incomplete fills, and the triangular braces you see in the photo were not attached to the vertical wall. It will work but looks like crap. I double checked temps, speeds, extrusion parameters and they were identical to the KISS settings. I then immediately printed another copy with the KISS code and it, again, was perfect. So, I double checked the Slic3r settings and tried to print again. This time about 10 layers up, the printer made a wild shift by about 5mm in the X direction. I double checked acceleration and rapid speeds and they are the same as what I set in KISS. I could also tell that the surface finish was not going to be as good on this copy either.

So, I know the extruder works properly and temps are good for my material. I also know that print speeds, rapids and accelerations should be the same between the 2 files. I've attached the first few layers of geode from both slicers. Anyone have any observations or suggestions?

EZstruder_mount-v6-Slic3r.gcode

(1.19 MiB) Downloaded 273 times

EZstruder_mount-v6.gcode

(847.92 KiB) Downloaded 281 times

cheers,
Michael

[int2str]

Not sure why your slicers behave different.
I did print the same item sliced with Slic3r yesterday and it printed fine. The lower triangles were in fact single walled and came off very easily though (thin wall detection checked).

I have a question for you though:
Why do you print so slow, yet have movement speed at 500mm/s?
Your firmware undoubtedly doesn't allow 500mm/s anyway, but why so high?

[mhackney]

My movement speeds are probably a hold over from my CNC milling experience. Rapid rapids decrease machining time and therefore cost.

The movement speeds of 500 mm/s are for travel (rapid) speeds and not print speeds.

I should also say that I generate gcode at 10mm/s but then use Repetier's print speed slide to increase speed (up to 20mm/s). I usually generate 30 mm/s but for this particular item, backed way down because of the geometry.

[int2str]

My movement speeds are probably a hold over from my CNC milling experience. Rapid rapids decrease machining time and therefore cost.
The movement speeds of 500 mm/s are for travel (rapid) speeds and not print speeds.

I'm just wondering...

As I said, your firmware is limiting maximum movement speed to something a lot less than that. So configuring a value far above the maximum seems wishful thinking

From your print it looks like you're not having any problems with this. But conventional wisdom would say that traveling at maximum speed would be a good recipe for introducing positional errors. Again, you don't seem to have the problem. Just curious about your choice there.

[mhackney]

Now that I have my printer operational I thought it would be good to update to the latest Repetier firmware. I downloaded the latest from github this morning and then picked through Configuration.h and pins.h to match my configuration. It's a complete mess! My thermistors are not reading temps, my LCD is displaying blocks and movement is totally messed up. My hot end and bed do heat up but the thermistors are not reading.

I've double checked everything. I was running .80 (Polygonhell's fork). My configuration should be reasonably stock:

My machine is from 12/2013
15 tooth pulleys
Mechanical (stock) endstops
Running RAMBo v1.1
RepRapDiscount LCD

I can reload my old firmware and all is OK. I also noticed that with the .91 update, the Repetier Host UI is very sluggish - for instance, if I click the move Z by 10mm button, there is a long (1-2 sec) delay before anything happens. I do have the same communication settings as with my .80 firmware. I also made sure to set EEPROM_MODE to a new value with each upload to overwrite the EEPROM. I've also checked the EEPROM window in Repetier and compared it against the previous .80 settings and everything (speeds, accelerations, etc) seem in order.

The Configuration.h settings are pretty straight forward, end stop settings duplicate what I had, etc. I would't think I'd have much problem. I did look at Flateric's header file he posted [ur=http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php ... 10#p25842l]here[/url] and accounted for my differences (RAMBo, 15 tooth pulley's etc). Any suggestions on what to look for?

regards,
Michael

[mhackney]

Well, this is a fine kettle of fish! I decided to start with debugging the LCD display. I had erroneously set the display to "11", once I changed it to the new "13" (13 = SeeMeCNC Display on Rambo (ORION)) almost everything started behaving properly. Everything except thermistor readings, so I assume that is a pin assignment problem that I can chase down in pins.h.

Otherwise, all axes move properly, display works with the new menu system (nice) - which I guess confirms that the change works on Rostock Max too - and the Repetier Host UI is responsive.

Now to find the thermistor reading problem.

cheers,
Michael

[Eaglezsoar]

If you had the time perhaps you could write a blurb on how a new user could upgrade to .91
Don't hit me with a thrown object it was just a suggestion. No one has done this yet.