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mhackney wrote:That's not really a problem, you can either invert the direction in the config file or swap the two phases (pairs of wires to coils) on the steppers. You had a 50-50 chance when you wired the steppers.

Just FYI, commissioning any new printer, especially when you've never done it before, should be done slowly and methodically so as not to damage things (or worse). In this case, simply testing jogging one axis at a time to test that the steppers are configured properly before homing is preferred. Homing requires several subsystems working properly and it's best to separate those and test them individually.

First test endstops with M119 (this and other G and M codes else here: http://reprap.org/wiki/G-code)
Then test that the steppers move in the right direction: position the carriages (all 3) about 100 mm down from the top. Then issue a G1 Z100 G200. The steppers should all move in the same direction, in unison, slowly, to move the carriages down.

etc...

ok maybe im not quite as crazy as i thought, i did the g1 command as you suggested and it did in deed move the bed in a downward direction. but so does hitting the home button, i do have homing direction set to home_to_max.

On a delta, home position is usually the top and is MAX Z. So moving incrementally in a negative direction will move down. However, moving to an absolute position like I asked you to do will move to that position. In my example, you start with the carriages near the top and I asked you to move to Z=100, which will be 100mm above the print bed. If the movement is down to that position, then stepper direction is correct. If it moves up, then you need to invert the direction, but I think you already determined you need to do that in your post above when the printer attempted to home the wrong way. Doing a simple Z movement is (arguably) a safer way to commission a new build.

that is strange, when i run what you posted it moves down, when i move it in a positive direction it moves down, when i home it moves down, so from what you said i have my steppers the right direction because the g1 100 moved it down. but the other stuff goes wrong. i inverted the stepper direction pins and home went up, and even though it triggered the end stops it did not stop at them and kept driving...until i hit the power switch quickly. and i checked with m119 the stops did trigger, got 1 on all of them. though when i run m119 it lists max_x, max_y, and max_z is that correct or when its in delta mode should it be alpha beta and gamma? Though i did discover with the wrong direction move that magnetic joints can be helpful, they just pop of during a crash instead of breaking something.

I have added my config file if anyone wants to take a look at it and tell me where i have gone wrong.

i think i figured out the endstop thing, i had the alpha tower hitting the gamma endstop. unfortunatly i have to go to work so do not have time to test it now.

Here's my config for a mini Kossel, but I ran this same basic file on my Rostock when it was smoothie. One thing I see is your _max_endstops are set with "!" or normally open to ground. As you'll see, mine are normally closed (NC) and this is how the Rostock is normally wired. The Smoothieware documentation shows NO as default, this is how older Mendals were configured.

You also should check that the endstops are wired to the correct stepper port (X to X, etc)

mhackney wrote:

config.txt

Here's my config for a mini Kossel, but I ran this same basic file on my Rostock when it was smoothie. One thing I see is your _max_endstops are set with "!" or normally open to ground. As you'll see, mine are normally closed (NC) and this is how the Rostock is normally wired. The Smoothieware documentation shows NO as default, this is how older Mendals were configured.

You also should check that the endstops are wired to the correct stepper port (X to X, etc)

I am using hall effect endstops and they seem to trigger backwards from the mechanical ones, so the ! is correct.

however i figured out where i went wrong. when I wired everything I used the example config file with the offical smoothie. but once everything was together i was swtiching to 626pilot's firmware so i used his example config file as the base for mine. and the official one has alpha on pin 1.25 and his has alpha endstop on 1.29, i did not notice this and so my steppers and end stops were not matched up, fix this and throw in a ! on the stepper motors and now everything seems to be working well. you may commence laughing at me now.

Aflac wrote:

mhackney wrote:

config.txt

Here's my config for a mini Kossel, but I ran this same basic file on my Rostock when it was smoothie. One thing I see is your _max_endstops are set with "!" or normally open to ground. As you'll see, mine are normally closed (NC) and this is how the Rostock is normally wired. The Smoothieware documentation shows NO as default, this is how older Mendals were configured.

You also should check that the endstops are wired to the correct stepper port (X to X, etc)

I am using hall effect endstops and they seem to trigger backwards from the mechanical ones, so the ! is correct.

however i figured out where i went wrong. when I wired everything I used the example config file with the offical smoothie. but once everything was together i was swtiching to 626pilot's firmware so i used his example config file as the base for mine. and the official one has alpha on pin 1.25 and his has alpha endstop on 1.29, i did not notice this and so my steppers and end stops were not matched up, fix this and throw in a ! on the stepper motors and now everything seems to be working well. you may commence laughing at me now.

so when i turn on my heatbed, it heats just fine and fairly quickly....but there is a whining noise associated with it. i saw that it said when using onyx with a 24v power supply you should adjust the pwm, i brought it down to 128, could that be causing the whine or is it something else. i could only find where it said to lower it, i never saw anywhere that it said what to lower it to.

OK, next problem, I got the geometry all worked out, got the 626pilot's auto calibration working, got an energy of 0.01, then I moved on to calibrating the extruder.

and that fool just twitches when i tell it to extrude. It looks like the motor is fighting itself. I hooked it up to the smoothieboard in the order red blue green black, and used to multimeter to confirm that red and blue make a circuit and green and black make a circuit, which is exactly how i hooked up all the other steppers and they work fine. the extruder part of my config is posted below. any ideas what im doing wrong?

extruder.hotend.enable true
extruder.hotend.steps_per_mm 530
extruder.hotend.default_feed_rate 600
extruder.hotend.acceleration 200
extruder.hotend.max_speed 50
extruder.hotend.step_pin 2.3
extruder.hotend.dir_pin 0.22
extruder.hotend.en_pin 0.21
delta_current 1.0

so if i hook the extruder up to the stepper controler of my gamma tower it turns just fine, so the problem must be somewhere in my settings.

I wish I could help you with the settings but alas, I cannot. If we can keep this open a little while someone with the skills for the settings you require will see it and step in and help.

Could it be that you are over-current on the extruder stepper? That can result in the symptom you describe. Try hooking one of the tower steppers to the extruder position too.

mhackney wrote:Could it be that you are over-current on the extruder stepper? That can result in the symptom you describe. Try hooking one of the tower steppers to the extruder position too.

I've got the amp set to 1 so it shouldn't be over. I hooked a different stepper up and it did the same thing, and changed to the 5th stepper driver and have the same behavior so it must be something in my settings.

so i was wrong about it being in the settings. it appears that it was something in the wire going up the tower. When i hooked the multimeter up to those wires things tested fine, but when i replaced them it started to work. but through another mistake while troubleshooting i found the problem i was getting when you have three of the wires connected instead of all 4.

This thread is going to be a great thread for people to see stupid mistakes to avoid.

Aflac wrote: This thread is going to be a great thread for people to see stupid mistakes to avoid.

Aren't they all? All of us make mistakes. At least you found the problem, and got it handled. It also gives us another thing to correlate those symptoms with. And no one can be blamed for a heisen-bug like that (What with it working on another driver for a bit)

yeah that part was strange, the only thing I can think of is that its the connector that is bad and not the wire itself, and when i moved it over i got a good connection but did not when i moved it back...so a loose connector perhaps? ill have to look into that. But yes, the correlation between symptom and cause is half why i posted the answer, hopefully it will save someone else this long troubleshooting i went through.

I am a pilot, and we very much live by if you screw up come back and tell everyone about it, cause it could save their life someday.

So on the connectors that you plug into your board there is a little opening where the metal of the connector is showing. This is where I was touching with the multimeter to ensure i had a good circuit. Upon closer inspection the metal inside the green connector was bent in such a way that it was accessible there but not actually touching the pin on the board.....grrrr....if I had just probed on the board instead of there i would have caught this a long time ago.

OK, on to my next problem, When I heat my hotend it heats up nicely and quickly and then sits at the temperature i set very stable....until i extrude. as soon as i extrude or retract the temperature jumps. sometimes as much as 30° to 65° off of what I have set. this does not seem normal. i was thinking interference so i moved the thermocouple wires and the extruder wires as far from each other as i could get, at no point are they closer than about three inches. I am trying to figure out if there is a pattern.

I just tried three retracts in a row, it droped about 10° the first two times and then the third time it jumped 65°. 4th retract it dropped 70°. 5th retract went up 50°. this makes no sense. The only trend i truly notice is that when it drops it recovers very quickly but when it goes up it takes a while to get back down. which would make sense since its easier to add heat than remove it.

Ok, i attached a screen shot of the last half hour of my temperature graph...any one have any ideas?

So this is interesting. the tempearture seems to have stabilized at just over 100° when it was infact just about room temperature....turn the printer off and back on and it dropped right down to where it really is. interesting.

So I ripped the thermocouple out and put in a thermistor and the temperature works just fine and is rock steady....Ill do some testing to see if i can figure out the thermocouple thing. and if we ever get support for it i might through in the E3D PT100 sensor. but for now it looks like im sticking with a thermistor.

The next problem i ran into was i could not calibrate my extruder, no matter what i changed the steps per mm to in teh config it always extruded the same amount...then i decided to check my config override file...and yup, it had a extruder steps per mm in it. fun times.

But this is why I recommended to a friend he build his own. by the time your done you know your printer inside and out.

Xenocrates wrote:

Aflac wrote: This thread is going to be a great thread for people to see stupid mistakes to avoid.

Aren't they all? All of us make mistakes. At least you found the problem, and got it handled. It also gives us another thing to correlate those symptoms with. And no one can be blamed for a heisen-bug like that (What with it working on another driver for a bit)

+1

I cant decide if i hate this thing and all its problems or am loving the troubleshooting.

I want it to work, but fixing is fun.

OK, the new problem, I got everything set up and calibrated and working. Got my energy on 626pilots auto calibration to 0.012, but when i try to print it goes down and is scraping the bed as it tries to print...i of course stop it quickly, but i am having trouble figuring this out. it obviously knows where the bed is from all the calibration, why is it crashing when printing. I tried changing the Z offset in slic3r, but that did not help...dang baby just woke up, got to go get him.

bubbasnow wrote:now that your bed is mapped thats fine, but i always drop my nozzle 10mm above the surface, and move it down incrementally then set the zheight using a piece of paper. then do M306 Z0 to ensure nozzle height is set correctly. This is done at temp.

I got that advice in another thread where i had asked about my problem...and now I am printing and everything is looking good....well I have a spot on my bed that is all scratched up from the scraping problem and I am having adhesion issues at that spot. but other than that I am good. and at least i know what that problem is and how to fix it and avoid it in the future.

Aflac wrote:So on the connectors that you plug into your board there is a little opening where the metal of the connector is showing. This is where I was touching with the multimeter to ensure i had a good circuit. Upon closer inspection the metal inside the green connector was bent in such a way that it was accessible there but not actually touching the pin on the board.....grrrr....if I had just probed on the board instead of there i would have caught this a long time ago.

Had you crimped those yourself?