Quite a Few Problems (Excess Speeds, E3Dv6 Mount Issues,etc)

[DDK452]

Hey all, first time poster here, figured I'd break my silence finally...with problems, whoops!

So to just jump right into things it seems like a mess of problems finally piled together for me, and I am sincerely hoping I could get some help from the community. The issues are as follows, and thank you so much for your help ahead of time!

Background Info:

1. Rostock Max v2
2. E3Dv6 Hot End Upgrade (0.25mm Nozzle) w/ Printed Mount pieces (http://repables.com/r/338/) & Metallic Spacers
3. Custom Extruder fitting (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:488678)
4. Everything else is 100% Stock SeeMeCNC parts

Excessive Speeds:
I'm having problems with my prints suddenly accelerating to what appears to be well over 35mm/s after the first layer. It gets to the point where material will just clump onto the hotend. This also doesn't appear to be software related, because I have tried it on MatterControl (MatterSlice), Slic3r, KISSlicer, and Cura. All of them have strange issues where they suddenly speed up in inappropriate areas and to excessive amounts. Also, the extruder can never seem to keep up, so filament gets smeared, dragged, etc everywhere sometimes. Also this seems to be consistent with larger prints, or prints with tight/small circles.

Power Cutout on Heating:
Occasionally when I try to heatsoak my hotend while warming up my bed my printer will shut itself off (appears to be PSU or Fuse, since the Rambo board completely shuts off). I'm wondering if it may however be a firmware issue.

Also I should note that I did have a Rambo fry on me way back when I first build my rostock due to a faulty Terminal, I had the terminal and nearby capacitor replaced, but the PCB was fine (this was done by Ultimachine themselves). I am also using insulated quick disconnects for my Hotend connections, however, I never have cutouts if I solely heat the hotend.

E3Dv6 Mount Skewed?:
This is the biggest issue at the moment by far. It seems that my mounts for my E3Dv6 recently placed the hotend at a slight canted angle, causing high layer heights towards the Y motor (~0.28mm) and very low to even smashed/non-existent layers on the X side (~0.12-0.18mm, sometimes no extrusion). This is with a starting layer height of 0.25mm, so it is rather outside of the range of accuracy and to a point where it causes extreme problems in larger prints (including layer collision).

Now what I'm wondering is if anyone ran into something similar because they 3D printed their E3D mount, and if so what did they do to workaround it. Otherwise, I'm wondering what alternatives I have since I would like to continue to use the spacers I bought and the rostock adapter probably wont work with them due to their height.


That's my list of issues so far. Thanks again for any help anyone in the community can provide, and if anyone needs pictures or any other information, please let me know!

-DK

[Jimustanguitar]

Excessive Speeds:
I'm having problems with my prints suddenly accelerating to what appears to be well over 35mm/s after the first layer. It gets to the point where material will just clump onto the hotend. This also doesn't appear to be software related, because I have tried it on MatterControl (MatterSlice), Slic3r, KISSlicer, and Cura. All of them have strange issues where they suddenly speed up in inappropriate areas and to excessive amounts. Also, the extruder can never seem to keep up, so filament gets smeared, dragged, etc everywhere sometimes. Also this seems to be consistent with larger prints, or prints with tight/small circles.

This definitely sounds like a setting in your slicer. You can set acceleration and jerk rates and specify a max speed in the firmware, but the machine is only following the instructions that it receives from the GCode. Check your speeds in the slicer first. Higher speeds shouldn't be a problem though, I regularly print up to 100 mm/s.

Power Cutout on Heating:
Occasionally when I try to heatsoak my hotend while warming up my bed my printer will shut itself off (appears to be PSU or Fuse, since the Rambo board completely shuts off). I'm wondering if it may however be a firmware issue.

Also I should note that I did have a Rambo fry on me way back when I first build my rostock due to a faulty Terminal, I had the terminal and nearby capacitor replaced, but the PCB was fine (this was done by Ultimachine themselves). I am also using insulated quick disconnects for my Hotend connections, however, I never have cutouts if I solely heat the hotend.

This sounds like a bad PSU. The next time it does this, test it with a multimeter to see if your PSU is outputting anything or not. This could also be caused by a loose connection between the green and black wires on your power switch, check that too.

E3Dv6 Mount Skewed?:
This is the biggest issue at the moment by far. It seems that my mounts for my E3Dv6 recently placed the hotend at a slight canted angle, causing high layer heights towards the Y motor (~0.28mm) and very low to even smashed/non-existent layers on the X side (~0.12-0.18mm, sometimes no extrusion). This is with a starting layer height of 0.25mm, so it is rather outside of the range of accuracy and to a point where it causes extreme problems in larger prints (including layer collision).

Now what I'm wondering is if anyone ran into something similar because they 3D printed their E3D mount, and if so what did they do to workaround it. Otherwise, I'm wondering what alternatives I have since I would like to continue to use the spacers I bought and the rostock adapter probably wont work with them due to their height.

The hot-end being tilted wouldn't change the machine's travel from one end of the bed to the other. This sounds like you need to level your machine as outlined in the manual again. You definitely want your hot-end to be true and plum, but it would take an extreme angle to cause issues like your describing, where as a very slight misadjustment in leveling would do this.

[DDK452]

Thanks for the response Jimustanguitar!

This definitely sounds like a setting in your slicer. You can set acceleration and jerk rates and specify a max speed in the firmware, but the machine is only following the instructions that it receives from the GCode. Check your speeds in the slicer first. Higher speeds shouldn't be a problem though, I regularly print up to 100 mm/s.

That's what I thought, however, even when I reduce those settings it seems to pick certain models to just print at extreme speeds. For some reason though (at least with PET) the prints fail miserably above 35mm/s. It almost seems like acceleration issues, but I'm wondering if maybe something is off with my firmware.

This sounds like a bad PSU. The next time it does this, test it with a multimeter to see if your PSU is outputting anything or not. This could also be caused by a loose connection between the green and black wires on your power switch, check that too.

A bad PSU is what I was thinking too. I'll definitely check the cables again, thanks!

The hot-end being tilted wouldn't change the machine's travel from one end of the bed to the other. This sounds like you need to level your machine as outlined in the manual again. You definitely want your hot-end to be true and plum, but it would take an extreme angle to cause issues like your describing, where as a very slight misadjustment in leveling would do this.

I've done that calibration multiple times sadly with the same result. In fact, the spacing when I set it to the X position is fine, as are the Y and Z. However, when it goes to print, same issues with smashed in filament in the X sector of the bed. It's really an incredibly frustrating issue, and I spent hours trying multiple calibrations to no avail. The only other possibility I'm considering is an issue with one of the T-nuts possibly being inserted incorrectly and creating a "warp" on the bed.

Thanks again for your responses!

[mvansomeren]

I've done that calibration multiple times sadly with the same result. In fact, the spacing when I set it to the X position is fine, as are the Y and Z. However, when it goes to print, same issues with smashed in filament in the X sector of the bed. It's really an incredibly frustrating issue, and I spent hours trying multiple calibrations to no avail. The only other possibility I'm considering is an issue with one of the T-nuts possibly being inserted incorrectly and creating a "warp" on the bed.

Thanks again for your responses!

Are you following the calibration instructions from the manual? If so, try this video - it actually has an additional step that I didn't see in the manual which requires to to set your bed center Z height through the LCD panel each time you adjust one of the stop screws. Ignore the part about running the script...not sure where to get that script. I set up the macros like it showed in the manual and that worked fine.

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3CqWxTcV38

Also, make sure that the screws that hold down the Onyx board are only finger tight (each of the six screws equally). As the bed heats it expands and I've found that having the screws barely tightened allows the bed to expand and remain flat - conforming to the glass on top. If the screws are tight, the bed has no place to go when it gets hot so it would have to bow or bend somewhere. There is no documentation to support this. This has just been from my experience.

I also agree with the bad PSU theory.

[guanu]

here's the scripts I use when I build machines here at the shop:

Rostock Max Towers.gcode is the following:

Code: Select all

; Tower endstop calibration script
G28
G1 Z.2 F15000
G4 S1
G1 X-77.94 Y-45 Z.2 F2000
G4 S2
G1 X0 Y0 Z.2
G1 X77.94 Y-45 Z.2
G4 S2
G1 X0 Y0 Z.2
G1 Y90 Z.2
G4 S2
G1 X0 Y0 Z.2
;

and for the Orion:

Code: Select all

; Tower endstop calibration script
G28
G1 Z.2 F15000
G4 S1
G1 X-65 Y-37 Z.2 F2000
G4 S2
G1 X0 Y0 Z.2
G1 X65 Y-37 Z.2
G4 S2
G1 X0 Y0 Z.2
G1 Y65 Z.2
G4 S2
G1 X0 Y0 Z.2
;

you can just paste that code in notepad and save as towers.gcode.. the reason for the video is in tech support chat, people want to know how we calibrate machines here. Instead of giving a multi page list of all the steps, we made a video to help people, and for us here it is much easier and quicker than chasing the screws running multiple scripts and using a piece of paper, watching the .2 gap from the nozzle to the glass is much easier to see small vairations of up/down movement to help dial in the machine.

Guanu

[mvansomeren]

here's the scripts I use when I build machines here at the shop:

Rostock Max Towers.gcode is the following:

Code: Select all

; Tower endstop calibration script
G28
G1 Z.2 F15000
G4 S1
G1 X-77.94 Y-45 Z.2 F2000
G4 S2
G1 X0 Y0 Z.2
G1 X77.94 Y-45 Z.2
G4 S2
G1 X0 Y0 Z.2
G1 Y90 Z.2
G4 S2
G1 X0 Y0 Z.2
;

and for the Orion:

Code: Select all

; Tower endstop calibration script
G28
G1 Z.2 F15000
G4 S1
G1 X-65 Y-37 Z.2 F2000
G4 S2
G1 X0 Y0 Z.2
G1 X65 Y-37 Z.2
G4 S2
G1 X0 Y0 Z.2
G1 Y65 Z.2
G4 S2
G1 X0 Y0 Z.2
;

you can just paste that code in notepad and save as towers.gcode.. the reason for the video is in tech support chat, people want to know how we calibrate machines here. Instead of giving a multi page list of all the steps, we made a video to help people, and for us here it is much easier and quicker than chasing the screws running multiple scripts and using a piece of paper, watching the .2 gap from the nozzle to the glass is much easier to see small vairations of up/down movement to help dial in the machine.

Guanu

Thanks, that is helpful info.

[DDK452]

Just wanted to say thank you for all your replies!

Guanu, thank you so much for the script, it made calibration much more intuitive/efficient than the method described in the manual. Seems my horiz. radius was out of whack for that calibration method, but the point to point wasn't. Also I found that my PTFE tubing was apparently too short at the max X movement and it was actually pulling the effector platform (possibly why my calib were off). Anyway, thanks again guys! Glad to be part of such a helpful community.

[geneb]

Understand that the "factory" method is basically "calibration by eyeball", with all the inherent inaccuracies involved in a visual comparison. That's why it's not the process I outline in the manual. You don't calibrate a CNC machine by eye, so why would you do so on a 3D printer?

"eyeball-cal" will get you a good calibration for the most part. Using the paper check method will give you a _correct_ calibration. I'd much rather specify that people use a feeler gauge instead of paper, but I suspect that's impractical for the typical builder.

g.

[DDK452]

Don't get me wrong Geneb, I wasn't blasting that method at all! It's a combination of the two that actually worked for me. Basically using the paper method to make sure everything is leveled off in those points, and then going for the eyeballed "calibration" to make sure everything is moving correctly.

That aside, a feeler gauge sounds like a much better alternative (as I google where to find some haha).

Thanks for the input and of course the manual!

[geneb]

My reply was more directed to Guanu.

You should be able to get a feeler gauge at any auto parts store. Find one that can be taken apart and grab one of the thinner ones to use. You'll want to use some acetone or paint thinner to clean off the machine oil they use to protect the gauges. You don't want the oils on the bed glass.

g.