Re: wiring help?

[Jeff Crews]

Well, I finally got my stepper extruder hooked up. I didn't realize that it runs so fast. (Or can run so fast, I mean. 10 rpm spits out thread like crazy.)

Now begins the great and glorious software struggle, I guess. Fixing SF to create the M108 R codes is sort of murky, but I am reading about it.

JSC

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From: Bill Culverhouse <bill.cul...@gmail.com>
To: Jeff Crews <cruz...@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 11:23 PM
Subject: Re: wiring help?

http://wiki.makerbot.com/stepper-driven-extruder

 

So you are looking for "option B"

 

Which is Koenkooi's method:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/koenkooi/5144834329/

 

If you have a 10 pin ribbon cable to cut up, plug the 10pin end into the

stepper. Split out the wires 3,4,5,10.

 

You can make sense of the pin order from this pic:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jabella/5456985514/

 

1-2 are on the left 9-10 are on the right.

 

So from the driver connect driver pin 3 to Quadrature pin 7 on the EC

Driver pin 4 to Quadrature pin 8 on EC.

 

I think. The photo is swapped up and I'm not near my bot to give you

the definite answer.

 

Then driver pin 5 to D10 on the EC. And driver pin 10 to any ground on the

EC, you can you the last pin on D10 as a ground or pin 9 on the Quadrature.

 

Clear as mud yet?

Let me know if you have any other questions.

 

Sorry I didn't make it to the meet last night.

 

-b

 

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 10:41 PM, Jeff Crews <cruz...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hello Bill-

I am having a bit of trouble interpreting the jumper picture for wiring up the extruder stepper board.  What I am finding online for std 10 pin idc headers doesn't seem to agree with the pin #s in the picture. Is there a better resource? I will keep looking as well.

JSC

[Drew Nelson]

The makerbot wiki page has link to a skeinforge plugin that says it does just that......now does it work.

[Jeff Crews]

I tried to just find and replace M108 S with M108 R in my gcode manually. It changed them all but then it never extruded after going Z+ in the initial "nose-blowing" sequence.. The temps were fine so it should have.

I can't find any place in Speed to specify rpm's, just the 255 PWM box.

I tried to install the rpmify plugin and and got all kinds of error messages. Either I did it wrong or the file specifies incorrect locations for other files.

The profilinator looks pretty complex. What does it do that fiddling with your SF settings doesn't?

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From: Bill Culverhouse <bill.cul...@gmail.com>
To: Jeff Crews <cruz...@yahoo.com>

Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2011 8:40 PM
Subject: Re: wiring help?

Add: "M108 S M108 R" to your replace.csv and go get dave durant's profilinator:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5310

 

Make sure references to speed are in rpm's not 255 in Reversal and Speed tabs in SF.

 

-b

[Bill Culverhouse]

I believe RPMify has been rolled into reversal. But I add the fix in the replace.csv in case

I want to disable reversal.

 

All RPMify is doing anyway is to change the "S" to "R" in the M108 lines.

The inital PWM isn't needed in case you do decide to use RPMify.

 

-b

[Jeff Crews]

Well, I'm using SF35 as well;  I call it the PWM box becasue the value in it was 255. So... if Rs are substituted for S's, wouldn't that make the M108 values equal  255 RPM in the gcode? But your conversion is more like 1.98 RPM. Does putting 1.98 in there establish that for the whole process? I am asking because now I am at work and don't have the machine here to try it.

I can see how if I just subbed in R for S and had RPM values that were super-high, the motor wouldn't turn.

Sorry I sound like an idiot, I'll get it eventually. I am cc'ing this to the group for future reference and hopefully aid to others. the extruder really is sweet.

JSC

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From: Bill Culverhouse <bill.cul...@gmail.com>
To: Jeff Crews <cruz...@yahoo.com>

Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2011 9:09 PM
Subject: Re: wiring help?

PWM box? Are you using SF 006?

Just put in 1.98 instead of 255.

I'm using SF35 btw. You just start using your

RPM number instead of 255.

 

If you put M108 S [TAB] M108 R in replace.csv it will do that automatically.

The TAB is a tab key press obviously.

In folder [user area]\.replicatorg\[SF_version_profiles]\[profile_name]\alterations

 

Shoot me the first chunkof your gcode file (or the whole thing if you like.)

 

I'll see if I see the problemo.

 

-b 

[Bill Culverhouse]

It's no problem.

 

Yes if the values are way too high the motor can't turn. I think I found that on my

setup the motor won't do higher that about 28 rpm. No that's 28rpm out of the

gearbox. The motor is actually turning 13X rpm higher because of the gearing.

 

The 1.98 is approximately the amount you want the motor to turn at 28.5mm/s feedrate.

The profileinator will tell you the Width/Thickness values and RPM for given layer height

and feedrates.

 

You are supposed to just start using RPM values wherever you would use a PWM value.

255 PWM is about 2 RPM (ish).

 

So yes, you sub R's for S's. And then swap all PWM values of ~255 for the appropriate RPM

value (about 2 for approx 30mm/s feedrate)

Clear? Let's muddy the waters a bit. So your firmware is likely not written for a MakerGear Extruder.

Meaning the steps per revolution (which is still hard-coded in the firmware for some reason) isn't

right. So in the control panel when you hit 2 RPM, if you look at the drive gear and time it, it is probably

a lot lower than 2 actual revolutions per minute. There is a nice way to fudge this into the numbers

profileinator gives you but we might as well fix your firmware. You are using a standard MBI stepper driver

so I'll set mine up that way and compile you a firmware for the driver and the gear ratio (in the motor)

so when you say 2 RPM the drive gear turns 2 RPMs. This only becomes an annoyance when a new

firmware comes out, which MBI isn't doing very much anymore for the Gen3 boards.

 

This problem goes away with Gen4 hardware since MBI finally sanctified a stepper extruder for it and

the steps per mm are adjustable in the machines.xml. (But only for Gen4 firmwares)

Also since this is going to the list as well, most of this isn't aplicable if you are using a 5D firmware in

a RepRap sort of situation. The dimension plugin for SF takes away the need for PWM and RPM M108

codes.

 

If anyone has any questions about stepper extruders on Gen3 RepRap/Makerbot hardware just let me know.

 

-b

[Jeff Crews]

It appears that at least some of this is obsolete wiki info. For instance the page on stepper extruders gives the address for DLing the stepper firmware, but then in RepG24 it appears to be already there (at least the author's name is the same, I assume it's the same firmware.)

Likewise for the rpmify plugin which you say is now folded into the reversal plugin, already included in SF35.

I'll try to re-edit my SF files to undo the damage done when I tried to install rpmify, and start trying to figure out the Profilinator. What are your values for gear diameter and so forth? I assume that your Makergear extruder is the same as mine.

JSC

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From: Bill Culverhouse <bill.cul...@gmail.com>
To: Jeff Crews <cruz...@yahoo.com>

Cc: "techshop-durham-...@googlegroups.com" <techshop-durham-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, July 22, 2011 10:13 AM
Subject: Re: wiring help?

[Bill Culverhouse]

The drive gear is different now. Mine looks like a MK5 that has an 8mm bore in it for the stepper.

I'm just using 10mm for gear diameter. The proper way to figure it is to caliper the gear's outside

dim, then put it in the extruder and run some filament through it and caliper the teeth groves so

you can subtract that from the first measurement.

 

My MK5 teeth are pretty negligible as far as how much they dig into the filament.

The gear Makergear is using now looks like it would dig in a fair amount so it would be worth

measuring.

 

-b 

[Jeff Crews]

Yes, my gear teeth are pretty fierce. I will measure.

Another odd thing- in reversing the filament, I found out that when the filament that was in the barrel goes back up through the gear and idler, it's still hot enough so that the pressure deforms the end into a spatula. Then it's too fat to keep going back up through the upper feed hole. I had a bear of a time getting it out.

I guess the fix is to lower the speed in Control Panel when backing it out so it has more time to cool before getting squashed by the gear again.

I suppose that if your drive gear looks like a MK5, that valley in the gear would help keep it round. My drive gear is completely cylindrical- no valley.

JSC

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From: Bill Culverhouse <bill.cul...@gmail.com>

To: techshop-durham-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, July 22, 2011 11:08 AM
Subject: Re: wiring help?

[Bill Culverhouse]

I don't usually drive the filament out of the extruder, I use thumb screws on the

idler and just spin them loose and pull it out. I've seen what you are talking about.

Sometimes faster works well, it might flatten it but it's still soft enough to skinny

up and go through the hole.

 

-b

[Bill Culverhouse]

I went ahead and made v2.9 firmwares for relays and no relays.

 

This is for the Makergear 13.6:1 geared stepper on a gen3 driver board from MBI

Steps per rev are set to 2720.

 

Drop the hex files into the [home]/.replicatorg/firmware/ folder.

Manually add the board defs found in the firmware.xml to your [home]/.replicatorg/firmware.xml
or you can rename/replace your firmware.xml with this one, upload the special firmware, then

put yours back or delete the firmware.xml and restart repG and it will redownload the firmware.xml from MBI.

 

Any questions let me know.

 

FYI the MBI driver board makes the extruder run *really* loud. Might consider a pololu.

Of course then you'd probably want to upgrade all the steppers to pololus.

-b

[Jeff Crews]

Hey Bill et al-

I cannot find any folder named firmware. I can't find any reference to firmware *anywhere* in my replicatorg24 folder. Ditto for a replace.csv file. Seriously, I have no idea of where else to look.

This is making me feel really dim.

JSC

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From: Bill Culverhouse <bill.cul...@gmail.com>
To: techshop-durham-...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Friday, July 22, 2011 4:26 PM
Subject: Re: wiring help?

[Bill Culverhouse]

It's not in the installed folder for repG. RepG makes a settings folder

in your user space called ".replicatorg" on windows xp it is:

c:\Documents and Settings\[username]\.replicatorg

 

If you are on a unix/linux system the dot makes it a hidden folder and

you will have to work accordingly.

 

-b

[Jeff Crews]

Okay, I found it, put the firmware there, edited the firmware xml to include the definitions, and added the replace.csv. Actually there were two of those, one in
Alterations and one under preferences, but the Alterations one seemed to work.

I also had to change the start.txt because it still had the "M108 S255 extruder speed to max" in it and that was showing up.

I'll try actually uploading the firmware tomorrow and see what happens. Right now I'm tired and every damn thing I've touched today has broken.

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From: Bill Culverhouse <bill.cul...@gmail.com>
To: techshop-durham-...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2011 10:35 PM
Subject: Re: wiring help?