Ball/Lead Screw Error Compensation
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@arhi I saw my name mentioned. Check out my blog because I've done away with the steel dowels and bushes, and replaced it with a "zero play" hinge arrangement. And the mechanical stop is also the electrical switch. Which means that only an infinitesimally small Z movement (too small for me to measure) happens.
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@deckingman said in Ball/Lead Screw Error Compensation:
Check out my blog because I've done away with the steel dowels and bushes, and replaced it with a "zero play" hinge arrangement.
Seen that already, and the brass plate for the sensor. But the original steel dowel and brass bushing are IMO much easier to purchase and setup, and also easier to understand. The "zero play hinge" is something you have to make yourself, not something easily purchased in a hardware store (at least not here).
And the mechanical stop is also the electrical switch. Which means that only an infinitesimally small Z movement (too small for me to measure) happens.
I was using this kind of stop for years for my CNC. Three stationary brass balls and a fourth ball in the middle with the rod poking trough going down as sensor. If the center ball loses contact with either of the three stationary balls it triggers. The issue I had was that contact was too bouncy after a while and required constant cleaning. Dropping from 12V+1k to 3V3 with 10k resistor helped a lot (required cleaning once a two months vs once a week with 12V).
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The issue I had was that contact was too bouncy after a while and required constant cleaning. Dropping from 12V+1k to 3V3 with 10k resistor helped a lot (required cleaning once a two months vs once a week with 12V).
So it was the bimetal/contact corrosion between brass and aluminium or steel which needed cleaning?
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The compensation is really just an intermediate step towards good axis accuracy.
Industrial cnc machines have linear (glass scale) encoders that correct for this anyway. The best have liquid cooling on all axis for extended reliability and repeatability.
However, i think most shouldn´t even worry about that because most printers have a repeatability way waaay worse than this could ever compensate for in accuracy. -
@JoergS5 4 brass balls, no bimetal issues there - brass to brass contact .. it's a cnc, lot of dirt present, reducing voltage and current helped, no visible issues existed but cleaning with abrasive sponge solved the problem... I always wanted to gold plate those balls but never got to do it ... was also thinking about enclosing that into "watertight" system and fill with some contact cleaner liquid .. many ideas, never did any of them as this was "good enough"
(it started like this: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1393731 and then I simplified it a lot to use only 4 balls total ... it was more done as a learning experience - me learning to use lathe then it was really necesary, those probes are rather cheap to purchase)
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@arhi Thanks for explaining. I want to DIY one like the one from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prb60JoxQSQ
when I have finished my CNC machine. Until then I use a TLS-02. -
@NitroFreak said in Ball/Lead Screw Error Compensation:
The compensation is really just an intermediate step towards good axis accuracy.
Purchasing a higher quality screw is way cheaper than compensation. Just to get instrumentation to do measurements you need for compensation is way more expensive than getting a proper screw.
I never tried duet3d as cnc driver but for cnc driver the only compensation I believe is required is for backlash, and I don't know if duet support WCS/MCS spaces where I can rotate the coord system to compensate for stock not being square mounted but that's about it. Compensating for something that can be reasonably cheaply fixed directly in hardware is not something I'd expect..
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@arhi I thought about using gold plated contacts for my end stop "switch". I've got some audio connectors kicking around somewhere that I thought about using. But then it occurred to me that gold is quite soft, the plating tends to be thin, and there is a lot more pressure on the contact than one would find in a switch, so it might have worn through the plating. In the end, I used a brass off cut and a brass bolt and a quick rub over with some abrasive should remove any tarnish.
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@deckingman yeah for your setup I think it's not needed as when you start the measuring procedure the FW will fail with "already triggered" if you have a problem with contact, and no matter how dirty it gets when surfaces stop touching the contact is lost. Same on my cnc probe, the probing itself will always work, I have a problem sometimes if I do few points (for e.g. finding center of the circle) the probe won't connect back from just a spring and I need to clean it).. but in any way it will never "not detect obsticle" so it's safe. I didn't consider softness of the gold as in my case the contact pressure is very light (just a weight of the steel pin and pressure of a small spring) but yes, in your case it might be a problem, again, if you convert it so that it's two plates touching instead of pin & plate it would mitigate the problem (probably introducing other problems). Anyhow it is "safe", no way it will not detect the bed (unlike number of those touch probes that require contact to be made to trigger where dirt can break stuff)
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@arhi Yes it's "normally closed", the same as all my other end stop switches. So bad contacts or wires falling off mean that it "fails safe" (triggered).
