precision piezo: difference between boards

garyd9

@moriquendi said in precision piezo: difference between boards:

Hi Gary,

You've pretty much got it right, there isn't much difference between the boards except the form factor.

We do have an Orion type solution for the Titan Aero that we're hoping to release in the next couple of weeks.

Oh? I wonder how (if) their Orion type solution would work with my printer. Would you be willing to share any details on how it would be mounted? Perhaps a mockup or something?

You should also have my email from a "contact us" query I did on the precisionpiezo website a few days ago asking the same questions (difference between the piezo20 and kit PCBs) if you're willing to share information but prefer not to post it here.

Thanks
Gary

Lakko

@moriquendi said in precision piezo: difference between boards:

Hi Gary,

You've pretty much got it right, there isn't much difference between the boards except the form factor.

We do have an Orion type solution for the Titan Aero that we're hoping to release in the next couple of weeks.

Idris
I can't wait for this release

Moriquendi

@lakko Beta test boards are going out this week (hopefully). I need to hear back from testers and find out how they liked it before I can release it for sale.

Idris

garyd9

I was kind of hoping for some kind.. any kind.. of response that might hint on how the titan aero orion might mount. If it's like the existing precision piezo titan aero mount, it'd be completely unsuitable for my needs. On the other hand, the "orion" unit appears to rely on compression while the existing titan area mount relies on flex - so there must be differences.

I'm also still waiting ( a week now) for a response to the question I asked on the "contact us" link on the precision piezo web site. The gist of the question was the same as the thread here and additionally asking if I could order a "kit" with the piezo20 board instead of the "universal 2.75" board.

Lakko

@garyd9 said in precision piezo: difference between boards:

[...] If it's like the existing precision piezo titan aero mount, it'd be completely unsuitable for my needs. [...]

probably if it is like that mount it will be useless for me too...
@Moriquendi is it possible to see some picture? Just for understand.
if it could useful i'll wait it, otherwise i'll go to the universal kit

Moriquendi

@garyd9 Sorry about that, I try to reply to all the inquiries as quick as I can but occasionally I miss someone.

I don't offer a kit for the piezo20 board however all the parts are available individually, you would probably want the PCB, a drilled or undrilled 20mm piezo disk and an endstop cable.

The Orion works by flexing the PCB through compression of the module as a whole.

Here is a (very) rough mockup of how the new product is designed to be used:

The red part represents the carriage of your printer, the green part is the PCB and your hotend/extruder mounts to the blue part. Force on the nozzle transfers through the blue part and causes the PCB to flex, cutouts at the bottom of the blue part allow for vertical deflection while constraining rotation and movement in other axis.

Idris

garyd9

@moriquendi Thank you for the post. I'm not sure that would work any better for my needs than a plain piezo disk. It still looks like its designed for use on a carriage instead of hanging from a delta effector.

I'm starting to wonder if I would be better off getting the universal kit. At least then if I can't figure out a way to mount it on or near the nozzle, I could still use it under bed.

I've yet to see any functional example of a piezo being used with a titan aero attached to a delta effector. While I'm certain something could be engineered, I was really hoping for an easier path...

Moriquendi

I doub't it would be any better. Mounting a Titan Aero on a delta effector I think is a fairly rare thing, the big advantage of the delta is the speed at which it can move the effector, essential to that is to keep the effector as light as possible which is why they're almost always seen with bowden hotends.

The universal kit will probably suite you better.

Idris

Lakko

Thank you @Moriquendi for the info, I'll wait for the new release
@garyd9 I think that your best choice is the universal kit and 3 undrilled piezo for the under bed piezo, take a look here
https://youtu.be/UVoCARDOoxs
So you don't need to touch the titan.
Hope this can help

garyd9

@lakko said in precision piezo: difference between boards:

@garyd9 I think that your best choice is the universal kit and 3 undrilled piezo for the under bed piezo, take a look here
https://youtu.be/UVoCARDOoxs

No, that'd be the easiest choice, not the best one.

I already have underbed FSRs and I'm trying to eliminate the complication and variability of different probe heights at different locations. The best way to do that is to have a single sensor at the nozzle instead of 3, 4 or even 20 scattered under the bed.

I have some different ideas of how to do what I want, but having a vague idea of an end result is quite easier than making an idea into a physical object.

I'd also have to mount the piezo control board on the effector - which was why I was hoping I could order a "kit" with the piezo20 board instead of the universal one. The "kit" has multiple piezo's (in case I destroy some in trial/error) and most of the wiring I'd need, while the piezo20 appears to be a physically smaller board (and with the plug orientation, would take less space overall.) Yet, when adding in currency exchange rates and international shipping, it starts getting expensive to order a kit AND an extra board, etc.

I was hoping they'd be willing to just swap boards in the kit being that they are the same price.

Dougal1957

@garyd9 what size/type effector is it and which hottend?

Moriquendi

@garyd9

There's nothing in the kit except the board, three piezos and the endstop cable, the difference in price is £1.47

Piezo Kit = £19.99
Piezo20 board + 3x20mm piezos (w Dupont connectors) + Endstop cable = £21.46

The Piezo20 board is about 2mm shorter than the universal board (excluding pins)

@garyd9 said in precision piezo: difference between boards:

I was hoping they'd be willing to just swap boards in the kit being that they are the same price.

You didn't make it clear that was what you were asking, I'm happy to do that.

Idris

garyd9

@dougal1957 It's a E3D titan aero with the standard (non-volcano) hot end. The effector is... I never measured it. It's the ultibots d300vs+ effector. Here's a model of it: https://github.com/UltiBots/D300VS-PLUS/blob/master/d300p_effector_bca_aero.stl

I fully expect that I'd have to modify it (or just start from scratch.)

garyd9

@moriquendi said in precision piezo: difference between boards:

Piezo Kit = £19.99
Piezo20 board + 3x20mm piezos (w Dupont connectors) + Endstop cable = £21.46

Okay, now I feel stupid. For some reason, I thought there was a significant price difference. I just checked and shipping would be the same 10.5 squiggle marks additional. Actually, doing in it parts might even be better for me - so I can mix piezo sizes.

I'm going to claim that the differences in currencies is what messed me up. I expected Euro's, but you seem to be using a different squiggly that looks suspiciously like a hash mark here in the US (# - pounds.) It doesn't matter that my claim doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It's the only excuse I could think of at the moment.

Sorry about giving you a hard time.

garyd9

Just placed Order No. 11100: 1 piezo20 board, 2x 27mm piezos and 2x 20mm piezos. That'll let me try the different sizes and give me a couple of spares in case I break something.

I should already have plenty of dupont connectors and ribbon wire to make my own endstop connectors.

Moriquendi

@garyd9 said in precision piezo: difference between boards:

I expected Euro's, but you seem to be using a different squiggly

We've also been experimenting with the metric system but I don't think it'll catch on

Your order should go in the post today and with any luck will get to you soon.

Idris

garyd9

@moriquendi said in precision piezo: difference between boards:

@garyd9 said in precision piezo: difference between boards:
We've also been experimenting with the metric system but I don't think it'll catch on

Speaking of that, I'd like to register a complaint. Here in America, we inherited our system of measurements from... YOU. (Not you personally, of course, but from England... or the "United" Kingdom.. or Britain.. or whatever you call yourselves these days.) Now that you dumped the illogical system on us, and FORCED us to use it under threat of death and more taxes, you go and change to something else.

I could go on about how America is great again and the center of the world and anything we do must be perfect, but the simple fact is that 12 inches in a "foot" doesn't make sense - and made even less sense 200 years ago when people's feet were smaller. 3 feet in a yard? Really? Oh, and don't even get me started with temperatures. What in the world were you damn Red Coats thinking? Did you guys invent those systems solely to screw up colonies???

At least here in the US we had the good sense not to confuse our money with weights or violent actions. A pound is something heavy or something you do when frustrated. It makes no sense to pound your finances (unless they're bad.)

How is it that you folks didn't convert to some metric form of money? Wouldn't it be nice to get paid in kilomoney and make change with millimoney instead of pounding things? Here's a place where you just can't compare to America. We have no sense. Only cents.

I suspect this thread is going to get locked within hours, or perhaps milliminutes, of me posting this.

SupraGuy

@garyd9 said in precision piezo: difference between boards:

Speaking of that, I'd like to register a complaint. Here in America, we inherited our system of measurements from... YOU. (Not you personally, of course, but from England... or the "United" Kingdom.. or Britain.. or whatever you call yourselves these days.) Now that you dumped the illogical system on us, and FORCED us to use it under threat of death and more taxes, you go and change to something else.

Here's a little (veering off topic) history for you that I'm just old enough to remember. in the early 70s, the USA set up an initiative to adopt the metric system. At that point, Canada was NOT going to do so, however pressure was brought to bear from the USA threatening trade relationships if Canada did not follow suit. At least this is how it was told to Canadians who did not want to change. I was pretty young at the time, so the timeline is a little hazy, but starting in 1975, American cars started having km/h printed on the speedometers, with the setting that there would be a complete conversion by 1978. The television started running PSAs telling us about metric temperatures, litres, and kilometers. The Canadian government made the commitment to go completely to the metric system, then the USA... didn't.

The resultant mess here is still a mess 40 years later. Canadian grocery stores charge for produce by the kilogram, and kg is what is on your receipt, but they still post the price per pound on the signs. Hardware stores have metric fasteners in a tiny little corner of the store, while the fractional inch fasteners take entire aisles. Most people here know their height in feet and inches, and look at their driver's license if asked what that is in cm. Similarly, we probably know our weight in pounds, and convert for kilograms. Carpenters still build their walls with 16" stud centres. Measurement gets pretty weird here, but that's also our own damned fault for not going all in one way or the other.

This has caused some pretty serious problems here, up to and including an airliner running out of fuel (The pilot asked for fuel in kilograms, and received fuel in pounds, resulting in having less than half the required fuel in the tank.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

Anyway, the USA made the decision to stay with the English imperial system, Including your very own units of measure that are only valid units within the USA and nowhere else on the planet, just to add in a little more confusion, pretty sure you can't blame anyone else at all for that.

The imperial system is more inherited from the Romans anyway, though it also got a little morphed. the word mile comes from the Latin "mille" for thousand, and was supposed to be a thousand paces. We're still stuck with a lot of Babylonian math (Base 60, which is why there's 60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, and also 360 degrees in a circle -- and why there are so many 12s in things as well, including inches to the foot.) The Romans weren't much for math themselves, thankfully. No wonder though when you consider Roman numerals. At least they had the good sense to grab numbers from the Arabs, but they left a lot to be desired in the actual implementation.

Anyway...

I've been looking at my V2.75 board, which is slightly different from my V2 board, and it's pretty nice for use. The mass of either one isn't really much of a consideration for me, but neither one is exactly heavy. I was playing with wire length. It does say to keep the wires as short as possible, but I think that you could probably use some longer shielded or coax leads. They use long coax leads to piezo pickups in studio-grade audio equipment, after all, so it should be possible for the relatively low-frequency signals that we care about as a contact sensor. (I wanted to have some space between the discs and the board so that I could easily observe the LEDs on-board.

I was also considering mucking about with some of my own, based on the schematic here: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/29e72c_b6fa4fdff11440fe90f1559a85cbd61e.pdf

Mine would be large and clunky, in part because I'd probably substitute parts that I have, since I have a bin with things like quad op-amps, resistors, diodes and breadboard. I should be able to make a functionally identical circuit, but it would all be through-hole components instead of tiny little SMD devices. No idea how it'll work, but I found a pile of little breadboards with TL074s soldered on each, I think I was going to use those for a graphic equalizer at some point (I think I built it using NE5532s instead.)

Sorry for the meandering powt, I didn't get enough sleep last night.

dc42

I think the most logical approach is for the world to adopt a new unit of measurement derived from one of the fundamental physical constants, for example the speed of light in a vacuum. Obviously the distance travelled by light in one second would be far too large a measure to be practically useful. So let's use the distance travelled by light in one nanosecond. As it happens, we already have a unit of measure very close to that distance, so let's redefine and use that. It's called the 'foot'.

SupraGuy

If only the "second" weren't so arbitrary, and no longer connected to what it actually measured in the first place, that being 1/86,400 of the rotational period of the earth. As such, anything based on time is be definition arbitrary, and no different than any other arbitrary measure.

I do like how the metric system ties everything through water, though there are some SI prefixes in place that don't always make sense. Water is of course the easy basis for temperature (Though still arbitrary, since it depends on "standard" atmospheric pressure) 1cm^3 = 1mL = 1g. (This is what I mean by weird prefixes) 1 calorie of energy will raise the temperature of 1g of water by 1 degree (Provided there are no state changes) It's still arbitrary, but at least it's all based on the same stuff.

I demand a new standard of measurement for time! We can implement it when the world starts speaking Esperanto.