13 Temperatures sensors (and more) for an R&D printer

bricoletout

Dear duet3D community,

I'm Loïc from France. My company is building a 3D printer to print technical polymers (PEEK for example).
We need to monitor (and record) a minimum of 13 temperatures. The most of the sensor will be PT100.
And we need to control ~8 heaters (cartridges, bed, chamber…).
Now we are using a good old ramps 1.4 with marlin but it’s seems to be not the best. We are using all the pins available on the board and we still miss some.
Also marlin is not the best to use an extruder with multiple heaters (for a pellets extruder we need 3 cartridges at different temperatures).
Here are my questions:

I saw that with the duet3d board we can use extensions boards. Could we add more than one extension ? Because I read 3 heaters on the main board and 5 heater on the expansion = 8. And maybe we will need more.
Is there enough PINS ton connect 13 temperature’s sensors ?
Which firmware will allow us to control multiple cartridge for one extruder ?
What slicer/ controller do you recommend to record temperatures during all the printing process ? Octoprint ?
Is the Duet3D 3 board ready to use Nema 23 ? I think so because I read (4.45A RMS, 6.3A peak)

Thank you for your answer, I really appreciate.

dc42

@bricoletout said in 13 Temperatures sensors (and more) for an R&D printer:

Here are my questions:

I saw that with the duet3d board we can use extensions boards. Could we add more than one extension ? Because I read 3 heaters on the main board and 5 heater on the expansion = 8. And maybe we will need more.

You can daisy-chain expansion boards. The most I have tested with is 3 expansion boards and one tool board, but the theoretical limit is much higher.

Is there enough PINS ton connect 13 temperature’s sensors ?

The Duet 3 6HC main board has 1 very high current heater output, 3 high current heater outputs, 6 medium current outputs, and 9 I/O connectors. The EXP3HC has 3 high curren toutputs, 6 mediumj current outputs, and 6 I/O connectors. Any or all of these outputs can drive heaters, although you would need to use SSRs in some cases (e.g. when using the I/O connectors, or when using the low current outputs unless the heater current is low enough). So you could drive all 8 heaters form the main board if you wanted to.

For temperature sensors, the main board has 4 thermistor/PT1000 inputs, and each expansion board has 3. Both boards can also support up to 2 dual PT100 or dual thermocouple daughter boards. So if you are prepared to use a mixture of (thermistor or PT1000) and (thermocouple or PT100) sensors, you can connect up to 8 temperature sensors to the main board and 7 to each expansion board.

Which firmware will allow us to control multiple cartridge for one extruder ?

RepRapFirmware 3 currently supports up to 64 sensors and 12 heaters, of which up to 9 may be bed heaters and 4 may be chamber heaters. I can easily increase heater limits if anyone need more. It's currently limited to a maximum of 4 heaters per tool, but on Duet 3 I can easily increase that if you need more. All the heaters can be set to different temperatures.

What slicer/ controller do you recommend to record temperatures during all the printing process ?

For Duet 3 we recommend you use a Raspberry Pi 3B or 4 attached to the Duet using the ribbon cable we supply, and use Duet Web Control to monitor and control the print.

Is the Duet3D 3 board ready to use Nema 23 ? I think so because I read (4.45A RMS, 6.3A peak)

Yes. I test Duet 3 with Nema 17, Nema 23 and Nema 34 motors.

HTH David

bricoletout

David,

Thank you for this very detailed (and fast) answer. That's awesome. The DUET3D will be our choice for sure.
We will use SSR if needed. That's not a problem. We already use SSR with 220V cartridges.
And for the PT100 we can also use PT100 amplifier to use them on the PT1000 inputs I think.

If I have any question I wil not hesitate to come back here.

Loïc.

dc42

@bricoletout said in 13 Temperatures sensors (and more) for an R&D printer:

And for the PT100 we can also use PT100 amplifier to use them on the PT1000 inputs I think.

No, for PT100 sensors you should use our PT100 daughter boards, https://www.duet3d.com/DuetAddons/PT100_DaughterBoard.

bricoletout

@dc42 said in 13 Temperatures sensors (and more) for an R&D printer:

@bricoletout said in 13 Temperatures sensors (and more) for an R&D printer:

And for the PT100 we can also use PT100 amplifier to use them on the PT1000 inputs I think.

No, for PT100 sensors you should use our PT100 daughter boards, https://www.duet3d.com/DuetAddons/PT100_DaughterBoard.

Ok thank you for the answer.