Posts made by kazolar

I found the single 5V pwm output limiting, plus to get the most precise control, an analog 5v fed to the CPAP blower driver board is most accurate. Tried a few ways to do that and settled on this board https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079BH3SHX?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details -- it's powered by 24v, will take the pwm output of a regular fan output and create a clean 0-5v analog output. If you run it at 100-200hz you can get the low end to be around .5v, and that's as slow as the CPAP blower can go. I can go the full spectrum and have perfect output control. Not sure of another source for these boards, but I will use them for duet and for klipper configs since they're simple and the best part is the fan control is super accurate.

@T3P3Tony i did a few more tests with the bench PSU, i current limited the fan, and it just drops RPM, doesn't do anything else. Even on powerup it ramps up with < 300 mA and maxes out at 600. I suspect with the amount of airflow it produces i will never run it at full throttle.

@T3P3Tony so how would this manifest with the tool board -- can I use it with the toolboard or no? I've tested it on the bench and it never peaks above even 650ma even at startup.

Question regarding 12v reg on the Tool Board.
I have a fan which is rated at 12V 1A, I was planning to run it of an external DC-DC converter, but when I ran it on a bench supply it pulls .6a at max RPM. So it looks like the rating is wrong. That's the part cooling fan, the hotend fan is < .1a -- so if I'm trusting the bench PSU -- I'm under 800ma. Is this OK to run directly of the toolboard? What should I look for if it starts pulling more current than toolboard likes?

@dc42 hopefully you know what changes made it work now.

@dc42 I installed 3.5 beta 2. The problem appears to have been fixed.

@dc42 I did the full test during lunch. Can confirm now I am on the 2.4 bootloader.
Here is the gcode

G28
G32
T0
G1 X300 Y300 F20000
T3
G1 X300 Y300 F20000
G28 A
G1 X300 Y300 F20000

Last line is where A doesn't go to 300 it makes a little squeak and says it went there. Note A in all cases in DWC shows home position -34.7, even when it's being operated by T3.
3.4.5 didn't work for me, I went backwards in order 3.4.4, 3.4.2, 3.4.0 -- power cycling after each complete flash. Only 3.4.0 worked and the last gcode line moved the toolhead to X300.
I tried upgrading from 3.4.0 to 3.4.2 -- and same result, last line didn't work. I reverted to 3.4.0. And it works again.

here is homea.g in case it's remotely helpful
G91
G1 A-700 F6000 H1
G1 A3 F500 H2
G1 A-10 F300 H1
G1 A0.2 F3000 H2
G90

here are tool definitions
M563 P0 D0 H1 F0 ; Define tool 0 to use extruder drive 0 and heater 1
M563 P1 D1 H2 X4 F2
M563 P2 D2 H3 Y3 X5 F4
M563 P3 D3 H4 Y3 X6 F6

note this is only a problem with A axis, UVW which represent my other mapped axis do not have this issue -- so in the gcode above I can replace T3 with T1 or T2 and replace A with U V or W and the last line will work fine.

@dc42 yes bootloader is 2.3 -- I expected that it would get updated during the various firmware updates I preformed, didn't even occur to check. Will update now and try latest firmware

@T3P3Tony sorry it took me a while to test, but the problem persists with the updated 3.4.5
Command is switch to tool 4 --
T3
issue G1
G1 X300 Y300 -- toolhead goes to the correct location
G28 A -- home the assigned X
toolhead homes -- this is not the issue
G1 X300 Y300 -- toolhead doesn't come back to X300 -- this is the problem

PS I downgraded to 3.4.4 -- Same issue.
I kept going back -- I ended up going back to 3.4.0 until the problem went away

@dc42 I finally got around to re-testing this. I downgraded to 3.4.2 (that was the major release I found quickly with all the web archives)
The problem went away, I was re-calibrating the machine and switching to 9mm belts and to mechanical switches to replace optical switches (my own experiment trying to find repeatable calibration, unrelated to the issue), so took a while to test again. The calibration process is adjusting UVWA axis home positions to match XY coordinate space. Now all is put back together. Am on 3.4.2 -- all works fine. I did a couple of rounds of homing A and then re-issuing G1 command with X Y coordinate for the toolhead A is mapped to, and it works properly. My config is duet3 6HC, 2 EXP3HC, and 4 toolboards. A axis is on the 1st expansion board. W axis is on the 2nd expansion board, 3.4.5 had no issue with UVW axis, but had a problem with A axis. 3.4.2 works fine now.

@Phaedrux config.g

@o_lampe I set up all axis to be linear
M584 Y0.5:0.0 R0
M584 U0.4:0.1 R0
M584 X0.2 R0
M584 V0.3 R0
M584 W2.0 R0
M584 A1.0 R0
M584 Z2.2:2.1:1.2:1.1 R0
M584 E101.0:102.0:103.0:104.0 R0
And after A axis is homed, when I tell it to go to center it goes from -34.7 to 299.4 in a micro-move -- basically instantly.

Also this was not an issue prior to 3.4.5, it was working fine with 3.4.1, and rotary mapping was introduced earlier.

I have 4 extruders - 2 gantries, 4th tool is mapped to Axis U->Y A->X.
When I calibrate, I dial in the min/max of each axis --
I send the tool to the middle of the bed with G1 X300 Y300 Z60 -- it sits above a camera I can see the nozzle in. All works fine, until if I do G28 A -- it homes A, then if I do G1 X300 Y300 Z60, it does nothing -- it does a tiny little move, but it should be moving A across from -30 to 300, it's not. It used to prior to 3.4.5 -- earlier 3.4 release worked fine with that calibration procedure. Oddly enough same exact calibration works with axis U, V,W -- but A has this oddity.

@Phaedrux got a new thermal camera today, and examined the basement of machine with the printer in a homed state and all steppers powered.
Thermal camera shows 23c on the hottest components. M122 B4 reports 34c on one board -- is it worth an RMA, or this is just a misconfigured temp reader? That 3hc board only handles 2 nema 23 2.4a steppers and corresponding endstops. There is another 3hc board that has the other pair of nema 23 steppers end stops -- same exact setup, part of the quad Z gantry setup, and that board reports 25c in M122 B3. Thermal imaging shows both boards having the same hot spots and same temperature distribution.

@phaedrux on startup after being off for multiple hours all other boards report 22c, main, and 3 3hc boards, the 4th says 31c, I checked board with ir sensor and and flir style cam sensor, all look the same. Nothing is legit 31c. So looks like the 3hc board mcu temp sensor is off.
I ran the boards for a couple hours, with cooling, all other boards top out at 25-26c, the other one says 34-35. But inothing on it anywhere near that.

M912 only seems to apply to the main MCU temp.
Looks like one of my 4 3HC boards needs an adjustment -- checking the board with ir sensor, and thermocouple -- it's no different than the rest, but it reports 34c while the rest report 25c -- real temp is 23c, so 25 is close enough, 34 is pretty far out there.

@dc42 my machine has 2 gantries with 2 independent heads on each. So as I called before a quad. 2 of the tools can be fully independent of each other, z is shared. If there is a way to synch z moves, this would be a cool project.

@dc42 I figured out I don't need to define individual axis anyway, just combine the end stops. No need for extra axis -- would be good if M119 would report the state of each end stop pin in the combined M574 definition. No good way to be sure you have the right end stop configured with the right stepper.

I did this
M584 Y0.5:0.0 U0.4:0.1 X0.2 V0.3 W2.2 A1.2 E1.0:1.1:2.0:2.1 Z3.2:3.1:4.2:4.1
M574 Y1 S1 P"io3.in+io1.in"
M574 U2 S1 P"io6.in+io4.in"
M574 X1 S1 P"io8.in"
M574 V2 S1 P"io2.in"
M574 W2 S1 P"2.io0.in"
M574 A1 S1 P"1.io0.in"
M574 Z1 S1 P"3.io0.in+3.io1.in+4.io5.in+4.io4.in"

that works fine and no extra axis definitions.

I defined my axis as follows
M584 Y0.5:0.0 U0.4:0.1 X0.2 V0.3 W2.2 A1.2 E1.0:1.1:2.0:2.1 Z3.2:3.1:4.2:4.1 B3.1 C4.2 D4.1 'A0.0 'B0.1
If I add P7 to hide the axis I don't want to see in the UI BCDab, then the homing for those axis doesn't work. I.e my homez.g script looks like this

M584 Z3.2 B3.1 C4.2 D4.1
G91
G1 Z6 B6 C6 D6 F450 H2
G1 Z-500 B-500 C-500 D-500 F450 H1
G1 Z5 B5 C5 D5 F450 H2
G1 Z-10 B-10 C-10 D-10 F100 H1
G1 Z0.2 B0.2 C0.2 D0.2
M584 Z3.2:3.1:4.2:4.1
M671 X708:708:-95:-95 Y615:0:0:615 S5
G92 Z-1.3 B-1.3 C-1.3 D-1.3
G90

if I had P7 in the initial M584 in config.g, then the homing doesn't move the BCD axis, if I don't use the hide parameter, everything homes properly.
I'm on latest 3.4 firmware

@deckingman thank you. I was hoping not to have to replace current wiring, so having the connection be made close to where cable chains exit will be best, sounds like I'll be able to do that. Almost done printing my expansion enclosures. Will start migrating the wiring next week. Would also be nice to configure control board fans to be MCU temperature dependent, probably ok to have all fans in each enclosure be linked of the main MCU temperature.