Smoothie M2

[Tim]

Yea I checked to be sure that my power supply is plugged in nice and tight and tested around the board to see what kind of voltage I was getting which is pretty even across the board at 23.41v.. I understand that the fets are ran off the VBB.. I used your config file and its on pin 1.23(Q5). Hmm I'm using S3D wonder if this has anything to do with it? Right extruder heats up fine and so does the bed but when I switch over to the left it won't heat up at all and I did test with a multimeter and I get nothing. Are you using Pronterface? Im not sure whats going on since im able to get a thermistor reading on T1 also even by holding my fingers on it a sec it will show a change. bad something or other?

No. . . mea culpa, I may have failed to test the extruder 1 heater (although I swear I remember doing so. . .). I tried just now and get the same behavior as you. I think that there is a configure issue; I'll go debug it. There doesn't seem to be anything amiss with S3D. The code it's sending is correct (M104 S<temp> T1), as far as I know.

[Tim]

Okay, here's the deal: I think I tested the extruder heaters by giving them the M codes in the configuration file, manually, and didn't check to see if the M codes match those that are usually sent by S3D and pronterface. Most of the M codes set in the configure file are the normal ones. Oddly, though, they assigned a different M code to the extruder 1 heater, and also the wait code, even though the extruder name is given as an argument, so there's no need to use different codes for the two extruders.

Anyway, long story short, the config file (I updated the attachment back where I posted the original one) needs:

• temperature_control.hotend2.set_m_code 104 #
  temperature_control.hotend2.set_and_wait_m_code 109 #
  temperature_control.hotend2.designator T1 #

and also I noticed that the name for the main hotend is incorrect:

• temperature_control.hotend.designator T0 #

Possibly it doesn't matter unless there's more than one name assigned to the M104 code, because I had no trouble getting the primary hot-end running, even though S3D was sending it the name "T0" while the config file had the designator set to "T".

[Volcom7114]

Great job. I'm glad I wasn't going nuts over here yet lol. Yea I'm not sure why they would keep all the code the same but have changed some of the simplest codes that are used a good bit but at least you worked it out and it makes sense now..

Thanks a bunch Tim

[Tim]

Yea I'm not sure why they would keep all the code the same but have changed some of the simplest codes that are used a good bit but at least you worked it out and it makes sense now..

Well, they do have the standard codes for most things, so my guess is that dual extruder setups are not very standardized. It's only the extruder no. 2 heater that has different codes. On the one hand, you'd think that whatever slic3r (and S3D) does would be considered a de facto standard, but on the other hand, the Smoothieboard was not designed just for 3D printers.

[lem]

Hi, Tim.

Now that you have had the Smoothie board for a while, could you post your general impression of the board and do a short comparison to the Rambo?

Thanks......
Larry

[Tim]

Now that you have had the Smoothie board for a while, could you post your general impression of the board and do a short comparison to the Rambo?

I would say that my impression after using it for a while is about the same as my initial impression. As far as the quality of the print produced, the whole M2 design determines that more than the controller board, although the controller board is certainly a part of that. But quality always degrades as a function of speed. Within limits, you can improve the quality of a print by slowing everything down, but if you go too slow the extruder will start melting layers that have already been put down, so there's certainly a value to being able to produce the same quality print at a faster speed. The smoothieboard excels at this; I was able to run a print at a blistering 200 mm/s, and while the print was certainly of lesser quality, it was acceptable. Lesser machines might shake themselves apart at that speed. Otherwise, I have been running just about everything at 100 mm/s, even filaments which other people say they have to slow down to 60 mm/s or lower. I really need to get a spool of ninjaflex; that's the toughest test for speed. But bear in mind that I have only one M2, so I am unable to do a side-by-side comparison. Everything I say should be taken as anecdotal evidence.

The RAMBo is really a nice, well-designed board, so I still think that the Smoothieboard is not such a huge improvement that anybody is going to feel compelled to rush off and buy one. I mentioned somewhere in a previous post that I had an older-model RAMBo with the 8-microstep steppers and a horrible hardware hack job that I did to replace the circuit breaker with an automotive fuse. I was wanting to upgrade the controller board, but it wasn't worth the price just to get 16-microstep contollers, since everything else on the RAMBo was the same, and my hack job, however ugly, was working fine. So the Smoothieboard seemed like a good opportunity to go beyond that, to try something a bit new and different.

Apart from the increased speed, my favorite features of the Smoothieboard are:

(1) Remote filesystem over USB---Quite possibly the best improvement of all. You just mount the Smoothieboard SD card on your computer as a remote filesystem, and copy files back and forth. The SD card never leaves the machine. I have seen instructions saying that the remote filesystem should be unmounted before printing over USB, but I tried running both at the same time and had no problems at all. Although if you do run both at the same time, probably you don't want to copy a gigabyte file across that link at the same time as it's transmitting data to the printer.

(2) The config file---many simple changes that would require a complete firmware update on a RAMBo can just be edited in the config file, which the Smoothieboard reads on startup. That avoids unnecessary firmware updates. It's a big issue for hardware tinkerers like me, although I think typical users wouldn't really care unless a must-have upgrade comes along.

(3) The firmware---flashing firmware is trivial. You compile the Smoothieware on a desktop, then just copy the resulting "firmware.bin" file to the Smoothieboard, and power cycle. The Smoothieware finds the file and automatically re-flashes.

(4) Extra outputs---I've still got a couple of medium-drive outputs that are not being used, although I've used up all the stepper controllers. I'm already using one of the extra switched outputs for my LED lights. Command "M42" turns the lights on and "M43" turns them off.

(5) Ethernet---Theoretically you can upload prints from anywhere in the world using a web browser (and appropriate routing through your firewall). I have not been able to get this interface working. Probably a firewall and/or router issue, and I haven't had time to look into it. If it works, then the M2 becomes a true networked printer without the additional Octoprint hardware that a number of people use to get that capability out of a RAMBo.

[jimc]

if you or anyone else needs ninjaflex at some point and want snow white just send me a pm. i have a case of 25 spools here i bought at a special price. ill sell you whatever you need for what i paid for it. basically dealer cost.

[Jules]

if you or anyone else needs ninjaflex at some point and want snow white just send me a pm. i have a case of 25 spools here i bought at a special price. ill sell you whatever you need for what i paid for it. basically dealer cost.

Ooh! Ooh! I'm an "anyone else"! I'd like to eventually test out a spool, color doesn't matter. Are they full kg spools, or half?

[jimc]

Ninjaflex all comes in 1/2kg spools

[Jules]

Ninjaflex all comes in 1/2kg spools

Wasn't sure - hadn't even gotten around to looking into it yet. But i still def. want to try it.