Testers Needed

The place to discuss your hardware and software/firmware modifications...
sprior
Posts: 384
Joined: Thu Apr 10, 2014 8:37 pm

Re: Testers Needed

Post by sprior » Sat Jan 02, 2016 5:59 am

Insta, since you're obviously familiar with modding the firmware... So to enable dual extruders can I start with the test firmware from Makergear and change only the number of extruders config line and that's all I need to change?

User avatar
insta
Posts: 2007
Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2014 3:59 am

Re: Testers Needed

Post by insta » Sat Jan 02, 2016 5:54 pm

Yes, and it's good enough if you don't have a Viki. I found the stock firmware quite lacking with a Viki.

If you're having trouble connecting with the new firmware, it's the baudrate. Set it back to 115200.
Custom 3D printing for you or your business -- quote [at] pingring.org

sprior
Posts: 384
Joined: Thu Apr 10, 2014 8:37 pm

Re: Testers Needed

Post by sprior » Thu Jan 07, 2016 6:59 am

I installed the max Z upgrade tonight and have an addition I think should be made to the instructions.
Some people who are quite familiar with programming Arduinos, but haven't recently updated the firmware on their M2
might not remember that you actually do need to plug the M2 into power and cannot power the RAMBo board via USB like
a normal Arduino. This can result in lots of wasted time and hair pulling when trying to upload the firmware and see
communications timeouts.

Guess how I know this.

I've got the firmware updated now, will actually try the setup tomorrow.

jprochnow
Posts: 113
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2015 3:22 pm

Re: Testers Needed

Post by jprochnow » Thu Jan 07, 2016 7:52 am

I want to get in on being a tester. Is there any open spots left?

sprior
Posts: 384
Joined: Thu Apr 10, 2014 8:37 pm

Re: Testers Needed

Post by sprior » Sun Jan 10, 2016 6:58 pm

I did a bunch of prints with the Z Max setup yesterday and noticed a potential issue. After the bed confirms the stop and starts to rise it does a nice Y shift to avoid hitting the clip, but then the nozzle comes close to the bed a bit higher up before moving off to the right for the purge. The problem is that if the nozzle leaked at all during warmup the glob makes contact on the bed and then might be drawn across the bed and could get incorporated into the print.

Maybe it would be better if the nozzle moves all the way to the off the right purge position before it actually makes it to the top?

User avatar
sthone
Posts: 897
Joined: Tue Jul 08, 2014 8:25 pm
Location: Connecticut
Contact:

Re: Testers Needed

Post by sthone » Wed Jan 13, 2016 4:33 pm

I always assumed that initial touch to the left side of the bed was to wipe the nozzle before to went over to purge. I always just make it a practice to snip that excess off with the tweezers while the bed is coming up the first time and then grab the purge too so it can't loop back and stick to the nozzle this way when it goes to print the first layer the nozzle is totally clean.
____________________________________________________
See my projects at https://www.theneverendingprojectslist.com

User avatar
insta
Posts: 2007
Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2014 3:59 am

Re: Testers Needed

Post by insta » Wed Jan 13, 2016 10:56 pm

Anybody have thoughts about the "reference" height being the top left rather than the middle of the bed? That screw is a royal pain to try and adjust, so it can be fixed height and use the Z indexing to zero that out, then use the other 3 corners for leveling.
Custom 3D printing for you or your business -- quote [at] pingring.org

Josh
Site Admin
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Apr 10, 2014 3:32 pm

Re: Testers Needed

Post by Josh » Thu Jan 14, 2016 8:52 pm

Alright, things have settled down from the holidays etc... So, some answers - there are two offsets in the firmware. First, there is the standard Z_MAX_LENGTH - in the old system, this told the firmware theoretically how tall it could print; in the new system, this tells the printer the distance from Z0 that the Z Max endstop activates. So say the Z_MAX_LENGTH is set to 200, and there is no M206 homing offset applied - this has the firmware think that when the Z Max endstop activates, the bed is 200mm from the nozzle. Due to all the possible variations you guys have seen (bed surface, leveling height, hotend type, and even down to minor differences in how the V4 hotend is installed), that number is off by some amount - the M206 homing offset is the second offset, which tells us how far from the theoretical Z Max position, the endstop actually activates. The exact process in the app is to zero the homing offset, go up until close, then have the user move the bed up until it's at the correct first layer height; from there, we take the actual Z position and invert it - if we were 7.28mm from theoretical Z0, we then set the Z homing offset to M206 Z-7.28, to tell the firmware that actually, the Z Max endstop activates at Z192.72, not Z200, so when moving to Z0 we only need to move 192.72mm. (I typed up all of that live, so the math might be off but the basic process is valid - this is the same basic process as posted in my first bottom Z endstop topic from last year)

Using M206 to adjust the fine position of the first layer is valid, and is something I'm working on adding to the app.

insta - if you mean "reference" height as in, the height that the other points are leveled against, you can use whichever point you want; the app process just has you choose whichever point is highest first, then level against that, but you can iterate through using whichever points you wish.

All - I've been working on the app UI scaling issues that some of you have encountered, and will be posting a test program soon (probably this afternoon), which will test a specific solution I've been playing with - if those of you with the major scaling issues (on 4k and retina especially) could grab it and test, then let me know how it looks (and maybe even email some screenshots), it would be greatly appreciated.

Finally, again, thank you all for the feedback (positive, negative, neutral - it's all valuable) - I'm glad the upgrade seems to be working well for all of you X)

sprior
Posts: 384
Joined: Thu Apr 10, 2014 8:37 pm

Re: Testers Needed

Post by sprior » Fri Jan 15, 2016 2:41 am

Is the new test code available yet? I need to relevel the bed and set Z anyway.

User avatar
jimc
Posts: 2888
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2014 11:30 pm
Location: mullica, nj
Contact:

Re: Testers Needed

Post by jimc » Fri Jan 15, 2016 2:58 am

josh just give us a link for the updated app when its available and ill give it go. the one I really had problems with was on my windows machine. that's the one with the 4k monitor.

Post Reply