Single V4 Extruder First Look.

[sthone]

First thank you for your service... Welcome to the M2 club your going to love it and it sounds like you bought everything you need right off that bat so you should be good there for awhile. You made the right decision going with the M2, I've heard a lot of people are disappointed with the Makerbots but you'll be hard pressed to find an unhappy M2 owner.

As for Mods on the M2 there really aren't any mods that you will "Need" to do, this thing just runs awesome right out of the box. (so to speak, you do have to put it together) There are things you can print to make life easier like tool holders, fan bracket, etc. but its more of "wanting" different upgrade like the V4 then "needing" them you will be very satisfied with the stock M2. The only thing recommended is to print spare motor and extruder mounts just to have back ups. Other than that just put it together and start printing, you'll figure the "want" parts later on and if you run into trouble along the way there are so many helpful people here on the forum and Rick's customer support is top notch too.

Again welcome to the Club....

-Steve

[nelsond6]

I second what Steve says. The M2 is great as is. I am only upgrading to the v4 as I wanted to have a second nozzle, but the v3b is still working great for me. The only thing I wish I would have done sooner was setup octoprint as being able to remotely watch/control your prints is great. Have fun with your new printer.
-Dan

[msmollin]

+1 on the above 2 comments.The M2 is great out of the box. Welcome to the club, and thank you for your service!


Great write up of the v4. The pictures are going to be immensely helpful when I'm triple-checking my upgrade. How's it printing so far for you? What have you put through it? Change any settings from the v3b? Sorry for twenty questions

[sthone]

Thanks, I've only run PLA through it so far at all the same settings I used on the 3VB (basically stock S3D settings) but it's printing great. I plan on trying ABS this weekend and I have some flex stuff to try too I just need to find something worth printing in it.

-Steve

[JohnnyRobot]

So... Where can I get me one of these bad boys? It's not listed on the MakerGear web site...

[insta]

So... Where can I get me one of these bad boys? It's not listed on the MakerGear web site...

http://www.makergear.com/products/m2-upgrades

[DrRobot]

Just ordered single v4 upgrade One question: After installation, do I need to change anything in Simplify 3D? Do I need to calibrate the temperature sensor and the max allowed temperature in the firmware? Thanks!

[Jules]

Just ordered single v4 upgrade One question: After installation, do I need to change anything in Simplify 3D? Do I need to calibrate the temperature sensor and the max allowed temperature in the firmware? Thanks!

Nope! You will need to reset the Z-Stop (and do the Z-Offset and Filament Drive Screw tension calibrations), but that's pretty darned easy with a V4, so good choice!

[DrRobot]

Just ordered single v4 upgrade One question: After installation, do I need to change anything in Simplify 3D? Do I need to calibrate the temperature sensor and the max allowed temperature in the firmware? Thanks!

Nope! You will need to reset the Z-Stop (and do the Z-Offset and Filament Drive Screw tension calibrations), but that's pretty darned easy with a V4, so good choice!

Thanks for the quick reply! I finally pulled the trigger and hopefully it's easier to maintain than v3b as far as jams.

[Tim]

Do I need to calibrate the temperature sensor and the max allowed temperature in the firmware?

Nope!

That's not entirely true. . . The v4 has a different enough heating characteristic from the v3b that you should do a PID auto-tune run. Fortunately, the PID values are held in EEPROM so you don't need to mess with the actual firmware, although it's always a good idea to take the values you got back from the auto-tune run and plug them back into the firmware source, so you don't have to think about it if you ever end up re-flashing your firmware for whatever reason.

Running auto-tune is pretty easy. Just have the machine turned on and send the command

Code: Select all

M303 E0 S200 C8

Then apply those values using

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M301 P<Kp_value> I<Ki_value> D<Kd_value>

And then commit to EEPROM with

Code: Select all

M500

The other two choices are (1) keep the values from the V3b, which are certainly not correct but likely to be close enough that you won't notice the difference, or (2) use some known PID values on the principle that they don't vary much from machine to machine. I'd give you my numbers, but I'm running a different firmware and have no idea if the values are compatible or not.