Retrofitting a Duet 2 wifi into Makergear M2 Rev. E

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Farr0wn3d
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Retrofitting a Duet 2 wifi into Makergear M2 Rev. E

Post by Farr0wn3d » Mon Nov 15, 2021 1:18 am

Hey everyone, after I blew the Z stepper driver on my printer's original Rambo board, I decided to upgrade to a Duet 2 wifi. I just wanted to make this post now that the printer is back up and running and say how pleased I am with the upgrade, and to recommend for anyone to do the same if they are interested in making their M2 quieter, more accurate, and producing cleaner prints.

I've only had the printer back up and running for a week or so, and I've been printing several hours per day, but in this amount of time the main things I've noticed were:

-I can sit next to the printer without noise cancelling headphones for longer periods of time. The motion noise is almost inaudible compared to the fans now.
-movements are much smoother, and I havent noticed any stalls like I often ran into with the rambo
-small holes now seem much more true-to-size compared to the rambo, I'm assuming this has something to do with the duet's higher microstepping and that it doesnt slow down as much for holes, allowing extra material to ooze out while it completes the circle.
-the horizontal surfaces are cleaner now, especially at the ends and beginnings of lines where the head down decelerate and accelerate when reversing direction. It seems like the extrusion stays more proportional to the speed of the head now, which leaves the overall surface consistency much more uniform.

Hopefully this post pushed someone closer to getting a Duet, as I wish I had done this sooner.
Jeremy

airscapes
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Re: Retrofitting a Duet 2 wifi into Makergear M2 Rev. E

Post by airscapes » Mon Nov 15, 2021 4:48 am

Could you provide the details as in what needed to be done other than R&R the board.. What firmware was used and what settings in said firmware needed to be altered. I have Nijaflex dampers under the motors which takes are of the noise but I would really love holes to be the right size so I don't have to make them all .4mm larger at the model level so they are correct.
Please provide as man details as you have time as I would like to do this alteration.

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Farr0wn3d
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Re: Retrofitting a Duet 2 wifi into Makergear M2 Rev. E

Post by Farr0wn3d » Tue Nov 16, 2021 3:50 am

I'll try to get as much info as I can here. Just an FYI since this is a large part of what is driving your decision, I printed a fan guard last night in PETG with a 0.25mm nozzle and I made the screw holes 3.5mm in fusion, and in real life they were 3.25mm. I attribute this disparity to thermal shrinkage, but maybe you will feel differently.

When I swapped boards, I took a few photos of the wiring of the Rambo before it disconnected everything. First thing I did was select the orientation of the board so that I could trim all the wires to fit without much excess. The Duet comes with new plugs and pins, as well as wire ferrules for the heater connections, and main power connections. If you dont already have a molex crimper, you're going to want one. Duet has really good write ups on how to connect and configure their boards. I used this link and went with the instructions for the board I purchased: https://duet3d.dozuki.com/ Attached is an image of what the board looked like when it was wired up. Much cleaner than the original setup, IMO.

I was a little hesitant to do this swap as it seemed intimidating, but once I was into it it wasnt bad and the info on the website helped a lot. Once it was all wired up, it was time to configure it to work with the printer. I used this configuration tool to produce the config.g file that the duet uses when it starts up to properly run with your setup. This file is all g-code (there are some differences compared to the marlin native g-code) and is used every time the board starts up, so any change you make is implemented the next power cycle/reset. Here is a link to the RepRapFirmware flavor of g-code https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Gcode

before you go to far, you need to update the firmware for the board itself, the duet web control server, and several other things. The write up on the site walks you though this. I also got a panel due display, which I highly recommend. It has its own firmware updates also.

It took probably 15 passes through the configuration tool to get all the settings just the way I wanted. The only thing left over after that was sorting out the z homing, because for whatever reason it would do a double pass for X and Y, but not Z. It would just send the bed hauling ass downward and when it hit the switch, that was home... only problem was it had a fair amount of momentum and wasnt consistent. The alternative was to do it really slowly, but that took forever from top to bottom. I ended up making my own homing file for z and everything was great after that.

A few things to know ahead of time with the config files:
-just like with the rambo, where there are certain parameters that can be saved to the EEPROM, you can save setting to a file called config-override.g which is optionally read after the config.g file. I saved my PID values to there using the same M500 command from marlin.
-with RRF (reprapfirmware) you have the option of using PID values, or their own version of them which are supposed to be more accurate (this is what i used, and my temps are very steady
-the board must have the PID's tuned for the bed out of the box, or it will throw errors for going too slow when you try to heat the bed

This is all I can remember off the top of my head. If you have any other questions you're welcome to ask and I'll do my best to help out if I can.

Jeremy
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airscapes
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Re: Retrofitting a Duet 2 wifi into Makergear M2 Rev. E

Post by airscapes » Tue Nov 16, 2021 5:01 am

Thanks so much! I have a couple weeks off in Dec.. think I will buy this board now and try an do the update on my time of!

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Farr0wn3d
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Re: Retrofitting a Duet 2 wifi into Makergear M2 Rev. E

Post by Farr0wn3d » Tue Nov 16, 2021 5:14 am

Perfect! a couple weeks will be far more than enough. If I were to have sat down and did it all start to finish I could have banged it out in a weekend.

airscapes
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Re: Retrofitting a Duet 2 wifi into Makergear M2 Rev. E

Post by airscapes » Tue Nov 16, 2021 2:21 pm

Can you post a link to where you bought the board and crimpers? I see a lot of clones but have never messed with clones of Arduinos or other components I have used in projects.. I assume you bought the genuine item for a first time go? Also, I currently use octoprint as my interface, does the duet software take the place of octoprint.. from what I have read in the past 20 minutes seems to suggest that..
Did this fit in the stock metal enclosure of the M2, if not what did you use? I guess I could extend everything and put this outside my enclosure which would be a lot more complicated but better in the long run. I never exceed 100F in the enclosure so I don't think it matters, rambo is going strong.

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Re: Retrofitting a Duet 2 wifi into Makergear M2 Rev. E

Post by Farr0wn3d » Thu Nov 18, 2021 4:26 am

This is where I bought it from:
https://spool3d.ca/duet-2-wifi-3d-print ... rol-board/
I got the board with the integrated antenna, but I would do the external antenna if I bought it again. The signal isnt super strong and I'm not that far from the router.

I've had my crimpers since I bought the M2, but these should do for you:
https://spool3d.ca/crimping-tool/
https://spool3d.ca/tubular-terminal-cri ... terminals/
The first set is for doing the pinned connectors and the second is for crimping the wire ferrules

The short answer is that yes, your octoprint will take the place of DWC but you can run both simultaneously if you want. Whichever one is streaming the gcode will be the one that has specific the metrics for the print.I got familiar with the duet web control interface (which has a lot of similarities to octoprint) while I was getting the printer set up, but I am now getting octoprint set up to be my main interface since I need remote access that includes a webcam, and I have a palette, so I dont have much choice for any prints that require it. DWC seems to support a network enabled webcam, but its going to be tricky to access DWC remotely and securely anyway, so I'm going the path of least resistance.

The short answer is, I dont think it will fit in the original enclosure. It is larger than the stock board for sure. I discarded the original enclosure a long time ago in favor of one I designed which housed the Geeetech display and some digital thermometers. I'm currently working on a new enclosure that will hold the panel due display.

airscapes
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Re: Retrofitting a Duet 2 wifi into Makergear M2 Rev. E

Post by airscapes » Thu Nov 18, 2021 6:04 pm

Thanks! Will have to think about this a bit, not sure I have room for external housing for board and display along with all the Octprint stuff and sounds like I will keep using octoprint..

airscapes
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Re: Retrofitting a Duet 2 wifi into Makergear M2 Rev. E

Post by airscapes » Sat Nov 20, 2021 7:59 pm

Hey do you have a Btouch or have you manually tried the mesh leveling on your M2 This really has been an interest of mine due to the drooping of the glass when heated to 110 for ABS. Just don't want the Btouch installed all the time.. was wondering if it could be mounted every 6 months or so to get things level using the manual leveling assistant of the Duet then us it to make a map. After that remove it from the machine and just load the map. Sounds like they have a way to set the offset similar to the M206 Zxx.xx M500 but not sure how that plays with the Mesh??
As you can tell I am looking for ways to justify this upgrade and the amount of work it will take, being the printer is working as it did when new.
I think if I go, I will go with wired as I have no need for wireless as there is a Ethernet switch right there. Also not sure why I need an LCD screen, I don't have one now and do not wish for one. Since I have Ocotprint setup I assume it is plug and lay with the Duet once everything is configured. I assume both can be used at the same time, Octoprint to print and the web interface of the duet to interact with the printer when needed.
Does the board come with and SD card and if not what grade is needed?
Update.. Just ordered the board, skipped the bltouch for now.. I need Molex crimpers and I guess SD card as it does not say it is included... ok little more googling and looks like the card is included, nice!

airscapes
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Re: Retrofitting a Duet 2 wifi into Makergear M2 Rev. E

Post by airscapes » Sun Nov 21, 2021 2:09 am

Looks like all the fan outputs on the duet are 12v. What the deal with running the M2 24v fans?

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