Jump to content

ddurant

Dormant
  • Posts

    286
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by ddurant

  1. The UP! machines do the same thing. I suspect it's not overly interesting stuff and is basically just glue but don't really know..
  2. That looks pretty small on X/Y, which means heat management is going to be a real hassle. Print slower, print cooler, put a fan in front of the machine to help cool it. If you're using skienforge, try using Multiply and printing multiple copies at once..
  3. You don't really need to reslice, though you can if you want.. Just edit the gcode file and look for M104 and M109 commands. Those ones set the temperature. The prints look fine to me!
  4. If a motor loses steps, then you'll hear that. It makes a very strange noise because the motor jumps a bit backwards instead of forwards.Always? I think the theory is that it's losing 1-2 (or some smallish number of..) steps at a time instead of the dreaded something-is-blocking-the-path-to-my-nozzle skipping where it loses a bunch at a time.
  5. Starting with this... ..I get normalized lengths of: 1/16 93mm1/8 92mm1/4 90.5mm1/2 91.25mm From my measuring last night, I can easily believe that there's a 1-2% measurement error, which makes the lengths above virtually identical. I understand that the number of steps needed to get these lengths are very different. I was just saying that if the motors are losing steps, I'd have expected the lengths to be more different. If something requires enough torque that the motor is losing 7% of the steps at 1/16th microstepping, I would have guessed that 1/2 microstepping would have more than enough force to not lose any steps.. edit: and, hey, I'm not an expert AT ALL in this stuff.. Just 'splaining my admitedly-naive view of things..
  6. Ok, that took me a minute to get but you're saying that the length doesn't matter - it's the number of steps needed to do that length.. Uh.. Right? Still, doesn't it seem a bit suspiciously coincidental that the length numbers are (virtually) identical? I certainly don't have one..
  7. Yes but not really.. They're the same in that they're both slicers but the underlying way they do things is really different.. SF is more setup to be able to drop in new modules that do interesting things (like, recently, Skin) but it's a more raw interface - you've got access to a bazillion knobs and dials and levers. NF is a more polished interface but it's not really suited (near as I can tell) to dropping new bits into it. Sort of like *nix vs Windows, almost.. I don't think you can slice with that version. Or if you can slice, you can't save the gcode or print from it. So.. People don't use it because it won't work. If cash is an immediate concern, just stick with SF (or one of the SF wrappers) for now.. NF will get a lot more interesting once they get volumetric 5D in there. Until then it's seriously limited in terms of calibration, compared to SF40+.
  8. I agree... I think the length differences between 1/16th and 1/2 are small enough to be in the noise - 1/2 should have WAY more torque than 1/16th and I'd have expected a much bigger change (er.. smaller change) if it was losing steps.
  9. Only time to do some quick testing but I played with this at just 1/16th and notice a bit of difference based on tension.. Starting at pretty low tension then turning it up 1/2 turn at a time.. 1/16 low tension 98mm1/16 +1/2 turn 98mm1/16 +1 turn 97mm1/16 +1 1/2 turn 96.5mm It's really difficult to measure this but it was definitely trending downwards..
  10. Naa... I'm still hoping to do some testing here, too...
  11. Edit: er... Wait.. I guess you did confirm that tension changes it, even down at half stepping. Not sure what to make of that... Not to sound ungrateful, and the offer to send you another couple pololu's is still open, but what I was really wondering is if the length changes with tension at 1/8th. 1/8th microstepping gives 1/2 the extruder resolution that 1/16th does but it also gives 2x the torque (or more torque anyway.. not sure it's really 2x) so it's less likely to miss steps. I may be able to test this out tonight.. I don't have much on my printing schedule and was going to try out a different color tonight so I'll be swapping filament anyway.. What I did was this: - 1/16 microstepping and 865.888 E steps in firmware. Verified 100mm of filament being pushed. - 1/16 microstepping and 865.888 E steps in firmware. Tensioned up the thumb screw and confirmed only 93mm of filament was being pushed. - 1/8 microstepping, changed E steps to 432.944 in the firmware. Confirmed 92mm being pushed. - 1/4 stepping, left E steps at 432.944. Confirmed 181mm of filament being pushed. - 1/2 stepping, left E steps at 432.944. Confirmed 365mm of filament being pushed. I guess I didn't get around to testing at full steps. These tests were all done with an F value of 100 in the gcode.
  12. Seriously?? Wow.. Now I feel all guilty.. If you're in the US and PM me your mailing address, I'll order you a couple new ones from pololu! The length of filament still changed when you changed the tensioner?
  13. You are thinking the difference might be due to lost micro-steps? I have nothing better to do right now so I'll check it out. Yup.. Just trying to narrow down why there's a difference when the tensioner changes. Once we (or, rather, you!) figure out where the esteps value is going wrong, we (or somebody) can start figuring out how to fix it. Setting it to 1/8th stepping will give less resolution on E but more torque - less likely to lose steps, if that's really what's happening. Though I can't think of other reasons that the 'correct' value would change vs tension, it's still not proven that it's losing steps. Dunno if really thin layers is possible with 1/8th stepping but, at this point, I'd just like to know why the standard formula that works for repraps doesn't work for us and why things change with the tension..
  14. I don't really see the reason why the extruder is running with 1/16 instead of 1/8 steps, considering this step of the print process needs far more torque than precision, while the z-stepper could easily run with 1/16 instead of 1/8 steps, and benefit from the extra resolution. Er.. What? Are you saying testing esteps vs tension at 1/8th is good idea or a bad idea??
  15. Be patient - a new version is coming out soon and hopefully that will be better. In the meantime, you can use repg or one of the other host programs to send netfabb-sliced stuff to the printer. Personally, I think netfabb would be a lot smarter in this area if they allowed an API so people could do their own host plug-ins.. They'd get paid but we'd do the work.
  16. You are of course, technically correct. (That's the best kind of correct) Usually (sometimes.. occasionally) I'm not that picky but in this case, it's a distinction I'm careful to make because non-volumetric-5D is about length out of the nozzle and volumetric-5D is about length into the extruder drive..
  17. I wonder if it'd be a worthwhile experiment to switch the extruder motor to 1/8 microstepping and see if that also varies with tension..
  18. Was it? I didn't get that from it but will go back and read it again to see if I can feel offended.. My response was just asking for more details, since choices are really only "volumetric 5D" and "not volumetric 5D". Software either has it or it doesn't so there's really not much per-software stuff to this. And, as Daid said, now that you're up to volumetric 5D, avoid instructions that talk about not-volumetric-5D.
  19. No, though I expect you have the right answer but mis-spoke.. It's not the steps needed to extrude 1mm, it's the steps needed to pull 1mm of filament into the extruder. The stuff about the correct esteps value varying based on the little tensioner screw is interesting.. I would very much like to understand why that's happening.
  20. This stuff should really be deterministic and it's been bugging me for like 9 months that the math doesn't work. Feel free to look through http://reprap.org/wiki/Volumetric_Dimension_settings and see if you guys can make it work.. Er.. How so?
  21. Did you see the bit in the wiki that says: I'd go back through the wiki and make sure you did the stuff it talks about. Take your time, make sure to do it all.. You upgraded to Marlin too, right?
  22. I'll let Daid or somebody else answer about firmware.. For SF, the wiki page was written around SF43 or so - starting at SF44 (2011-10-08 from www.skeinforge.com) is probably a safe place to start. Later versions (AFAIK) work fine but there have been a number of changes with parameters being moved and such. The wiki page might be out of date for new versions. For acceptable ranges, since you're new, I'd say the big ones are: - keep feed rates under 100 until you get a couple good prints then give 'er the spurs - layer height between 0.15 and 0.25 - divide 0.5 by layer height and use that for the 2 "width over thickness" settings
  23. Yes! Actually, I don't know but having it in there won't hurt - better to be safe and just add it to netfabb until it starts supporting volumetric 5d.
  24. It's job is to cool the plastic!!! I would definitely add that back on. It will become really important once you get going.. It's difficult to get things just right.. Digging into the tape means the platform is too high. Have patience, try one small thing at a time and you'll get it right. Once you get it right, you'll spend a lot more time printing and less time messing with it..
  25. You should really upgrade to the Marlin firmware and a new version of skeinforge.. See viewtopic.php?f=15&t=417 for a very easy way to get the firmware up to date and http://wiki.ultimaker.com/Sprinter#Spri ... _and_later for tips on getting a recent SF. It's a bit of a pain to get everything upgraded but it's very, very worth it! Ask as many questions as you want, too.
×
×
  • Create New...