UM2+ replacement Main Board

[rayholland 6]

Hi,

 

I just fried my original UM2+ mainboard (wanted to use a more stable power supply, but reversed the 24v polarity, stupidddddddd me) 😞

I can get a 'cloned' v2.1.4 mainboard for a reasonable price, but i stumbled on a v2.1.6 pcb which claims to have removable drivers.

 

They bundle this v2.1.6 mainboard also with 5x TMC2208 drivers (they should be super quiet).

I also see a little fan on top of the driver heatsink, which would be a plus.

 

Does somebody has experiences with these v2.1.6 boards (in combination with the TMC2208 drivers)? Are they any good?

 

See:

https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/32835586263.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.676556cdThk2NH&algo_pvid=66b35798-c2a2-4241-bbc7-82ccb8a0ce61&algo_expid=66b35798-c2a2-4241-bbc7-82ccb8a0ce61-0&btsid=0ab6f81e15886122992508817e1324&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_

 

Regards,

Raymond

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by rayholland
typo

[chrisr 18]

Interesting find Raymond. I'm also keen to hear any users opinions.

[Torgeir 242]

HI Raymond,

 

Welcome in here.

 

Sorry to hear about your mishap.

This "new" main board is interesting as it allows to install alternative stepper drivers. 

I would ask if this upgrade to silent step, will keep the ultimaker's firmware control of the "current regulating" to all the stepper drivers as it should be, -or do you have to adjust stepper current using the small pot-meter that's located at each of the small stepper PCB's?

 

Thanks

 

Torgeir

 

[rayholland 6]

I ordered this v2.1.6 with TMC2208 drivers. It should arive soon and i will keep you updated.

According to the seller it should be a drop in replacement (original firmware can be used).

 

In the past i worked with TMC2130 drivers which did not have potmeters to adjust the stepper current (current could be set programmatically using SPI), but i think you are correct about the 2208's

 

I read somewhere that the Vref pot setting sets RMS average current. The factory setting of 1.23v results in a current of 870mA average, which i think would be fine for the stepper motors in the UM2+

 

But we will see. Fingers crossed

[rayholland 6]

<deleted>

Edited June 17, 2020 by rayholland
wrong calculations

[chrisr 18]

Excited to hear you ordered it Raymond. I hope it's as good as it sounds! Please do keep us updated with what you think of it?

[Torgeir 242]

Hi Raymond,

 

Looks great. Yes they are rated 1.7 amps (but we set them to 1.2A or 1200mA in the firmware).

Would be very interesting to see how it works.

 

Torgeir

[rayholland 6]

Dont buy this board.

 

I had several headaches over this thing.

1. Had to remove the fan, because otherwise it would not fit
2. The original mainboard has fit-pressed screw nuts, but the new board does not have these. So i needed to use extra long screws to hold the board in place

3. I had to reverse order ALL the stepper motor leads
4. All the drivers had VREF around 0.85v. For X, Y,Z this is ok, but for E1 i needed to adjust this to +-1.2v (via tiny potmeter)

5. After this, i thought everything worked fine, until i tried to change filament and the extruder motor was stalling while loading the filament. It turns out that the TMC2208 drivers standard have StealthChop enabled. This is great for 'low noise', but gives problems when moving the motor very fast. It is not possible to enable SpreadCycle using pinouts MS1/MS2. Enabling SpreadCycle is only possible when using UART 😞

Possible solutions: Use an A4988 driver for the Extruder or change the firmware (change #define FILAMENT_INSERT_FAST_SPEED 100 to 50)

 

Further the board came with absolutely zero documentation and the seller did not reply to my emails.

Edited June 17, 2020 by rayholland
addon

[Torgeir 242]

Hi Raymond,

 

Sorry to hear this info.

That not a good start, -however, I would just buy one of that small PCB with a A4988 installed.

Just swap and off you go..

 

Will this fan be possible to put outside the shielded box, in order to blow inside with suction from outside?

 

My shielded box (to go over the PCB) had two holes for fans to be installed into.

I'm using two 24VDC (in serial -less noise) fans mounted with white foam (to avoid humming noise from the chassis).

This white plastic foam is taped with aluminium tape for sealing/attatchment and hold very well.

Don't let this stop you, you are to close now.. 

 

Good luck.

Regards

 

Torgeir

 

 

 

Edited June 16, 2020 by Torgeir
Text error.

[rayholland 6]

5 minutes ago, Torgeir said:

Will this fan be possible to put outside the shielded box, in order to blow inside with suction from outside?

 

 

5 minutes ago, Torgeir said:

Yes, this would work, but i think the fan is not really necessary. Only having the alu block on the steppers will be enough.

 

 

 

[rayholland 6]

Tomorrow i will try another thing:

 

According to the datasheet, i can program the driver 1 time to set it in SpreadCycle mode:

OTP Setting (Refer to TMC2208)

---

With the TMC2208 Configurator you can change the settings and program the OTP (One-Time-Programmable) memory of a Trinamic TMC2208 via the UART interface.

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by rayholland
addon

[rayholland 6]

I did some more research and i think the board has potentials.

It follows the original Ultimainboard 2.1.4 design (see picture), so we could use header J4 for softwareserial (TX) to control/configure the TMC2208's using a custom Marlin build

 

J4
pin 10 (PB4) -> softwareserial 1 - X
pin 11 (PB5) -> softwareserial 2 - Y
pin 12 (PB6) -> softwareserial 3 - Z
pin 13 (PB7) -> softwareserial 4 - E

 

Does anyone know if i can use  internal pullup resistors on these pins?

 

Another route would be using TM3120 drivers using SPI, (see header J1), and using 4 digital pins as Chip Select

 

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by rayholland
typo

[Torgeir 242]

Great Raymond!

 

The changes in this PCB might only be the interface toward the stepper drivers, so this should be very easy to modify in software I'll think.

This is a question for @tinkergnome.

 

I've copied your picture for the ease of seeing details in here..

 

 

Regards

 

Torgeir

 

[rayholland 6]

Yes. The design and pinouts are identically to the original Ultimotherboard 2.1.4 (so TinkerGnome's firmware would just work fine).

 

BTW: I'm now checking pins.h in the TinkerGnome / Ultimaker2Marlin repository, but i see that pins 10,11,12,13 are already occupied 😞

 

Update:

I going to change the TMC2208 with TMC2209 drivers.

 

Doc about the TMC2209 state:

TMC2209 slave address can be set from 0x00 to 0x03 (up to 4 TMC2209s per UART port) using the MS1 and MS2 pins

 

 

So i only need to use the J22 serial header (TX and RX) and make a special cable:

 

 

The nice part of using the TMC2209 in UART mode (TX and RX) is that, with the correct modifications to TinkerGnome's firmware we could be able to change Current and mode (StealthChop/SpreadCycle/Hybrid with threshold) in the display menu of the UM2 (no more need to adjust current using the tiny pot meter on the drivers).

 

 

 

 

Ultimainboard V2.1.4 PCBA overview.pdf

Edited June 17, 2020 by rayholland
update

[tinkergnome 927]

3 hours ago, rayholland said:

i see that pins 10,11,12,13 are already occupied

 

PB4 - PB7 are not used by Marlin - as far as i can see...

 

...but perhaps somehow connected to the USB chip (16U2) ? - dunno 🤔

Did you check the schematics?

 

[rayholland 6]

Hi ThinkerGnome,

 

Thanks for your info.

I'm going for the TMC2209's, because these can be addressed by Slave address.

This way i only need to use the hardware serial UART TX and RX pins (J22) and do not need any other free digital pins.

 

@tinkergnome BTW:

What do you think about this board in combination with TMC2209 drivers (configured as slaves) using the free hardware serial pins (only 2 pins in total needed on the mainboard)?

Would you be interested in creating a seperate branch for this?

 

I can see a lot of benefits using this board as a replacement in an UM2:

1. It has the same design and pinouts as the original ultimaker board

2. Using TMC2209 drivers in UAT mode it should be possible to set driver current, mode (StealthChop, SpreadCycle, hybrid mode with threshold), microsteps, pre-overheat warnings and even switchless endstops should be possible.

Edited June 17, 2020 by rayholland

[tinkergnome 927]

3 hours ago, rayholland said:

Would you be interested in creating a seperate branch for this?

 

Not myself, but i can give you (direct) access to the GitHub repository if you want. (just send me a message with the user name)

[rayholland 6]

I have 3 options:

1. fork tinkergnome's repository and backport the TMC stuff from the vanilla marlin into it -> i'm afraid i will stumble into a lot of dependency issues

2. use the 1.1.9 vanilla marlin build and adjust the screen menu gui and structure to match the ultimaker menu -> a lot of work

3. use the 1.1.9 vanilla marlin build and only edit the Configuration.h, Configuration_adv.h and Pins.h files (using tinkergnome's Configuration.h, Configuration_adv.h and Pins.h as a reference)

 

I think i will go with option 3.

@tinkergnome : do you think to just edit the Configuration.h, Configuration_adv.h and Pins.h (using yours as a reference) will be enough? Or do you think i will also need to do some code patching to get everything working on my UM2+ (the mainboard is exactly the same as the original one, except it has removable drivers) ? I can see that the UltiController with display are supported vanilla marlin 1.1.9

 

 

 

Edited June 18, 2020 by rayholland

[tinkergnome 927]

39 minutes ago, rayholland said:

do you think to just edit the Configuration.h, Configuration_adv.h and Pins.h (using yours as a reference) will be enough?

 

I would rather use the genuine Ultimaker firmware as a reference in this case. Apart from that - why not? Marlin fully supports the board and the display nowadays and it's an ordinary Mega2560 after all.

Good luck!

[rayholland 6]

39 minutes ago, tinkergnome said:

 

I would rather use the genuine Ultimaker firmware as a reference in this case. Apart from that - why not? Marlin fully supports the board and the display nowadays and it's an ordinary Mega2560 after all.

Good luck!

 

Thank you

[rayholland 6]

I ordered the TMC2209 drivers from AliExpress. I think it will take some while till they will arive.

In the meantime i flashed/programmed the Extruder TMC2208 driver into SpreadCycle.

The filament loading is now working perfect 🙂

 

Here is a great video on how to program the TMC2208 into SpreadCycle using the OTP method:

 

So, in conclusion:

You can user this 2.1.6 UltiMainboard with the TMC2208 silent stepper drivers as a dropin replacement for the UM2, but you need to set the Extruder stepper into SpreadCycle mode.

 

BTW:

These are the Vref's i used

X: 0.9V

Y: 0.9V

Z: 0.9V

E: 1.1V

 

[Torgeir 242]

Hi Raymond,

 

This is great information.

 

Thanks

 

Torgeir

[Bike71 0]

On 6/27/2020 at 4:56 PM, rayholland said:

I ordered the TMC2209 drivers from AliExpress. I think it will take some while till they will arive.

 

Hello Raymond
Thanks for your great work!
Did you replace the TMC2208 drivers with the TMC2209 and what is your experience?
Best regards, Bike71

Edited December 9, 2020 by Bike71

[my3DBr 4]

Hello Raymon!

Any chance having a step by step? 

[my3DBr 4]

https://biqu.equipment/collections/control-board/products/bigtreetech-tango-v1-0-motherboard-upgrade-on-the-basis-of-rumba-control-board-for-3d-printer
 

is it possible to be used?