Help needed to dial it in

Discussion in 'Calibration, Help, and Troubleshooting' started by Steven, May 23, 2016.

  1. Steven

    Steven Well-Known Member

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    BB-Dual, Stock RC3 firmware.

    I've resolved a lot of hurdles, but i'm fighting a few issues...
    Unlike my Prusa-i3, which has been working perfectly after tweaking it over the past 3 years.

    My usual tricks to get PLA or ABS to stick to the bed has been met with mixed results. Kapton tape, AquaNet hair spray.
    Once the print sticks, it will unstick after 10+ layers. Mostly due to the print head mashing thru not yet hardened layers and plowing thru. literally. and pushing the part out of the way.

    The benchy that does print has horrible quality and horrible layers. I'm trying my 8th benchy; never got past 30 layers without complete failure.
     
  2. Chase.Wichert

    Chase.Wichert Well-Known Member

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    Are you using the supplied benchy? Or your own settings? What material are you using? What print temp and what bed temp? UHU on glass works well, I just use elmers glue stick extreme, found it at the dollar store, not the purple kind, you can buy uhu online though, I also use Wolfbite nano for abs and works awesome.

    Have you calibrated your esteps? It could be that too much material is being extruded causing it to plow into the print..
     
  3. Rob Heinzonly

    Rob Heinzonly Well-Known Member

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    You can also visit this site to check what goes wrong with your prints. (and post some pictures)
     
  4. Old_Tafr

    Old_Tafr Well-Known Member

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    The benchy print is done from an already sliced design, (and works and with the supplied firmware too) so this limits the things that can be wrong to things like the printer setup itself, and not the million things possible in s3d.

    As the print goes wrong after a few layers then it is possibly too much filament as a little too much extruded each layer will eventually mean it's far too high and as you say "the nozzle just ploughs through it" This ploughing does not happen in prints normally.

    Some people including me have found that the 100 mm calibration does not always work, it's worth a check and if necessary just changing the parameters (without doing the sums) until it extrudes exactly 100 mm.

    A crude but effective way of reducing the extrusion during a print is with the control on the front panel. Turn the control clockwise for less !! This is a "feature" of the stock firmware, fixed I'm told in later versions. I found that a quick change to 94% reduced a lot of filament being pushed around by the nozzle.

    The benchy gcode file also has it's own settings for print cooling fan speed, (lots of posts on these fans needing physical adjustment downward to within 2 to 1.5 mm of nozzle height) so too high maybe a problem in cooling the print too fast, but it sounds more like too much filament and the head just bashing the print until it comes loose.
     
  5. Alex9779

    Alex9779 Moderator
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    Sorry but I got to correct you again.
    Turning the knob on the status page changes the percentage of the "feedrate" abbreviated with "F_R". The feedrate is the overall speed the machine moves so EVERY move is slowed down (less than 100%) or speeded up (>100%). The speed distribution among the moves set by the code file and thus by the slicer, like slowing down for outer lines or cooling, is retained.
    I do not doubt this could help if you have extrusion problems because then the filament flow is less and so the filament has more time to melt.
    But in the described case above this won't reduce the amount of filament extruded, it just takes longer...
     
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  6. Chase.Wichert

    Chase.Wichert Well-Known Member

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    You can change the filament extrusion rate in the Tune settings on the LCD I believe, however.
     
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  7. Steven

    Steven Well-Known Member

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    Why is that when I try to do the extrude calibration, I get NO ACTION ?
    I was able to do it before.
    I even chose restore from failsafe.
    Set temp to 210.
    At temp selct from sd card calibration; extrude0_gcode.
    The only thing that happens is the name is shown on the main screen. NO EXTRUDER MOVEMENT.
    My next step is to manually change my esteps. original was 304, then 152 as per my first calibration. I'm going to try 140 and work from there.
     
  8. Chase.Wichert

    Chase.Wichert Well-Known Member

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    Did you home it first? I think I have read that you need to home it first, but not really sure, worth a shot.
     
  9. Steven

    Steven Well-Known Member

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    I found out that if i DISCONNECT my OctoPi, it will behave normally. WTF!
    So I ran the 100mm calibration.
    Octave White PLA.
    195c for the nozzle,
    75c for the bed.
    It actually extruded 102mm. Despite that, I lowered the esteps from 152 to 145. just to see what happens.
    I cant tell definitively, because as I get more and more layers... I killed it as layer 20, the nozzle is plowing at least 1mm of previously laid filament.

    It's as if the Z axis is not changing enough thru the print.
     
  10. Rob Heinzonly

    Rob Heinzonly Well-Known Member

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    Do you have Octopi installed on the Raspberry ? In the past more people had problems with the BigBox when Octopi wasn't installed on it.

    As for the print: can you post some pictures ?
    Did you calibrate the Z-Axis ?
    It almost sounds like you have mounted the 0.9° motors on the Z- axis, instead of the 1.8° motors.
     
  11. Steven

    Steven Well-Known Member

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    No, I did verify that the correct motors are on the Z axis. X and Y have the 0.9step motors.
    I did install OctoPi on the raspberry card and it did install fine. I can view and control BigBox via its web gui. But no video image.
    It seems The marlin gets wonky sometimes if the octipi is connected at startup. still verifying that one.

    Anyone have a link handy for the Z axis calibration so I can do it again?
     
  12. Rob Heinzonly

    Rob Heinzonly Well-Known Member

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    There's not really a Z-axis calibration in that sense, but you can basically follow the same procedure as in the E-stepper calibration; move the Z-Axis xx mm down and measure what distance the bed travelled. The next step will be adjusting the steps per mm.
     
  13. Steven

    Steven Well-Known Member

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    That's an excellent idea. I will try that shortly.
     
  14. Stefan

    Stefan Well-Known Member

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    ... This might be a really stupid question... did you have the right motors on Z and E?
    On my build I swapped then so I had the Z steppers on E and E on Z...

    This lead to Z not moving as expected like 50% since 1 pair of steppers have 0.9 degree/per step and the other 1.8
    and your z height problem sounds like "it does only move 0.1 for 0.2 layer" and your e-steps on 150ish I had with 1.0 Dual about 284...


    http://wiki.e3d-online.com/wiki/BigBox_Printer_Sub-assemblies#.282.29_Dual_Direct-Drive_Extruders
    the parts lists say 0.9 for extruder so I'm kind of sure that is your problem
     
  15. Steven

    Steven Well-Known Member

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    sonavavitch! In diving back into the build docs, 0.9deg for X, 0.9 for Y, 0.9 for ext1 and ext2. And 1.8deg for Z axis.

    I'm sure I went over this several times: But I have my Z and Extruder motors swapped. crap.
    That does explain a lot. but now to delicately swap them around...
     
    #15 Steven, May 24, 2016
    Last edited: May 24, 2016
  16. Rob Heinzonly

    Rob Heinzonly Well-Known Member

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    1.8° steppers on both Z-axis and 0.9° steppers on the rest.

    So:
    3 x 400-Step Stepper Motors (4 x for Dual), X-Axis, Y-Axis, Extruder(s).
    2 x 200-Step Stepper Motors, Z-Axis.
     
  17. Steven

    Steven Well-Known Member

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    I was able to remove the Z axis motors without removing the base! delicately thru the electronics hatch!
    When I get back home, I'll re-zero the Z axis, align the threaded bars and fix my dropped pincher bar washer/spring on the extruders.
     
  18. Mark_T

    Mark_T Well-Known Member

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    I was told by E3D that this was a perfectly valid assignment of the motors from the kit.

    Swapping the Z axis with the extruders when you have Titan and the hybrid carriage puts the lighter motor on the carriage.

    I imagine there is a configuration change needed to tell the system that the Z axis has 0.9 degree motors, but it should work OK.
     
  19. Chase.Wichert

    Chase.Wichert Well-Known Member

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    You just need to change the esteps, which can be done through and EEPROM edit, the lcd menu, or change the firmware and reupload it.
     
  20. Stefan

    Stefan Well-Known Member

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    Of cause 0.9 or 1.8 steppers are ok, but you have to adjust the steps/mm for every not Standard axis. And remember that every time you change the fw... or just reinstall the Std way. Options so many options

    What doesn't bugging me why BB has those 1.8 for the Extruder? Do they have more power or are they lighter or cheaper?
     

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