Oneways Trident 300 Formbot

[Oneway]

Backing up a couple months two things continue to amaze me , one is how much knowledge I accumulated since this endeavor started and two, how much I forgot over my printing hiatus. Honestly when I finally reorganized my printing room and dusted off my printers and tools I looked at the trident and thought how the hell  do I turn this thing on? How do I connect to the printer? SSH huh? Oh man , not a good feeling and thankful to be back up to speed now.

Ok printers cleaned off , plugged in, network is up, mainsail connected, klipper running and my vorons steppers buzzing as it begins the homing routine, so far so good. 

Disclaimer : I will jump back and forth as I remember mods or changes that were not documented prior to today. One of those changes shortly after switching to the stealthburner was ditching the inductive probe in favor of the klicky probe. I used the probe in its first iteration up until a few weeks ago when it was replaced with my first go round with TAP which I will go into greater detail later on.

After the first homing in over a year I jump into update manager and am greeted with UPDATE next to every package, so without any hesitation, update all, what could go wrong?

 mcu 'mcu': Unable to connect blah blah blah

oh god what have i done?  google please point me to the answer. So many associated problems to this error and not having a clue where to start I start where the wizards live , Discord. Open a help ticket and within 5 seconds im describing my problems and what I did to cause them. For anyone reading this who may be new to Voron and bored enough to make it this far, if you have problems and have exhausted your resources and brain power the Voron Discord server is far and away the most complete and helpful resource around. I was hesitant at first being new to both Voron and Discord plus I hate asking for help but quickly realized that the guys that man the help channels know their shit and are more than willing to help , and if they dont know usually they will get somebody on who does. 

In a nutshell I was suffering from the udev bug and by good fortune the gentleman that fielded my help ticket just happens to be the guy that wrote the fix, what are the odds. 

 

"Shiftingtech V2.011 — Today at 4:03 AM
A bug has been introduced in Debian Bullseye (which includes current MainsailOS), which prevents the symlinks in /dev/serial/by-id/ from being created. If your printer can't connect to the MCU anymore after a system update, you can check if it is caused by that bug by checking the installed version of udev with 

apt show udev

 If your version is 247.3-7+deb11u2 you have the broken package installed and should replace it with the "backports" version. Take special care about the last number ("u2"). 

A few commands and a little cut and paste later, presto, we are back in business and well on our way to the next problem. 

 

Edited March 2 by Oneway

[Oneway]

Pi camera side project 

I thought today would be a good day to knock this out while waiting on a few parts for the real overhaul starting this week.

During my pause in printing several new things have popped up, one being obico and crowsnest so i thought why not utilize the camera i have sitting in a box. First attempt was with a logitech c270, after printing the mount and a small collision with the printhead, yes that happened and the result was catastrophic, ie broken belt and gantry alignment problems, but for all the issues it created as a result of me not paying attn the end result was beneficial since i discovered several things that needed help, I will go into that rabbit hole another day. Today its camera time. 

The c270 was a failure, not only was the mount not to my liking but the coverage of the build surface and resolution was nothing short of crap so back to google. I came across a corner pi cam design on github, ordered the appropriate hardware via amazon and started the printed parts, a few hours later and success.

I also puchased a wide angle lens which i believe is 150 degrees to get total coverage, thats the problem with trident and cameras, there just isnt much room and since i decided on dark tinted panels, placement outside of the printer is impossible, fashion before function. The corner placement gives me a little more relief as well. 

One issue i had was with the ribbon channels that clip to the inside of the 2020 extrusion,  the author used smaller sections and stacked them up to the camera, my ocd wasn't ok with that , to many parts and just not very slick unfortunately the hinge mounts hit the channel so i got it down to a few pieces rather than 20. Wasn't sure if this print would make it due to the height being right at 220mm high but things went smoothly.

 

Installation of the camera was fairly straightforward although i cannot get the suggested webRTC streamer to connect but the mjpeg streamer works just fine and can be monitored via obico from anywhere and most importantly it saves a walk from the house to the work room to check progress. 

And the final result.

Link to project : https://github.com/Diyshift/3D-Printer/tree/main/Trident Corner Cam

[claudermilk]

That post requires this obligatory gif:

Yeah, after holding of over the holidays I finally did it too. Lots of flashing on both the Trident and the V0 and both printers are all happy. My Trident is still on Buster because of something not being happy about moving to Bullseye--I think I'll just leave it there. I was going to update to get crowsnest, but the camera just started working after a cold reboot, so I'm leaving it well enough alone now.

[Oneway]

Boxes are piling up for the new additions,  making so many changes at once is a bit overwhelming but I have to stay focused and bang out one projecct at a time. First thing on the laundry list was to handle getting up to date with everything, ive redone, reinstalled, deleted and scrapped so many things on the software and hardware side the last couple years that my configs are a patched together mess and very outdated, lets see what happens when i update klipper this time   Well one thing I can always count on is more work fixing something that wasnt entirely broken and just as expected:

 

Klipper reports: ERROR

MCU Protocol error

This is frequently caused by running an older version of the
firmware on the MCU(s). Fix by recompiling and flashing the
firmware.

Your Klipper version is: vOLD AS FUCK-dirty
MCU(s) which should be updated:
mcu: Current version v0.12.0-85-gd785b396
CB1: Current version v0.11.0-241-gffb5105b
Up-to-date MCU(s):

 

I can spend hours trying to figure out the why and what or I can just start over, backed up all the configs, reformatted microsd, installed kiauh and without to much pain the result is actually very satisfying knowing im completely current on all packages and no more ERROR. I actually had to do a little digging on how to flash my board , I couldnt remember if I had done it over DFU or used the sdcard since it was years ago, if I remember correctly once its flashed over DFU the bootloader is changed and the sdcard way is no longer an option but im probably incorrect but anyway I opted for the standard way since when I built this I followed the Voron manual to a T.

Everything's up and running, heatsoak for a bit an bang out a few little pieces for the  upcoming changes, there's no turning back once this project is started and definitely no pushing of plastic, I only have one working printer so if somethings forgotten im up shits creek.  

can you can can? I cannot, but I can follow smarter peoples directions fairly well so here goes nothing.

 

 

[Oneway]

Canbus conversion

Not one to be safe rather than sorry I opted to just start removing everything first and hope for the best. Drag chains, endstops, a ton of wire and the stealthburner, everything must go. 

Stealthburner in pieces on the bench, hopefully i can repurpose the neopixels for the new toolhead. 

Before..

I never switched to a toolhead pcb so everything is spec voron build for the most part, I will say that this started as a formbot kit and the printer has thousands of hours on it but the wires are still in perfect condition and no signs of wear and never a break.

Drag chains ... bye bye 

Under the hood, Canbus adaptor seems to be alive and responding.

Docs im using to get canbus up and running  https://github.com/Esoterical/voron_canbus/tree/main

what a mess

Taking time to clean the dust off of things especially the deck fans and planning out what to rewire and rerun. I wish I knew than what I know now when it comes to building, one thing that seems like a really good idea is the inverted electronics bay, that would make life so much easier. 

Back to work.

 

 

 

 

 

. 

 

Edited March 16 by Oneway

[Oneway]

Well its been a few days with several missteps, mishaps, and general fuckups on my part which comes with spending 22 hours over a weekend staring at a box that melts plastic, what the hell happened to my life? I used to be cool, now i worry about accels and pressure advance, thermal expansion and canbuses, FML.

After removing tons of wire and replacing parts heres what we have, much cleaner look.

Umbilical installed , pg7 amazon strain relief and some green cover, its a voron rat-rig, i know...

 So many things its hard to pick a place to start and since im no expert I will not attempt to go into much detail, this is more of a generalized account of what perhaps not to do. 

Earlier I think I said something along the lines of doing one thing at a time to stay focused and on track, this turned out to not be a viable option as many things im changing are directly linked to another and so that idea went out the window.

 

This all began with TAP, in hindsight maybe I should have just stayed klicky and kept on pushing plastic, but no. I went with the chaotic labs cnc tap version2 and although i did get it up and running the accuracy results left something to be desired, like accuracy. Without bashing it to much I will say that even with 2 of them I couldnt make one good one  and so one went back to amazon and one is here for anyone who would like it, I read all i could and understand why its not great and although it works fine on other setups, it didnt work great on mine. Next up and currently installed was the mellow tap cnc, yes its heavier than the CL version but it does have the proper rail and plenty of preload, it took a bit to break in but works excellent now. When reading over the TAP literature online one thing stood out to me as i was having issues with both the chaotic and mellow taps, something about it being a precise instrument and could potentially shine the light on other problems that were not apparent before, hmmm. it did. I didnt like the rails that came with my formbot kit and said i would replace them someday, at this point the z an y are fine or at least seem to be but when i was fiddling with the tap and the stealthburner i realized a slight wobble when grabbing the toolhead and applying pressure , it wasnt perfectly solid, it also wasnt the carriage or the mount or any other thing i looked at , it was the rail, it had an ever so slight bit of play in it and was def causing my probe_accuracy results to vary wildly, .01 on some .005 on others and every once in a while .0005 , its probing the same place 10 times , it shouldnt be changing so much everytime. I changed everything chasing numbers , retract distance, speed , lift speed, the build surface , my z screws, lube, clean , in the end it was the rail or at the least it was a major contributor.

 PLUG --- I am a huge supporter of WEST3D and will buy everything i can from them if they have it in stock, unfortunately they were out of stock of their berserker linear rails in the size I needed so i had to go with LDO which is def an upgrade but i really wanted to try the west3d rails, I am going to replace all my formbot kit rails soon enough just not now and will do so with their rails, if you havent shopped with those guys please do, they are awesome. 

Damn this playing catchup shit is old. I replaced the x linear rail, scrapped the chaotic labs cnc tap in favor of the mellow version, remember this is all to switch to canbus im just taking the scenic route. So I planned ahead and complicated everything, if im changing to tap and canbus, why not change toolheads? Dont get me wrong i love the sb and have since the first release and each update but its heavy, I like changing shit, and why not? So I printed all the parts, ordered the appropriate hardware from west3d and soon it will become the xol toolhead and the Vz-hextrudort-low extruder, along with my rapido hf v1 , which will become a headache later on but for now we are making progress. 

 def not pretty but I kinda like the built to work ,not to look like a sportscar.

 and heres literally how this all started.

Ok thats all I can remember for tonight as i run config and test after test getting this running again, the heartache is coming up. Oh and molex, my favorite.

adios for today.

 

 

 

[mvdveer]

Ahh the joys............

[Oneway]

Quick recap of switching over to canbus. If I had to do it again it would be so much easier now and I cannot thank some of the techs that man the discord help tickets enough, I mean who else quickly sees that im an idiot and just need another set of eyes to point out the obvious since I have a knack for getting the hard things sorted while missing the most basic. The initial install started off poorly as for whatever reason my e2c canbus adaptor would not go into dfu mode. I read about the jacked firmware on some units and thought rather to be safe this time or at least try to but failed so i skipped the firmware upgrade and jumped to getting the ebb36 sorted. The wiring is fairly easy if you have dealt with jst and molex fittings which ive screwed up enough to be competent at this stage. Followed these directions https://canbus.esoterical.online/ which are fairly straightforward and all was well until the e2c and ebb would not play together, yep the firmware issue is alive and well so for the 100th time of pressing a button and plugging it in to switch to dfu it worked, firmware loaded and aces, ran the suggested queries and everything seemed to be communicating, how exciting. 

 Tidying up some wiring and getting the last things plugged in to test the fan and see if this actually worked I made a small oversight. I bought delta fans for the parts and hotend on the new xol, when I tried to spin up the parts fans to test the canbus nothing happened , the hotend was heating the thermostat was reading, the extruder was spinning but no fans, well shit. Checked the wiring and cfg, triple checked the communication and still no love so I jumped on discord reluctantly but got the answer I dreaded , yep its wired right only delta fans are 12v and 5v which seem to not care for the 24v pin headers on the ebb36, wtf rookie mistake and I should know better but got caught up in wanting to see this thing work after being down for 10 days.  I honestly dont want to use a buck convertor to get 12v so switched to honey badger fans all the way around that run at 24v, little loud on the hotend but not a big deal.

Got the built in adxl working, I stopped using klipper based adxl configs and switched to shake tune , if you havent tried this you should, so much better.

https://github.com/Frix-x/klippain-shaketune

This might be another rabbit hole to go into , klippain sounds very interesting. 

Getting closer.

I switched beds during this as well as adding magnetic kinematic mounts, the bed is awesome and not having that 3m magnetic sheet anymore is great, the kinematic mounts and bed are from Mandala Rose Works , amazing stuff. 

And how she sits now as I finish installing the trident bed fan mod, Im still tuning and getting used to all the changes and of course switching to orca just added more questions but im finally getting more comfortable. On the list I still have to finish the bed fans, print the 4" exhaust duct so I can stop breathing this crap, print the trident top hat to get more room for my umbilical and it looks cool, and get the lights in the toolhead. 

Obviously I print parts to make better printers to print better parts to make better......... tinkerer till I die or id buy a bambu. 

gnite.

[mvdveer]

31 minutes ago, Oneway said:

klippain sounds very interesting.

Been using it now for 4months or so and love it!

 

[Oneway]

Got this with my last order from West3D , totally legit printer nerd merch.

[Oneway]

19 hours ago, mvdveer said:

Been using it now for 4months or so and love it!

Dude I read the docs and it seems amazing but at the moment im playing catchup to get everything rolling like it used to, so I think switching would be a tactical error,but at the same time I feel like diving in and taking it for a spin. I forget who turned me on to the shake tune but that lead to reading about klippain, for now ill stick to shaketune but im almost at the end of the physical mods so ill need another reason to fix something that isnt broken. 

[Oneway]

Bedfan upgrade

Easiest time to do this is when you have the bed torn apart but its still doable with it on and even easier with a removable magnetic bed which I just so happen to have now. 

print fan mounts x 4

print wago 2x5 mount

run 2 wires up  the drag chain 

install wago mount, fan mounts, wago connectors, fans, tidy up your wires, crimp ferrules to fan wires and supply wires.

one wago for 24v supply and one for ground, connect wires and make sure you leave some slack in drag chain before crimping jst xh connector and plugging in to the fan header of your choice. 

download ellis bed fan macros https://github.com/VoronDesign/VoronUsers/tree/main/printer_mods/Ellis/Bed_Fans dont forget to include in printer.cfg

fire it up and check if fans are spinning, enjoy hotter chamber temps assuming you have also installed a chamber thermistor which I highly recommend. 

Before I was running a Nevermore and although it helped with circulation and a small increase in chamber temp I could only reach around 39-40c after heatsoaking for over an hour. With the bed fan mod running at 80% I easily hit 50c in about one hour from dead cold. 

Also I havent  played with the max fan speed to see at what point it cools rather than heats or fights with the heater.

Well worth the time and effort and back to installing neopixels in the Xol only to tear it apart again since I forgot to print the diffuser. Ugh. 

 

 

[Oneway]

Just ordered the clicky clack LDO door kit. Besides that its a way better design im tired of the smoke plexi on the front, ya it looks cool but I cant see shit unless i open the door which isnt a great idea when struggling to keep chamber temps up. 

I see people with much higher sustained temps during printing and wonder what I can do to get my chamber temp up? I have thicker panels that are properly sealed so im wondering if im losing heat thru the cheap abs back and bottom panels along with the slight crack between the front door panels. If you have suggestions im all ears, thanks.

[Oneway]

Neopixels installed in Xol toolhead, I skipped this part in leu of getting the canbus up and running, also the directions on the xol github skip over any led install so I just copied the stealthburner installation direction adding a bit of wire to get back over to the left pixel. Its pretty tight getting the wires over the 2010 hotend fan but def works. Everything still running off the stealthburner_led cfg and looks good with the exception of forgetting to print the clear diffuser which will def wait untill I absolutely have to remove the toolhead for some other reason, its just a light:) 

[Oneway]

Clicky Clack door mod 

I was never happy with the panels or the bom split doors, I changed to 5mm smoke panels awhile ago which look really good but really hinder the view of whats going on inside and the use of an exterior mounted camera. So today my LDO door kit arrived  from West3d. I should have already printed the parts but ive been busy fighting with TAP, my new most hated change and a subject on which I will rant upon later. I also realized im out of polymaker ASA black but thankfully had a brand new roll of ABS which of course I havent tuned since changing almost everything but as I recall it prints fairly easy and is more forgiving than the ASA ive been using so im just gonna go for it.

Packaged exceptionally well as expected.

And LDO quality extrusions and very nicely packaged parts. This kit also includes the panel which Im going to keep clear so I can see whats going on , function before fashion for once.

Parts are printing as I type, starting with a few panel clips to see if my settings are passable, Im having severe buyers remorse and mod remorse if thats a thing with the TAP install, my accelerations took a major hit  which obviously effects my print speeds and quality, I usually print well above the standard for abs and asa parts and I know I cant print something at a million miles a minute and expect it to be as strong but Ive never dealt with ringing and poor surface quality like this in the past. Im going back to klicky pcb soon, id go to beacon but im running an MRW mag bed which i just bought so im not keen on shelling out more money and letting this beautiful bed collect dust. 

Speaking of beds , have you seen the Provoc magnetic bed thats beacon safe? Its pricey but includes the heater and might be an option down the road when I explore the beacon probe. 

[mvdveer]

22 minutes ago, Oneway said:

Speaking of beds , have you seen the Provoc magnetic bed thats beacon safe? Its pricey but includes the heater and might be an option down the road when I explore the beacon probe. 

You got my interest. Am converting all my TAP machines to Cartographer. The one I can't has a Mandala Rose Magnetic bed - this sounds like an option, but still untested in the wild - and the cost - OUCHHH.

[Oneway]

45 minutes ago, mvdveer said:

You got my interest. Am converting all my TAP machines to Cartographer. The one I can't has a Mandala Rose Magnetic bed - this sounds like an option, but still untested in the wild - and the cost - OUCHHH.

I know, I had the same reaction but it does include the heater   And yes totally untested but for now its back to klicky and the archetype toolhead until I find a reasonable solution to the magnetic bed problem.

 

 

[Oneway]

Day 2 Clicky Clack  

Day one - Looked in the box, downloaded printed parts, realized I had put a roll of ABS in a ASA box so im out of my usual filament, I havent printed ABS on this machine since all the changes and usually print ASA instead. Quick test print resulted in failure on the hinge overhangs, turned down the hotend 5 degrees and increased the fan, the result isnt perfect but well within acceptable quality standards to me. Speaking of print quality, is it just me or do many of the photos showcasing print examples on the interweb of mods and tests look like absolute dogshit? I always wonder if all the efforts go into designing and thinking instead of what the end goal should be, good prints. 

I have to say I love this mod, and love having a clear front panel once again, i keep thinking the doors open its so clear and clean. 

This is the way I wish all mods turned out, quick and painless but most of all an improvement on the existing design. All in all totally worth every cent.

back to the never ending chasing of unicorns.

 

[Oneway]

Saturday = Printer cave day (if the wife says its ok)

Trying to figure out how to utilize my MRW mag bed and ditch TAP, for now my solution is to go back to the lesser of garbage which in my case is the chaotic labs cnc tap for these reasons, its lighter, it doesnt eat up Y, I already have one, and its got to be better than the mellow cnc. The mellow is a well machined work of art actually and by all accounts should be more consistant and more rigid than the chaotic labs, it isnt according to input shaper and probe_accuracy and the quite noticeable reduction in acceleration just didnt set right with me.  Now granted this solution is temporary since im going archetype/breakneck/cpap as soon as the parts arrive and I figure out a probe solution that doesnt make me feel like i flushed 300 bucks on the MRW bed down the shitter. Im leaning towards klicky 00 or klicky pcb and see how that pans out or the idgaf option, replace bed with beacon compatible mag bed from provok and going beacon which of course seems like the right choice but costs me several hundred and a brand new bed sitting in a box unused, or option 3, build another printer:) 

Anyway, tore off the mellow tap, cleaned and relubed chaotic labs tap, ordered new orings for mount bolts and jst zh 1.5 connectors to make a new cable, gotta love amazon next day and without much headache the swap was complete... except, carriage mounted x endstop acting weird, querying the endstop it stays open , unplug it from probe pins on ebb36 and replug it triggers once and not again , wtf ? Replaced endstop switch which should have handled it, nope, check printer.cfg to see if i did something stupid, theres plenty of that but nothing relating to this particular problem so back against the wall and tired of troubleshooting theres only one solution I can see , goodbye endstops...

 

Honestly I didnt remove these until I was sure the solution worked. 

Sensorless Homing 

Follow this https://github.com/EricZimmerman/VoronTools/blob/main/Sensorless.md

Mr Zimmerman knows his shit, hes helped me on the voron discord and walked me thru the e2c/ebb36 install with his github, not sure what kind of human he is but he seems to be a major contributor to the voron community and im pretty sure I owe him a 6pack. The install and cfg was a snap and for once everything worked exactly as described, and if you change and mod things like I do than im sure you are used to setbacks and expecting things to go wrong not right so this was a pleasant surprise. Shit thats two mods in a row without a hitch, maybe im getting smarter. 

I have to say I love the less is more look of my printer now, ive removed so much shit and learned a ton along the way, so much so that for once I totally feel comfortable self sourcing a complete and unique build that will rely on only what experience can bring. So glad I took the suggestion in the beginning of building my first Voron to bom specs in order to create a foundation rather than jumping directly to the latest greatest, its been one of the best decisions ive ever made.  

With the change of cnc taps from mellow to CL , accelerations up several thousand in X and Y, particularly in Y as the suggested accel went from 3800 to over 8g, also the probe_accuracy is spot on at .0008.

Quick probe calibrate and reset the offset which looks like I nailed for once, im sure a little baby stepping will take place down the road but the test square I always run to determine the first layer looks like a winner. Now I can get back to printing the trident tophat.