Trident 350mm rebuild from scratch

[lawson.brian]

I thought I might as well pop a thread here as I will have a list of questions to run through on this build.

One night, while my wife was out, I had a bit of a browse of ebay and came across an interesting project (as you do) and popped in a cheeky bid not expecting to get it.... and won it.

A 'sort of finished but not finished' Tridex. When I picked it up and run a tape across it I realised it was actually a standard Trident 350 frame & rails with a 300mm bed and a bit of a mix in the two toolheads with the bare minimum of panels etc to get it working.

I managed to get some data off the klipper install and she had a total of 10 printing hours - i.e the setup phase. Looking further into it I realised the prints were delaminating so decided it needed a full reprint ... but on investigating the Tridex documentation it looked like a 300mm bed was still a bit big on this size frame and it was going to take quite a bit to get it to the standard tridex specification ......

.... so a conversion back to a standard trident was the best course for what I wanted  .....a standard trident 350mm with a 300mm bed. The bonus is I still have the Tridex steppers so I can head back down that path with an appropriate frame later on if I want multi-material rather then multi-colour.

 

Edited April 17 by lawson.brian

[lawson.brian]

Now, this is where the fun for me starts

With a 300mm bed, it sits in the middle front. Due to this there are a couple of options for calculating head position based on endstops ........

Currently I have it set up with the left side of the bed being 0 and the front of the bed being 0 so left of the bed is -ve. Now this causes some challenges with regards to Z-tilt setup, bed mesh etc so I was considering setting it back up as per a 350mm but specifying the bed as being 25-325 for X and 0-300mm on Y as useable and reduce the bed mesh based on this. Anyone else run down this path?

Z-tilt with Klicky - with the bed set up I was having issues with the z-tilt function not lifting z enough between probes - i.e if the bed was not completely flat it would drag the klicky across it and pre-activate or fully remove it. How do you specify how much to lift in Z prior to each move in the z-tilt function (klicky macros) as I cannot see anything in the environmental config file that will change this?

Canbus - which Mellow Fly boards are recommended? - I see a few are used here. As the Manta M8P has canbus I was wanting to continue to use it. I managed to kill a BTT SB2209 rp2040 board by being a bit careless during initial toolhead testing - i.e the can cable snagged and caused an 'unscheduled removal' of the can plug and a cap  ... I may be able to do a repair but I cannot imagine it will be robust long term.

Having the 300mm bed in the middle front actually opens up some options ..... in theory enough room for a spool on the left and right so, maybe, a 2 channel filament changer?

 

 

 

[mvdveer]

7 hours ago, lawson.brian said:

How do you specify how much to lift in Z prior

Set this in the Z-Tilt section. Change this value to 15 for example

horizontal_move_z: 10

 

7 hours ago, lawson.brian said:

Canbus - which Mellow Fly boards are recommended?

I am a bit biased - All my printers have Mellow boards. As they all have Stealthburner toolhead, I use the SB2040 boards. For those printers without Stealthburner, I use the SHT36 from Mellow. Have not had a problem (13 printers with Mellow boards)

 

7 hours ago, lawson.brian said:

in theory enough room for a spool on the left and right

You can do an internal spool on a standard Trident 300 - mine has this. So that won't be a problem

[lawson.brian]

Managed to get a bit done today around the kids;

Swapped the full toolhead from my switchwire with a Nitehawk sb in it and got it to home, complete a z-tilt successfully with a better z-height (thanks Mvdveer) and complete a 7x7 bed mesh within the confines of the bed! Will order a new canbus toolhead from Ali but this gets the printer operational until that arrives and I can complete the rest of the config while I have a bit of time.

Hopefully tomorrow the bed will be wired and possibly a first print ......

Any suggestions for good umbilical brackets for the Stealthburner for the nitehawk sb and later a Mellow Fly sb? I robbed the chain from the SW but only on X not Y which is a bit dodgy still. I see there are some with printable inserts (PUG)?

 

 

[mvdveer]

10 minutes ago, lawson.brian said:

Any suggestions for good umbilical brackets

Depends on the extruder you are running as this will determine the fit to the umbilical mount. There are mounts on printables utilising (These are for galileo2) "PUG", PG7 and Zip tie. (Another PUG)

[lawson.brian]

On 4/18/2025 at 11:37 PM, mvdveer said:

Depends on the extruder you are running as this will determine the fit to the umbilical mount. There are mounts on printables utilising (These are for galileo2) "PUG", PG7 and Zip tie. (Another PUG)

Thanks for this. Currently running a CW2/revo (borrowed from my switchwire) but am aiming for the Galileo 2 / revo toolhead with the cutter as this will have a filament changer attached to it so these will do nicely!

[lawson.brian]

Got her running over the easter break. Pinched the toolhead with Nitehawk from my Switchwire as well as the chains for the X/Y in the interum. Switchwire certainly in a bad state now! Got the obligatory cube done in PLA!

Run a couple of longer prints off and have a really bad resonance on straight lines on the Y axis around the 40mm/s speed mark. Faster is fine. Seems to be limited to the B motor (left) so wondering if I have a dodgy stepper or driver on that channel.

 

 

[lawson.brian]

Have been working in finding the source of this bad resonance I am experiencing at 30-40mm/s

Input Shaper; Running the input shaper process gives reasonable graphs but the noise was pretty horrific during the process and I noticed some increase in vibrations up toward the 200hz area. (This is using the 0.13 release of Klipper)

Swapped out the stepper for Motor B - no difference

Checked for loose bolts and everything seems to be good.

Lifted amps from 0.8 to 1.0 for A & B - no real change & removed the stealthchop=0 line for both A & B - doesn't really change anything as Klipper defaults to spreadcycle anyway so ....

If I run higher print speeds keeping out of the 30-40mm/s zone it improves it but doesn't fix the issue - it is pretty bad.

Next move will be to change the stepper unless anyone has any other ideas?

Here is the config for Motor B (X)

 

#---------------------------
#     X/Y Stepper Settings
#---------------------------

# X Stepper (B Motor-Left) on Motor1
[stepper_x]
step_pin: PE2
dir_pin: PB4
enable_pin: !PC11
rotation_distance: 40
full_steps_per_rotation:200  #set to 200 for 1.8 degree stepper
microsteps: 16
#endstop_pin: ^PF3
endstop_pin: nhk:gpio13 #X enstop Nitehawk
position_min: 0
# Uncomment for 350mm build
position_endstop: 350
position_max: 350
homing_speed: 50   #Max 100
homing_retract_dist: 5
homing_positive_dir: true

[tmc2209 stepper_x]
uart_pin: PC10
interpolate: false
run_current: 1.0
sense_resistor: 0.110

 

[lawson.brian]

Have around 30h on this printer now without the panels printing PLA and still chasing the loud resonance noises at low speeds (30mm/s) - i.e first layer. I can hear it vibrating through the house like an orbital vibrating sander.

The steppers for X/Y are LDO 42STH48-2004AC 1.8 deg. My 2.4 runs this size but the 0.9 deg version LDO 42STH48-2004MAH and no issues with that printer for noise on X/Y but that is running 5160's on 24v so not a like for like comparison.

Seems to be Stepper X (Motor B) that is worse but I had swapped in a replacement motor (same type) and no difference. I can lift to 35mm/s and it quietens down which is what I am now setting the first layer speed to.

Anyone else running this motor and having noise issues? Any other Nema 17 motors that are a lot quieter / low vibration that might be worth a look at?

For reference I can run it from 40mm/s through to around 140mm/s (hotend limited) extruding and the noise is good now - just the slow stuff where it is obnoxiously loud.

Other then that I have had a play with the stepper wiring pairs, different TMC drivers BTT V1.2 & V1.3, swapped to different motor slots on the MCU, different amps, both 16 and 32 micro steps, re aligned the carriage checked all the bolts etc etc. It basically turns the toolhead into a tuning fork at 30mm/s.

 

[lawson.brian]

Did a bit more testing this morning with some success;

Pulled out the 'B' motor and swapped in one from my Switchwire - a smaller LDO 42STH40-1684AC and resonance at 30mm/s has pretty much gone on a print that was pretty bad for resonance initially so confirmed that this stepper set with this particular frame just does not work at low speeds.

So, decisions decisions ... what replacement steppers to get?

I don't know if maybe an earlier batch of these motors were noisier but this is the one I have pulled and I tested two different ones:

 

[lawson.brian]

Clark Kent dropped by today and dropped off some Super Power's ! ... or was that Royal Mail??

LDO-42STH48-2804AC Super Power Stepper Motor.

Only running them with TMC2209's @ 24V 1 amp but so far they are much much quieter!