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Voron Adjacent Modding Journey


atrushing

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I am wrapping up a few more loose ends.

I've added a guide for the heated bed wires. It has been fun designing a few parts that don't need any screws for installation.

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I am using a meter of reverse bowden tubing routed with as smooth of curves as possible so that it stays tucked out of the way and follows the wire bundle up to the toolhead.

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And the very necessary bed probe. I am trying out an IR differential probe because it is one of the few options that is short enough to fit under the toolhead. It senses the top of the build surface so I want to test to see if it can adapt to different build plates.

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Tomorrow I should be able to try pushing some plastic through this printer!

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1 hour ago, Penatr8tor said:

Agree but it needs something inside that big hole where the part cooling fan used to go. Maybe some radial fins or something.

Nope... I thought so too, but after making it, I love to see the Extruder in it....

But @atrushing did make a fake fan cover... because I asked him, but never used it??? (shame) hahaha!

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32 minutes ago, Buurman said:

Nope... I thought so too, but after making it, I love to see the Extruder in it....

But @atrushing did make a fake fan cover... because I asked him, but never used it??? (shame) hahaha!

And that's the beauty of DIY... Everyone gets to make things the way they want it and we do not have to agree. To me it looks unfinished and you like it open, either way works. What's that old saying...

Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder. 😄

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21 hours ago, mvdveer said:

Would be interesting to see how that performs. Looks neat and nicely tucked away

So far it is working fine for me. I will need to put in some more time with it and do some larger prints to see how flat the first layer is.

I think I will fit one onto my V0.1 because the stock micro switch doesn't leave much room for error. I have to make sure to home the Z axis with the nozzle off the corner of the bed or it won't even trigger.

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The IR probe looks very interesting. Of course I'm using the pinda probe. I have a Super Pinda that I bought and will implement on the next round of improvements but, the standard probe was good enough to print some parts that covered over 90% of the bed with amazing quality (with PLA).

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Today was a long day of tuning, calibration and troubleshooting. (and I'm not finished yet)

I started with the current and speed settings for the steppers. I wanted to keep the moving mass down as much as possible so while I used the standard Nema 17 x 40mm stepper for the Y axis, I used a Nema 17 x 20mm for the X axis. I was able to get these axes running smoothly at up to 500 mm/sec.

 

 

On the Z and E axes I used LDO Nema 14 x 17mm pancake steppers. These turned out to be barely up to the task and it took a lot of fiddling to get them up to speed without melting anything. I was constantly checking them with a digital thermometer and whenever they got to over 95C I would disable all motors and let everything cool down for a while. I was able to get them working but I might go back and swap one or both to 20mm pancake steppers.

During the first print I kept bumping up the speed override and had it printing at 200 mm/sec before the Y axis skipped some steps. I still have plenty room to set the current higher so I'm not too worried. Plus I'm not trying for any speed Benchys. Until it skipped the print quality was looking fine for now. This is also a decent proof for the HexRAT extruder

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I can officially call this a printer now!

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1 hour ago, Penatr8tor said:

Looks good. It would be interesting to see how fast the Z axis is. 

Right now it is maxing out at 20mm/sec. I am still trying to tune it but it has to work against gravity when raising the bed and also work against the Keybak when lowering the bed. Going to the 20mm pancake stepper would be an easy change but I might need to go to a Nema 17 x 20mm stepper. I would be happy with 50mm/sec.

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A quick note on the CB1. It is running Klipper with no WiFi drop-outs at all. Without the 4010 blower running it was getting up to 65C but with the blower at 80% the temp stayed between 44-48C all day long.

The web interface feels a smidge slower than with my other printers running PI 3b but I am quite pleased with the Manta/CB1 combo. One small gripe is that the way they organize the config files is a little odd and I had to reference my other printers to get things working as I expected.

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44 minutes ago, atrushing said:

I am quite pleased with the Manta/CB1 combo

Looks like a good alternative, the way prices are going on raspberry pi's at present. A nice, neat and compact solution.

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8 hours ago, mvdveer said:

Looks like a good alternative, the way prices are going on raspberry pi's at present.

The only good thing about the availability and pricing of Pi's right now is that it is pushing the market to create these alternatives. I watched a video recently about a new RISC-V single board computer at a decent price range! Pi's are great but I'll be happy when more of these boards are better supported.

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13 hours ago, Penatr8tor said:

The IR probe looks very interesting.

I found the chart but I can't remember which video I stole it from.

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So, a Klicky would be more accurate as long as there wasn't any play in the magnetic connection and the TAP would barely register on this graph!

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I read somewhere (reddit I think) that new Pi's are coming in Feb-March and also hearing that there's an increase in production for the Pi 4B. I personally haven't seen the availability go up any so I'm not holding my breath but it would be nice to grab a couple at a more reasonable price or even a new version come down the pipe. The Manta does look intriguing and it's good to know that it works well. I think the Pi needs some competition. 1, to bring prices down and 2. to offer choices with more features and better performance. 

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1 hour ago, Penatr8tor said:

I think the Pi needs some competition. 1, to bring prices down and 2. to offer choices with more features and better performance. 

Couldn't agree more. Even without scalping the price has been creeping up. Guess there's also the changes of usage, it's moved out of the tinkering/maker space directly (where I'd say cheap price was essential if you were going to blow it up by accident) into being a general purpose computer (I know it's always been that 😉 )indirectly involved in "making" (klipper and 3d printing say) so they've taken the opportunity to increase the price.

The real challenge will be when to dump the unboxed original PIs, that we've been hoarding, for maximum value before the market crashes when flooded with all the cheaper/better/neater/faster options.....

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Good points @smirk

I think one of reasons why the Pi is so rare these days is growth in popularity. The usage of the Pi has expanded from the hobbyist/student/maker space to the industry and consumer space as a control module for automated manufacturing on the industry side and as the compute module for home automation products on the other. Even a handful of small companies using 500-1000 units a month in production is enough to adversely impact consumer availability when the market previously sold only to students and hobbyists.

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Two steps forwards..

Watching Teaching Tech's latest video I learned that the Orbiter filament sensor macros were a good way to load and unload filament as well as handle runout. I hooked up an extra push-button to the M4P and loaded the OrbiterSensor.cfg in Klipper and it worked like a charm! I didn't bother with the LED like the Orbiter sensor uses but if I had the patience, it might be possible to trigger the Mini Stealth status LED within the macros.

My next task was swapping the Z axis stepper from a 17mm to a 20mm motor. I don't know what magic LDO crams in that meager 3mm difference but at 0.5A current I was able to reliably get Z speeds of 100 mm/sec while the stepper stayed at 40C.

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While I had things apart I did make sure to add some lithium grease on the stepper gears. I even took apart the Keybak and spread a little grease on all of the friction surfaces. I also rubbed some of the lithium grease into the Keybak string because it was pretty noise while the Z axis moved and every bit of friction reduction helps.

One big step back..

I started another print to verify the improvements but I accidentally put the unreasonable probing speed of 70mm/sec in my config. The printer got halfway through the mesh level and then failed with too many probes out of range. It parked itself and Klipper showed an error. I tried restarting the printer but then Klipper couldn't reach the MCU. Re-flashing the firmware was a challenge since the SD card slot is underneath the control board and against the printer frame.

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Unfortunately, even with the fresh flash, the CB1 still doesn't recognize a connected USB device or any serial interfaces. Tomorrow, I get to try disconnecting everything and testing if any of the printer connections are interfering with the USB connection. If that doesn't work I might have to try connecting through UART.

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