Two Trees Sapphire pro 2 - exploring this corexy printer

Thing is, when wiring up a 3d printer board.
In this case the robin nano on my 'new' sapphire pro. (Second hand but has never actually printed anything).

I tend to think (erroneously as it turns out) that the positive and negative terminals along the power strip for mains in, extruder and hotbed out - are going to be the same for all of them.

And it turns out that on a robin nano 1.2 board - this is not the case.
The outputs are in fact reversed compared to the input.
So I wired the bloody hotbed up the wrong way round.

Soooooooooo, I'm wondering if I've killed something on the robin board or something on the hotbed itself !

Everything else works fine. printhead moves arounf and hotend and extruder works fine. Eventualy - after changing x&y motors round and then remembering to change endstops as well - all three axis home perfectly.
Which given it's a corexy and the belt setup is totally bizarre - I am amazed that it works at all.

But the bloody printbed will not heat up !

So, do i need a new heating pad or a new board ?

I might see if there's still current coming from the power connector tonight with the multimeter.

Not sure what's cheaper, a robin nano 1.2 or a 220mm heatpad. I do know that the board is probably a lot easier and quicker to change over :-)

But I suspect it's the heat pad that's buggered.

Anyone ever done similiar ?

ps. I have re-wired correctly and still no hot printbed. BUt everything else works fine.

well the hotend needs stripping down and probably having ptfe strategigically inserted, but you expect that.
But apart from the hotbed - it's all good.

Thing is I don't know if th horbed worked when i got the machine as the original owner said he could never get it to actually print. It would just sit there - almost as though it was waitign for the bed to heat up (my thoughts not his).

I'm hoping it's dodgy wiring on the hotbed and my mate can bring his soldering iron and have a play.

check the bed with an ohm meter..

So the heating element in these heated beds do not include any type of a diode. They get warmed by current flowing across a constrained path. And that resistance will build the same amount of heat no matter which way the current flows over it. Why there are red and black wires going to the heat bed idk, but 2 reds would be just fine. Now external mosfets very much care about that polarity coming in. If you are wiring the heat bed output from a mainboard into a external mosfet then you need to ensure that polarity is right. If you are wired directly from the board to the bed and connections are correct and tight and the bed doesnt heat up then you should look in marlin under configuration.h and make sure that the heated bed is enabled. And once you get it all up and running don't forget that PID autotune for them heaters.

Okay - it's worse than I thought ......
printer perfect - but the mobile organic bifurcated interface is f***ed ;-)

Yeah, turns out I didn't screw the terminals down tight enough.
After re-seating and using the correct size screwdriver - everything now working perfectly.
I've even added the top extruder 'pyramid'.
This cuts the bowden tube length down by about half.
And eliminates any really extreme angles in the tube.
Hopefully this'll make it half decent for flexible filament

So everything is now doing everything it should, levelled the bed and am now looking for a simplify3d profile for it and coming up totally blank.

Thing is - does the slicer have to know it's a corexy ?
I guess I'll just have to make my own profile and see what happens :-)

Oh and I need to add another 20mm to the hotend cables, it's kinda tight at the front right corner.
I don't usually do proper cable management and I think i got a bit carried away lol

But yeah, so far - as with all my other printers, only issues have turned out to be my fault :-)

Oh yeh I buggered the print surface while making the levelling nuts so that they don't rotate in their sockets when levelling.
But have just swiped the aluminium with some magigoo - and that will most likely do a much better job anyway.

There are 2 sheets of pei the correct size in my workshop somewjere.
But I put them in safe places and cannot find them, not for love not money.
So magigoo and a slightly reduced print area it is for now.

It Lives !
And oh man is it quiet !

The only noise is the tiny fan in the base and the occasional retraction.

The linear slides on the x&y are silent as are the tmc driven motors.

The odd thing is that while I've now got it talking to simplify3d and happily printing over the usb cable.
It won't print the same g-code from the sd card.
It reads the card and appears to load the file a the hotend and bed heat up correctly.
But doesn't go so far as to home and start printing.

Wondering if I can plug an sd card reader into the screen.
Although it does read the card.
odd.
And a problem for tomorrow.
Yonight I' going to ramp the spee dip and see just what this sucker will do !

Also try and figure out why the fan control isn't working.

There are only two sockets for the c]print cooling fans. And the control panel has fan speed options that don't do anything.

Maybe need to swap over and double wire the fans into one connector.
we'll see. Also try a different sdcard and a micro to standard adaptor.

And sort the bloody hotend temp swing.
It's goes from 10c under to 20c ver and oscillates between.
Never seen anything like it.
The hotbed just hits temp and stays there - like normal.

Have to see what gcode I can throw at the robin nano to try and settle things down a bit.

But I am up to 200mm/s print speed.
hell I'm printing the first layer at 100.
I've aset everything else at 100% and just given the first layer 50%

Magigoo is good stuff lol

You need to PID autotune that heater. But first go over the heater and temp sensor connections and make sure everything is tight and heater and temp sensor are correctly attached to the hot end. Then connect via usb and enter M303 S235 C8 if you're printing with the PETG and it will return to you the correct kp, ki, and kd values for you to go enter into your firmware for the extruders heater. You can also do the same for the bed heater. For that you would enter M303 E-1 S60 C8 and wait for it to return your kp, ki, and kd values for you to go enter in marlin under the configuration.h tab. And then them heaters will work well. Also I like to apply thermal paste to the heater cartridge before i slide it into the heat brick. If i had one that was assembled dry I might be inclined to take it apart and apply some artic silver 5 or other cpu thermal paste. Because I use all E3D stuff all the temp sensors i use are also little cartridges and I also apply thermal paste to them before putting them in.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by curious aardvark

It Lives !

The odd thing is that while I've now got it talking to simplify3d and happily printing over the usb cable.
It won't print the same g-code from the sd card.
It reads the card and appears to load the file a the hotend and bed heat up correctly.
But doesn't go so far as to home and start printing.

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That was the problem I had and without the knowledge to know what was wrong my best choice was to sell it to someone who would get it working.
I'm happy it's done you some good.

yeah - it is an odd one.
The actual hardware and mechanics of the machine are excellent. I mean the top plate is 6mm aluminium and the base is made from 2.25mm steel.
It's ultra stable !

But even if card reader had worked - the temperature swing would probably have buggered you up.
Still looking into commands to fix that, pretty sure it's a dodgy firmware setting and those you can usually fix with the right gcode tagged on to the startup code.

That said -= even wth a near 40 degree swing - I set it at 210 and it oscillated between 192 and 230 - it STILL knocked out a couple of trolley keys at 200mm/s. they look a little rough - but they are dimensionally accurate and without the temp issue would be as good as a 70mm/s print from my other machines.

With the extruder mounted on a pyramid frame at the top - I've got the bowden tube dwon to half the length and with no really sharp angles. So I've got high hopes for flexible filaments.
Attachment 15041

Think I found the design for the pyramid on thingiverse. Originally it ws held together with little plastic plugs - so I had to redesign it to use bolts and nuts.
The tricky bit was fastening the feet securely to the top frame. I think he just had his resting - not good. I ended up using cable ties and it's now seriously rigid and going nowhere.
I've actually cjopped a bit more off the bowden tube sonce I took that pic.


It's weird that they obviously put so much effort into getting the frame and general mechanics right - the linear rails are amazing and coupled with the tmc stepper drivers - It's so smooth and quiet that if it wasn't for the filament making noise during retractios - you would not even know it was running.
I find it weird that you'd go the the effort to make something so well engineered and then bugger things up with dodgy firmware.

And just checked - it's running a custom version of marlin 1.

So yeah - all-in-all, well chuffed with it :-)

How you getting on with the flashforge 3 - got a workling one yet ?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by curious aardvark

How you getting on with the flashforge 3 - got a workling one yet ?

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It was returned because using one extruder for supports and the other one for the actual print, it was not capable of putting the supports under the print.
The support would be offset and then the next layer of the print would be offset some more and so on until it looked like really severe layer shift with the supports being printed inside the print.

Even though I returned it with a small test print that would demonstrate the problem within about two minutes, Technology Outlet would only print a normal test cube or the two colour cube on the USB stick, which of course came out fine as I had already told them it would.

Anyway I had a refund and that was it.
Not sorry at all now because the Creator 3 has very very noisy fans and I do mean noisy.

I got a Raise3D-E2 to replace it from a different supplier. Just put my fourth roll of PLA in and apart from being on my third filament sensor the only bad prints have been down to operator error.
Although there is a glitch in the firmware meaning the only way to stop the Hepa fan is to unplug it.

Just waiting for a reply from Raise3D about this glitch that they themselves introduced into later firmware and depending on their answer I could be returning yet another 3D printer which with the one you had will bring my total to four manufacturer fails !!!!!!

I think we might start calling you 'lucky' :-)

Filament run out sensors are pretty pointless.
But for that kind of money you would expect something that simple to work. As basic working practice renders them useless.
ie: how big is my print - how much filament is on the roll.

Well if you want to keep trying out mid range idex printers here's another one for you to try: https://www.bcn3d.com/bcn3d-sigmax-r19/

Shame monoprice or qidi don't do them yet.

I mean if you want to push the boat out there's always my all time favourite fdm 3d printer (so far): https://www.lpfrg.com/products/leapfrog-bolt-pro/
Leapfrog bolt. Gorgeous looking machine with so,e seriously over engineered mechanicals.
They were also a nice bunch of blokes to chat with when tct still did non-industrial machines.